A PRESCIENT VIEW---
November 12, 2009
Debt is Destroying the Dollar
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism. Still, the world's appetite for gold as an investment option is intensifying. Last month, India purchased 200 tons of gold at $1,045 an ounce, before the price topped $1,108 on Monday. China, too, may increasingly diversify from paper -- i.e., bonds -- into gold, the price of which, some experienced investors believe, could soar to $2,500 an ounce in three to five years. One reason for all this is U.S. behavior.
India's 2008 GDP was $1.2 trillion, so its $6.7 billion purchase was small beer. It may, however, be a large portent: Gold increasingly looks to investors to be a more reliable store of value than governments' bonds are, especially U.S. bonds as the U.S. government threatens to pile a mammoth health care entitlement onto the nation's Ponzi welfare state, increasing the nation's debt and borrowing.
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budget economy
The fiscal year 2009 budget deficit, triple that of 2008, was 10 percent of GDP and, Lawrence Lindsey says, probable policies will produce deficits of 7 percent of GDP for a decade. Ronald Reagan's worst deficit was 6 percent of GDP, and for only one year.
Lindsey -- former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and director of George W. Bush's National Economic Council (2001-02) -- says Americans' net worth has dropped at least $13 trillion since the recession began in December 2007. What is to be done?
Americans could suddenly begin saving substantially more, but this would deepen and prolong the recession. Alternatively, America could reflate the value of its assets by printing money. Lindsey says it is already doing that -- printing bonds promiscuously and lending money to banks at negligible rates, money banks can use to buy the bonds. This sharply increases the money supply, which sets the stage either for inflation -- too much money chasing too few goods. Or for recovery-snuffing higher interest rates to try to prevent inflation. Or for something like Japan's lost decade -- banks pouring money into government bonds rather than the real economy.
America, says Lindsey, will not become Weimar Germany, where hyperinflation caused people to rush to stores with satchels of rapidly depreciating currency. But, he adds, no country has successfully behaved the way the United States is behaving.
Suppose, he says, you owned some U.S. Treasury bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, and you were sitting in front of two buttons, one marked Buy More, the other marked Sell. Which button would you push? Obviously, Sell.
Fortunately, Lindsey says, there is so much U.S. paper circulating, every owner cannot hit Sell at the same time. But if enough people, institutions or nations sell, others will not buy unless U.S. interest rates rise substantially, which can ignite a vicious cycle -- killing economic growth, thereby depressing revenues and increasing the deficit and borrowing.
Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute notes that China, America's largest creditor, has increased its dollar holdings 20 percent this year, so China has increased its interest in not having the dollar devalued by mass selling. But, Stelzer adds, China thinks geopolitically as well as economically, and might have noneconomic reasons for encouraging a controlled flight from the dollar.
A cataclysmic event -- say, an interruption of the flow of Middle Eastern oil -- could, Stelzer says, cause the world to flee to the safety of even a depreciating dollar. But absent such an event, the world will be carefully watching a U.S. government that has a powerful incentive to try to use controlled inflation for the slow-motion repudiation of some of its mountain of new debt.
It is, however, hubris -- something abundant in Washington -- to think inflation can be precisely controlled, like an oven's temperature. It is hubris cubed to think inflation can be unleashed just short of provoking a flight from the dollar.
Perhaps Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows how to sop up the trillions of new dollars before inflation ignites. But will he? He knows about "the recession within the Depression" that occurred in 1937, perhaps as a result of premature confidence in a recovery.
Furthermore, he may feel duty-bound to try to use loose money to help reduce unemployment. But although the Fed has suddenly assumed stupendous powers, it still has one sovereign duty -- to preserve the currency as a store of value.
georgewill@washpost.com
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
LA STRADA--FELLINI--AND A FINE ANALYSIS OF FILM
La Strada
Fellini’s Magic-Neo-Realism
John Parris Springer
English Department, University of Central Oklahoma
jpspringer@ucok.edu
Along with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) is among the most important films of post-war Italian cinema. Rome Open City and The Bicycle Thief are the two films that introduced Italian Neo-Realism to the world and restored Italy’s place of prominence in international film culture. But it was Fellini’s La Strada, built upon a firm Neo-Realist foundation yet possessing something more—a fairy-tale-like narrative, resonant with archetypal characters whose lives illuminate the basic truths of the human condition—that revealed the full aesthetic richness of Neo-Realism just as it was being transformed by Fellini into something other than a faithful recording of mundane reality. It is this sometimes whimsical, sometimes hallucinatory visual and narrative quality in Fellini’s work that distinguished him from his fellow Neo-Realists and which, even more significantly, pointed the way to future styles and directions in world cinema. As meticulously situated as the characters and plot of La Strada are in the particularities of post-war Italian society, La Strada has always conveyed to audiences a certain universal significance which has made it one of the most revered films in world cinema; an artistic masterpiece that transcends national borders to deliver a profound commentary on the nature of the human condition and our most basic needs as sentient creatures.
La Strada possesses a fable-like simplicity that conceals the film’s seemingly unplanned, episodic structure. As a filmmaker who came of age during the flowering of Italian Neo-Realism, Fellini has an unerring instinct in La Strada for creating an often harshly realistic portrayal of post-war Italian society. Certainly the film’s attention to lower class and socially marginalized characters reflects the politics of Neo-Realism and its goal of developing the cinema as a tool for representing and analyzing the experiences of average, ordinary people, an impulse that arises from Neo-Realism’s roots in Italian Marxism. Evidence of pervasive poverty and the scarring effects of war are brilliantly incorporated into the mise-en-scene of the film through Fellini’s art direction and costume design. His use of actual locations in La Strada, rather than the more easily controlled environment of the film studio, and his use of untrained actors in several minor roles, likewise followed basic Neo-Realist aesthetic principles that aimed at presenting a more authentically realistic image of the world.
But Fellini was always something more than a realist. Every Fellini film possesses a certain ineffable poetry, a sense of magic and wonder that can range from the hilarious to the frightening to the uncanny. He is what I would call, mixing literary and cinematic modes, a "magic neo-realist." In Fellini’s films we ultimately encounter a fidelity to something larger and more complex than a strictly empirical notion of social and economic reality. We encounter a highly subjective view of the world, often grotesque and distorted, brimming with both irony and pathos and filtered through Fellini’s profoundly humanistic vision as an artist. Indeed, the unique blend of reality and surreality that Fellini’s films offer, their deft mingling of the objective and the subjective, reality and dreams, constitute the very essence of that often-used adjective in film criticism—Felliniesque. Fellini’s pursuit of his own, personal vision as an artist often made him a controversial figure within Italian film culture, where other directors and critics complained that his films failed to live up to the strict ideological requirements of Neo-Realism. Such complaints had little effect on Fellini, however, who continued to pursue his visionary approach to cinematic storytelling over the course of a nearly 40-year career.
La Strada was Fellini’s third film as a director, and it single-handedly established his international reputation as a director of art-house cinema, winning numerous honors and prizes including the Academy Award as best foreign film in 1954. La Strada must also be seen as the product of several fertile collaborative relationships between Fellini and others, most notably his wife, the actress Giuletta Masina who plays the gentle, simple-minded Gelsomina, and the composer Nino Rota, whose musical scores in numerous Fellini films make an enormous contribution to their effectiveness. This is especially the case with La Strada, for which the musical score itself was a huge international hit.
La Strada means "the road," and the film is best understood as a journey taken by the two main characters: Gelsomina (Masina), a simple-minded young woman who is sold by her family to a brutish, itinerant carnival strong man, Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Traveling the countryside in a crude hutch attached to the strong man’s motorbike, Gelsomina is abused and mistreated by Zampano until she is finally driven to madness and death. Along the road they encounter "The Fool," (Richard Basehart) a circus acrobat and clown who teaches Gelsomina that there might be more to life than her servitude to Zampano. The Fool and Zampano are depicted by Fellini as a study in contrasts: the strong man’s sullen brutishness and awkward demeanor around others stand in sharp contrast to the graceful and loquacious Fool, whose free-spirited contempt for authority leads him to taunt and ridicule Zampano. Finally the strong man confronts the Fool, and in the fight that follows he accidentally murders him. Gelsomina, already the victim of Zampano’s physical abuse, witnesses the Fool’s death, and begins a slow descent into madness. Finally, unwilling and unable to care for the increasingly deranged Gelsomina, Zampano abandons her to fate.
Each of the three main characters has certain obvious affinities to natural elements. Gelsomina is associated with water; we first encounter her on the beach at her home and throughout the film her returns to the ocean are shown as cleansing and restorative. Giuletta Masina’s performance as Gelsomina is one of the most outstanding features of La Strada and one of the great performances in film history. She displays a perfect balance of innocent vulnerability and sympathetic openness to others that is continually bruised in her dealings with Zampano. In film criticism the word most often used to invoke such a delicate interplay of comedy and pathos is Chaplinesque, and the spirit of Chaplin’s "Little Tramp" hovers over Masina’s carefully nuanced performance.
The Fool is associated with the air. As an aerialist and high-wire artist, we first see him high above a crowd of spectators eating a plate of spaghetti, and his costume consists of a pair of wings. The Fool represents a carnivelesque energy which seeks to subvert authority and puncture the masculine pretensions of Zampano. Though brash and egocentric, the Fool possesses a generosity of spirit that makes him an emblem of the artist: the creative individual who reaches out to others through artistic expression. He is a teacher and savior figure in the film, and through "the parable of the pebble" that he teaches Gelsomina, he bestows upon her an understanding and sense of purpose which can redeem even her sad existence. Zampano, in contrast, is a loner and outsider who views other people as either instruments to be bent to his will or obstacles to be overcome and vanquished through brute strength. He is associated with the earth, and with impulses that are base, often animalistic. His violent temper and aggression also make him a figure evocative of fire. Yet most often he conveys a sullen mistrust towards others that reveals his underlying fear. Zampano is like a dog that has been kicked so often he has become hostile and suspicious of everyone he meets.
Fellini’s La Strada is fundamentally about different ways of being human, three different ways of interacting with your fellow human beings, and thus about three different ways of finding meaning in human existence. For Gelsomina it is the wide-eyed openness and sensitivity to other beings and forces in the universe that makes her a magical, even holy, presence in the film. She, too, can be seen as a kind of savior through whose death Zampano is finally brought to some kind of emotional and spiritual awakening. For the Fool, the meaning of life is to be found in the play of personal expression, the performance of self for others that has made him a star attraction of the circus. This is also why the Fool is such a fascinating and attractive figure for Gelsomina, despite the fact that he ridicules her and calls her ugly. Still, through the "parable of the pebble," the Fool is able to impart to Gelsomina a sense of her own value and purpose in life that redeems her even in the midst of Zampano’s brutal treatment. However, the interpersonal and existential choices that Zampano makes determine that he will be unable to find any redemptive meaning to existence, any purpose to his endless wanderings as a circus strong man. He seems doomed to continuously perform an act that increasingly becomes a parody of masculinity and male strength and that scarcely conceals his basic loneliness and inability to sympathetically engage with other human beings.
Zampano is the real subject of Fellini’s film. Anthony Quinn’s brooding, laconic performance as Zampano has the effect of making the character seem remote and distant; he is often seen only on the edges of the frame, in the background, as in the first scene when he comes to purchase Gelsomina and Fellini places him hovering in the background while our attention is focused on the drama of Gelsomina’s separation from her family. But his centrality to the film is clearly established by the ending of La Strada. Several years have gone by and the strong man has become noticeably older when he arrives at a seaside village where he hears a young woman singing the plaintive melody that had become Gelsomina’s theme. Zampano learns of her death from the young woman. Later in the evening, after his performance, Zampano wanders down to the beach where he is overwhelmed by his thoughts. The final, redemptive moment occurs when he stares up at the stars and begins to cry, signaling the emergence of human emotions which he had long suppressed and denied. But it is too late; Gelsomina is dead, and the humanizing influence of her gentle spirit is lost in the overwhelming sense of grief and isolation experienced by Zampano.
Clearly La Strada can be seen as both a Christian religious parable and an Existentialist philosophical statement. Yet Fellini rejected such obvious interpretive frameworks, preferring instead to create a sense of openness and ambiguity in the film, another indication of Neo-Realism’s influence on the director. He specifically removed from early drafts of the script all overt Catholic symbolism and Existentialist didacticism in order to fashion a film of rare visual poetry and emotional impact. Finally, La Strada cannot be reduced to either a religious or philosophical argument. It is a film that must be experienced within the context of each viewer’s sense of the human condition and the need for gentleness and companionship that gives human existence whatever sweetness it is capable of possessing. La Strada—The Road is perhaps a too obvious metaphor for the journey we are all embarked upon; a journey in which how we treat others is inevitably the final measure of our own happiness
Fellini’s Magic-Neo-Realism
John Parris Springer
English Department, University of Central Oklahoma
jpspringer@ucok.edu
Along with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) is among the most important films of post-war Italian cinema. Rome Open City and The Bicycle Thief are the two films that introduced Italian Neo-Realism to the world and restored Italy’s place of prominence in international film culture. But it was Fellini’s La Strada, built upon a firm Neo-Realist foundation yet possessing something more—a fairy-tale-like narrative, resonant with archetypal characters whose lives illuminate the basic truths of the human condition—that revealed the full aesthetic richness of Neo-Realism just as it was being transformed by Fellini into something other than a faithful recording of mundane reality. It is this sometimes whimsical, sometimes hallucinatory visual and narrative quality in Fellini’s work that distinguished him from his fellow Neo-Realists and which, even more significantly, pointed the way to future styles and directions in world cinema. As meticulously situated as the characters and plot of La Strada are in the particularities of post-war Italian society, La Strada has always conveyed to audiences a certain universal significance which has made it one of the most revered films in world cinema; an artistic masterpiece that transcends national borders to deliver a profound commentary on the nature of the human condition and our most basic needs as sentient creatures.
La Strada possesses a fable-like simplicity that conceals the film’s seemingly unplanned, episodic structure. As a filmmaker who came of age during the flowering of Italian Neo-Realism, Fellini has an unerring instinct in La Strada for creating an often harshly realistic portrayal of post-war Italian society. Certainly the film’s attention to lower class and socially marginalized characters reflects the politics of Neo-Realism and its goal of developing the cinema as a tool for representing and analyzing the experiences of average, ordinary people, an impulse that arises from Neo-Realism’s roots in Italian Marxism. Evidence of pervasive poverty and the scarring effects of war are brilliantly incorporated into the mise-en-scene of the film through Fellini’s art direction and costume design. His use of actual locations in La Strada, rather than the more easily controlled environment of the film studio, and his use of untrained actors in several minor roles, likewise followed basic Neo-Realist aesthetic principles that aimed at presenting a more authentically realistic image of the world.
But Fellini was always something more than a realist. Every Fellini film possesses a certain ineffable poetry, a sense of magic and wonder that can range from the hilarious to the frightening to the uncanny. He is what I would call, mixing literary and cinematic modes, a "magic neo-realist." In Fellini’s films we ultimately encounter a fidelity to something larger and more complex than a strictly empirical notion of social and economic reality. We encounter a highly subjective view of the world, often grotesque and distorted, brimming with both irony and pathos and filtered through Fellini’s profoundly humanistic vision as an artist. Indeed, the unique blend of reality and surreality that Fellini’s films offer, their deft mingling of the objective and the subjective, reality and dreams, constitute the very essence of that often-used adjective in film criticism—Felliniesque. Fellini’s pursuit of his own, personal vision as an artist often made him a controversial figure within Italian film culture, where other directors and critics complained that his films failed to live up to the strict ideological requirements of Neo-Realism. Such complaints had little effect on Fellini, however, who continued to pursue his visionary approach to cinematic storytelling over the course of a nearly 40-year career.
La Strada was Fellini’s third film as a director, and it single-handedly established his international reputation as a director of art-house cinema, winning numerous honors and prizes including the Academy Award as best foreign film in 1954. La Strada must also be seen as the product of several fertile collaborative relationships between Fellini and others, most notably his wife, the actress Giuletta Masina who plays the gentle, simple-minded Gelsomina, and the composer Nino Rota, whose musical scores in numerous Fellini films make an enormous contribution to their effectiveness. This is especially the case with La Strada, for which the musical score itself was a huge international hit.
La Strada means "the road," and the film is best understood as a journey taken by the two main characters: Gelsomina (Masina), a simple-minded young woman who is sold by her family to a brutish, itinerant carnival strong man, Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Traveling the countryside in a crude hutch attached to the strong man’s motorbike, Gelsomina is abused and mistreated by Zampano until she is finally driven to madness and death. Along the road they encounter "The Fool," (Richard Basehart) a circus acrobat and clown who teaches Gelsomina that there might be more to life than her servitude to Zampano. The Fool and Zampano are depicted by Fellini as a study in contrasts: the strong man’s sullen brutishness and awkward demeanor around others stand in sharp contrast to the graceful and loquacious Fool, whose free-spirited contempt for authority leads him to taunt and ridicule Zampano. Finally the strong man confronts the Fool, and in the fight that follows he accidentally murders him. Gelsomina, already the victim of Zampano’s physical abuse, witnesses the Fool’s death, and begins a slow descent into madness. Finally, unwilling and unable to care for the increasingly deranged Gelsomina, Zampano abandons her to fate.
Each of the three main characters has certain obvious affinities to natural elements. Gelsomina is associated with water; we first encounter her on the beach at her home and throughout the film her returns to the ocean are shown as cleansing and restorative. Giuletta Masina’s performance as Gelsomina is one of the most outstanding features of La Strada and one of the great performances in film history. She displays a perfect balance of innocent vulnerability and sympathetic openness to others that is continually bruised in her dealings with Zampano. In film criticism the word most often used to invoke such a delicate interplay of comedy and pathos is Chaplinesque, and the spirit of Chaplin’s "Little Tramp" hovers over Masina’s carefully nuanced performance.
The Fool is associated with the air. As an aerialist and high-wire artist, we first see him high above a crowd of spectators eating a plate of spaghetti, and his costume consists of a pair of wings. The Fool represents a carnivelesque energy which seeks to subvert authority and puncture the masculine pretensions of Zampano. Though brash and egocentric, the Fool possesses a generosity of spirit that makes him an emblem of the artist: the creative individual who reaches out to others through artistic expression. He is a teacher and savior figure in the film, and through "the parable of the pebble" that he teaches Gelsomina, he bestows upon her an understanding and sense of purpose which can redeem even her sad existence. Zampano, in contrast, is a loner and outsider who views other people as either instruments to be bent to his will or obstacles to be overcome and vanquished through brute strength. He is associated with the earth, and with impulses that are base, often animalistic. His violent temper and aggression also make him a figure evocative of fire. Yet most often he conveys a sullen mistrust towards others that reveals his underlying fear. Zampano is like a dog that has been kicked so often he has become hostile and suspicious of everyone he meets.
Fellini’s La Strada is fundamentally about different ways of being human, three different ways of interacting with your fellow human beings, and thus about three different ways of finding meaning in human existence. For Gelsomina it is the wide-eyed openness and sensitivity to other beings and forces in the universe that makes her a magical, even holy, presence in the film. She, too, can be seen as a kind of savior through whose death Zampano is finally brought to some kind of emotional and spiritual awakening. For the Fool, the meaning of life is to be found in the play of personal expression, the performance of self for others that has made him a star attraction of the circus. This is also why the Fool is such a fascinating and attractive figure for Gelsomina, despite the fact that he ridicules her and calls her ugly. Still, through the "parable of the pebble," the Fool is able to impart to Gelsomina a sense of her own value and purpose in life that redeems her even in the midst of Zampano’s brutal treatment. However, the interpersonal and existential choices that Zampano makes determine that he will be unable to find any redemptive meaning to existence, any purpose to his endless wanderings as a circus strong man. He seems doomed to continuously perform an act that increasingly becomes a parody of masculinity and male strength and that scarcely conceals his basic loneliness and inability to sympathetically engage with other human beings.
Zampano is the real subject of Fellini’s film. Anthony Quinn’s brooding, laconic performance as Zampano has the effect of making the character seem remote and distant; he is often seen only on the edges of the frame, in the background, as in the first scene when he comes to purchase Gelsomina and Fellini places him hovering in the background while our attention is focused on the drama of Gelsomina’s separation from her family. But his centrality to the film is clearly established by the ending of La Strada. Several years have gone by and the strong man has become noticeably older when he arrives at a seaside village where he hears a young woman singing the plaintive melody that had become Gelsomina’s theme. Zampano learns of her death from the young woman. Later in the evening, after his performance, Zampano wanders down to the beach where he is overwhelmed by his thoughts. The final, redemptive moment occurs when he stares up at the stars and begins to cry, signaling the emergence of human emotions which he had long suppressed and denied. But it is too late; Gelsomina is dead, and the humanizing influence of her gentle spirit is lost in the overwhelming sense of grief and isolation experienced by Zampano.
Clearly La Strada can be seen as both a Christian religious parable and an Existentialist philosophical statement. Yet Fellini rejected such obvious interpretive frameworks, preferring instead to create a sense of openness and ambiguity in the film, another indication of Neo-Realism’s influence on the director. He specifically removed from early drafts of the script all overt Catholic symbolism and Existentialist didacticism in order to fashion a film of rare visual poetry and emotional impact. Finally, La Strada cannot be reduced to either a religious or philosophical argument. It is a film that must be experienced within the context of each viewer’s sense of the human condition and the need for gentleness and companionship that gives human existence whatever sweetness it is capable of possessing. La Strada—The Road is perhaps a too obvious metaphor for the journey we are all embarked upon; a journey in which how we treat others is inevitably the final measure of our own happiness
Reeve Speaks on Afghanistan
November 14, 2009
An Audience of One
By Richard Reeves
REad at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/14/an_audience_of_one_99153.html
LOS ANGELES -- Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.
It is very hard to get to chat with any president. But any president has to know what is in the big three of American newspapers (or their Web sites): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. And those papers right now are filled with shouting and whispering to President Obama. The latest shout, a big one, is the leaking to the Times of cables to the State Department from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who also happens to be a former military commander of American troops in the country.
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Richard Reeves RealClearPolitics
President Afghanistan
Los Angeles Department of State
The Washington Post the Times
Bill Clinton Obama
[+] More
That would be ambassador and former general Karl Eikenberry, who told the president that there might be no point in sending more young men and women in uniform to win an unwinnable war in a vast country largely ungoverned or governed by unfathomable corruption. Eikenberry's "classified" words were obviously meant as a countermove designed to check the "classified" request for 40,000 more American troops by the current military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, leaked to The Washington Post last month.
That is the way the game is played and always has been in Washington. I once asked President Bill Clinton whether he got more critical information from daily Central Intelligence Agency reports and briefings or from reading the Times. "From the Times," he answered. "Although occasionally the CIA and the other intelligence agencies are ahead on timing."
For people like me, who believe we should get out of Afghanistan ASAP, the Eikenberry report surfaced in the nick of time -- just as Obama appears ready to make long-term strategy decisions about our military involvement in Afghanistan. What is going on there is a civil war, a political war, and we have learned time and again that all the firepower in the world cannot stop people who want to destroy each other on their home territory. The Afghans have been in those unforgiving mountains for thousands of years, and they will be there for thousands more after we leave. So it does not really matter when we go.
Besides, our own people at home want us to get out, even if the war is being fought by a volunteer army, and to most Americans that means it is like another National Football League game. Our soldiers are professionals putting on a television show, same as the warriors of the NFL.
"All the polling I've ever seen," said William Schneider of CNN, "tells me one thing: Americans hate political wars. They want to win or get out."
Schneider and I were together at a forum called "Obama's Afghanistan: The Media and the War," sponsored by the Center on Communication Leadership at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He went on to say: "We're talking now about persuading the population rather than destroying the enemy. That is the definition of a political war. We are taking sides in another country's civil war."
That message should have gotten through to presidents who ran the war in Vietnam, or it got through too late.
Another panelist, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, put it this way: "More troops mean more casualties, which means less public support."
Morton Abramowitz, who was director of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the 1980s when we were training and supplying the mujahedeen fighting and defeating Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan, offered more than a little insight into what is happening now in the same place and sometimes with the same people: "First, we would not be there or in Iraq if we had a draft and people were worried about their children. Second, can anyone tell me why it takes so long to train Afghan soldiers. The Taliban seems to have no trouble training them in a few weeks."
I hope the audience of one is listening to words like that and has the political courage to break his own campaign promises about saving Afghanistan. Save them from what, themselves?
An Audience of One
By Richard Reeves
REad at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/14/an_audience_of_one_99153.html
LOS ANGELES -- Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.
It is very hard to get to chat with any president. But any president has to know what is in the big three of American newspapers (or their Web sites): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. And those papers right now are filled with shouting and whispering to President Obama. The latest shout, a big one, is the leaking to the Times of cables to the State Department from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who also happens to be a former military commander of American troops in the country.
Receive news alerts
Sign Up
Richard Reeves RealClearPolitics
President Afghanistan
Los Angeles Department of State
The Washington Post the Times
Bill Clinton Obama
[+] More
That would be ambassador and former general Karl Eikenberry, who told the president that there might be no point in sending more young men and women in uniform to win an unwinnable war in a vast country largely ungoverned or governed by unfathomable corruption. Eikenberry's "classified" words were obviously meant as a countermove designed to check the "classified" request for 40,000 more American troops by the current military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, leaked to The Washington Post last month.
That is the way the game is played and always has been in Washington. I once asked President Bill Clinton whether he got more critical information from daily Central Intelligence Agency reports and briefings or from reading the Times. "From the Times," he answered. "Although occasionally the CIA and the other intelligence agencies are ahead on timing."
For people like me, who believe we should get out of Afghanistan ASAP, the Eikenberry report surfaced in the nick of time -- just as Obama appears ready to make long-term strategy decisions about our military involvement in Afghanistan. What is going on there is a civil war, a political war, and we have learned time and again that all the firepower in the world cannot stop people who want to destroy each other on their home territory. The Afghans have been in those unforgiving mountains for thousands of years, and they will be there for thousands more after we leave. So it does not really matter when we go.
Besides, our own people at home want us to get out, even if the war is being fought by a volunteer army, and to most Americans that means it is like another National Football League game. Our soldiers are professionals putting on a television show, same as the warriors of the NFL.
"All the polling I've ever seen," said William Schneider of CNN, "tells me one thing: Americans hate political wars. They want to win or get out."
Schneider and I were together at a forum called "Obama's Afghanistan: The Media and the War," sponsored by the Center on Communication Leadership at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He went on to say: "We're talking now about persuading the population rather than destroying the enemy. That is the definition of a political war. We are taking sides in another country's civil war."
That message should have gotten through to presidents who ran the war in Vietnam, or it got through too late.
Another panelist, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, put it this way: "More troops mean more casualties, which means less public support."
Morton Abramowitz, who was director of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the 1980s when we were training and supplying the mujahedeen fighting and defeating Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan, offered more than a little insight into what is happening now in the same place and sometimes with the same people: "First, we would not be there or in Iraq if we had a draft and people were worried about their children. Second, can anyone tell me why it takes so long to train Afghan soldiers. The Taliban seems to have no trouble training them in a few weeks."
I hope the audience of one is listening to words like that and has the political courage to break his own campaign promises about saving Afghanistan. Save them from what, themselves?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
TOM FRIEDMAN'S DECEPTIVE PLAN AND THE FRUSTRATING MIDDLE EAST
Tom Friedman is at his deceptive best today (Sunday November 8, 2009)writing his NY Times op-ed piece where-in he throws up his hands in seeming disgust with the lack of progress by the Arab-Israeli players in the interminable Middle East drama. Mr. Friedman, the notorious "liberal" Iraq-War supporter, and often considered "biased" as a commentator on the Middle East is good at this. His article calls for the west to "get out of the picture" and let the "players" get on with it, as he obscures underlying facts and ignores "the elephant in the room"-- our staunch support for only one of the actors in the controversy. In: "Call White House, Ask For Barak", November 7, 2009, NY Times, Friedman concludes that the "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore."(See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08friedman.html)
Friedman states that for all our efforts in that region "the respective leaders continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price. ---Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”
He adds, "Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix. ----It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.---If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.” (op cit).
Is Tom kidding us? He convieniently forgets that we are the Israeli facilitator. He begs that his readership has forgotten how we continuously support Israel in the UN with our veto power in the Security Council. How supply the billions of dollars annually to Israeli coffers each year to support their massive military. That we provide secret satellite imagery on their neighbors, and look the other way when they use that information to attack potential adversaries, or step out-side of the norm of international behavior in their treatment of occupied populations. Is he calling for us to abandon our policy of ignoring their nuclear arsenal, and protecting them from often-deserved criticism, of maintaining a cruel and inhumane blockade of Gaza, and most recently of supporting their efforts to bury the Goldstone Report? No mention of these issues in Friedman's piece. Does he urge us to change our behavior toward Israel? No these would remain in force as we "turned our backs". Friedman wants only to push these unfortunate facts under the rug and abandon our rightous effort to seek justice for the oppressed in Palestine.
However, Friedman's piece does have an element of truth in it.
A little benign neglect from the US would be good for the Israelis--- were we to really engage in such behavior. For all our efforts in that part of the world, we give but, unevenly---and hand out only lip-service for the Palestinians. Were we to actually "turn our backs" on the injustice in that part of the world-- the Palestinians would not miss our efforts. But Israel would! But that is not what Mr. Friedman is proposing here. Putting the problems of the region on the "back burner" while containing to support Israel (as we do now) would just maintain the status quo. The Mr. Netanyahu would be happy with that..his nation holds all of the pieces of the pie and have no inclination to share it. And we are helping them do it.
Were the US to actually rescind the "Israel support system" that tiny but powerful nation might actually be forced to consider peace as an alternative. But don't expect anything like that soon.
Get the picture?
rjk
Friedman states that for all our efforts in that region "the respective leaders continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price. ---Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”
He adds, "Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix. ----It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.---If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.” (op cit).
Is Tom kidding us? He convieniently forgets that we are the Israeli facilitator. He begs that his readership has forgotten how we continuously support Israel in the UN with our veto power in the Security Council. How supply the billions of dollars annually to Israeli coffers each year to support their massive military. That we provide secret satellite imagery on their neighbors, and look the other way when they use that information to attack potential adversaries, or step out-side of the norm of international behavior in their treatment of occupied populations. Is he calling for us to abandon our policy of ignoring their nuclear arsenal, and protecting them from often-deserved criticism, of maintaining a cruel and inhumane blockade of Gaza, and most recently of supporting their efforts to bury the Goldstone Report? No mention of these issues in Friedman's piece. Does he urge us to change our behavior toward Israel? No these would remain in force as we "turned our backs". Friedman wants only to push these unfortunate facts under the rug and abandon our rightous effort to seek justice for the oppressed in Palestine.
However, Friedman's piece does have an element of truth in it.
A little benign neglect from the US would be good for the Israelis--- were we to really engage in such behavior. For all our efforts in that part of the world, we give but, unevenly---and hand out only lip-service for the Palestinians. Were we to actually "turn our backs" on the injustice in that part of the world-- the Palestinians would not miss our efforts. But Israel would! But that is not what Mr. Friedman is proposing here. Putting the problems of the region on the "back burner" while containing to support Israel (as we do now) would just maintain the status quo. The Mr. Netanyahu would be happy with that..his nation holds all of the pieces of the pie and have no inclination to share it. And we are helping them do it.
Were the US to actually rescind the "Israel support system" that tiny but powerful nation might actually be forced to consider peace as an alternative. But don't expect anything like that soon.
Get the picture?
rjk
Saturday, November 7, 2009
NEWS SNIPPETS FROM AFGHANISTAN ON THIS DAY
CiVILIANS KILLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHAN TROOPS SHELLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHANS FEARFUL OF MORE US TROOPS, OBAMA'S MAN IN AFGHANISTAN MISSING IN ACTION, TWO US TROOPS LOST SOMEWHERE, SEARCHERS KILL AND MAIM 25 AFGHANISTANIS
Snippets of News on Afghanistan:November 7, 2009
The stories emanating from Afghanistan today give one pause.
1. From the NY Times: Title: Prospect of more US troops worries Afghans.
2. From the NY Times: Title: NATO Airstrike Reported to Kill 7 Afghan Soldiers (by accident, while searching for two missing US troops…reported dead by Taliban, while 25 others were reported hurt or injured.)
3. From the LA Times: Title: Nine Civilians Killed in Helmand Province by NATO rocket attack. Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces said today they were investigating reports that nine civilians were killed in a rocket strike aimed at insurgents in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The incident came despite new efforts by international forces to avoid civilian casualties and make the Afghan population feel safe.
Dozens of angry villagers carried the bodies today through the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, before they were dispersed by police firing guns in the air, witnesses said. ( Apparently civilians harvesters working in a field were mistaken for Taliban planting a bomb by NATO troops. )
Such incidents have fueled rising anger against international forces.
"I'm sure if the situation continues like this, one day everyone will declare holy war against the infidels," said Anwar Khan, who heads the Helmand provincial council, raising the specter of Afghans turning against the U.S.-led coalition.
Same article: In the east, a U.S. service member was killed when insurgents attacked a patrol Wednesday afternoon, military officials said. They provided no further details.
Afghanistan News Center: more troops may not be the answer, says Obama adviser
More troops may not be the answer to Nato's Afghanistan problems, a key adviser to President Barack Obama has said.
By Telegraph (UK) reporter 07 Nov 2009
National security adviser James Jones warned that extra troops could just be "swallowed up" in the deserts and mountains where troops are fighting. He was speaking as the president ponders a request to send 40,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, a decision which could prove one of the most crucial of his presidency.
Holbrook Missing in Action in Afghanistan?
Richard Holbrooke’s future unclear as fallout from Karzai rift reaches Washington
See "The Times" (UK) November 7, 2009, Giles Whittell in Washington
Richard Holbrooke has been called many things in his long career: diplomat, peacemaker, bruiser and, in the court of President Hamid Karzai, “the Devil”.
In Kabul a week after it became clear that President Karzai would win a second term without a second round of voting, the most conspicuous truth about President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is his absence.
The man who forced Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table and longed to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State was instead handed the toughest regional portfolio on the planet at the start of President Obama’s term.
He has since hired dozens of advisers and set out goals on reforming everything from Afghanistan’s poppy fields to its notoriously porous prisons. But his critics say he has failed to broker a stable political settlement with President Karzai, largely because relations between the two have broken down. The result is whispering in Washington about how much longer he can retain his job.
“It is a typical Washington parlour game about who’s up, who’s down,” a disdainful State Department spokesman said last month. If the game had a name it would be “Where in the world is Holbrooke?”, and the answers are revealing.
When Senator John Kerry was immersed in ultimately successful negotiations with President Karzai in Kabul last month, Mr Holbrooke was in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke was with her. Then, instead of including Kabul in his itinerary, he flew home. Between those trips he held a rare open briefing widely regarded as intended to show that he had not been sidelined by Mr Kerry.
Asked about his personal relations with President Karzai, Mr Holbrooke called them “fine . . . correct . . . appropriate”, and said he was looking forward to seeing the Afghan leader “in a few days”. More than a few days — and a dramatic climb-down by President Karzai’s main opponent — have passed since, and Mr Holbrooke remains in Washington.
“The optics are not great surrounding him right now,” one fellow diplomat said yesterday. A close Washington confidant of Mr Holbrooke’s admitted: “It would be understandable if people thought he was somewhat missing in action.” His staff retort that during the most intense US foreign strategy review since Vietnam, he needs to be in Washington — advising his immediate boss, Mrs Clinton, but also briefing President Obama privately and without her knowledge.
Yet the case against Mr Holbrooke involves more than geography. He has “needlessly antagonised” the one man with whom he should have cultivated a rapport, aides to a former US Ambassador to Kabul say. He has also misused six months, from April to September, that should have been spent planning for the dire political contingencies that he knew were looming.
Mr Holbrooke confronted President Karzai over his failure to arrest the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum last year and encouraged opposition figures to run against him. In August he refused to join in President Karzai’s celebrations after his first-round election win, insisting that a second round would be required.
By some accounts this inadvertently sabotaged an opposition move to unite behind a single candidate, and it took Senator Kerry to make President Karzai accept the idea of a second ballot.
Team Holbrooke, meanwhile, is accused of having a confused decision-making apparatus with memos and analysis more notable for enthusiasm than acuity. Mr Holbrooke’s lack of knowledge of Afghanistan has also been noted in Kabul and Washington.
“Somehow the political element never got it together and said, ‘What is the Plan B and Plan C?’ an ally of the envoy told The Times. “‘What do we do if there’s a legitimacy crisis?’” Faced with just such a crisis, many in Washington now believe that Mr Holbrooke will have to take the blame.
Get the picture?
rjk
Snippets of News on Afghanistan:November 7, 2009
The stories emanating from Afghanistan today give one pause.
1. From the NY Times: Title: Prospect of more US troops worries Afghans.
2. From the NY Times: Title: NATO Airstrike Reported to Kill 7 Afghan Soldiers (by accident, while searching for two missing US troops…reported dead by Taliban, while 25 others were reported hurt or injured.)
3. From the LA Times: Title: Nine Civilians Killed in Helmand Province by NATO rocket attack. Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces said today they were investigating reports that nine civilians were killed in a rocket strike aimed at insurgents in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The incident came despite new efforts by international forces to avoid civilian casualties and make the Afghan population feel safe.
Dozens of angry villagers carried the bodies today through the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, before they were dispersed by police firing guns in the air, witnesses said. ( Apparently civilians harvesters working in a field were mistaken for Taliban planting a bomb by NATO troops. )
Such incidents have fueled rising anger against international forces.
"I'm sure if the situation continues like this, one day everyone will declare holy war against the infidels," said Anwar Khan, who heads the Helmand provincial council, raising the specter of Afghans turning against the U.S.-led coalition.
Same article: In the east, a U.S. service member was killed when insurgents attacked a patrol Wednesday afternoon, military officials said. They provided no further details.
Afghanistan News Center: more troops may not be the answer, says Obama adviser
More troops may not be the answer to Nato's Afghanistan problems, a key adviser to President Barack Obama has said.
By Telegraph (UK) reporter 07 Nov 2009
National security adviser James Jones warned that extra troops could just be "swallowed up" in the deserts and mountains where troops are fighting. He was speaking as the president ponders a request to send 40,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, a decision which could prove one of the most crucial of his presidency.
Holbrook Missing in Action in Afghanistan?
Richard Holbrooke’s future unclear as fallout from Karzai rift reaches Washington
See "The Times" (UK) November 7, 2009, Giles Whittell in Washington
Richard Holbrooke has been called many things in his long career: diplomat, peacemaker, bruiser and, in the court of President Hamid Karzai, “the Devil”.
In Kabul a week after it became clear that President Karzai would win a second term without a second round of voting, the most conspicuous truth about President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is his absence.
The man who forced Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table and longed to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State was instead handed the toughest regional portfolio on the planet at the start of President Obama’s term.
He has since hired dozens of advisers and set out goals on reforming everything from Afghanistan’s poppy fields to its notoriously porous prisons. But his critics say he has failed to broker a stable political settlement with President Karzai, largely because relations between the two have broken down. The result is whispering in Washington about how much longer he can retain his job.
“It is a typical Washington parlour game about who’s up, who’s down,” a disdainful State Department spokesman said last month. If the game had a name it would be “Where in the world is Holbrooke?”, and the answers are revealing.
When Senator John Kerry was immersed in ultimately successful negotiations with President Karzai in Kabul last month, Mr Holbrooke was in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke was with her. Then, instead of including Kabul in his itinerary, he flew home. Between those trips he held a rare open briefing widely regarded as intended to show that he had not been sidelined by Mr Kerry.
Asked about his personal relations with President Karzai, Mr Holbrooke called them “fine . . . correct . . . appropriate”, and said he was looking forward to seeing the Afghan leader “in a few days”. More than a few days — and a dramatic climb-down by President Karzai’s main opponent — have passed since, and Mr Holbrooke remains in Washington.
“The optics are not great surrounding him right now,” one fellow diplomat said yesterday. A close Washington confidant of Mr Holbrooke’s admitted: “It would be understandable if people thought he was somewhat missing in action.” His staff retort that during the most intense US foreign strategy review since Vietnam, he needs to be in Washington — advising his immediate boss, Mrs Clinton, but also briefing President Obama privately and without her knowledge.
Yet the case against Mr Holbrooke involves more than geography. He has “needlessly antagonised” the one man with whom he should have cultivated a rapport, aides to a former US Ambassador to Kabul say. He has also misused six months, from April to September, that should have been spent planning for the dire political contingencies that he knew were looming.
Mr Holbrooke confronted President Karzai over his failure to arrest the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum last year and encouraged opposition figures to run against him. In August he refused to join in President Karzai’s celebrations after his first-round election win, insisting that a second round would be required.
By some accounts this inadvertently sabotaged an opposition move to unite behind a single candidate, and it took Senator Kerry to make President Karzai accept the idea of a second ballot.
Team Holbrooke, meanwhile, is accused of having a confused decision-making apparatus with memos and analysis more notable for enthusiasm than acuity. Mr Holbrooke’s lack of knowledge of Afghanistan has also been noted in Kabul and Washington.
“Somehow the political element never got it together and said, ‘What is the Plan B and Plan C?’ an ally of the envoy told The Times. “‘What do we do if there’s a legitimacy crisis?’” Faced with just such a crisis, many in Washington now believe that Mr Holbrooke will have to take the blame.
Get the picture?
rjk
Friday, November 6, 2009
BEST IN THE WORLD--AMERICA'S FALSE HEALTH CARE ASSUMPTIONS
I read Nicolas Kristof's column in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?em) published November 4th 2009, as so often Kristof says it all..and so well.
On Fox News Sunday (June 07, 2009) Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told Chris Wallace that President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan is the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." Kristof used that quote to begin his report on US health care. The blustering Senator Shelby from Alabama...a true blowhard..who states misthruths and misrepresentations which some would have us continue to believe. That America is truly exceptional...even in the realm of health care. Shelby stated to Wallace: "We have the greatest health care system in the world. ....it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. (Foreigners) sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? ...(its) the best health care system the world has ever known.”
But Shelby's bluster has more to do with his financial support from the health insurance companies and less to do with actual facts about American health care delivery. Yes it is true that our techology is one of the best and rakns at the very cutting edge...that technology is available to some---such as for our senators and congressmen..and the wealthy elites, but the value of a health care system is not what it is CAPABLE of performing for an elite minority, but what it actually delivers to a nation's citizenry. So as Kristof's piece so aptly points out--the greatest myth of the health care debate is the...the false confidence most Americans have regarding the US health care system. Americans are NOT the best cared for by any measure.
Kristoff points out that our citizens don't live as long as residents of similar economic circumstances and race as those in other industrialized nations. Thirty developed contries rank above us, while we are tied in that category with such stalwarts in health care as Kuwait and Chile. Regarding infant mortality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) we rank 37th, while in maternal mortality we are 34th. Krsitof states that "A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."
Another interesting fact is that "Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take."
Yet another study, cited by Kristof and conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19, developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system in the world” ranked in last place."
Get the picture?
rjk
On Fox News Sunday (June 07, 2009) Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told Chris Wallace that President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan is the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." Kristof used that quote to begin his report on US health care. The blustering Senator Shelby from Alabama...a true blowhard..who states misthruths and misrepresentations which some would have us continue to believe. That America is truly exceptional...even in the realm of health care. Shelby stated to Wallace: "We have the greatest health care system in the world. ....it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. (Foreigners) sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? ...(its) the best health care system the world has ever known.”
But Shelby's bluster has more to do with his financial support from the health insurance companies and less to do with actual facts about American health care delivery. Yes it is true that our techology is one of the best and rakns at the very cutting edge...that technology is available to some---such as for our senators and congressmen..and the wealthy elites, but the value of a health care system is not what it is CAPABLE of performing for an elite minority, but what it actually delivers to a nation's citizenry. So as Kristof's piece so aptly points out--the greatest myth of the health care debate is the...the false confidence most Americans have regarding the US health care system. Americans are NOT the best cared for by any measure.
Kristoff points out that our citizens don't live as long as residents of similar economic circumstances and race as those in other industrialized nations. Thirty developed contries rank above us, while we are tied in that category with such stalwarts in health care as Kuwait and Chile. Regarding infant mortality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) we rank 37th, while in maternal mortality we are 34th. Krsitof states that "A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."
Another interesting fact is that "Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take."
Yet another study, cited by Kristof and conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19, developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system in the world” ranked in last place."
Get the picture?
rjk
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