Eggs Laid by Tigers

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Grading President Obama 7/5/09

Here's how I grade our president for last week events.

A+ for Iran

Iranians are doing as well as one can expect, given that the Bad Boys have all the guns and our meddling would be hurtful. One of our countrymen suggested that it woud be good if Iran had the Second Amendment. I wonder what the demonstrations would have been like if all the demonstrators had carried assault weapons. I wonder what will happen here, with so many states passing laws that allow folks to carry guns loaded with armor-piercing bullets, if a demonstration of importance were to come up.

New York Times reports that a group of religious leaders in Quom has declared the government to be illegitimate. Quom is unnaturally important in the Iranian scheme of things. That declaration will not topple the government, but every week there is some new and hopeful development. The Christian Science Monitor focuses on developing individual technology to keep the movement going; that is a development that I suspect is more powerful than is commonly realized.

D- for Bolivia

The president last week refused to extend trade goodies to Bolivia on the flimsy ground that Bolivia is not doing enough to interdict cocaine traffic.

In the first place, if cocaine is a problem, the problem lies in the US, where we are willing to spend billions of dollars to buy and enjoy the juice of the coca plant.

Secondly, when Bolivia tried to crack down on the trade through Brazil it needed to borrow helicopters from Brazil because the helicopters we had scheduled for Bolivia were sitting idle. The helicopters were sitting idle because diplomatic relations between our two counties are broken over our support for the secessionist provinces in southern Bolivia.

The president should do all in his power to support the present government and stop worrying about Hugo Chavez, who is a blow-hard. By harming Bolivia he is playing into Chavez' hand; and not incidentally encouraging the anti-government forces in Peru.

B- for the Uighurs.

Obama found a home for the Guantanamo Uighurs in spite of China's determined opposition, but that is the least he could do. He has not helped the Uighurs in China, who are being killed by the Chinese government. I would give him a higher score if I could think of anything useful that he could do.

A for Afghanistan

The Marines are now in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, a principle poppy-growing area and a Taliban stronghold. There are a lot of marines there. The objective is not to kill anyone but to provide security for the people there so they can, finally, create for themselves something of a normal life.

I applaud the objective, though I am curious to see how marines can adjust to a no-kill strategy. In the first week it became "necessary" to drop a 500 pound bomb on a compound, killing some 40 folks, but the Command observed he compound for a day to insure itself that there were no civilians there.

Whether the new stage works or not, the decision not to kill civilians must be applauded. Good work, Marines!

C for Pakistan

Pakistani forces "cleared" Swat Valley of Taliban, and destroyed many homes in the process. Some 2.5 million people are now living in tents, with only the bare minimum of living equipment. The location is very hot in the summer. It is piercingly cold in winter. A lot of folks face freezing to death. Th Pakistani government is doing little to help. Our Ambassador Holobrooke, to his credit, met with some of the refugees, and promised to convey their plight to the central government.

That's not enough. These folks need to return to their homes and usual way f life, or we have jut created 2.5 million new converts to the Taliban. I'm really worried that there will be not enough to prevent catastrophe.

And now the Pakistan army is moving into South Waziristan -- a much more difficult place, and if the army uses the tactics it used in Swat, there will be millions more displaced. Keep your fingers crossed. The folks in these mountains are very familiar with war. When the army moves in, they move out, and there are relatively few civilian deaths.