Acting Globally, Thinking Locally

The debate about a Presidentially-ordered surge in troops in Iraq is a set-piece designed to distract us, and a lot of us have fallen right into the pit.

President Bush has all the forces, money, and Constitutional power necessary to achieve his redeployment objectives—call it “escalation”, or “augmentation” (Condoleeza) or “acceleration” (Chuck Hagel, I think he misspoke)--without anyone's agreement, even to override any conceivable action the Congress could do in the short-term to prevent him from making it happen.

Short of changing his mind, and it's well documented that neither hurricane nor civil war can achieve for us that objective, he can do what he intends, and all the protests in the world and legislation on the Hill won't stop it. Expending a lot of time or effort to blocking it is by definition wasted effort.

Over the course of six to 19 months, though, Congress can affect the conduct of the war through controlling special appropriations for Iraq. They should put Bush on a shorter leash, giving him extra funds for the next six months to get training, reconstruction, final offensive operations, and planning for redeployment completed. Future funding would depend on making the case to Congress, and on finding budget cuts--I'd start with unwanted weapons systems and Star Wars anti-missile fantasies--to pay for additional special appropriations for purposes agreed upon by Congress. A further escalation in six months—when this effort falls short—can be precluded.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, needs additional funding and NATO forces, though that is another story. In Iraq, we should be looking to buy a small amount of time to make the political deals required to decentralize the police, to prepare the way for the exit of our combat forces, and to give the regions autonomy and a fair distribution of the oil money.

Speaking of money for oil, I have to weigh in on the hottest local topic: the Mayor's new Hummer!

Of course no one can deny Mayor Bobby Duran the right to get the private vehicle of his choice. I've always felt that one may drive a gas-guzzler as long as one doesn't complain about the price of gas. The fact of the Hummer's military origin in its design is irrelevant: getting some civilian benefit from military expenditure would be great, if the vehicle were not so useless in civilian life. Instead of Duran's personal vehicle, we should instead focus on the fuel standards of the town's fleets of passenger vehicles and trucks, with hybrids and biodiesel being the standard for each that we should be aiming at.

Mayor Duran's political albatross is all his, though I could suggest he donate it to the town: we could plate in in bronze and put in the Plaza with other controversial past heroes. Perhaps it has an excellent stereo that would provide music for plaza visitors. That would certainly be proof of his big-ness, which seems to be the hidden issue.

The real issue--one that should be obvious though it doesn't seem to come up-- is that the mayor's actual role is mostly one of providing leadership. In the campaign for his recent, narrow re-election (see, for example, a previous commentary, "Bobby Duran, No Mas" at http://chinshihtang.blogspot.com/2006/02/first-fifteenth-monthly-review.html) we all saw that the town is run by others, and that mayoral policy-making in this town is basically limited to breaking tie votes in the council. The rest is what he/she provides by argument and by example. In this regard, it would be better to lend one's image to ground-breaking for bike trails than to the right to take up two spaces (even if he pays for both meters) in our limited downtown parking areas.

Duran's choice is therefore a political judgment we may be called upon to validate or reject. Someone mentioned to me that this issue is all about making a wedge issue out of the differing value systems of longtime residents and new residents. I'll admit that there is such a gap, but let's not let that keep us all from thinking intelligently about the issue at hand.