An Open Letter to Charles Krauthammer:

I sometimes wonder if you, like your Obama-obsessed comrades in Congress, are aware of just how damaging your views are to the prospects of international accord and some measure of peace.

Given your nonstop belligerance toward the president and Democrats in general, perhaps this is by design. Perhaps you are a warrior and nothing more, and as long as you are battling against the “prince of lawlessness” that you imagine your nemesis to be, you are convinced your cause is righteous. Perhaps everything you believe can be packaged into the idea that the president must somehow be destroyed, and all other priorities are expendable until this goal is reached.

You are not alone, of course, in holding this deluded philosophy, which has prevented so much potential progress from being realized over the last six years. (Congratulations?)

Mitch McConnel failed in his single-minded priority for the GOP as announced on the occasion of Mr. Obama’s inaugaration – despite a massive effort by the right, Obama’s second term is well under way. Unlike the various illegalities practiced under the former administration (see Libby, Scooter and Plame, Valerie), the hoped-for scandals and indictments of the Obama team are not going to happen. No, not even continued chants of “Benghazi!” will help you now. So you too have failed in your crusade. After six years of harping, you have convinced exactly no one outside your ideological camp that Ken Starr’s political corpse should be resurrected to run down and hog tie another successful Democrat. Can you not simply own that failure and move on? Can you not step out of the ring now that you are on the canvas?

What I am getting at is this: continuously undermining the Hurculean task of managing U.S. foreign policy in a world shattered by extremism, factionalism, and a general collapse of civilization in many regions is not productive for the U.S. and its citizens – people like me. It is good only in the eyes of obsessive people like you, who have no sense of proportion, and of course it’s good for America’s sworn enemies. That goes without saying.

I really don’t care how much you hate the man, nor do I care about the prospects of the GOP, or the Democrats for that matter. I share this lack of compassion for tired, out of touch, insular political parties and their self-interested agendas with MANY fellow citizens. So by extension I don’t care about you, nor am I going to be swayed by your baseless ideologically inspired sophistry.

But I do care about shills like you poisoning the well of ideas here at home, joyously squeezing the bellows of hatred and ridicule into the fires of burning nation states for the sole reason that it might help make the president look weak and increase the prospects for a Republican White House in 2016. Yes, I realize this is “the game” from the GOP perspective, but some of us are through playing it. When I think of the alternative you offer by implication – a “strong” president like former ‘president’ Cheney and his brilliant plans for a “free Iraqi people” and “cheap oil for everybody”, I can’t help but shudder with dread that many low-information American voters would take you up on it.

I realize someone like you will never admit the truth about Iraq – namely, that it was plunged into chaos and sectarian war as a direct result of an unjustified, unprovoked, poorly planned American invasion based on lies told by Cheney’s neocon gang, followed by a dismantling of the regular Iraqi army by the American “governor” of that briefly conquered (and now lawless and leaderless) state.

The disbanding of the Iraqi army, especially, was sheer foreign policy idiocy, as was pointed out at the time, and everyone who was paying attention knows it. These Iraqi men – trained, armed, and then stateless – now form the core of the Islamic State, Sunni warriors cut loose from the now-Shia controlled Iraqi government structure by American decree, men who know they are enemies of Shia Baghdad and who face the prospect of trying to survive under an Iranian puppet regime emboldened by a decade of state-destroying adventures known collectively as the “War on Terror”.

(Yes, I know the new conservative line is that IS was born of Syria’s war, because this allows conservatives to blame IS’s rise on Obama’s “inaction” there – but I am not buying, because without the instability created by the U.S. over a decade of war, IS would just be another Islamist extremist group that CAME to Syria to expand the fight against Assad. They would not be in Iraq or Libya today.)

This is all the result of Cheney’s actions, not Obama’s. No matter how much you want the 2012 Status of Forces agreement to be Obama’s ‘blunder’ that ruined Iraq, you and I both know who put that agreement in place as a matter of history and law. And you and I both know the Iraq “adventure” was an abject failure from beginning to end. It was not Obama’s war. It was not even America’s war. It was Cheney and Halliburton’s war, to the tune of billions in war profiteering.

Of course, to your mind hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, thousands of dead Americans, many billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain, the hatred of the civilized world toward the “imperialist” bullies running America (believe me, I lived it), and the easily foreseen current state of affairs in Iraq brought on by vain American adventurism – none of these is anywhere near the horror of…what? Obama not waging war (which he is not allowed to do anyway) on every rogue actor on the planet? That seems to be the prescription, though you and your Congressional cohort are for some reason reluctant to articulate the actual war plans: the cost justifications, the logistics of fighting on multiple fronts from Ukraine to Syria to Libya, the assurances that non-state actor “x” is our “friend” and will steadfastly fight our cause against non-state actor “Y”, and the viable end-game scenarios for these actions that would justify the cost in lives, money, and international reputation. You imply Obama is refusing to pursue these lines, but you know they don’t actually exist – never mind, progress is not the goal, I know. You don’t need to actually have a goal beyond embarrassing the president and weakening our position as a nation in the eyes of the wider world.

By the way, isn’t it Congress’s prerogative to declare war? Why don’t they then?

By continuing to argue, sans facts, that the Obama administration’s foreign policy is somehow the “cause” of the world’s sectarian strife, you undermine actions the administration and its many allies are actually taking to address these foreign conflicts and nascent threats. At every turn, you attempt to stoke phony “outrage” over administration “bumbling” rather than suggest useful or insightful (as opposed to fantastic and impossible) changes or enhancements to policies that are in fact in place and quietly working.

With your cynical sarcasm and ridicule of U.S. policies, effectively saying “It’s hopeless” to try to assist the president, you signal to your acolytes in Congress that the only course for the GOP is to pre-emptively undermine anything Obama would try to do toward a shared goal of American safety and prosperity. In doing so you trade the cause of peace and security for petty, ephemeral partisan victories that amount to nothing in the real world. (Hint: Obama will not run again in 2016. Promise.) Your goal, if you have any beyond Obama’s destruction, appears to be to convince Americans the country is in worse condition in 2016 than it was in 2008 (though it is not by any fair measure you care to name) and that it’s all the fault of one man, thereby paving the way for a Republican White House because, you know, lesser of two evils, right? You seem adamant in your need for this to be “true” to the point of helping useful global chaos to be realized and tangible, at least in the minds of voters. But it’s not true. The world is always unstable, and the Obama years mark one of the few times the U.S. was agile enough to largely stay out of it – allowing us to concentrate on the many domestic challenges we face (one of which is massive war debt and a huge population of disabled veterans who will need lifetime care, not to mention a treasury depleted by war adventures).

If I thought you were rational, I would ask you to consider only this: as many areas of the Middle East still burn with the fires set by an unthinking, shoot-first American foreign policy circa 2001-2007; as Russia continues to devolve into a failed kleptocracy due to its structural economic weaknesses and Putin’s monomaniacal insanity (not to mention his knowledge that Obama will be both restrained from acting on foreign soil and simultaneously pilloried for inaction by the GOP Congress for electoral purposes); as stateless terrorists in austerity-crippled Europe probe for weakness and terrorize the citizenry; and as Syria continues to crumble while Congress signals it will not support the president’s plans there (again, because they value embarrassing Obama and protecting theselves against primaries over defeating Assad); remember that the United States has somehow – even under Obama – managed to emerge from the Cheney-era’s Great Recession and costly middle east war adventures to steer the country toward a return to prosperity; we have somehow also managed to avoid another costly, pointless war; we have somehow managed to prevent any significant foreign-launched terror attacks. If I thought you were rational I would ask you to recognize that these are good things, not bad things, that they are positive developments for the U.S. despite the world’s general condition.

In other words, we are the envy of a chaotic world right now, an island of peace, enjoying stability and prosperity (relative to 2009) amid the world’s present chaos. All signs point to a continuation of this pattern and a return of American economic dominance and worldwide influence (absent Congressional sabotage in the form of debt default threats, sequesters, thoughtless tax slashing and such). Deficits are shrinking every year; manufacturing is making a comeback; the previously steep annual increases in health care costs are slowing dramatically under Obamacare; the dollar is stronger than it has been in years. The Dow Jones is in record territory. There have been – and I predict there will be – no indictments of Obama administration officials, because they are playing by the rules whether you choose to believe it or not.

Your calculated, hateful rhetoric, your fake sputtering frustration at the “grave ineptitude” of the administration, words that paint a picture of a ‘failed’ presidency, a ‘weak’ president, a ‘lawless’ president simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone who knows the truth of history. Unfortunately, many do not know the truth, because they are listening to the likes of you, in your collective, fact-free Obama-hating echo chamber, instead of looking at the actual historical record, the actual events and decisions that led to the wrecked domestic economy and the factional, warring, America-hating Middle East Obama inherited in January 2009.

I’m still on the national scene. I’ll have to mix it up with more local color, I know, but for now I’m fixated.

I have been considering the arguments for and against the administration’s – and, somewhat by extension, Congress’s – plans for spending their way out of the recession. A scandal-hobbled and severely weakened Republican party is attempting to rally the conservative faithful to guard against the administration’s incremental “takeover” of the free market, their plan to “socialize” health care, their designs on “dismantling” the Bush tax cuts. I suppose to them, it looks like Armageddon. But to me it just looks sensible. I try very hard not to be partisan on questions of nuts and bolts policy, and maybe that’s impossible, but I just can’t see the problems. Here’s how they look to me, one by one:

Socialism and the end of free markets? Hardly – the economic crisis is certainly more complex than you or I can fully understand, but one thing is pretty clear: if our financial markets collapse, we will have a very much bigger hole to dig ourselves out of than if we can do something to prevent that collapse. And that “something” is a cash infusion to free up capital, loosen credit restrictions, and increase the so-called “velocity of money” to get spending and growth back in the picture. It’s not a long-term solution to our problems (see below), but it’s a way to avoid longer-term problems in the short term, if that makes sense. The short explanation is “Japan” – their “lost decade,” economists agree, was longer than it might have been due to very sluggish action by their federal regulators at the outset of their own economic crisis. Like our domestic free market stalwarts, they were squeamish about intruding on the mysterious mechanisms of the “invisible hand” guiding the financial system. The result was a shut-down of credit availability that slowed their economy to a crawl for many years. The government came in with money and loan guarantees, but late, and the damage took longer to undo. It’s fortunate, in a way, that our crisis occurred on Bush’s watch, and the first massive bailout was planned and conducted under his administration. It quiets the noisemakers a little, as they must acknowledge that this is not a “Democrat” thing. I for one believe Obama when he says he doesn’t “want” to be in the banking business – it’s a necessity for now. As much as we may despise the big financial players for their greed, recklessness and willful ignorance, before we can make any systemic changes we must shore up the system we are currently working under. In fact I agree that we need a second stimulus. The alternative could very likely be chaos.

Nationalized health care – I just can’t see what’s wrong with it. The best way to express this is to look at the preliminary numbers and to note the many examples abroad from which we can learn and plan. I believe it’s safe to say that in the U.S., we waste a lot of money when it comes to health care. How else to explain that among industrialized countries, we are first in spending but only middling in performance (according to many published reports)? That is, we spend – by far – the most per capita on health care, but we receive, in terms of health care access and quality, nowhere near the best product. Why? One obvious reason is middlemen and the exorbitant costs of health care administration, insurance itself, and drugs. It’s no secret health insurance cost is outpacing inflation by a wide margin. Why? Drug costs are also through the roof. Why? Perhaps the why is unimportant. If we can offer a public solution to compete with these monolithic insurance companies and hospital organizations, the very competition we want to protect will be served. Rather than crush competition, a public plan might force a highly consolidated industry to simply take fewer profits and reduce inefficiencies and redundancies. Would it be so bad, for example, if your local hospital didn’t have a two-story atrium, marble floors and an espresso bar? I guess the question comes down to whether health care is a “product” or, at a basic level, a “right.” In a nation as wealthy as this one, it can be both. The cost of the health care plan before Congress is roughly 1.5 trillion dollars over ten years. But if we look at the projections of what we will spend as a nation on health care without the plan – estimated at about 35 trillion over the same period (we spent a verified 2.4 trillion in 2008 and are projected to spend 3.1 trillion in 2012 and 4.4 in 2018) – that “huge” number doesn’t look so big. Furthermore, if such a plan forces private industry to compete, to force efficiencies in the system and to be satisfied with smaller margins, then spending that 1.5 trillion—or even more—may actually end up saving us all money. I for one think it likely. We just have to have the guts to go head to head with the health care giants. As for the giants, I don’t blame them for wanting to protect their golden goose. But I would be very disappointed in our public “leaders” for not going after a few eggs for the rest of us out of fear or, worse, because they are themselves  in the pockets of Big Medicine.

Tax increases!!! – I believe, if memory serves, that the decade or so of massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was offered up by the Bush administration and defended by a sycophantic Federal Reserve as a “solution” to our economic “problems”. Well, here we are. Can we try something else now? The interesting thing is that as the economy has cratered under this philosophy, the very rich are getting – you guessed it – richer. In constant dollars, the gap between rich and poor in this country continues to grow. And the concentration of wealth in the upper echelons continues to concentrate as labor and the middle class absorb more and more of the tax burden. At last report, the richest 1% of Americans controlled 20% of the country’s wealth. We all know this. It’s not necessary to point out that these ultra-rich pay “more taxes” than the local McDonald’s manager (in terms of percentage and dollars). Of course they do, because they can afford it. Paying 46% of a 100 million dollar income still leaves you with 54 million, you know. And I don’t need to be reminded that they “risk” their capital to start businesses, create jobs, etc. Of course they do – because with risk comes reward. And – a very important point – they have the capital to risk in the first place. Do you? You work hard, don’t you? You “invest” as much as you can – in the market, your 401, Beanie Babies, whatever, knowing your investment is at risk. And yet – gosh – you are still taxed. How come? The answer is pretty clear – because you (and I) don’t write the tax laws. It should be crystal clear by now that trickle-down economics is at best a fantasy and at worst a form of theft. Give the super-rich more money, and they put it in the bank. They don’t spend it (because they don’t need it). Or, worse, they lend it back to the government at attractive interest rates to allow the government to pay its debt – debt it has incurred because it does not collect enough taxes. Which creates ever more debt. This really happens. It’s not the rich people’s fault – they’re programmed to make money, they really can’t help it. And within reason that’s a good thing. But the cycle we’re in is not good for the rest of us. So it’s up to government to equalize the tax code already – and by equalize, I mean ask those who reap the greatest rewards from this economy to contribute the greater share toward its maintenance, until we have equilibrium. Heck, some of them (notably Warren Buffet) are themselves asking to be taxed more.

But what it really all comes down to, I and many others have been thinking, is what we value as a people. The familiar refrain during this recession is that the only way out of it is if Americans “start spending again,” as if only the working and middle classes can save us by buying a new TV. I can see how this helps the TV manufacturer and Wal-Mart – but how does it help the rest of us? Americans, it seems, are going exactly the opposite way. They are buying less expensive things, and fewer things, and smaller houses, and “staycations”. They have started thinking about what they buy, rather than buying out of habit or from advertised coercion. They are, in a simple word, simplifying. They may even find they like it. I have found, even though I like the possessions I have, that too many possessions is not a blessing but a burden. They just weigh you down.

So how do we save the economy? Maybe by spending – but not on TVs. Maybe we spend on better health care access for everybody (a net savings due to increased wellness), better roads and bridges (which will need building anyway), more efficient energy systems and factories and appliances and cars and homes (also a net savings and a balm for our abused environment). We should spend on outreach and assistance to Africa and to our so-called “enemies,” spend on alternative energy research to reduce our consuming addiction to their natural resources (which is how they became “enemies” in the first place) and in so doing de-fuse their own leaders’ anti-American rhetoric. In short, instead of buying a TV, let’s buy a sustainable future. We can simplify our material life and invest instead in our national and global health – in every sense of that term. It is a short-term asceticism that may well bring forth a long-term flowering of our nation and culture into what it always had the potential to become: a nation of progressive, fair-minded, egalitarian individuals working both for ourselves and for the common good of our fellow citizens and the world. It’s not impossible if we just decide to do it. The only obstacles I can see are greed, paranoia and cynicism. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of that.