A Response to Racism

A Response to Racism in America
Nicholas Johnson
The Gazette, June 8, 2020, p. A6 [As submitted; bracketed words deleted by The Gazette from hard copy edition for space]

Racism, like COVID-19, is [also] a global pandemic. It has been a systemic element of American culture for 400 years. Like the virus there is neither vaccine nor treatment, it spreads throughout the world in billions of incidents [every day], and as we’ve just been reminded, it can also kill. (Reproduction of handbill advertising a Charleston, South Carolina, slave auction in 1769. Credit: public domain, Wikimedia.org.)

What can we do?

One more impassioned speech or “study” won’t eradicate racism. But, as Thomas Paine said, "words pile up and then people do things." His words in "Common Sense" caused them to fight the Revolutionary War. Words are the "first step in a journey of a thousand miles" – [a journey] seldom completed on the first try.

Following similar protests for similar reasons, in 1968 President Lyndon Johnson created the Milton Eisenhower Commission with members capable of putting the national interest above political advantage. Their remarkable staff produced both the Commission's final report ("To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility") and 11 Staff Reports exposing [our] racism [pandemic] in numerous institutions.

Two [of those 11] volumes addressed "Violence and the Media."

As [an FCC commissioner] a Federal Communications Commission member at the time, I brought the [life] experience of being raised in the 1930s and ‘40s as an “anti-racist” in the midst of Iowa City's "northern racism," plus my disgust at the “southern racism” during my 1950s stay in the South. [during the 1950s.]

At the start [beginning] of my FCC efforts, broadcasting was one of the [single] most racist and sexist [among] American industries.

Change required improving licensees’ hiring practices, putting blacks [Blacks] in front of as well as behind the cameras, increasing the odds of blacks [Blacks] owning a radio or television station, enforcing station licensees' responsibility for meaningful community service, providing public access to [the] mass media (e.g., license renewal challenges, Fairness Doctrine, public access channels on cable, and low power community FM stations [, like KICI in Iowa City]) -- and much more.

It's time to do this again -- focusing on police practices and blacks' [Blacks] disproportionate incarceration, yes, but the other dark corners of systemic racism as well: food, housing, healthcare, child care, education and training, employment, transportation, payday loans. [– and much, much more.]

And fueling racism is how those enjoying white privilege [perceive and] use language; how we think, talk and teach our children. As [the lyrics of] “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” explained in the 1958 musical “South Pacific,” “You've got to be taught/Before it's too late/Before you are six/Or seven/Or eight/To hate all the people/Your relatives hate ..." [/You've got to/Be carefully taught.”]

[Is there hope?] Can it be done? [It has been done; progress] Progress was achieved in my little corner of the media’s racist ruins. Of course, much of that progress was undone once I left -- along with [President] Johnson's much more significant progress.

[President] Johnson was fully aware of the political consequences for the Democratic Party from his civil rights efforts. [(a party long dependent on the support of the southern states).] As he put it to an aide, "There goes the South for a generation." How many of our current elected officials can you imagine being willing to do the equivalent for the good of the nation?

What do we need? More political and institutional leaders willing to put the defeat of racism above politics, profits, and position. More understanding of the thousands of forms and locations of the racism virus. More willingness to change each of them, one at a time – and to keep at it as long as it takes.

Nicholas Johnson of Iowa City, was an FCC commissioner from 1966 to 1973. Comments: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org
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Note: On this morning's (June 8) Gazette editorial page I share the space with but one other author, Condoleezza Rice. So far as I can find out now, her column is not now available online. If I later find that it is, I will put a link here. Meanwhile, she and I end what each of us have to say on a similar note. She concludes, "What is your question about the impact of race on the lives of Americans? And what will you do to find answers?"

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The Futility of War

The Futility of War and the Path to Peace
Nicholas Johnson
Remarks on Armistice Day
November 11, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
Veterans for Peace, Chapter 161
Pentacrest
Iowa City, Iowa

It is a very special honor to be invited by you, Veterans for Peace, to speak at this commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. This is America’s day to recognize both those who have fought and died in our wars, and those who have fought to prevent future wars. [Photo credit: unknown; Wikimedia. "This photograph was taken in the forest of Compiègne after reaching an agreement for the armistice that ended World War I." November 11, 1918.]

You have told me to speak about war under the title “The Futility of War.” Fortunately, that title is consistent with my beliefs. Had you chosen, say, “The Case for Increasing Military Spending” this talk would have taken much longer to prepare.

You and I seem to agree – both about the value of peace, and why understanding the futility of war is the first step toward that peace.

In our brief time this morning I will suggest five reasons why.

First, Lessons From Viet Nam

Fifty-three years ago, President LyndonJohnson, who had appointed me Administrator of the Maritime Administration, or MARAD, asked that I look around Viet Nam and southeast Asia, and write an assessment of the war. Although based in Washington, MARAD kept a small staff in Saigon assisting with the agency’s responsibility for merchant shipping sealift.

The futility of that war was immediately obvious to me. As I concluded my report, “You can’t play basketball on a football field.” Not incidentally, that conclusion of mine for President Johnson led to a conclusion of his that I would make a terrific Federal Communications Commission commissioner.

Why no basketball?

It started with my arrival. Chatting with the officer driving me from the airfield into Saigon, I looked up and saw a banner over the street. “What does that say?” I asked him. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you have any officers who could read that?” I asked. “None who I know,” he said. [Photo Credit: Daniel Graham Clark; NJ delivering speech at Veterans for Peace gathering; first on Pentacrest and continuing inside Old Brick, Iowa City, November 11, 2018.]

My suspicion continued during a conversation with a Vietnamese gentleman. Our military was fighting a war of futility over a specific hill. I asked his advice. “Read some Vietnamese mythology,” he said. Befuddled, I asked him to explain. “If you Americans knew anything about us,” he began, “you would know that every Vietnamese schoolchild is told the story of the origins of our people: the union of a Chinese dragon and an elf.” “OK, so?” I asked. “The elf emerged from that hill,” he replied. “You will never take that hill. Move up the road two or three clicks and you’ll find the going much easier.”

Even if one wants to engage in war there is a futility of war in some places and times. It’s like trying to grow a garden on a concrete parking lot or play a trombone under water. Although, in my case, there’s a futility to my playing a trombone anywhere. The best and the brightest in our military know about the futility of war. Unfortunately, few of those who send them to war are as well educated.

The first example of the futility of war is when these eleven conditions are present:

• our troops are only the latest in a centuries-long string of invaders;
• in an ongoing civil war;
• we can’t read or speak the native language;
• know little of the people’s history, religion, culture, literature, or tribal relationships;
• our enemies don’t wear uniforms, while we, who are already easily identified, do wear uniforms (a British problem you’d think we’d recall from our own Revolutionary War);
• it is impossible to distinguish enemies from our local allies and employees;
• our troops’ choice is between killing innocent civilians, or being killed by those who look like innocent civilians;
• creating a conflict between “winning hearts and minds” and “burning down the village to save it;”
• the longer the fighting continues the more counterproductive it becomes;
• increasing rather than decreasing chaos and civil war;
• on a battlefield with no frontline, with territory repeatedly gained only to be lost again.

That’s what I meant by “you can’t play basketball on a football field.”

I provided the second President Bush similar advice in February 2003. The column was headlined, “Ten Questions for Bush Before War.”

Second, Due Dilligence

The second example of the futility of war involves due diligence – what I was urging Bush to do before sending troops to Iraq the next month. It’s not difficult. The process, the twelve questions, are analogous to those Iowa City business persons must answer for bank loan officers. Before war the questions are:

• What’s the problem, or challenge?
• How is our national interest involved?
• Is our goal precisely defined and widely understood?
• What are the metrics for measuring progress?
• Are there cheaper and more effective non-military alternatives?
• How will military force help, and how will it hinder, reaching our goal?
• What are the benefits and costs?
• What will it require in troops, materiel, lives, and treasure?
• Will the American people support it to conclusion?
• Will we be confronting Viet Nam-like impediments?
• What is our exit strategy?
• Once we leave will things be better, worse, or the same?

You may recognize my debt to Joint Chiefs Chair General Colin Powell for some of those questions. Or, as Joint Chiefs Chair General Martin Dempsey put it most succinctly in 2013, “As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that the use of force will move us toward the intended outcome.”

Our founders, fearful of unchecked presidential war powers, created what we today call “civilian control of the military.” But note that the analysis just laid out comes, not from civilians but from the military. That’s why I have only half-jokingly said, what we really need is military control of the civilians.

After the Twin Towers slaughter funded by Saudis and executed by Saudis, what was the civilians’ response? They let other Saudis in America immediately leave, skip the Congressional Declaration of War required by the Constitution, tell Americans to “go shopping,” and start fighting preemptive, perpetual wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, Constitutional Restraints

The futility of war is recognized in the Constitution.

The idea of a civilian, cabinet-level Secretary of Peace was first proposed in 1793 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Many others have urged it since. The closest we have to a Department of Peace today is what was once called the Department of War, and now Department of Defense.

The irony comes, not alone from the Department’s name, but from conservatives’ approach to the Constitution, what they call a “textual” or “original intent” interpretation of its language. For the Constitution’s drafters made unambiguously clear their extreme opposition to a president having a king’s power to both declare and direct wars. As James Madison said, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty.” His concerns were shared by Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason and others.

The presidents and members of Congress who came along later followed those men’s advice. For 156 years, through World War II, armed forces were increased for a war, following a Congressional Declaration of War, and then quickly demobilized once war ended.

Fourth, the futility of perpetual war and how it happened

How did we evolve from a country without standing armies, that demilitarized after every war, with a Congress that restrained executive war powers? How did we get a go-along Congress that supports the executive’s standing armies, never demilitarizes, engages in multiple perpetual wars of choice, maintains military presence in 150 countries, at an unaudited total cost over one trillion dollars a year, put on our grandchildren’s credit card?

Then, Americans fought in World War I for about 18 months. We wrapped up a multi-front global World War II in four years. Now we display the futility of war by continuing to struggle in Afghanistan for 17 years.

There’s more to this story than we have time to discuss.

Partly what happened is the same marriage of profits and politics that dictates other aspects of our lives and economy. Roughly half our fighting forces are employees of for-profit contractors. Privatize prisons and prison owners lobby for longer prison terms. Privatize the military and private contractors lobby for longer wars. Provide large enough campaign contributions for members of Congress and those who profit from war will reap the rewards of a military budget larger than those of the next five or ten nations combined. Some of this money will be spent on multi-million-dollar fighter planes and multi-billion-dollar aircraft carriers – neither of which provided much protection from pressure cooker bombs for the 23,000 runners at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

The other half of the political equation is the virtual elimination of citizen sacrifice. (1) Those subject to the draft, and their parents, were a powerful force opposing the Viet Nam war. Without a draft we might still be fighting in Viet Nam, as we are in Afghanistan. Now only four-tenths of one percent fight our wars. (2) After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor everyone sacrificed. There was rationing. We did without. After the Twin Towers attack we were told to “go shopping.” (3) World War II was a largely pay-as-you-go war. No longer. Wars are free. We just borrow money from China, and add trillions to the national debt.

Fifth, the futility of wars when we doing nothing; and `what we can do.

What can we do to eliminate the futility of today’s wars? Essentially six things that are the exact opposite of what we’re now doing:

• Reestablish the impediments to war our founders intended.
• Reinstate the draft, for children of the rich as well as the poor.
• Demand every member of the House and Senate cast a recorded vote on Declarations of War.
• Enact a supplemental war tax and pay-as-you-go wars.
• Require all citizens to bear some sacrifice, as in World War II.
• Contribute our own voices to a public debate on the questions I’ve suggested must be answered before going to war.

In that effort, your voices are the most persuasive. When it comes to peace, Americans are more likely to listen to those who have known war than to those who have only preached for peace.

It really is up to us. You and me.

As Edward R. Murrow closed his documentary about the consequences of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on Americans, “We cannot escape responsibility for the result. … Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

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Why Unwinnable 'Wars' Are 'Stupid Stuff'

September 23, 2014, 11:50 a.m.

Note: Click here for an updated list of prior columns and blog essays about terrorism and war.

Add 'Impossible to Win' to Objections to War With ISIS

"A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play."

-- Computer's conclusion about the war game "global nuclear war," from movie "War Games" (1983)

"You can't win, you can't break even
And you can't get out of the game
People keep sayin' things are gonna change
But they look to us like, you're stayin' the same . . .
You can't win, you can't win no way
If your story stays the same, no, no"

-- Charles Emanuel Smalls/Michael Jackson, "You Can't Win"

"We're waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!"

-- Pete Seeger, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy"

"Don't do stupid stuff."

-- "The polite-company version of a phrase [President Obama's aides] use to describe the president's foreign policy." Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2014.

"After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State [which] is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraqi Army."

David D. Kirkpatrick and Omar Al-Jawoshy, "Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq," New York Times, September 23, 2014, p. A12

"The United States and five Arab allies launched a wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one other extremist group in Syria for the first time early Tuesday . . .."

-- Ben Hubbard and Alan Cowell, "U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria," New York Times (online), September 23, 2014

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There is a rather long list of categories of reasons why our third military adventure in Iraq is a bad idea. They are very briefly reviewed, below.

But for those for whom none of those categories seem persuasive, we now have another: A "war" with ISIS, in which the U.S. is a leading force, can be neither fought nor "won" by the standards of any reasonable definition of those words.

This is not the same as saying America is no longer the preeminent military force in the world, more advanced in technology and larger in resources than the next 10 countries combined. It still is. It is not to say that our military is less able and macho than the ISIS fighters. It is not. It is only to say that there are some places and times in which we cannot fight and win anything resembling a war. Whatever it is we want from others, whatever our "national security" may require, they must sometimes be achieved with methods and strategies other than military -- not just in addition to military but instead of military.

As I once put it to President Lyndon Johnson, "You can't play basketball on a football field." In that instance, Viet Nam was a country in which we would, inevitably, be viewed as only the latest in a centuries-long history of foreign invaders, entering into a form of civil war, in a country with an unfamiliar language, history, mythology, religion, social structure, and geography, where our "enemies" refused to wear uniforms and thus were indistinguishable from our allies, there was no World War II-like "frontline," and land was won, lost and won again with ever-increasing American (and Vietnamese) deaths.

In that war effort, a high administration official and I came up with a couple of alternatives, only half in jest. We calculated a cost of $500,000 for each Viet Cong killed in our effort to "win hearts and minds." What if we were to simply give every Vietnamese $250,000? They would consider it a fortune; it would cut our costs in half; and would probably win more "hearts and minds" than killing them. The other possibility was to withdraw our soldiers and replace them with realtors, whose mission would be to simply buy up the entire country one hectare at a time.

Neither of our proposed options proved to be popular with the President, who decided about that time that rather than continuing my responsibility for sea lift to Viet Nam, I would make a really terrific FCC commissioner.

If you can't play basketball on a football field, you certainly can't play basketball in the desert sand. The ineffectiveness, indeed the negative contribution, of our military efforts in the Middle East have much in common with our failures in Viet Nam.

Others have cited a range of categories of concerns about our Middle East military adventures -- as have I in "Is U.S. Response Strengthening ISIS? Playing Into the Terrorists' Hands," September 19, 2014; " Why Iowans Should Care About Iraq War III; Why Do We Accept Words Like 'Islam,' 'State,' and 'Caliphate'?" September 16, 2014; and "Is War the Best Answer?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 12, 2014, p. A7; embedded in " Whatever the Question, Is War the Best Answer?" September 10, 2014. [The next day, September 24, the New York Times' editorial board outlined some of these categories as applied to Syria in Editorial, "Wrong Turn on Syria: No Convincing Plan," New York Times, September 24, 2014, p. A30.]

Some find our war effort unjustified by their standards, citing rules of war grounded in international law, religion, philosophy, morality and ethics. Others believe the military action is unauthorized under the letter and spirit of our Constitution and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Frightening the American people into supporting the war on grounds we are under threat of imminent terrorist attack in the U.S. is challenged as, at minimum, unwarranted (e.g., Senator Lindsay Graham, "This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed here at home.") Our military actions are self-defeating insofar as they increase, rather than decrease, (a) the ability of ISIS to recruit additional terrorists from now some 74 countries, and (b) the likelihood of terrorist attacks within the United States. The list goes on and on, including in the three prior blog essays linked just above.

Tom Tomorrow, in his usually incisive way, illustrates some of the folly in our Iraq adventure in this week's "cartoon":

[Source: Tom Tomorrow, "Building Blocks of War," September 22, 2014, Tom Tomorrow, "This Modern World".]

There is a kind of disquieting irony in the last three quotations at the head of this blog essay: President Obama's pledge not to do "stupid stuff," followed by the Times report that our numerous air strikes over Iraq, coupled with the Iraqi military's ineffectiveness, have failed to restrict ISIS' hold on Iraq land; and then the news 24 hours later that the bombing strategy that failed in Iraq has now been extended to Syria. (And of course fighting a "war" against ISIS in Syria -- ISIS being the Syrian government's most effective enemy -- is infinitely more complex and futile than fighting them in Iraq.)

As the other opening quotations illustrate in a variety of contexts, there are some wars, as well as some games, that cannot be "won" -- the computer's conclusion from its analysis of nuclear war that "the only winning move is not to play;" the metaphor of a card game in which the players "can't win, break even, or get out of the game;" and Pete Seeger's image of a war in which we "push on," notwithstanding the fact it is getting progressively worse.

We are not winning our military action against ISIS. There is little prospect that we ever will. Even if we did, as with our "defeat" of al-Qaeda, the likelihood is that another, successor organization will only pop up as ISIS did in this ongoing game of "whack-a-mole." If we ever were to, for the third time, "declare victory and go home" ("Mission Accomplished"), the probability is overwhelming that the results will be similar if not identical to what happened the two prior times.

The "solution"? There is none. There is only the "least worst alternative." We shouldn't have attempted a military action that was not fully supported by our Joint Chiefs of Staff and doomed to failure in the first place. Any option that has "the Great Satan" (the U.S.) as the leading aggressor is highly unlikely to be successful. Perhaps we should slowly abandon overt, conventional military action, limiting our involvement to diplomacy, intelligence gathering, economic and trade sanctions, and trying to restrict ISIS' access to financial resources. I don't pretend to have "the solution."

My only position for now is that "unwinnable wars are stupid stuff."

Now here is a 4:05-minute video excerpt from the 1983 movie "War Games," in which the computer's conclusion is portrayed about 3:50 into the excerpt:



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America Needs a War Tax

February 9, 2010, 9:30 p.m.

War on the Cheap Is the Most Expensive
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
It's highly unlikely I would ever "join" the Tea Party, or know how to go about doing so, or where to find "it" should I change my mind.

But I do share at least one concern with many of those who do so identify themselves, and that is our nation's mounting debt. Any regular reader of this blog already knows that.

When I was in government I recall the year President Lyndon Johnson pulled out all the stops to keep the budget from going over $100 billion dollars. He thought there was something symbolic about that number. That's right, a budget in the "billions" not "trillions." President Obama's budget is 30 to 40 times that amount. The interest alone is multiples of what it took then to run every government agency and program, fund the new "Great Society" social programs, and the Viet Nam War.

Nations are reluctant to go to war when their people see and feel the costs. That's why those who have reasons for wanting war have reasons for wanting to hide the costs.

There's nothing like a draft to bring that cost to every kitchen table in America. Among those who honestly, analytically, and thoughtfully believed the Viet Nam War was a great mistake were those of draft age. But clearly there were young men and women, and their parents, whose objections were intensified by the prospect of family members, friends and neighbors having to travel thousands of miles abroad to fight in a war from which they might never return.

As Country Joe and the Fish put it in the lyrics to "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag,"

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

I can never forget watching on a military air base as soldiers boarded one plane, headed for Viet Nam, while a couple hundred yards away coffins of the fallen were being unloaded from another plane, and taken into the same hanger from which the solders had emerged.

It's easier for a nation to support a war politically if the military only takes volunteers, and since that's nowhere nearly enough men and women, "outsources" the rest of the tasks to high-priced mercenaries.

It's easier when, instead of rationing gasoline, tires, sugar, and other essential items in the war effort, the president responds to an attack on our country by encouraging everyone to go shopping.

It's easier when, instead of foxholes, trenches, and hand-to-hand combat, wars can be fought from 30,000 feet, where pilots are at relatively less risk -- or better still, with drones over Pakistan that don't even require pilots, and can be controlled like simulated objects in a video game by CIA operatives from thousands of miles away in the U.S..

It's easy for the wealthy to support a war, or be agnostic about it, when the president is simultaneously cutting their taxes -- instead of increasing them for a pay-as-you-go war.

It's hard to pick what's worst about war. But an aspect of those we're now fighting that gets all too little attention in the midst of the media's coverage of individual battles and "collateral damage" is the costs we're putting on our nation's maxed out credit card.

What are we thinking? What are our options? One possibility is a decimated dollar and the resulting wild, raging inflation -- a cruelty that is hard to imagine, and harder still to impose on those with fixed incomes. Another is to declare the nation bankrupt, and default on all our loans. The third is to leave it to multiple future generations to devote their lives to paying off the interest and debt we have run up with our irresponsible and immoral folly and merely left, like trash after a college football game, for someone else to pick up.

Meanwhile, the only folks who benefit from this are the same bankers to whom we gave the trillion-dollar bailouts (who earn the multi-billion-dollar interest on the government's bonds and T-bills), the munitions manufacturers, and the mercenary operations owners.

I usually would not use extensive excerpts from an article, but those that follow are such a useful contribution that I'm going to do so on this occasion.

Here it is.

Eric Margolis, "Wars sending U.S. into ruin; Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford," Toronto Sun, February 5, 2010:

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today. [And see, Nicholas Johnson, "A $14 Trillion Opportunity Cost," January 27, 2010.]

Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion - more than Germany's total defence budget.

No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity" budget.

Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.

The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.

China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends on defence.
There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.

Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - funded by borrowing - cost each American family more than $25,000.

Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental authorizations -- putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.

This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.

America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.

If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.

America needs a fair, honest war tax.

Excerpts from: Eric Margolis, "Wars sending U.S. into ruin; Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford," Toronto Sun, February 5, 2010.

Clearly our war policies need more than "a fair, honest war tax," but that sure would be a good start on the return road to reality.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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WWGFS Tiger and Barack

March 18, 2008, 11:15 a.m.

Analyzing Race, Ethnicity, Sports and Politics
"How does he do it?"

That's how the Orlando Sentinel's sports reporter, David Whitley, led his story about Tiger Woods' 64th PGA tournament win. David Whitley, "Champ Authors Another Golf Masterpiece," Orlando Sentinel, March 17, 2008.

It got me to wondering as well. Just how does he do it?

What accounts for the thousands who come out to watch him play, and the millions more who watch on television? Why do corporations line up to pay him millions just to use, or say nice things about, their products?

What accounts for a swooning media? What would cause seasoned and cynical professional sports reporters like Whitley to write, in assessing Woods' Bay Hill victory, "Another Sunday, another Tiger Woods masterpiece. . . . He passed Arnold Palmer in career wins and tied Ben Hogan on Sunday. Next up is Jack Nicklaus, then Sam Snead, then Zeus or whoever else is the club champ on Mt. Olympus."

"Masterpiece"? "Zeus"?

It's hard to understand, isn't it? Why, in a field of very talented professional golfers, would so much attention, so much adulation, be focused on this young man?

And then I was reminded, not of the initialed bracelets that asked the question "WWJD" -- "What would Jesus do?" My suspicion is that Jesus might well take the same approach to golf that a law school colleague of mine takes to all of what he persists in disdainfully pronouncing "sch-portz."

No, what I asked myself was, "WWGDS" -- "What would Geraldine Ferraro say?"

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, you may recall, has been thinking deeply about the comparable attention focused on Barack Obama. Why would this young presidential candidate, like Tiger Woods, attract crowds of thousands, and voters by the millions, on the basis of his performance?

And after long and thoughtful contemplation this seasoned politico, who has been around the track herself more than once, and has contributed so much to her candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton, finally figured it out and shared her conclusion:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosmanb, "Ferraro's Obama Remarks Become Talk of Campaign," The New York Times, March 12, 2008.

Could this be the explanation for Tiger Woods as well?

Moreover, to the extent there may be more sports fans cheering Woods than political junkies cheering Obama, the Ferraro theory may very well explain it by the additional ethnic strains Woods represents. After all, Obama is merely the son of a white woman and Kenyan man. Woods is as Thai as he is African-American, with Native American and European ancestry as well. (See, e.g., Janita Poe, "Tiger Woods Spotlights Multiracial Identity; Golf Star Sparks pride in Heritage," Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1997.)

By golly, I'll bet that's it, I thought.

But then I read on in Whitley's piece:

"Why is this guy seemingly immune to all the laws of golf? . . . 'It's why you work all those tireless hours,' he [Woods] said. 'It's why you get up at 0-Dong-30 and log your miles, bust your tail in the gym.'. . .

Those moments look easy because he's done all the hard stuff. . . . Woods has more talent than all of them, but that doesn't fully explain why he's so much better. It really comes down to a dedication that never ends. . . .

After that [earlier, less than perfect] round he and caddie Steve Williams went back to the range at Isleworth. Woods pounded balls until a no-way miss started kicking in. . . .

Everybody will remember that last birdie putt [of 24 feet on the 18th green], but Woods was relishing the 167-yard [five iron] shot that set it up.

It was the product of the extra range time he put in. Only this time, his caddie was joined by millions of other eyes to see the make-or-break moment. . . .

He made it look easy. . . . 'Well, I have to keep working and keep progressing,'Woods said. 'And keep working on my game.'

It's no mistake he said 'working' twice. With Tiger the wins never stop because the work never ends."

When President Lyndon Johnson was referred to as "Lucky Lyndon" he would sometimes respond, "Yes, they call me 'Lucky Lyndon,' but I've always found the harder I work the luckier I get." Samuel Goldwyn, Donald Trump, and Gary Player, among others, have also commented on the relationship between work and "luck."

Could it be that Geraldine Ferraro's theory requires a little more refinement?

Could it be that Senator Barack Obama's qualities like ability, hard work, a quality education, achievement, and the sense of fairness and social justice that underly his vision of the future, of our coming together, delivered with a real public speaking ability -- like Tiger Woods' golfing ability coupled with his hard work, dedication and focus -- are a better explanation of Obama's popularity in political rallies, primaries and caucuses across our land than his skin color?

Could it be that, notwithstanding the progress we have made in race relations over the past 50 years, the success of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama has less to do with being black and more to do with having to overcome being black, and to do so by working harder, and achieving more -- spectacularly more -- than had they been white?

Now that's a concept that Ferraro, of all people, should understand. (As male and female feminists alike occasionally note, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did -- only backwards and in high heels.")

If the answer to "WWGFS?" involves that insight she may, indeed, be on to something.

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