On ISIS: What the United States Must Not Do

 

Fubara David-West

October 14 at 7:34pm  · 

ISIS: What Obama and the U. S.Must Not Do

Whatever President Obama and the United States are thinking about doing to face the threat posed by ISIS, they must make sure that they do not turn this into a contest that the U. S. must win.

The states facing the ISIS threat directly, must bear most of the burden of ensuring that ISIS does not succeed. The U. N. Security Council should also be given the responsibility to deal with the threat to international peace and security, which ISIS represents. This is exactly the kind of a threat that the U. N. Security Council is designed to handle.

By presuming violently to redraw the territorial boundaries of member states of the United Nations, ISIS represents the exact threat that the United Nations and the U. N. Security Council are set up to tackle. They must live up to their obligations. The United States should not take over the function and the obligation of the United Nations, in this case.

President Obama's current tactics and strategy are just perfect, for dealing with this situation.

We might note that most of the states directly threatened by ISIS, have the population, and the money to fund a combined, or a set of unilateral national military operations against ISIS.  

Here is a sample of the relevant statistics from the World Bank, on some of the states in question--

Saudi Arabia: Population 28.83 million; GDP $745.3 billion (2013 figures)

Kuwait: Population 3.369 million (2013 figures); GDP $183.2 billion (2012 figures)

Qatar: Population 2.169 million; GDP $202.5 billion (2013 figures)

Iraq: Population 33.42 million; GDP $222.9 billion (2013 figures)

Syria: Population 22.85; GDP $73.67 billion (2012 figures)

There is no compelling reason, why the United States should take over responsibility for the security of these states, none of which pays taxes to the U.S. treasury.  They must either put up the forces that they need, to defend their territories and their people or face the dire consequences.  

The constant argument that unless the United States takes over the security of these kinds of states, another 9/11-type attack on the United States might be expected, does not have much credence, if critically analyzed. For instance, there was never such an attack on the United States before 2001.  

The only other attack on the United States, which might be considered to be similar was the attack on Washington, by the British Army in 1814.  During that attack, the British army set fire to the White House.  Thus, the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaida were a rare event, which should not be used, to gauge the possibility or probability of future events.

Indeed, with all of the actions and programs that the United States has put in place since the 9/11 attacks, the probability that a similar attack against the U.S. homeland will be successfully launched is now very small.  

Future threats and attacks of a similar scale are more likely to be launched against American interests overseas.  Even if such attacks are successfully carried out, they will probably not have the same kinds of significant effects on the U.S. homeland, which the 9/11 attacks had.  

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Launch an African Solar Project

• SORT

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  Fubara David-West

  Launch an African Solar Project
  
  Big Question: Why is it that African countries, their universities and their private sectors are unable to put together, a project involving research and development in solar energy? I have just heard a story on NPR about a new scramble for Africa on the part of international consortia. This is a potentially huge industry for a market that should be worth trillions of dollars in 20 years. Why should Africa not be the biggest consumer and exporter of this industry? Africa should produce the energy-sector equivalent of Google, with headquarters in Africa. 
  
  I think Africa should redesign the power grid, and make the generation and distribution of energy more decentralized and dependent on solar panels. With the low overhead that production in Africa should contend with, powering up every home and business should employ all of the young unemployed, scattered all over the continent. It should also create enormous wealth and increase the size of the middle class tremendously. 
  
  If done properly, it would become the project that lays the groundwork for a truly integrated, continental economy. It should also lead to the tremendous democratization of technical skills in Africa and move the continent closer to the great Kwame Nkrumah's dream about what Black Power would mean in an African context.

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Another Nonsensical Case on Affirmative Action

There is a persistent myth in the United States, that every smart white person who is not admitted into a 

university is not, because a less qualified minority applicant (at most times it is assumed that the student is an African-American) took his or her place.  In fact in most cases, what we have are equally qualified students  

at the other end of the controversy, who differ in some minor detail with regard to the variables being considered: minor detail, which indeed tell us nothing about the academic abilities and potentials of the 

two sets of students in question.  In the end, what we have is a useful tool in the still enduring racial and 

class battles in the United States, to be used in the courts to beat down on minority students. 

The United States is once more within the grips of the nonsensical cases that get to the Supreme Court,  

having to do with Affirmative Action in admission to universities.  I say they are nonsensical, because at the  

core of these cases is the notion that any single applicant to a University can point to a single factor that  

explains why he or she is not granted an admission.  The notion is baseless, because unless everyone of these plaintiffs can assure the world that they are Einsteins, competing with mere mortals in the admission process

there is no single reason to believe that they are the most qualified applicants.

The Universities keep this alive, by putting together all sorts of complicated formulas for admitting students,  

which give the impression that at the end of the day, a formula will incontrovertibly identify the best  

candidates.  The fact is that no such formula is likely to exist, when we are dealing with human beings.  Meanwhile, all they do is to give an instrument with which any student can challenge the entire process in the 

courts as unfair, racially biased, and logically inconsistent.  

If the legislatures will allow it, all of these complex formulas should be thrown out, and admission decisions  

made in the spirit of academic freedom, by admission offices and their staff, with input from the heads of the 

various departments.  Intelligence, initiative, creativity, intellectual curiosity, community leadership: none of these crucial values at the roots of lifting up a student to becoming a valuable knowledge producer, worker

and citizen is captured by these formulas.

Should Netanyahu be Snubbed?

The politics of the United States, unfortunately, makes it virtually impossible to really snub the Israeli Prime Minister, even when he deserves to be snubbed.  Netanyahu's public displays of disapproval with regard to the US stance vis a vis an apparent hunger on the part of the Israeli Prime Minister to start a war with Iran, should actually be denounced by Senator John McCain and others in the United States.  What Netanyahu is doing is in effect, an attempt to force the United States to become an implicit partner in deciding to go to war, before the United States has determined that it is in its interest to do so.

After the experience with the Iraq War, which was started by President Bush, because some of his advisers, and the warriors in the Conservative intelligentia convinced him that Iraq posed a nuclear threat, Mr. Netanyahu should be sensible and sensitive enough to understand why the United States should not blindly go to war with Iran, over suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons.  However, he has his own agenda, which he has every right to stick to.  There is no single reason why President Obama and the United States should go along, before the president and his team determine that it is indeed time for such a mission.

Israel remains a very important ally of the United States, but it should not dictate the security policies of the United States.  

Playing Clint Eastwood with Romney

The party conventions leading up to the US presidential elections are over.  Let the games begin.  To me the 

games began a few days ago, following the discouraging jobs' report.  As expected, the Republican  

candidate for president, Governor Romney jumped all over the numbers.  Very disappointing!  He declares.  However, there is a tiny bit of significant detail that is missing, and has been throughout the electoral

season: what will Romney do?  It is a tricky question for a Republican presidential candidate, who 

has bought into the myth that government is bad for the people.  The problem is that if one believes that 

government is the enemy and that the private sector and its values hold the keys to solving fiscal, economic and policy problems, there is no reason for the person to run for the highest government job in the country.

That sets up a great parody of the performance Clint Eastwood presented at the Republican convention.  

Governor Romney, you say that the president's economic policies have failed; and that the recent jobs report  

shows that the president's policies have not worked. What would you do differently?  Second question:  if you truly believe that the private sector and not government creates jobs (as Republicans like to say), why

are you running for president, at a time when you know that the country faces great challenges with regard to 

job creation?  

Third question:  you are elected in November.  The treasury department comes to you. and tells you that

credit is frozen all over the country.  We have just lost half a million jobs.  The automobile industry is on the brink of liquidation.  Cities across the country will be forced to eliminate jobs for teachers, fire fighters, and

the police.  Students will soon be unable to get college loans.  What would you do?  Nothing?  Ask the 

Congress to pass laws cutting taxes for "job creators"?  If you have a divided Congress that is unwilling to adopt your tax proposals, what else will you have to offer?

Obamacare Survives in the Court

The Supreme Court's ruling is a triumph, once again, of law as an institution that develops in the direction 

of the development of human knowledge, as Aquinas conceptualized it.  That approach to law is what 

strict constructionists often come up against, when they argue that anything that does not literally adhere 

to the letter of the constitution as written is unconstitutional.  

 

In rejecting the strict constructionist interpretation of the US constitution, once again, the Court did another  

remarkable thing, in an age of passionate partisanship that often threatens to impose the will of the rowdy   

minority on the majority.  It erred on the side of such Founding Fathers as James Madison, who sought to limit the exposure of the United States to the ever-present threat of mob rule in a constitutional democracy.

Romney's Voodoo Economics

Romney's voodoo Economics

By Fubara David-West

Governor Romney's posture on the U.S. economy qualifies as a case of voodoo economics,
because it is based on nothing but a myth: business knows best; and a creed, which says that the
entire program of governmental public policy can be reduced to a slogan, lower taxes on job creators! What the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency has going for him is
is that there is a huge population of Americans, for whom the myth is an appealing
cultural song, and the creed, the stuff of religious doctrine.

That is why, in spite of the fact the last Republican President, George Bush basically sold the
same kind of program to Americans, with all of the bravado of a Texas cowboy, Romney is now self-assuredly promoting it. President Bush embarked on his program after taking
office with a booming U.S. economy, and with Federal budget surpluses that were
projected to last well into the future. By the time he left office, eight short years later, his treasury department was alerting him to the fact that the US economy was facing a complete
melt-down, with huge Federal budget deficits, an American automobile industry on its death-
bed, cities and school districts in dire fiscal straits, businesses facing a credit freeze, the economy shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month and with the housing industry in such a bad shape, that trillions of dollars in middle-class wealth had been wiped out.

Trust me, the Republican presidential candidate, Romney says, I know about business and how to create jobs. Trust my hackneyed slogans, because I am not Obama! The interesting thing is that many Americans are actually paying serious attention to him, because at this moment, he
is tied with the president in the polls.