Keystone Cop Foreign Policy

Just a few observations about the President’s speech last night. As I watched it, I had to remind myself that it was he who had requested the time from the networks. There he was, for all the world to see, a man clearly annoyed that he had to, once again, explain brilliant strategy to his slow-on-the-uptick citizens. There I was trying to make sense of the bazillion contradictions flying around, sometimes within the same sentence. Something is clearly wrong with either the world’s greatest communicator…or me.

The President described the horror of chemical weapons, the tragic image of children laid out on concrete floors covered by sheets, the agony of a father holding his dead children in his arms begging them to wake up. What remedy did he then propose to right this monstrous wrong? A limited, targeted strike designed to limit Assad’s future use of chemical weapons which absolutely, positively will NEVER involve one American boot on the ground. So, which is it, Mr. President? When you’ve got your Secretary of State running around making references to the holocaust and Harry Reid throwing around Hitler comparisons, it would seem like your moral indignation would produce something a bit more lethal. This “shot across the bow” strategy would be like discovering that Hitler had murdered 6,000,000 Jews, then putting him in time out for a week with no television.

Then I was treated to the bizarre sight of a United States President reminding me that although he doesn’t need Congressional approval to bomb Syria, he wants it because we are the oldest Constitutional Democracy in the world and it’s always better when the President and Congress work together. In the very next sentence he then informs us that the Congressional vote that just last week he was demanding immediately if not sooner, now he wants to be put on hold until a diplomatic solution can be pursued through that champion of freedom and democracy, Vladimir Putin. By this time, my head was about to fall off my shoulders from the rhetorical whiplash.

Ok, so what to make of this? First a summary of events:

1.     Obama makes “red line” comment about Syrian chemical weapons and their use.

2.     Chemical weapons are used in Syria

3.     Obama immediately talks tough, telegraphing his intention to carry out military strikes on Syria.

4.     The Prime Minister of America’s oldest ally, the United Kingdom, goes before Parliament to make the case for and gain approval for his country’s participation in said military action whereupon, he loses the vote in humiliating fashion.

5.     Obama takes a walk after dinner and suddenly sees the need for Congressional approval

6.     Our Secretary of State goes before Congress and testifies to the horror of it all and the urgency to act immediately, if not sooner.

7.     Members of Congress are not persuaded and the Congressional switchboards are lit up with calls coming in at a rate of 100-1 against intervention.

8.     Days turn into weeks after the President’s initial telegraphing announcement that a missile strike was in the works, giving Mr. Assad lots of time to rearrange his assets, to redeploy everything he doesn’t want destroyed by cruise missiles to a safer place.

9.     Sec. Kerry gives a convoluted answer to a reporter’s question about a hypothetical, something any beginner politician knows to never do, especially at a time of great crisis when the less said the better.

10. Vladimir Putin rushes in to the breech caused by Kerry’s feckless remark and buys more time for his client Assad, by proposing that he turn over his entire stockpile of chemical weapons so they can be destroyed.

11.  This, we are told by our President is a development worth pursuing. Nothing is said about how maddeningly difficult it is to “destroy” chemical weapons even in the best of conditions, let alone inside of a country racked by civil war. Indeed the United States is not even in compliance with the provisions of the much heralded Chemical Weapons treaty outlawing their use, since we have yet to destroy all of our stockpile, yet we are now asked to believe that the Syrians will be able to manage their safe destruction in a country where the air is thick with artillery fire.

 

What a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Here’s my view. If John Kerry’s bumbling and the President’s ham fisted incompetence has opened the door for Vladimir Putin to win HIS Nobel Peace prize, I say, thank God for small miracles. I care not how we’re able to wiggle off this hook. All I want is for the United States of America to stop interfering in the Middle East. If the result of this Keystone Cop routine we call our foreign policy is no intervention in Syria, I’ll be more than happy to give the President all the credit he will demand for his brilliant statecraft.

Remember This Story?

This was the headline on Wednesday, December the 12th, 2007. The BBC warned us all that scientists in the US had made this bold forecast using state of the art computer models. The Polar ice cap was going to be "ice-free" by this time. Along with this dire forecast came calls for dramatic government "action". Al Gore practically gave himself a hernia jumping up and down warning everyone about this new study from the comfort of his 10,000 square foot, 9 million dollar, 191,000 kilowatt-hour consuming Nashville home.

So, imagine my surprise this morning to see this morning's headline in the UK Daily Mail.

I eagerly await Mr. Gore's assessment of this NASA satellite image. I also look forward to the press conference where the scientist responsible for the 2007 prediction will explain to us how he could possibly have been so fabulously wrong.

While I have no scientific knowledge or expertise, what I do have is enough common sense to know that a subject as maddeningly complex as global climate cannot be predicted with anything approaching certainty by computer models. How can we predict climate change fifty years down the road when we can't even get the weekend forecast right half the time? I little humility in discussions of this topic would be nice. Oh, and before we completely scrap the world's economic model based on hyperventilating former Vice-President's grave prognostications, how about a little candor about the flimsy reliability of computer models? 

My Return To Golf

Three months and three days ago, I had rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder. My doctor has proven himself to be not only a fine surgeon, but an even more impressive prophet, since every single thing he told me would happen, HAS happened. He warned me that it would be an extremely painful experience, and that I would curse every time I thought of him for the first six weeks. He told me that the rehab process would be long, painful, and slow. Then finally, he told me I would be well enough to start playing golf again by September.

So, there I was Friday, driving out to Royal Virginia on a gorgeous Friday morning, prepared to test his hypothesis. As I expected, RV was wide open, so I walked up on the 1^st tee box with a mixture of exhilaration and fear. Just in case you’re wondering, no…I didn’t go to the range to hit any balls beforehand. That’s just not how I roll. That would have been the smart thing, the prudent thing to do. Start out with the wedge, hit a few chips, work my way through the bag taking ever longer swings to test my range of motion…that sort of thing is what the careful, thinking man would have done. But, there I was with a driver in my hand, taking the club back waiting for a sharp pain, feeling none, then swinging down through the ball and watching it fade majestically against the bright blue sky and into the trees on the right side of the fairway. I was thrilled! The ball was lost, but it didn’t hurt! By the time I tapped in for a triple bogey seven, I was practically ecstatic.

The second hole brought more of the same, another lost tee shot, and another triple, but absolutely no discomfort. I did notice that every shot I hit was roughly twenty yards shorter than usual and my ball flight was left to right , when before it had always been the opposite. Then, the miraculous happened…two consecutive pars! By the end of my first nine holes of golf in over six months, I had lost 6 balls, but managed to shoot a 50 with no pain. As I walked off the green and headed to my car, I remember thinking that finally, the shoulder problems were over, behind me.

Then, I made the mistake of overconfidence. When I woke up yesterday and saw the beautiful blue skies and felt no pain in the shoulder, I couldn’t resist a follow up nine holes. I drove out to Sycamore Creek to see if I could possibly be paired up with a threesome. I was amazed to find the parking lot virtually empty and the first tee box wide open, (note to self…sell Sycamore Creek stock). This time, I was hitting the ball a little better, and had only lost two balls by the time I found myself standing in the middle of the 5^th fairway with a six iron in my hand. On the follow through of the swing I felt a sharp pain in the shoulder and dropped the club as the ball took a sweeping turn to the left towards a creek. I immediately knew that there would be no more golf for me for the day. The disappointment was deep. Too much, too soon, according to Pam. She’s probably right. Stupid shoulder.

This is always the way it is with me. I can never just take things slow; take my time, pace myself. I always have to go off half cocked with no reasonable plan and no calculus which allows for the possibility of failure. It is one of my many character flaws, one which causes Pam much frustration and grief, my unbridled, unreasonable, and unjustified self-confidence!

This morning’s good news is that the shoulder does not hurt, so apparently, there’s no lasting damage. See? I knew it was just a minor setback all along! I’m good to go. Maybe another nine this afternoon?? What the heck, why not eighteen?

Meanwhile, Pam rolls her eyes in disgust and shakes her head while mumbling, “I am married to a middle school boy!”

An Advanced Copy of the President's Speech

Good Evening.

Two weeks ago, we are reasonably sure that Bashir Assad used chemical weapons on his own people killing over a thousand of them including women and children. I made the decision to authorize a military response to this heinous act. But then, after Prime Minister Cameron lost his authorization vote in Parliament, I took a walk after dinner and came to the decision that I probably should get Congress to put a fig leaf of constitutionality on the thing by voting their approval. Well, since then, I have taken another walk and tonight am announcing my decision to call the whole thing off.

Alright, here’s the thing. Although I am one hell of an orator and probably the best communicator to ever occupy this office, the truth is that I’m much better with prepared remarks. Whenever I just start yakking and yammering on extemporaneously, I end up getting screwed. Which brings me to this whole “red line” thing. See, that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. All I was doing was trying to sound tough and serious about a hypothetical use of chemical weapons. The term “red line” is perfect since it suggests seriousness and alarm. Well, who would have thought that such an off-handed remark would come back with such vengeance to bite me in the ass.

I hope that it has been clear to you that I have never really wanted to go to war with freaking Syria. It’s soooo Bush-esk, complete with iffy intelligence, and those insufferable Code Pink women holding up their stupid bloody hands while Lurch was trying to make the case to that Senate committee the other day. It’s embarrassing. But, because of me and my big mouth, I found myself in one helluva bind. My worst mistake was flying over to Sweden and blaming the red line thing on some 75 year old treaty and trying to insinuate that it wasn’t even my red line. I mean the minute it came out of my mouth I knew it sounded whiny, but what’s done is done.

So, as President, sometimes you just have to admit defeat. It’s clear that the American people don’t want to get involved in Syria, and although I could probably round up plenty of Republican neo-con votes, I’ve put the folks in my party in quite a bind since none of them ever want to go to war for anything. The other day I even had Howard Dean sounding like a hawk. It’s all just too much.

So, tonight, I say to you, the American people that I have heard you and I get it. There will be no attack on Syria. This in no way should be interpreted as tacit approval for genocide, just an acknowledgment that a couple of days of cruise missile launches isn’t going to make a hill of beans difference on the ground in that God-forsaken hell hole, and honestly, I would rather concentrate on funding Obamacare and granting amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants.

God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

The Dog Ate My Homework

President Obama’s press conference yesterday in Sweden will one day be shown in Psychiatry classrooms the world over as a classic example of the concept of transference. While every news outlet in America was running clips of Republicans and Democrats alike blaming the entire Syrian mess on Obama’s ill-advised “red line” remark of last September, there was our President responding to a reporter’s question about that red line thusly:

“I didn’t set a red line; the world set a red line. My credibility isn’t on the line; the world’s credibility is on the line…”

This is essentially the President of the United States explaining that the dog ate his homework.

Ok, let me get this straight. Virtually everyone in Washington understands that Obama has been painted into a corner because of his red line remark, and now has to be supported or he and our country will lose all international credibility. We watch the spectacle of historically dovish Democratic Senators tying themselves into pretzels of illogical contradictions trying to rationalize support for something that they would be marching in the streets protesting if Obama were a Republican President. We hear Chris Matthews demand that Democrats vote “yes” on Syria in order to “save the President’s hide.” And yet, half way around the world the President stands in front of a bank of microphones blaming the entire world for the very red line that his own words produced.

All of which begs this simple question, if the President is right and this really is the “worlds” problem, then why isn’t the UN in charge? World problems need to be addressed by the world in the world’s forum…the United Nations. Why are we unilaterally declaring this an American mission? I seem to recall this President being a huge fan of the UN, a big supporter of coalitions. So, why are we a coalition of one?

There are many reasons a nation goes to war, some better than others. But to jump into the middle of another Middle Eastern cat fight to recover a President’s prestige and reputation is possibly the worst reason of all.

Parental Vindication

This week has brought a feeling of vindication to the Dunnevant home. The work of being a parent is a never ending treadmill of struggle and self doubt, a work without many tangible rewards. It’s like cutting the grass, no matter how well you do it, next week you have to do it all over again. You constantly second guess yourself. Was I too strict? Did I shield them too much from life’s brutal consequences? Did I teach them too much theory and not enough practical life skills? Should I have made them do more chores? Underlying all of this angst is the fearful question; will they make it out there on their own?

Well, this week brings two small rewards, a tantalizing hint that Pam and I just may have pulled it off. My daughter had her first day with students as a middle school English teacher, and my son tried out for the biggest, most prestigious choir he’s even encountered, one that had rejected him a year ago…and made it.

Kaitlin has handled the preparation for her first full time job with uncharacteristic calm. Usually, she hasn’t done well with new things, change. In the past she has been crippled by doubt and feelings of inadequacy. Suddenly, as she has approached this biggest stage of her life, a new Kaitlin has emerged, a confident, well-prepared, professional who seems to know that she’s ready and able. Spending two years cloistered with extremely smart and ideologically hostile people at Wake Forest has apparently instilled a mental and emotional toughness in my daughter that has been thrilling to observe.

Patrick has always been able to rise to the top of every musical environment in which he has been planted. Whether in high school or college he has been able to distinguish himself merely by demonstrating his enormous talent. Then he got accepted at Westminster Choir College for grad school and naturally tried out for their premiere showcase choir, the one that gets to sing behind world famous singers in Central Park, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t make it. To his credit, he didn’t fume and throw a fit like many ego-heavy musicians would have, he just figured he wasn’t good enough and needed to get better as a singer. After getting knocked a few rungs down on the self-esteem ladder, he shrugged it off and went to work. Well, last night he got word that this year, he made it. He couldn’t have been happier, and we are justifiably proud of his hard work and persistence.

Of course, after watching Breaking Bad for the past two weeks, what we are really thankful for is the fact that neither of our children are cooking meth and hiding their rolls of hundred dollar bills in air conditioner vents.

It’s all relative, really. Just thankful for the little things.   

Breaking Bad... and Me.

About a week ago, I gave in to heavy pressure from my son and started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. I am now into season two and feel that I have watched enough to form an opinion. What follows is a review of what I have seen so far.

I should say at the outset that I have a strange, almost neurotic aversion to depictions of drug use in movies or on television. Simply put, it makes me queasy. It’s the oddest thing since I can watch the goriest war movie, or other violent productions without hesitation, but show someone shooting up and I reach for the Pepto-Bismol. When I shared this weakness with my secretary(another recent Breaking Bad addict) her response was, “Don’t be such a baby!” So, there’s that. But after listening to my son rave about this show 24/7, Pam and I decided to give it a shot.

The central plot revolves around a 50 year old high school chemistry teacher named Walt who is married to an oddly irritating woman named Skyler, who is pregnant with a “surprise” baby. They also have a physically handicapped high school aged son boringly named Walter Jr. Early on Walt is diagnosed with a rather advanced case of lung cancer, strange since Walt isn’t a smoker. He spends practically all of season one hiding his diagnosis from his family while coughing his head off all day and night. The viewer gets the impression that although Walt is a long time teacher in the New Mexico school system, he somehow has very bad insurance, and is otherwise in precarious financial shape. With this terminal illness hanging over his head, and a baby on the way, Walt decides to do what anyone else might do under the same circumstances…he decides to put his chemistry knowledge to work cooking crystal meth for profit. In this enterprise, he is assisted by one of his former reprobate students, Jesse, himself a small time Meth chef who spends most of his time sampling the inventory and acting like the 20 year old meth addict loser that he is. Just to make the story even more bizarre, Skyler’s kleptomaniac sister Marie is married to a foul-mouthed DEA agent, Hank, whose job it is to hunt down Meth dealers. In other words, on paper, it’s difficult to root for any of these people.

So, how come eight shows in, I find myself feeling such an emotional attachment to Walt? How come I’m growing so fond of Jesse and his baggy pants, oversized sweatshirts and his constant use of the word, “Yo”? How come despite Hank’s degenerate brand of humor and his psychopathic fondness for gore, I actually like the guy? This is the genius of Breaking Bad.

Walt rationalizes his turn to the drug trade as a desperate eleventh hour bid to provide for his family, and in the beginning, it may have even been true. But as the show goes on, I get the impression that Walt is a man who has gone through life playing it safe and doing what he was told to the point where he has nothing but regrets. Now that he knows that the end is near, the violence, chaos and danger of the drug business has empowered him somehow, making him feel more alive than he has ever been. Along with the money has come a blurring of lines. Why are some things legal and other things illegal he asks his DEA brother-in-law? Aren’t the legal lines we draw as a society arbitrary? I can only assume that future seasons of the show will show fresh rationalizations.

The show is expertly written, superbly acted and brilliantly directed. There are scenes that you want to watch again simply because the humanity was so electric, the emotions so raw. Walt is a man capable of going either way, capable of both great tenderness and raw violence, an almost meek man who loves his family but can come up with the idea of an acid bath to destroy the evidence of a dead body. The central idea that pulses through this amazing show seems to be the question of how far would you go to provide for those you love if you knew you were about to die? Would you respect the law? How ruthless would you be willing to become?

Captivating television.