today’s blog features three clippings from the star tribune. the first is a reader response about health care. the second loses focus sometimes but centers on it’s title “history doesn’t excuse terrorism, but it sure is relevant.” the third is about the record deficit.
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Falsely positive
During the last presidential debate I heard George W. Bush say that our health care system is “the envy of the world.” This is an absurd and false claim, and here’s some proof.
The World Health Organization ranks the United States 29th in the world in healthy life expectancy and 38th in infant and child mortality. Moreover, the 28 countries that do better than we do spend, on average, about $2,500 less per capita per year. Given our population, that $2,500 difference amounts to $712 billion every year. One can only conclude that $712 billion must be going to something other than health care.
Those 28 countries all have some form of single-payer, universal health care. They treat health care as a fundamental human right rather than a business opportunity. So when a candidate says our system is the envy of the world, I think he is lying to protect the $712 billion stake of the insurance companies, the HMOs, and other businesses that profit from health care but provide none of it.
-Steven Boyer, St. Paul
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History doesn’t excuse terrorism, but it sure is relevant
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Austin, Texas – You open the paper and read the news from Iraq these days, and all you can say is, “Damn, damn, damn.”
I’m flat out of ideas about how we can fix this, but I maybe see a couple of wrong roads we should give a miss. I was much struck by a column by David Brooks of the New York Times written in an understandable rage against the perpetrators of the school massacre at Beslan, Russia. Condemning the perpetrators of Beslan with all the vigor at his command – hyperbole is impossible – leads Brooks to an unfortunate conclusion.
Brooks particularly blames the American media, which he argues are “averting their eyes” and being “quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act” by paying attention to what he regards as irrelevant: the grievance that served as a justification or pretext for these terrorists’ act of evil. In other words, he is so exercised at the utter, unmitigated evil of the terrorists, he thinks history is irrelevant.
History does not excuse terrorism, but it sure is relevant, if for no other reason than you have to understand an enemy in order to combat him. Of course we should pay attention to what shaped the Chechen terrorists – since when is learning about terrorists or trying to understand what motivates them the same as condoning them or their actions?
In the case of Chechyna, the history is so grim it draws dramatic attention to precisely how a cult of death can start. Chechnya has a long, bitter history of fighting Russia going back at least two centuries. Those of you who have been paying attention know that after World War II, Stalin deported almost the entire nation of Chechnya to Siberia and dumped most of them off in frozen fields with nothing. So most adult Chechens were born in Siberia. Because of the Chechens’ desire for independence, two hideous wars followed, one under President Boris Yeltsin and one under President Vladimir Putin.
Most of us remember the mind-numbingly desolate photos of Grozny, the capital, after the surrender – beyond Dresden. That’s how Chechen terrorism was born. Desire for independence is not something this country normally condemns.
Brooks blames the terrorism on the “death cult thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world.” At least in the case of the Chechens, that’s akin to blaming Catholicism for the IRA. On a larger plane, Brooks thinks we refuse to recognize the absolute evil of the Beslan terrorists because it “undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.” Speak for yourself, Brooks.
Seems to me the one thing that does not change through history is human nature. Theologians and philosophers will continue to debate human nature. I’ve always like an observation about politics made by an old West Texas rancher: “I feel like I’m about equal parts good and bad. There’s just not many people appealin’ to the good in me.”
I think we’re all capable of evil under extreme circumstances. I do know that most humans are kinder and better people when they are healthy, well-fed, raised by loving people in a secure environment and taught it is wrong to kill. But that doesn’t change human nature.
One trouble with defining terrorism as absolute evil is, as the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Second, we appear to be stuck – permanently stuck – with war of unequal forces, since no country is dumb enough to declare war on the United States. So we need to learn every thing we can about how to fight these people effectively. Third, defining “terrorist” or any “other” as an absolute, irrational evil gives us a spurious and intoxicating sense of self-righteousness. We become the simon-pure contrast, thus missing any chance to consider if correcting or just changing our own conduct would be effective.
One of the things I know about human nature is that in order to kill strangers face to face – or, God forbid, their children – you have to either be very afraid or convince yourself that your enemy is completely evil, other, nonhuman. People seem far more capable of killing other people if they can’t see them, which is probably why war has gotten nastier as the technology has gotten better.
We have killed an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Iraqis since “mission accomplished” and are bombing Fallujah today. For all I know, in some future I cannot envision, this will turn out to be the right thing to have done. Peace and democracy will flourish in Iraq, and we will all bow down to the great wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. But so far, no good.
According to opinion polls both in Iraq and in the larger Arab world, our invasion of Iraq has increased hatred of the United states and fanned terrorism. Ignorance and condemnation are not a strategy for dealing with that.
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Record ’04 deficit puts government at debt capacity
By Jonathan Welsman
Washington Post
Friday, October 15, 2004
Washington, D.C. – The federal government reach its $7.4 trillion debt ceiling Thursday, forcing Treasury Secretary John Snow to delay contributing to one of the federal employees’ pension systems to avoid running out of cash and possibly defaulting on government debt.
The situation will probably prove temporary, as it has in the past.
Congressional leaders said that when they return for a lame-duck session after the election, they will raise the debt ceiling to allow the government to borrow the money it needs to pay its bills. At that point, any overdue contributions to the pension fund will be paid, with interest.
But it also underscores the political sensitivity of record government deficits during an election year.
When Bush came to office, the debt ceiling was $5.95 trillion and had last been raised in 1997.
Since 2002, Congress has raised the borrowing limit by more than $1.4 trillion, as the government ran increasingly large deficits of $158 billion in 2002, $375 billion in 2003 and $413 billion for fiscal 2004, which ended in September. On Thursday the Treasury Department released its final 2004 deficit figure, which came in below initial forecasts but still at a record level in dollar terms.
If Republicans had hoped to avoid the issue before the election, Democrats on Thursday sought to make them pay with a litany of accusations.
“This is a heck of a burden to pass on to the next generation,” said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Campaign aides of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry noted that Bush’s 2001 budget anticipated the debt ceiling would not have to be raised until 2008. And, they charged, the government has run up more debt in the last 17 months than was amassed under all the presidents from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.
But budget watchdog organizations took both Kerry and Bush to task for what they see as a failure to take the deficit seriously.
“Following the presidential debate where more attention was given to the candidates wives than to the budget deficit… it is hard to see where the leadership to put the country back on the path of fiscal responsibility will come from,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
