Obama's Drone War: A Bourne-like Identity

The President, in wanting to keep the nation “safe” from terrorists, asks a few select members of his staff to put together a list of people to be targeted for death. Once the list is compiled, the President and his staff meet secretly in the White House where the President goes through the list, listens to suggestions then decides who will be assassinated. To make his acts legal, the President has his lawyers draw up a secret memorandum justifying his decisions. That would be an excellent plot for a Robert Ludlum-like novel or movie – if it were not so true.

President Barack Obama’s drone war has taken us beyond the point in which art imitates life and dropped us squarely in that realm where life imitates art. Using drone strikes, the Obama administration – through the Central Intelligence Agency and the military – has made assassination a regular part of the presidential routine. Members of the President’s national security team meet to discuss the administration’s kill list.

We have known about this for some time. (The New York Times and The Washington Post have written news articles as far back as 2010 detailing different aspects of the international drone war.) But many of us have been too obtuse to its particulars. That is until 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awalki was killed in a drone attack in Yemen several weeks after his father, Anwar al-Awalki, was killed.

The al-Awalkis were United States citizens. The father had been identified as a senior al-Qa’ida operative, a man plotting to kill Americans. The son seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because of the secrecy of the drone program and the mystery of his death we cannot be sure.

Since January 2009, the Obama administration has conducted six times the number of drone attacks as the Bush administration. Most of the Obama administration attacks – 283 as of September 2012 – have been CIA operations in remote parts of Pakistan. There have also been attacks in Yemen and Somalia. Most Americans – liberals, conservatives, and moderates – support the drone strikes, according to several national polls. (A Washington Post-ABC poll from February 2012 found that 83 percent of Americans approved of the Obama administration's use of unmanned drones against suspected terrorists overseas. Two-thirds of those surveyed even agreed with strikes against U.S. citizens.)

And there lies the rub.

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush sought, and received, from Congress a naked declaration of war. According to that declaration:

The “President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent future acts on international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

That declaration — as well as other events – led this nation into armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The declaration was also used to redefine a battlefield and war, and what the United States could do to protect its people – warrantless wiretaps, rendition and torture. To rationalize its actions, Bush had his own lawyers draw up the legal precedent under which he could act. Much of the public was rightly outraged.

Since then, President Obama has not only embraced the very same tactics and definitions the Bush administration used to justify its actions, he has expanded those tactics and definitions to make White House ordered assassinations legal – even on U.S. citizens – without any outside oversight. The President – to borrow from conservative author and professor, George W. Carey – has ratcheted up his presidential powers.

“An incoming president will assume whatever advances in presidential power were made by his predecessor,” Carey wrote recently in The Imaginative Conservative. “In turn, an incumbent will strive to accrue new powers that can be passed on.”

And that is what makes this so scary. Who or what will stop the next president from going even further. Bush pushed the envelope when he had John Yoo, a lawyer at the Office of Legal Counsel, draw up a legal opinion justifying “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Obama, even while drawing down troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, has embraced too much of the Bush doctrine on what constitutes a battlefield and what is a war in explaining how and where the Federal government gets the authority to target people for death.

A white paper explaining the Obama administration’s reasoning states that the “United States retains its authority to use force against al-Qa’ida and associated forces outside the area of hostilities that targets a senior operational leader of the enemy forces who is actively engaged in planning operations to kill Americans. The United States is currently in a non-international armed conflict with al-Qa’ida and its associated forces. Any U.S. operation would be part of this non-international armed conflict, even if it were to take place away from the zone of active hostilities.”

And who identifies who is a “senior operational leader” of a terrorist group?

It only takes “an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government,” according to the white paper. It does not matter if the accused is a United States citizen or not. The discussion of who will be targeted in a drone strike can be initiated by a “high-level official” in the secrecy of the White House, without outside oversight, without what we in this nation have come to know as due process. Under this policy, the accuser, jury, judge, and executioner are one in the same.

When the Bush administration created its own legal opinions to justify its questionable actions, Democrats were up in arms. Several leading Democratic lawyers, such as Dawn Johnsen who Obama considered for his Office of Legal Counsel, declared that the “Bush administration’s excessive reliance on ‘secret law’ threatens the effective functioning of American democracy” and “the withholding from Congress and the public the legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the systems of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government,” according to an article by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian last week.

For years, many of us ignored the events unfolding around us, leaving the questions about the drone war to a few. It left us not knowing who we were as a nation. Then three American citizens – Anwar al-Awalki, Samir Khan and Abdulrahman al-Awalki – were killed, and some of us recoiled at what our President was doing in our names. According to the White House, Anwar al-Awalki was a senior al-Qa’ida operative. What was his son’s alleged crime? As far as we know it simply may have been that he was the son of a man who the President and his committee of secrecy had declared a terrorist.

Considering our government’s track record on getting things right in this post-9/11 world, that may be the scariest scenario of all.

Naysaying the Economic Naysayers

Things are starting to look better economically in the United States. Not because of any particular thing that is going on, but because of several things that spark guarded optimism for 2013. Of course in expressing this optimism we cannot be naïve, nor can we ignore or deny the extreme resistance that remains in some quarters – particularly among the naysaying, sky-is-falling denizens of the Republican Party.

But as we acknowledge that resistance we cannot be distracted from the facts. The nation is, indeed, a long way from experiencing robust economic growth. (After all, we just learned this week that fourth quarter GDP was a negative 0.1 percent.) Yet, there are signs all around us that we are making steady strides toward coming to grips with what ails this nation economically. In doing so we may finally be able to make some fixes if we can just get enough people to accept policies over politics.

America is not in decline, no matter how often the extreme declare it. America is not on the verge of bankruptcy, no matter how loud the extreme proclaim it. America is not headed toward “European-style Socialism,” no matter how forcefully the extreme assert it.

How do I know this? Why do I express such optimism?

For one, the amount of investment some companies are pouring into their businesses. Just recently, General Motors announced that it plans to invest $1.5 billion in its plants around the country. The company said $600 million of that will go into its complex in Kansas City. Although the improvements will not result in more hiring at the plant it should help several businesses that supply the plant and will be assisting in its makeover. At the same time, Ford, Daimler and Nissan announced that they will work together to build fuel-cell electric cars by 2017, and Ford and Toyota have partnered to develop hybrid rear-drive trucks.

We also have more people recognizing the need to create an infrastructure bank to pay for numerous much needed projects, which should lead to jobs and economic growth, as Mark Thoma argued in his Fiscal Times article, "One Investment That Can Reduce Our Long-Term Debt." And even though the fourth quarter GDP numbers were not impressive, there were some impressive things in the report. For example, "real disposable personal income increased 6.8 percent," leading to a rise in both personal consumption and personal savings. There were also increases in nonresidential fixed investment (up 8.4 percent.) and residential investment (up 15.3 percent).

The icing on the cake came Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its January jobs report. According to the bureau's preliminary numbers, the nation added 157,000 private sector jobs last month. The bureau also revised its jobs numbers for November (247,000) and December (196,000). That means the country has experienced more than 30 months of positive job growth. Included in those January numbers were 28,000 construction jobs and 33,000 retail jobs. The education, health care, and business services industries each added 25,000 jobs.

In addition, for what might be the first time in many years, economists across the ideological divide have come to grips with one of the most argued points since the start of the Great Recession: It’s not about the national debt; rather it is about revenue, jobs, and economic growth. While that could be seen as a minor adjustment in emphasis, it is an important one because it removes the cover that so many hid beneath.

Economists from Paul Krugman to Bruce Bartlett to Jan Hatzius to Richard Koo to Alan Blinder to Lawrence Summers to James K. Galbraith to John Makin and Daniel Hanson have declared that the way to worry about the nation’s long-term deficit is to not worry, to stay calm, to deal with it in a few years when the economy is better.

“The federal government is not on the verge of bankruptcy,” economics columnist Martin Wolf said last week in the Financial Times. “If anything, the tightening has been too much and too fast. The fiscal position is also not the most urgent economic challenge. It is far more important to promote recovery. The challenges in the longer term are to raise revenue while curbing the cost of health. Meanwhile, people, just calm down.”

According to E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post, Wolf, a “thoroughly pro-market economist," offers excellent advice. Wolf is not alone.

In the same column, Dionne quotes conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, a former White House advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, saying: “In fact, our long-term deficit situation is not nearly as severe as even many budget experts believe. The problem is that they are looking at recent history and near-term projections that are overly impacted by one-time factors related to the economic crisis and massive Republican tax cuts that lowered revenues far below normal.”

In his Jan. 29 column, “Outsourcing, Insourcing and Automation,” for The New York Times, Bartlett wrote that one of the major issues facing the nation is unemployment, in particular cyclical unemployment that is turning into structural unemployment. Cyclical unemployment, Bartlett argues, does not have the same long-term impact as structural unemployment, which occurs when workers’ skills do not match the jobs being created.

“The longer someone is out of work, the less likely that person is to find a job,” Bartlett wrote. “Skills deteriorate, younger workers tend to be hired for available vacancies, jobs move to new geographical locations and so on.”

According to former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, we cannot “lose sight of the jobs and growth deficits that ultimately will have the greatest impact on how this generation of Americans live and what they bequeath to the next generation.”

Even the International Monetary Fund has admitted that it underestimated the damage poorly-timed austerity has on economic growth.

Meanwhile, economic analysts at Goldman Sachs recently told clients that this country still has the world’s strongest economy. Goldman’s analysts also said there are “key economic, institutional, human capital and geopolitical advantages the U.S. enjoys over other economies.”

For example, gross domestic product in the U.S. is almost $16 trillion, “nearly double the second largest (China), 2.5 times the third largest (Japan).” Goldman also says America will continue to enjoy an advantage over other nations because this nation's work force is younger and more energetic; America has greater natural resources, including oil, gas and arable land; America performs the greatest amount of research and development; and America is still the land of choice for motivated immigrants, including those who are highly educated.

So as James K. Galbraith said: Stop worrying about our long-term deficit problem because we don’t have one.

“Foggy rhetoric about ‘burdens’ that will ‘fall on our children and grandchildren’ sets the tone of discussion,” Galbraith wrote in an Aug. 9, 2011, article for The New Republic. “The concept of ‘sustainability’ is often invoked, rarely defined, never criticized; things are deemed unsustainable by political consensus. Backed by a chorus of repetition from the IMF, headline-seeking academics, think-tankers, and, of course, the ratings agencies.

“But there isn’t, in fact, a ‘long-term deficit problem.’ So long as interest rates stay below the growth rate, as they are, debt-to-GDP levels eventually stabilize and even decline. The notion that there is a big problem is pure propaganda based on pseudo-debate, pitting two viewpoints that nevertheless converge on the practical issue.”

Galbraith’s point from more than a year ago was recently supported by Makin and Hanson of the conservative American Economic Institute. The two concluded that trillion dollar deficits are sustainable for now because of low interest rates.

“The Chicken Little ‘sky is falling’ approach to frightening Congress into significant debt reduction has failed because the sky has not fallen,” the two wrote. “Interest rates have not soared as promised… Trillion dollar federal budget deficits have continued to be sustainable because the federal government is able to finance them at interest rates of half of a percent or less. Two percent inflation means that the real inflation-adjusted cost of deficit finance averages -1.5 percent.”

Indeed, it's about jobs and growth.

Republicans Say the Most _______ Things

Art Linkletter was right – kids do say the darndest things. If he was alive today he could start a new show – Republicans say the scariest, most dangerous, most asinine things.

That is especially true when it comes to guns, rape, and anything Obama.

Take a look at some of the recent statements from Republican leaders and their followers, particularly the Tea Party and evangelical Christians.

The National Rifle Association, whose top leaders have pushed arming teachers across the country in response to the Newtown, Conn., shooting, have vowed to fight any gun control legislation and have been warning members that President Barack Obama is coming after their guns. That argument has led to a right-wing declaration that a civil war is brewing in this nation.

For example, James Yeager, the chief executive of Tactical Response, which teaches people weapons handling and other tactical skills in Tennessee, produced a YouTube video in which he declared that he will kill anyone who tries to confiscate his weapons. In the clip, Yeager said increased gun measures would “spark a civil war” in which he would be “glad to fire the first shot.”

“If it goes an inch further,” he said, “I’m going to start killing people.” While he now states that his pledge to “start killing people” was just overwrought anger, he has not backed away from his overall claims.

No wonder since Fox has become the major purveyor of the gun control will lead to insurrection meme.

Bill O’Reilly recently warned that we could have a civil war if Obama uses executive orders to alter gun control laws. O’Reilly said Obama could “chose to be a good President or whether he just wants to have blood in the streets.” O’Reilly went on to suggest that the President should cut spending on such things as Medicare and Social Security to avoid armed conflict.

O’Reilly was not the only rabid Fox employee to talk about insurrection. Several conservative – is there any other kind? – Fox contributors compared the President to Hitler and Stalin, and cited Nazi Germany to argue against his policies. They also warned of civil war, revolution, and insurrection if Obama’s policies on guns, spending, and entitlements are enacted.

Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy told their Fox and Friends audience that if the Obama government tried to confiscate guns nationally “there would be an insurrection.” A short time later, Todd Starnes, a Fox radio host tweeted: “I can assure you the federal government will not be confiscating the Starnes family guns,” which seems reasonable since there has been no recommendation that federal officers go door to door taking guns out of people’s homes.

Columnist Arthur Herman wrote in a Jan. 3 op-ed on FoxNews.com that riots in Argentina foreshadowed a coming civil war in America.

“Some have said my warnings about a coming civil war between makers and takers are exaggerated,” Herman wrote. “It’s true that Argentina’s politicians have been waging class warfare since Juan and Eva Peron – and they aren’t fazed when it turns bloody. Obama and the Democrats are relative newcomers to the game. But Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it.”

Then there are the rape comments.

Months after Todd R. Akin and Richard Mourdock destroyed any Republican chances of picking up U.S. Senate seats with asinine comments about rape, Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia decided to come to Akin’s defense by saying Akin was “partly right” in his declaration that in the case of legitimate rape, women’s bodies have the ability to shut down to avoid pregnancy.

“I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things,” said Gingrey, a former OB/GYN. “It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.’ So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.”

As if such wild comments are not enough, Republicans have threatened to shut down the government or default on the nation's debt in an effort to force the President and Democrats to cut the safety net.

But the most egregious attacks may revolve around Obama’s efforts to fill his cabinet. Republicans have attacked him for seeking like-minded appointees. They have also assailed him for recommending a former Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, for a major security post. Apparently, reaching across the aisle for talented people is against the rules.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, says Hagel should not be confirmed as Secretary of Defense because Hagel was against imposing economic sanctions on Iran. One would think that would make Hagel a good candidate in the eyes of the GOP since its members spent the last election saying the sanctions are weak and ineffective. The Iran sanctions, according to Republicans, made Obama weaker than Jimmy Carter.

Then there are the attacks against feeding poor children in America. Guest on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. spent a great deal of time recently claiming that children receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are becoming a “group of entitlement nation children.” Feeding those kids through the SNAP program, the Fox contributors said, means those children will grow up with a sense of entitlement that will hamper their productivity throughout life.

We can’t forget the comments concerning same-sex marriages. According to one conservative preacher, an acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriages mark the end of time. The pastor, Scott Lively, who is on trial for inciting human rights abuses against members of the LGBT community in Uganda, recently said that the great flood of the Bible was caused by people writing songs about same-sex marriages.

“We need to remember that in the time leading up to the Flood what the rabbis teach about the last straw for God before He brought the Flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage and Jesus said that you’ll know the End Times because it will be like the days of Noah,” Lively said in an interview with Sandy Rios of the American Family Association.

“I think this is the issue of the End Times, homosexuality,” he continued in the interview. “It’s present, if you do a careful investigation of all the scriptures dealing with this from the beginning and all the way to the end, God is painting a very clear picture that this represents the outer extent of rebellion against Him in a society and the last thing that happens before wrath comes.”

His comments echoed those of another conservative southern preacher, Aaron Fruh of Alabama, who also blamed the biblical flood on homosexuality. Fruh said God “knew that the people on the earth were going to destroy themselves through same-sex marriage.”

Of course, there is also the denial of climate change (Fox asked if the government faked the hottest year on record data released recently); Wyoming’s effort to nullify any federal firearms regulations by making it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison for any federal official to enforce any gun laws; the downplaying of a government default on the nation and the world economy; the hostage style negotiations over the debt limit; and Sean Hannity’s attacks against John Brennan.

Indeed, Republicans say the scariest, most dangerous, and most asinine things.

On the Redolence of Washington

There is a repugnancy that permeates our political system, a malodor that wafts from Capitol Hill across this vast nation. It hovers not only in the air around us, but also reaches deep into our social consciousness, and leaves a stench that overwhelms ours and the nation’s souls. Occasionally, though, a strong wind comes through providing us with a cleansing or a reprieve.

The deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff was such a moment. For a short time, it seemed that Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill smelled what the rest of us had smelled for the last four years. Our lawmakers in Washington came together, albeit at a late hour, to keep us from plunging in what many had described as an economic abyss. Although the deal was less than perfect, it gave many a moment of hope, a sense that the best way to pass meaningful legislation is to begin in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, it was a fleeting moment. Before the fiscal cliff bill could reach President Barack Obama’s desk for signature Republicans had already returned to their recalcitrant ways.

House Speaker John Boehner, who had thrown the fiscal cliff debacle to the President and Senate, announced to the nation that his party would again use the debt ceiling in seeking to wrest spending cuts from the President and Democrats.

His statement was reinforced by Sen. John Cronyn of Texas, who declared that the GOP is willing to shut down the government in order to extract concessions from Obama.

“The coming deadlines will be the next flashpoints in our ongoing fight to bring fiscal sanity to Washington,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle not long after a fiscal cliff deal was reached. “It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal wellbeing of our country, rather than plod along the path of Greece, Italy and Spain. President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately.”

Cornyn, like many of his GOP colleagues, has decided that the only way to go is to slash the safety net that helps to support as many people in the red states as it does those in the blue states.

“Republicans are more determined than ever to implement the spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms that are needed to secure the long-term fiscal integrity of our country,” Cornyn wrote days after Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Republicans should be ready to tolerate a partial government shutdown in the battle over the debt limit.

The declarations by Boehner, Cornyn, Toomey, and other Republicans of course sent the pundit class into a tizzy. Within hours of the fiscal cliff deal and the Republican announcements, pundits began debating, pontificating on, and dissecting the winners and losers of that deal as if the obstinate players were the only ones that mattered.

But while the talking heads search for new ways to describe the game they help promote the rest of us should look deeper for answers and connections. The problem is we may not find many.

The Jan. 1 deal does bring much needed revenue – granted not as much as desired – to the federal coffers. It also preserves unemployment insurance – while not a substitute for employment – for 2 million people without incomes. It will keep the cost of milk – already high – from rising through the roof. And it will allow poor, working, and middle-class people to continue using the child and tuition tax credits to lower their tax bills.

But what price will we have to pay?

Indeed, the fiscal cliff deal fell short on many fronts. It failed to include a stimulus package. It failed to avert another battle over the debt ceiling. It allowed the temporary payroll tax cut to expire. It did not raise taxes on capital gains and estates high enough. And it did not solve any long term fiscal problems.

More important, it put us back where we were 18 months ago, preparing to fight another battle with a political party that believes not only in taking hostages, but in executing them as well.

That is why we may not find those deeper answers and connections.

The fact that the deal was negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signals just how bad things have become in Washington in general and the House of Representatives in particular.

That so many urged the President to allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire in an effort to gain greater negotiating leverage over the Republicans shows that too many people in Washington fail to recognize the real consequences of such actions. Theirs are arguments steeped in politics not policy.

For the millions of people whose unemployment ran out a few days before the deal was struck, it was no game. Yes, Congress could have passed a bill after Jan. 1, resulting in retroactive benefits. But unless one has lived from paycheck to paycheck one does not understand how a delay, even of a few days or weeks, can create havoc. Allowing those benefits to expire would have caused real harm to real families, something lawmakers should avoid at all costs.

The problem of course is that Washington is unable to do anything – even the things on which all parties agree – until the last moment

“Debt-ceiling dilemma: In the short run, it enables Republicans in Congress to excite their base about entitlement reform that base doesn't really want. (After all, it's the over-65 Republican base that collects most entitlements.) In the long run, it hardens the image of the congressional GOP as a collection of desperadoes who can never safely be trusted with power," David Frum, a The Daily Beast writer and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, said after the fiscal cliff deal.

The debt-ceiling dilemma and the Republican response so far also remind us that the slightest shift in the wind can bring back that fetid aroma emanating from inside the Beltway.

Turn Right? Turn Left? What's the Destination?

As the House of Representatives heads home for a short Christmas break, I am reminded of a story about two men – one a leftist, the other a right winger – who live across the street from each other. Both men are driving to the same venue, but do not share a ride because of their disdain for each other. Before they leave for their destination each man seeks to convince the other that he alone has the best short cut.

“All you have to do is go left at the corner then turn left again, and so on,” the leftist says.

“Oh, BS,” says the right winger. “You go right at each corner. Everyone knows that.”

The men decided to bet on whose was the better short cut. Each took his own route only to end up back in front of their individual homes.

I offer that story because it seems to be where we are in Washington today. No matter what, those on the right want to continue going right, while those on the left want to continue going left – neither acknowledging that adhering to such directions just takes us back to where we started.

This past week, House Republicans showed us just how ignorant making the same right turn time and time again takes us nowhere but back to square one. After a lot of posturing, whining, and maneuvering, House Speaker John Boehner walked away from the negotiation table where efforts were underway to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Instead of continuing talks with President Barack Obama to close the gap between each other’s deficit reduction proposals, Boehner offered up a “Plan B” that called for tax increases only on those making $1 million or more a year. “Plan B” never reached the House floor for a vote, with Boehner pulling it because he did not have enough support for it among his own caucus.

Meanwhile, those on the left argue that we continue on their route, refusing to acknowledge that while we must preserve the safety net, we cannot adhere blindly to all of its provisions. As the nation ages the cost of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security will keep rising. While we do not have to eviscerate those programs we must take prudent steps to safe guard them.

The same is true with gun control. We cannot continue with a mishmash of gun laws around the country, a poor mental health system, and a blind adherence to the Second Amendment if we want to save ourselves from the senseless whims of mass murderers. There is not one answer to the question we face on gun control laws, but there are some things that we can put into place to lessen the risks we face as a nation. Will we be able to completely remove guns from our society? No, but we can limit access to high-power weapons and multi-round clips.

Yet, neither the left nor the right seems ready and willing to act sensibly. For the right, any effort to regulate firearms is an attack on personal liberty. The Second Amendment, according to many of them, was intended so that Americans could protect themselves against a tyrannical Federal Government. That the Second Amendment calls for gun ownership as a way to maintain a “well-regulated militia” is lost on the right, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition, we cannot fix our fiscal house if we do not recognize some very basic tenets, including that while Federal spending must be brought down, we cannot continue to allow such people as Willard Mitt Romney to pay less than 15 percent in taxes on income above $20 million, while those making much, much less pay a higher rate. We cannot reduce the budget deficit if we do not add jobs to the nation through additional stimulus spending, which could result in greater demand for goods by both businesses and individuals. We cannot tackle the long-term systemic issues in our economy if we do not recognize that the current level of safety net spending cannot be maintained forever.

The same goes for our gun policies. We cannot address mass killings in America if we do not recognize that many of the shooters have been young men in that age range where mental illness becomes most pronounced. We cannot help those young men who are a threat to themselves, and more important, a threat to society if the mental health system is fragmented with few options for parents and others who detect the warning signs of a meltdown. We cannot provide the treatment those young men need if we do not have the facilities or if insurance companies are allowed to limit how much psychiatric care a person can receive.

And we cannot stem the flow of guns into the hands of those who would do the most harm if we continue to allow each state to have varying laws, to allow weapons to be sold at gun shows without background checks, to allow people to buy as many guns as they can carry without red flags going off, to allow people to continue purchasing large amounts of ammunition without some investigation.

The battle over gun control is not just about the mass killings that seem to be occurring more frequently in this nation. It is about the thousands of shootings that occur across the nation every week. It is about making it harder for abusive husbands – and in some cases wives – to grab a gun and kill their spouses. It is about taking guns out of the hands of people who would commit suicide. It is about recognizing that in the majority of murders in the United States the victim and the assailant knew each other. It is about accepting that more guns do not necessarily make the world safer. Mostly, it is about admitting that our love affair with guns as a symbol of freedom is an anachronism, a vestige of time that has long passed.

And the fiscal battle being waged is not about right-wing or left-wing doctrines. It is about the millions of people who remain underemployed or unemployed. It is about a deteriorating infrastructure. It is about investing in education to better prepare our students for tomorrow. It is about reducing long-term costs for safety net programs. It is about restoring a sense of confidence in the American economy and the nation's ability to tackle large issues.

More important, though, it is deciding that if we really want to get somewhere in this nation, if we really want to make that journey together, to reach our destination then we are going to have to make some right and some left turns. Otherwise we will end up back where we started.

Let America be America

If you are still struggling with who won the 2012 presidential election then let me give you a hint: America.

Was it simply because President Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected to the White House, defeating Willard Mitt Romney? No. America won because more people than expected voted, and in doing so they rejected the idea that we must become a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, one in which selfishness, greed, and xenophobia stand supreme.

Indeed, voters did not give any candidate or party an overwhelming “mandate” as many have said, but the majority did speak loudly about the type of nation they want. They spoke not only in the voting booth, but also in exit polls in which they addressed questions the answers to which cannot always be discerned by analyzing election results.

Yes, about 48 percent of Americans supported Romney, and about 51 percent supported Obama. More important, though, was the number of voters who in exit polls supported a kinder America. For example, 60 percent of those polled say they agree with increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year as part of a balanced debt reduction plan, compared with 30 percent who oppose any tax increases. In addition, a majority of voters supported protecting the safety net. If the exit polls reflect how people really feel, then that means even some people who voted for Romney support a more balanced approach to dealing with the nation’s problems.

Or as E.J. Dionne said in a recent Washington Post column: “The voters repudiated the very worst aspects of post-Bush conservatism: its harsh tone toward those in need, its doctrinaire inflexibility on taxes, its inclination toward extreme pronouncements on social issues, and its hard anti-government rhetoric that ignored the pragmatic attitude of the electorate’s great middle about what the public sector can and can’t do.”

That voter response would suggest that we should begin moving forward, allowing America to open her arms to all of her children. Of course, that does not mean we will. Already, conservatives are trying to re-fight the election.

Some conservative business people have given walking papers to employees in retaliation for Obama’s win, while others say they will add surcharges to customers’ bills and will reduce hours for workers to avoid providing health care insurance.

The day after the election, Robert Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., a privately held mining company, gave 160 workers layoff notices, citing the re-election of what he called a coal hating president. John Metz, whose company owns and/or manages numerous Denny’s and Hurricane Grill & Wings restaurants, said he will add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills, as well as reduce employ hours to below 17, to deal with the added costs of Obamacare. John Schnatter, the chief executive at Papa John’s Pizza, is willing to give away 2 million free pizzas to the tune of $24 million to $32 million a year, according to a recent Forbes article, but he is not willing to add $5 million to $8 million to his bottom line in order to pay for employees’ health care. He has threatened to cut workers to below 30 hours a week to avoid Obamacare requirements, and has said he would add 11 cents to 14 cents per pie. (Forbes calculated that Obamacare would add an extra 3.4 cents to 4.6 cents per pie at Papa John's.)

In addition, conservative Republicans already have begun the election conspiracy theories, from mysterious black people showing up like extraterrestrials at rural polling places in Maine to Obama using mind control on people so that he and the United Nations can create a communist dictatorship in America.

Of course, no post-election spin can be complete without the doubling down of old conservative standbys, including efforts by the Conservative Majority Fund to start an impeachment drive against the President because he is not a natural born citizen in its view. “Our only recourse now is to move forward with the full impeachment of President Obama,” the fund announced in a recent fundraising letter. “We suspect that Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and that there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the constitution. Further, he may not even be a U.S. citizen because nobody, I mean no one, has seen an actual physical copy of his birth certificate. Impeachment is our only option.”

We also have seen calls by conservatives to revolt against the federal government, including on-line secession petitions from 40 states. Romney has returned to his disparaging of the “47 percent” of takers in this country, saying in a conference call to his conservative donors that Obama won because he gave “gifts” to minorities and young women. (Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah later corrected Romney’s assertion that 47 percent of the population is moochers. Hatch says it is 51 percent.)

But even with all of that America is still the winner because while overt and subtle racism are up, according to an Associated Press poll released before the Nov. 6 presidential election, the numbers are not as high as they were a decade or two ago. And the racist dogma is being rejected by a majority of America, especially the young. Obama won with a broad based coalition that included blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women, white workers, and the young.

Suffice it to say that the 2012 election did not put to rest all of the issues facing our nation. It did, however, give us a greater sense of what the majority of Americans want and how they want to proceed. By rejecting the calls for a return to the 1950s, the voters gave America a resounding victory.

America can, finally, be America again.

The Bitterness Within Us

With the U.S. presidential election entering its final weeks, it might be time to ask ourselves what we have learned this year about our nation and its people. The answers may not come very easily and may not be to anyone’s liking. The partisan divide makes one wonder if this nation will be able to move forward after such a contentious election season.

We appear more divided than ever, with few people able to open their minds to the harsh realities that lie ahead. Too many of us have become trapped in political echo chambers, unable to hear anything but the sounds of the like-minded. Few people actually listen to opposing views. Some seem afraid that respect for another opinion will shatter all previous beliefs, that it would upend the universe. Civility and respect are lost in a cacophony of hateful rhetoric, and the win at all cost attitudes of so many. Chalk it up to the messiness that is democracy, many say.

But what ails discourse in this country goes beyond the messiness of democracy. Our ailments lie in bitter hearts unable to empathize with others, in jaundiced eyes unable to see the tragedy that exists in a world different from our own. Two distinctive incidents recently brought this home.

One was the attempted murder of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan on Oct. 9. The other was the responses to a New York Times column in which Nicholas D. Kristof wrote about his uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, who was dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer.

Malala, as nearly everyone knows by now, was heading home from school when gunmen boarded her school van, demanded she be identified, and then fired three shots – striking Malala and two other girls. Malala was rushed to a military hospital where she remained until recently being transferred to a hospital in Britain. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it will go after Malala again.

Why? The Taliban said because Malala is “promoting secularism” by pushing for education for women and girls. The attempted murder of Malala was rightfully met with outrage from many corners of the world. On Oct. 14, tens of thousands of people in Karachi protested against the Taliban’s actions.

In the United States, President Barack Obama decried the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.”

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded as well as their families,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.

In Britain, the BBC quoted Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that the attack had “shocked Pakistan and the world,” and that Malala’s bravery was “an example to us all.”

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists,” Hague said. “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.”

Unfortunately in America, the shooting of Malala became a political football, a way to attack the Obama Administration. One conservative blog, Redstate.com, took a December 2011 comment by Vice President Joe Biden out of context in an effort to suggest that Obama and Biden had no issues with the Taliban and it’s shooting of Malala.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Biden said in an interview with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. “That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”

During the interview, Biden was seeking to explain U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, in particular those aimed at reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Biden was also discussing U.S. reasons for going into Afghanistan: To oust al-Qaeda, not necessarily to wipe out the Taliban.

Meanwhile, others decided that the shooting was an opportunity to attack Islam in general and the President in particular, rather than show solidarity with Malala. The virulent attacks were numerous and outrageous. One has to ask: What manner of person is unable to empathize with a young girl nearly killed for seeking an education?

The answer may be found in the reaction to Kristof’s column. Kristof wrote that Scott Androes “had a midlife crisis and left his job in the pension industry to read books and play poker.” Androes worked part time and earned $13,000 last year. To save money he did not carry health insurance and did not go to the doctor for wellness visits. During that time, Androes developed prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Kristof used Androes’s story to argue the merits of Obamacare. While many readers empathized with Androes, many also blamed him for his plight, basically saying he made his bed and must lie in it.

According to Kristof, one Oregon reader wrote: “Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem. I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.”

Another reader wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: “Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.”

A third reader said, “Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences,”

It would be easy to chalk up those responses to a few callous people hiding behind the anonymity of Internet posts. To do so is to fail to recognize that in these trying times, people are not only filled with disdain and vitriol, they are even more willing to share that with all of society. Recent Pew Research Center polling found, for example, that such feelings have increased dramatically among Republicans.

And that raises some serious questions about how this nation will move forward, and whether everyone will be invited on the trip.