Turkey These Days

Turkey’s Cautionary Tale

Caroline Glick/ 04/15/2011/Jerusalem Post

Turkey's AKP used democracy to gain power. Now that they have power, they are systematically destroying freedom in their country.

Today’s Turkey is a cautionary tale for the West. But Western leaders are loath to consider its lessons.Ever since Turkey’s Islamist Justice and Development AKP party under Recip Tayip Erdogan won the November 2002 elections, Western officials have upheld the AKP, Erdogan and his colleagues as proof that political Islam is consonant with democratic values.

During Erdogan’s June 2005 visit to the White House, for instance, then-president George W. Bush praised Turkish democracy as “an important example for the people in the broader Middle East.”

Unfortunately, nine years into the AKP’s “democratic” regime it is clear that Erdogan and his colleagues’ embrace of the language and tools of democracy was a mile wide and an inch thick. They used democracy to gain power. Now that they have power, they are systematically destroying freedom in their country.

Turkey ranks 138th in the international media freedom group Reporters Sans Frontieres country index on press freedom. Sixty-eight journalists are languishing in Turkish jails for the crime of doing their job. The most recent round-up of reporters occurred in early March. And it is demonstrative of Turkey’s Islamist leaders’ exploitation of democratic freedoms in the service of their tyrannical ends.

As Der Spiegel reported last week, veteran journalists Ahmet Sik from the far-left Radikal newspaper and Nedim Sener from the highbrow Milliyet journal were among those rounded up. As radical leftists, both men oppose the AKP’s Islamist politics. But they shared its interest in weakening the Turkish military.

The Left opposed the military’s constitutional role as the overseer of Turkish democracy because the military used that role to persecute leftists. The AKP party opposed the military’s power because it blocked the party’s path to Islamizing Turkish society and politics.

When the AKP turned its guns on the military it used leftist journalists to support its actions.This collusion came to a head in 2007. In a bid to destroy the legitimacy of the military, the AKP regime has engaged in unprecedented levels of wiretapping of the communications of senior serving and retired generals.

This wiretapping operation preceded the exposure in 2007 of the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy in which senior military commanders, journalists, television personalities, entertainers and businesspeople have been implicated in an alleged attempt to topple the AKP government.

As part of the Ergenekon investigation, over the past four years, hundreds of non-Islamist leaders from generals to journalists have been arrested and held without trial.Ironically, Sik, who is now accused of membership in the Ergenekon plot, was an editor at the leftist weekly magazine Notka that “broke” the conspiracy story.As Der Spiegel notes, the arrest of Sik and Sener shows that the AKP’s early embrace of investigative reporters and championing of a free press was purely opportunistic.

Once Sik, Sener and the other 66 jailed reporters had finished discrediting the military, the regime had no need for them. Indeed, they became a threat.Both Sik and Sener have recently written books documenting how Turkey’s version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Fetulah Gulen network, has taken over the country’s security services.

In an interview this month with the opposition Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, former Turkish president Suleyman Demirel warned that the AKP has established “an empire of fear” in Turkey.TURKEY’S DESCENT into Islamist tyranny has not simply destroyed freedom in Turkey.

It has transformed Turkey’s strategic posture in a manner that is disastrous for the West. And yet, in this arena as well, the West refuses to notice what is happening.

Earlier this week the US Ambassador to Ankara Francis Ricciardone gave an interview to the Turkish media in which he romantically upheld the US-Turkish partnership. As he put it, “Our interests are similar. Even if we have different methods and targets, our strategic vision is the same.”Sadly, there is no way to square this declaration with Turkish policy.

This week it was reported that NATO member Turkey is opening something akin to a Taliban diplomatic mission in Ankara. Turkey supports Hamas and Hizbullah. It has begun training the Syrian military. It supports Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It has become the Iranian regime’s economic lifeline by allowing the mullahs to use Turkish markets to bypass the UN sanctions regime.

In less than 10 years, the AKP regime has dismantled Turkey’s strategic alliance with Israel. It has inculcated the formerly tolerant if not pro- Israel Turkish public with virulent anti-Semitism.

It is this systematic indoctrination to Jew-hatred that has emboldened Turkish leaders to announce publicly that they support going to war against Israel.The Turkish government stands behind the al- Qaida- and Hamas- linked IHH group.

IHH organized last year’s pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in which IHH members brutally attacked IDF naval commandoes engaged in a lawful mission to maintain Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of Gaza’s coast.

With the support of the Turkish government, IHH is now planning an even larger flotilla to assault Israel’s blockade of Gaza next month.

Actually, in a sign of the intimacy of its ties to the AKP regime, this week IHH announced it is considering postponing the next pro-Hamas flotilla in order to ensure that its illegal pro-terror campaign will not harm the AKP’s electoral prospects in Turkey’s national elections scheduled for June.

American and other Western officials have argued that it would be wrong to distance their governments from Turkey or in any way censure the NATO member because doing so will only strengthen the anti-Western forces in the anti- Western government. Instead, Western leaders have done everything they can to appease Erdogan.

The US even allowed him to invade Iraqi Kurdistan.Unfortunately, this appeasement policy has only harmed the West and NATO. Take the behavior of NATO’s Secretary-General and former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. As Denmark’s prime minister, Rasmussen stood up boldly to the Islamists when they demanded that he apologize for the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten’s publication of caricatures of Muhammad in 2005.

Yet when Turkey threatened to veto his appointment as NATO secretary-general in 2009 over the Islamists’ rejection of free speech, Rasmussen abandoned his strong defense of Western liberal values to placate the Turks.

In a humiliating speech Rasmussen said, “I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark or insult or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or the Prophet Muhammad... I respect Islam as one of the world’s major religions as well as its religious symbols.”

Rasmussen then proceeded to appoint Turks to key positions in the alliance.Far from reining in Turkey’s anti-Western policies, by maintaining Turkey in NATO Western powers have been forced to curtail their own defense of their interests.

NATO’s incoherent mission in Libya is case in point. It can be argued that Germany’s large and increasingly radicalized Turkish minority played a role in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to risk her country’s good ties with Britain and France and refuse to support the Libyan mission.

So, too, it was reportedly due to President Barack Obama’s deference to Turkey that the US failed to support the anti-regime forces until Gaddafi organized a counteroffensive against them.

So if as appears increasingly likely, Gaddafi is able to survive the NATO-backed insurgents’ bid to overthrow him, he will owe his survival in no small measure to Erdogan.

TURKEY IS a cautionary tale for the West, which is now faced with the prospect of AKP-like regimes from Egypt to Tunisia to Jordan to the Persian Gulf.

And the real issue that Western leaders must address is how things in Turkey were permitted to deteriorate to the point they have without any US or European official lifting a finger to stem the Islamist tide?

The answer, it would seem, is a combination of professional laziness and cultural weakness. This mix of factors is also on display in the US’s behavior toward the revolutionary forces active throughout much of the Arab world.

Professional laziness stands at the root of the West’s decision not to contend with the unpleasant truth that the AKP is an Islamist party whose basic ideology has more in common with Osama bin Laden’s values than with George Washington’s.

This truth was always available. Erdogan and his colleagues did not make any special efforts to hide what they stand for.

The West chose not to pay attention because its senior officials knew if they did, they would have to do something. They would have had to distance themselves from Turkey, remove Turkey from NATO and seek to contain the power of the Erdogan regime. And this would have been hard and unpleasant.

So, too, they knew that if they noticed the nature of the AKP they would have to throw themselves deep into Turkish society and defend the superiority of Western values over Islamist values. They would have had to locate and support Turkish leaders who are willing to adopt Western values and then cultivate, fund and empower them.

This also would have been hard and unpleasant.Likewise, in post-Mubarak Egypt, it is easier to believe fairy tales about Facebook revolutions and Westernized student leaders than face the harsh truth that from Amr Moussa to Mohamed ElBaradei to Yousef Qaradawi there are no leaders in post-Mubarak Egypt who support the peace with Israel or believe that Egypt has common interests with Israel and the US.

There are no potential leaders in Egypt who share Western values of individual liberty and human rights.And as in Turkey, the price for recognizing these inconvenient facts is taking effective action to counter them.

As in Turkey, the West will be forced to do hard things like develop a policy of containing rather than engaging Egypt, and of identifying and cultivating forces in Egyptian society that are willing to embrace John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith over Hassan al-Banna and Qaradawi.

Rather than do any of these hard things, Western leaders have lied to themselves about the nature of these forces and regimes. They have told themselves that there is no problem with the likes of Erdogan and his Egyptian cohorts, and opted to limit their meddling in the internal affairs of others to endless attempts to undermine and overthrow successive pro- Western, democratic, non-leftist governments in Israel.

These governments, they have argued, must be replaced by leftist parties in order to feed the West’s fantasy that all the problems of the region, all its Qaradawis and Erdogans, will magically become Thomas Jeffersons and John Adamses if Israel would just cut a deal with the PLO.This fantasy is convenient for lazy Western cultural cowards.

They know that there will be no pushback for their policies. Israel won’t attack them. And by pretending the Islamists share their values and strategic interests they are free to take no action to defend their values and strategic interests from Islamist assault.

But while this strategy has been convenient for policymakers, it has done great damage to their countries. The growing menace that is Islamist Turkey teaches us that professional laziness and cultural squeamishness are recipes for strategic disasters

Text of Obama's Stirring April 12, 2011 Speech Affirming the Common Sense of Liberal Values

“Good afternoon. It’s great to be back at GW. I want you to know that one of the reasons I kept the government open was so I could be here today with all of you. I wanted to make sure you had one more excuse to skip class. You’re welcome.

Of course, what we’ve been debating here in Washington for the last few weeks will affect your lives in ways that are potentially profound. This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page, more than just cutting and spending. It’s about the kind of future we want. It’s about the kind of country we believe in. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity. More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.
But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.

We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we’ve built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We’ve laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce.

We’ve supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has benefitted from these investments, and we are a more prosperous country as a result.

Part of this American belief that we are all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.

For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally born a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. Moreover, this belief has not hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale, who continue to do better and better with each passing year.

Now, at certain times – particularly during periods of war or recession – our nation has had to borrow money to pay for some of our priorities. And as most families understand, a little credit card debt isn’t going to hurt if it’s temporary.

But as far back as the 1980s, America started amassing debt at more alarming levels, and our leaders began to realize that a larger challenge was on the horizon. They knew that eventually, the Baby Boom generation would retire, which meant a much bigger portion of our citizens would be relying on programs like Medicare, Social Security, and possibly Medicaid. Like parents with young children who know they have to start saving for the college years, America had to start borrowing less and saving more to prepare for the retirement of an entire generation.

To meet this challenge, our leaders came together three times during the 1990s to reduce our nation’s deficit. They forged historic agreements that required tough decisions made by the first President Bush and President Clinton; by Democratic Congresses and a Republican Congress. All three agreements asked for shared responsibility and shared sacrifice, but they largely protected the middle class, our commitments to seniors, and key investments in our future.

As a result of these bipartisan efforts, America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt-free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the Baby Boomers.

But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program – but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts – tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our national checkbook, consider this: in the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.

Of course, that’s not what happened.

And so, by the time I took office, we once again found ourselves deeply in debt and unprepared for a Baby Boom retirement that is now starting to take place. When I took office, our projected deficit was more than $1 trillion. On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more. In this case, we took a series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs, kept credit flowing, and provided working families extra money in their pockets.

It was the right thing to do, but these steps were expensive, and added to our deficits in the short term.

So that’s how our fiscal challenge was created. This is how we got here. And now that our economic recovery is gaining strength, Democrats and Republicans must come together and restore the fiscal responsibility that served us so well in the 1990s. We have to live within our means, reduce our deficit, and get back on a path that will allow us to pay down our debt. And we have to do it in a way that protects the recovery, and protects the investments we need to grow, create jobs, and win the future.

Now, before I get into how we can achieve this goal, some of you might be wondering, “Why is this so important? Why does this matter to me?”

Here’s why.

Even after our economy recovers, our government will still be on track to spend more money than it takes in throughout this decade and beyond. That means we’ll have to keep borrowing more from countries like China. And that means more of your tax dollars will go toward paying off the interest on all the loans we keep taking out. By the end of this decade, the interest we owe on our debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion. Just the interest payments.

Then, as the Baby Boomers start to retire and health care costs continue to rise, the situation will get even worse. By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt. That’s it. Every other national priority – education, transportation, even national security – will have to be paid for with borrowed money.

Ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy. It will prevent us from making the investments we need to win the future. We won’t be able to afford good schools, new research, or the repair of roads and bridges – all the things that will create new jobs and businesses here in America.

Businesses will be less likely to invest and open up shop in a country that seems unwilling or unable to balance its books. And if our creditors start worrying that we may be unable to pay back our debts, it could drive up interest rates for everyone who borrows money – making it harder for businesses to expand and hire, or families to take out a mortgage.

The good news is, this doesn’t have to be our future. This doesn’t have to be the country we leave to our children. We can solve this problem. We came together as Democrats and Republicans to meet this challenge before, and we can do it again.

But that starts by being honest about what’s causing our deficit. You see, most Americans tend to dislike government spending in the abstract, but they like the stuff it buys.

Most of us, regardless of party affiliation, believe that we should have a strong military and a strong defense. Most Americans believe we should invest in education and medical research. Most Americans think we should protect commitments like Social Security and Medicare. And without even looking at a poll, my finely honed political skills tell me that almost no one believes they should be paying higher taxes.

Because all this spending is popular with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and because nobody wants to pay higher taxes, politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse –that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices. Or they suggest that we can somehow close our entire deficit by eliminating things like foreign aid, even though foreign aid makes up about 1% of our entire budget.

So here’s the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20%. What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That’s 12 percent for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.

Up until now, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12%. But cuts to that 12% alone won’t solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget. A serious plan doesn’t require us to balance our budget overnight – in fact, economists think that with the economy just starting to grow again, we will need a phased-in approach – but it does require tough decisions and support from leaders in both parties. And above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five and ten and twenty years down the road.

One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates. It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years, and one that addresses the challenge of Medicare and Medicaid in the years after that.

Those are both worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history.

A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That’s what they’re proposing. These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic.

It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on Earth – can’t afford any of this.

It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors. It says that ten years from now, if you’re a 65 year old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you’re on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it.

This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.

Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President.

The fact is, their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. As Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about this plan. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know.

The America I know is generous and compassionate; a land of opportunity and optimism. We take responsibility for ourselves and each other; for the country we want and the future we share. We are the nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI bill and saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives.

This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.

Today, I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, but one that protects the middle-class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.

The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week – a step that will save us about $750 billion over twelve years. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs I care about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs. We’ll invest in medical research and clean energy technology. We’ll invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education and job training. We will do what we need to compete and we will win the future.

The second step in our approach is to find additional savings in our defense budget. As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than protecting our national security, and I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America’s interests around the world. But as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, has said, the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security is America’s debt.

Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again. We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world. I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review, and I will make specific decisions about spending after it’s complete.

The third step in our approach is to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Here, the difference with the House Republican plan could not be clearer: their plan lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself.

Already, the reforms we passed in the health care law will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion.

My approach would build on these reforms. We will reduce wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments. We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency and speed generic brands of medicine onto the market. We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid.

We will change the way we pay for health care – not by procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results. And we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services seniors need.

Now, we believe the reforms we’ve proposed to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid will enable us to keep these commitments to our citizens while saving us $500 billion by 2023, and an additional one trillion dollars in the decade after that. And if we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare.

But let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations.

That includes, by the way, our commitment to Social Security. While Social Security is not the cause of our deficit, it faces real long-term challenges in a country that is growing older. As I said in the State of the Union, both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations. But we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code. In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.Beyond that, the tax code is also loaded up with spending on things like itemized deductions. And while I agree with the goals of many of these deductions, like homeownership or charitable giving, we cannot ignore the fact that they provide millionaires an average tax break of $75,000 while doing nothing for the typical middle-class family that doesn’t itemize.

My budget calls for limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2% of Americans – a reform that would reduce the deficit by $320 billion over ten years. But to reduce the deficit, I believe we should go further. That’s why I’m calling on Congress to reform our individual tax code so that it is fair and simple – so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford. I believe reform should protect the middle class, promote economic growth, and build on the Fiscal Commission’s model of reducing tax expenditures so that there is enough savings to both lower rates and lower the deficit. And as I called for in the State of the Union, we should reform our corporate tax code as well, to make our businesses and our economy more competitive.

This is my approach to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next twelve years. It’s an approach that achieves about $2 trillion in spending cuts across the budget. It will lower our interest payments on the debt by $1 trillion. It calls for tax reform to cut about $1 trillion in spending from the tax code. And it achieves these goals while protecting the middle class, our commitment to seniors, and our investments in the future.

In the coming years, if the recovery speeds up and our economy grows faster than our current projections, we can make even greater progress than I have pledged here. But just to hold Washington – and me – accountable and make sure that the debt burden continues to decline, my plan includes a debt failsafe. If, by 2014, our debt is not projected to fall as a share of the economy – or if Congress has failed to act – my plan will require us to come together and make up the additional savings with more spending cuts and more spending reductions in the tax code. That should be an incentive for us to act boldly now, instead of kicking our problems further down the road.

So this is our vision for America – a vision where we live within our means while still investing in our future; where everyone makes sacrifices but no one bears all the burden; where we provide a basic measure of security for our citizens and rising opportunity for our children.

Of course, there will be those who disagree with my approach. Some will argue we shouldn’t even consider raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It’s just an article of faith for them. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more.

I don’t need another tax cut. Warren Buffett doesn’t need another tax cut. Not if we have to pay for it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. Or by cutting kids from Head Start. Or by taking away college scholarships that I wouldn’t be here without. That some of you wouldn’t be here without. And I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.

Others will say that we shouldn’t even talk about cutting spending until the economy is fully recovered. I’m sympathetic to this view, which is one of the reasons I supported the payroll tax cuts we passed in December. It’s also why we have to use a scalpel and not a machete to reduce the deficit – so that we can keep making the investments that create jobs. But doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option. Our debt has grown so large that we could do real damage to the economy if we don’t begin a process now to get our fiscal house in order.

Finally, there are those who believe we shouldn’t make any reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security out of a fear that any talk of change to these programs will usher in the sort of radical steps that House Republicans have proposed.

I understand these fears. But I guarantee that if we don’t make any changes at all, we won’t be able to keep our commitments to a retiring generation that will live longer and face higher health care costs than those who came before.

Indeed, to those in my own party, I say that if we truly believe in a progressive vision of our society, we have the obligation to prove that we can afford our commitments. If we believe that government can make a difference in people’s lives, we have the obligation to prove that it works – by making government smarter, leaner and more effective.

Of course, there are those who will simply say that there’s no way we can come together and agree on a solution to this challenge. They’ll say the politics of this city are just too broken; that the choices are just too hard; that the parties are just too far apart. And after a few years in this job, I certainly have some sympathy for this view.

But I also know that we’ve come together and met big challenges before. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill came together to save Social Security for future generations. The first President Bush and a Democratic Congress came together to reduce the deficit. President Clinton and a Republican Congress battled each other ferociously and still found a way to balance the budget. In the last few months, both parties have come together to pass historic tax relief and spending cuts. And I know there are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who want to see a balanced approach to deficit reduction.

I believe we can and must come together again. This morning, I met with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to discuss the approach I laid out today. And in early May, the Vice President will begin regular meetings with leaders in both parties with the aim of reaching a final agreement on a plan to reduce the deficit by the end of June.

I don’t expect the details in any final agreement to look exactly like the approach I laid out today. I’m eager to hear other ideas from all ends of the political spectrum. And though I’m sure the criticism of what I’ve said here today will be fierce in some quarters, and my critique of the House Republican approach has been strong, Americans deserve and will demand that we all bridge our differences, and find common ground.

This larger debate we’re having, about the size and role of government, has been with us since our founding days. And during moments of great challenge and change, like the one we’re living through now, the debate gets sharper and more vigorous. That’s a good thing. As a country that prizes both our individual freedom and our obligations to one another, this is one of the most important debates we can have.

But no matter what we argue or where we stand, we’ve always held certain beliefs as Americans. We believe that in order to preserve our own freedoms and pursue our own happiness, we can’t just think about ourselves. We have to think about the country that made those liberties possible. We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community. And we have to think about what’s required to preserve the American Dream for future generations.
This sense of responsibility – to each other and to our country – this isn’t a partisan feeling. It isn’t a Democratic or Republican idea. It’s patriotism.

The other day I received a letter from a man in Florida. He started off by telling me he didn’t vote for me and he hasn’t always agreed with me. But even though he’s worried about our economy and the state of our politics, he said,

‘I still believe. I believe in that great country that my grandfather told me about. I believe that somewhere lost in this quagmire of petty bickering on every news station, the American Dream is still alive…

‘We need to use our dollars here rebuilding, refurbishing and restoring all that our ancestors struggled to create and maintain…We as a people must do this together, no matter the color of the state one comes from or the side of the aisle one might sit on.’

I still believe as well. And I know that if we can come together, and uphold our responsibilities to one another and to this larger enterprise that is America, we will keep the dream of our founding alive in our time, and pass on to our children the country we believe in. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.”

Sounds Like a Very Thin Book Indeed: On Shakespeare and the Law

• Eric A. Posner
• April 14, 2011 | TNR
  

A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Tell Us About Justice

by Kenji Yoshino

THE LAW PLAYS an unacknowledged role in much of Shakespeare’s work. Trials—real trials, quasi-trials, mock trials—recur. In many plays, characters refer to contemporary laws and legal institutions; and the plays raise larger questions about justice and the workings of the law. Lawyers, then, can help to illuminate Shakespeare’s plays, and many have done so by explaining the early modern legal background and Shakespeare’s exploitation of persistent legal puzzles for dramatic purposes.

Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at NYU, argues that Shakespeare’s plays contribute to modern debates about law and justice, and he draws crisp lessons from twelve of those plays. He argues that Titus Andronicus teaches us that in a world devoid of the rule of law, individuals protect their interests by taking revenge against those who violate them—and that revenge begets revenge in a cycle of retribution that spins out of control and throws society into chaos. Portia’s character in The Merchant of Venice illustrates the hazards of legal rhetoric: lawyers can manipulate law for private ends, subverting justice and social order. Measure for Measure proves that legal decisionmakers should avoid the two extremes of rigid legalism and excessive mercy, and strive to take a path down the middle. OthelloMacbeth the fallacy of natural justice—the view that justice will prevail even without human intervention. Hamlet warns that intellectuals make bad rulers because their idealism interferes with the pragmatics of governance. King Lear teaches us of “the unavoidable injustice of death.” The Tempest argues that great leaders voluntarily relinquish power. illustrates the hazards of legal fact-finding; the four Henry plays the fallibility and the trickery of sovereigns; and

The quality of Yoshino’s readings varies considerably. In general, he does better at the retail level—teasing out the meanings of complex passages—than at spinning out overall readings that are both original and persuasive. Scholars have long noted that anxiety about the absence of the rule of law animates revenge tragedies such as Titus Andronicus, and the legal themes in Measure for Measure have fascinated lawyers for decades. Some of Yoshino’s other readings display more originality but they often seem strained. It is true that Hamlet is an intellectual and that he temporizes before killing Claudius, but he does not resemble the utopians to whom Yoshino likens him—he does not, for example, harbor any particular vision for Denmark that he hopes to implement come what may. More successfully, Yoshino argues that Othello illustrates the value of legal processes by contrasting the impartial deliberations of a jury-like council of Venetian nobles, which acquits Othello of the charge of witchcraft, and the wild accusations of Othello himself, who falsely convicts Desdemona of adultery.

But there is no reason to single out Macbeth as the play that illustrates the fallacy of natural justice. Yoshino claims that Macbeth suggests that wrongdoers will receive their comeuppance from “nature” in the absence of human agency, a view that Yoshino thinks produces complacency about the need for human institutions of justice. But it takes human beings to punish Macbeth—it is not as though he is struck by lightning. Yoshino makes too much of the fact that Macbeth is tortured by his conscience, and too little of the ways in which “nature” (personified by the witches) both contributes and responds to the evil actions of the characters. The play does suggest that not all murderers will escape the torments of conscience, but a play littered with the corpses of innocents hardly “conveys a profoundly comforting message” that all will be right in the end.

Yoshino loves Shakespeare, but he resists the temptation to treat the playwright as an oracle. That is certainly wise: we moderns can hardly treat as an infallible authority someone who believed in monarchy and accepted as natural a hierarchical social system of aristocrats and commoners. Shakespeare certainly toyed with gender stereotypes, but his plays comfortably accept a social order characterized by female subordination. It is natural, then, that Yoshino not only interprets Shakespeare but also criticizes some of the attitudes that come across in his plays.

Yet this type of criticism, while necessary, is tricky; and in Yoshino’s hands too often Shakespeare’s work becomes a bag of anecdotes to illustrate moral platitudes. Yoshino argues that Prospero is a great man because he voluntarily relinquishes power like George Washington. Henry V manipulates public opinion in order to maintain power, which yes is troubling. Portia is a dangerous woman because she manipulates legal rhetoric in order to advance her aims, in the process subverting the spirit of the law. Othello suggests that an impartial jury will more likely discover the facts than individuals, tormented by jealousy and humiliation, acting on their own. Do we really need Shakespeare to understand these truths?

The danger is that in laboring over these limited implications, one loses sight of the plays themselves. No one likes legalism, but Portia is clearly a heroine, immensely more appealing than any of the other characters in the Merchant of Venice. She manipulates legal language, but mostly for the ends of justice: no one believes that Shylock ought to get his pound of flesh. The plot turns on what is essentially a pun, a caricature of legal reasoning. No one in the audience can take seriously Portia’s argument, let alone perceive in it a threat to social order or contrariwise be gulled into thinking that legalistic rhetoric that deliberately misperceives the intentions behind words offers a solution to real problems. Portia illustrates the hazards of lawyerly rhetoric in the way that Falstaff illustrates the hazards of overeating.

In the weakest sections of his book, Yoshino applies his ideas about the plays to current events. He does so by ignoring the moral ambiguity of the plays, and in this way dishonoring them. In Yoshino’s hands, Portia offers a model for Bill Clinton’s famously legalistic defense of his perjury in the Lewinsky affair: “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” But Clinton’s argument, unlike Portia’s, fell flat. He convinced no one that he obeyed the law of perjury—the difference between the real world, where legalistic argument can be identified as such and rejected, and the closed world of Shakespeare’s story, where a play on words dissolves the dramatic tension. Measure for Measure somehow supports President Obama’s comment that judges should be “empathetic.” Obama was struggling to find a code word for liberal constitutional jurisprudence, which he could use to oppose the Republican mantra of “strict constructionism”; and nothing in Shakespeare’s play illuminates the complex debates about judicial review of democratically enacted legislation, a phenomenon that lay centuries in the future.

Titus Andronicus, a play in which the title character bakes his adversary’s children in a pie and feeds it to her, turns out to be a parable of the Bush administration. Since Titus acted from revenge, Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had to be animated by revenge as well—and not just against Al Qaeda but against Muslims generally—a tendentious interpretation of events that Yoshino hardly bothers to defend. Yoshino revels in the complexity of human motivation and the subtlety of moral choice when he discusses fictional characters, but he does not extend the courtesy to real people.

Mercifully, Yoshino’s discussions of the present occupy only a few pages and will not spoil the book for those who care about Shakespeare and seek a guide to the legal themes in his body of work. Although Yoshino fails at his self-described goal of illuminating current events with the help of the Bard, one will enjoy following a sensitive and lively mind work its way through the legal themes in some of the most beautiful passages in English literature.

Eric A. Posner is a professor of law at the University of Chicago.

Basman on Nafisi on Dylan

His disappointing, hypocritical concert.

Azar Nafisi/TNR/April 11, 2011

In memory of Farah Ebrahimi.

Times are indeed a-changing: Bob Dylan, who became an American icon by “speaking truth to power,” just gave a concert in China, one of the most repressive countries in the world. While there, Dylan not only failed to express solidarity with the Chinese dissidents in jail; according to The Washington Post, he also agreed to perform only “approved content.”

The scenario becomes even more ironic when you consider that, while Bob Dylan sang “Love Sick” in mainland China, outgoing U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, a potential Republican nominee for president, spoke in his farewell address about the detention of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, and others. He added, “The United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur.” The problem is not that Dylan should not sing his love songs in China; rather, the problem is that Dylan was just fine morphing into Barry Manilow in Beijing, when he was his old self just three days prior in Taiwan, signing “Desolation Row” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Artists are only human. They have many sides to them, they can be fickle, and they are mortal. What endures is not the singer but the song. Yet I still hang on to the old-fashioned belief of my youth, when we listened to Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez, convinced that artists were effective because they were the consciences of their societies—because their commitment was not to any political ideology, sect, or party, but to truth. Truth that is dangerous no matter what times we live in, because it is always a call to action. Once we know it, we can no longer justify our silence.

Some may say in defense of Dylan in China that age mellows us. I agree age does or should do this, and that it can also make us more self-consciously aware and critical of ourselves. It is also true that too much fame and power, too much wealth, can change our attitudes toward the principles we once believed in. But, for some, age, fame, power, and wealth can be means to becoming more humane and to helping others find their voice. Take Joan Baez, for example, who, in maturity, has changed and grown wiser, but not lost her passion, her commitment to justice and kindness.

Thinking of Joan Baez, one feels grateful and hopeful that certain things in life will not be changing with the times. Yet Bob Dylan, who always had a cynicism and aloofness that Baez did not, seems to have lost something with age. In China, he seems to have struck out against his own songs, his creations. The result? A disappointing and hypocritical show—one that makes me yearn for the Dylan we once knew.

Me:

In memory of Stan:

I disagree with Nafisi, who, for a literature professor, evinces here an embarrassingly middlebrow conception of art, a conception she tries to elevate with the rhetoric of "Truth." In her argument "Truth" as she rhetorically deploys it is analytically empty.

Bob Dylan owes who what: solidarity with the jailed dissidents to them, to Nafisi; protest songs to Nafisi; the incarnation of a former, sixties self to Nafisi; to "Truth" as Nafisi sees it to her; to channel Joan Baez for Nafisi?

I say horseshit to all this.

Dylan owes nobody anything when he performs other than to his audience to put on a good show. If he agreed to his hosts' strictures-where some would not have-so he did and where is the hypocrisy? If I'm a member of his audience in China, I say better to have heard him sing some of his songs, than not to have heard him sing at all.

Hypocrisy is an instance of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues one doesn't hold or possess. Where is that here? What standard does Dylan profess that he inverted? Dylan doesn't present himself as a moral exemplar or as a conscience. I don't think he ever did. But, regardless, he hasn't for decades. Nafisi wants to fix him in his sixties, protest self, long, long after he by and large left it behind. That is where she locates his hypocrisy: that he violates the meanings (to her) of his 40-50 year old persona. Her argument is ludicrous and a measure of its ridiculousness is that on her logic Dylan has been a hypocrite for nigh on 40 years.

Joan Baez can sing, profess and present herself however she chooses. But by doing so she affords no rational standard by which to judge Dylan. For those who wish to attempt to be now the consciences of their societies, let them try. Dylan does not wish to be that and that aim similarly affords no one a basis by which artistically or morally to judge him.

Here is Nafisi at her most declamatory, high sounding and most empty:

...Yet I still hang on to the old-fashioned belief of my youth, when we listened to Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez, convinced that artists were effective because they were the consciences of their societies—because their commitment was not to any political ideology, sect, or party, but to truth. Truth that is dangerous no matter what times we live in, because it is always a call to action. Once we know it, we can no longer justify our silence....

She writes as though she has some purchase on "Truth" in relation to art, as though, accordingly, she can prescribe for, and to, others in their art what she holds most meaningful for herself. Even in the most demanding of times artists seek their own paths, beholden to no one’s conception of truth or value, and will, finally, fall to be judged by the quality of their art, not by its congruences to the high items on someone’s checklist of what is morally, socially or politically important.

Kagan's Dissent in Arizona School Case

April 9, 2011/NYT/Editorial

In the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling about a school-choice program in Arizona, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion leaves intact a program that has disbursed almost $350 million of state funds, most of it to schools choosing students on the basis of religion.

The holding all but overrules a landmark decision of the Warren court, Flast v. Cohen. As Justice Elena Kagan says powerfully in her first dissent, “by ravaging Flast in this way,” the majority “damages one of this nation’s defining constitutional commitments.”

The First Amendment’s establishment clause — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” — is meant to protect citizens even when they are not harmed. Before, under Flast, a taxpayer could ask a court to enforce this central right. Now, under this ruling, a taxpayer all but can’t, and any government can use the tax system to avoid challenges to financing of religion.

The only difference between cases considered under Flast since 1968 and the current one is the means of government spending. In past cases, it has come through appropriations. In this case, the money comes through a tax credit: any taxpayer can redirect up to $500 of what he or she owes the state to a nonprofit that uses the money for scholarships. What the court calls a tax credit and Arizona calls a voluntary cash contribution is, concretely, a redirected tax payment.

Justice Kennedy, in an opinion clearly intended to overturn legal precedent, says that the program’s financing comes from taxpayers taking advantage of this credit, not from the state, so the taxpayers bringing the lawsuit can claim no harm from the state and lacked standing to sue. To Justice Kagan, “this novel distinction,” has “as little basis in principle as it has in our precedent.” Whether a state finances a program with cash grants or targeted tax breaks, the effect is the same. Taxpayers bear the cost.

Since the Flast case, she writes, “no court — not one — has differentiated between these sources of financing in deciding about standing.” In five cases where taxpayers challenged tax expenditures, the court has dealt with the merits “without questioning the plaintiffs’ standing.” The court has relied on some of these decisions as “exemplars of jurisdiction” in other cases. (“Pause on that for a moment,” the justice entreats.)

When this case was argued last fall, the convolutions of the Arizona program seemed intended to mask its violation of the Constitution. The court’s ruling is another cynical sleight of hand, which will reduce access to federal courts while advancing endorsement of religion.

Eight Minutes of Glorious Political Incorrectness: Niall Ferguson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJcHbaNNIM4&feature=related

Proportionality Briefly Revisited

The art of disproportion

Op-ed: Critics of Israel’s response to rocket attacks obviously clueless about rules of war

Avi Yesawich/Y Net/April 9, 2011

Individuals who criticize Israel’s response to rocket attacks are obviously clueless about the rules of war.

Over the past several days, Israel’s southern region has been bombarded by a barrage of rockets and mortar shells from the Hamas-led Gaza Strip. It is important to understand that our southern border had not previously been privy to a period of exceptional calm and relative normalcy, but rocketed and bombed repeatedly, on a daily basis, by various terrorist groups throughout the Strip. However, these attacks have intensified over the recent days, and Israel, as she typically does, is responding with precision air strikes against Hamas terror cells and weapons compounds, attempting to inflict maximum damage on its targets while avoiding civilian casualties on the ground.

The recent escalation has prompted calls for a “serious response” from various Israeli officials, ranging from continued airstrikes throughout the weekend to a “Defensive Shield” type operation such as the one proposed by former Israeli national security advisor Giora Eiland. Whatever the ultimate size and nature of the response is, Israel will be pressured to act with restraint by the international community, including the avoidance of the use of “disproportionate force,” a term that has seemingly become synonymous with Israel and the IDF.

How shockingly ignorant this notion appears to be. Despite what anyone may believe, there hasn’t been a single instance in the history of warfare where a clear victor has emerged after inflicting “proportional force” against its enemy. One of the most basic understandings in war is that, naturally, one side must inflict superior damage on the other in order to force its surrender or capitulation. Israel, undoubtedly influenced by immense international pressure, is unable to respond in such a manner that would force Hamas militants to cease their attacks and restore quiet and calm on the border, simply because in doing so, she would be using “disproportionate” force in order to accomplish this objective.

And imagine for a moment if we did respond proportionately. Each time Hamas or Islamic Jihad indiscriminately fires a Qassam or mortar shell into Israel, threatening civilians on a daily basis, Israel returns the favor. When a Hamas terror cell deliberately fires an anti-tank missile at a clearly marked school bus full of children, Israel intentionally fires artillery shells into a kindergarten playground in Gaza City. In essence, this would be the proportionate response. Perhaps we can delude ourselves into believing the international community would accept such strategy.

Israel must respond disproportionately

If Hamas hasn’t made it clear enough to the international community about its strategy and intentions, I will try to summarize it clearly: Israel has no right to exist.

The organization deliberately attacks civilian areas, which constitutes a war crime and is a violation of international law. The Hamas charter openly calls for the violent destruction of Israel and rules out any chance of meaningful peace negotiations with the Jewish state.

As Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar sees it, "Palestine is Islamic, and not an Islamic emirate, from the river to the sea, that unites the Palestinians. Jews have no right in it.” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum puts it even more eloquently, stating that “the Jewish faith does not wish for peace nor stability, since it is a faith that is based on murder…Israel is based only on blood and murder in order to exist, and it will disappear, with Allah's will, through blood and martyrs.”

Imagine for a moment if Israel were to respond even “proportionally” to these actions and statements.

When London was bombarded in World War II, England firebombed German towns and leveled Dresden completely. In order to end WWII, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, a non-nuclear state at the time. I doubt anyone would argue that Russia’s actions in Chechnya were “proportionate” in any sense of the word.

In response to tragic events such as 9/11 and multiple terrorist attacks around Europe, the international community has waged overt wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya (albeit for very different purposes) and clandestine wars in several others. Yet the world nonetheless becomes hysterical when Israel rises up to defend herself against the unrelenting assault on her southern communities.

As our southern towns continue to come under heavy fire, Israel must respond disproportionately until normalcy and calm are reestablished and our waning deterrence has been restored. As we watch other nations respond to domestic and international threats as they see fit, Israel need not apologize for acting to provide her citizens with the safety and security they need and rightfully deserve.

Avi Yesawich is currently studying to receive his MA in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Tel Aviv University. He is a graduate of Cornell University and a former IDF combat soldier

Me:

Undernourished, ludicrous notion of proportianality here though there are some strong points clearly made. Proportionality in these instances doesn't mean tit for tat, bomb playground for targeting bus. It means a military response adequate to the dangers posed but framed by the rules of war, if the enemy is not so constrained. See Michael Walzer on this in his essay in The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/proportionality