Kitty and other friends -- I've also enjoyed
reading the Christmas letters, and so I'll add mine. On the whole, I would
much rather write about family, but in answer to your question, there is some
thoughts on Iraq, Korea, and terrorism at the end.
We've had a good Christmas season -our 18year old son, Will is home from the
University of Chicago; they have a very long break after the first quarrter,
then only a week between the second and third. He's having a good
experience, both academically and socially. He must be one of the
people who fell for UCh's propaganda for prospective students, which,
recognizing its reputation for nerdiness, makes it sound as if, compared to
UCh, the University of South Florida is uptight. He's singing in the
chapel choir, made the soccer team as a walk-on, is learning to row crew and
with four friends has made a very professional 10=minute documentary film
about one of his classmates (who, although interesting in a way, is not
exactly the sort of kid you wish you'd had). But he is also excited
about, and doing well in his classes. It's interesting how much he has
grown up in the last year; I wonder if others have had the experience that
once teenagers finish the college application/acceptance process, they become
much more communicative and approachable.
My older daughter, Sasha, and her husband, Dustin, and their daughter
Xela came down from their home in Brooklyn for Christmas. Xela is
almost 2 and delightful. Dustin is systems guy for a chain of health spas.&
nbsp; Sasha teaches yoga but is basicly (and I think rightly) devoted to
being a mother for a few years. They are in a good but rather
small apartment and are in the process of looking for a house to buy -- the
NY real estate market is awful. For what a two bedroom walk up
costs, you could but a substantial row house in Washignton -- and, I assume,
a mansion in most places.
Merrin has just moved from Texas back to Colorado, on her way to an
as-yet-undetermined graduate school. We had a very good week trip
together in Berlin and Prague this fall -- something of a breakthrough in our
relationship.
Ellen started a new job last September -- running the US side of a consulting
firm owned by Shorebank in Chicago (there is also an international side;
Shorebank was one of the pioneer community-development oriented banks).
It's a challenge trying to build a business , but she is enjoying it.&
nbsp; Her main office is in DC, but she's in Chicago a couple days most
weeks, which makes keeping in touch with Will easier.
I'm still at the law firm, mostly working on our representation of commitees
of victims (aka plaintiffs) who are creditors in the asbestos bankruptcies. I
also am spending about 1/3 of my time on defense and foreign policy related
stuff -- including a trip to Asia last month to gather material for a
report for the Atlantic Council on missile defense (which I have not yet
written and am beginning to feel guilty about) and membership on the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board where I am one of the (few) token Democrats.&
nbsp; It is sort of interesting being a meetings in a group in which Henry
Kissinger (who is on the board) is definitely to the left of center.
The work at the law firm is still interesting, but I am beginning to think
about how to get more time for travel, Maine, and Xela.
I do not have a candidate for the Dems in 2004 -- though I find Howard Dean,
the retiring governor of Vermont, an intriguing possibility. I fully
understand the problem of being from a small, liberal state and the man who
signed the civil union law -- both Washington events for Dean that I have
been at have been sponsored by politically active gays couples -- but he's
smart, articulate, a medical doctor,and talks sense (specifically about
reversing the tax cuts so we have the money we need for health care and many
other prioirities, including defense -- and avoiding the problems the
prospect of long term big deficits will cause for the economy). That's
probably disqualifying, but not unpromising.
On the various crises --
My view is that if we don't deal with
Iraq now, we will have to do so later, when it will be far harder, so if SH
does not actually demonstrably stop his WMD programs, we are right to do what
it takes to drive him from power. SH is clearly concealing a
substantial program to build (and hide) his chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons programs, and his efforts to build long=range missiles to deliver
them. All the business about our needing to provide "evidence" that he
has these programs is fundamentally misdirected: He has the burden of
proving that he has disarmed; the UN or the US does not have to prove that he
has not. Iraq has admitted that it had these in 1991, and the UN
inspectors have repeatedly found that they have not shown that they were
destroyed -- and the UN's initial report is that his 12,000 page declaration
does not fill the gaps. So far, his argument is essentially that the
"cat ate my homework." (I agree that we should provide what additional
evidence we have; but it is just silly to expect "satelillite photos" of a
chemical weapons stockpile, etc. The only hope of another smoking gun
(there have been lots in the past) is a defector -- hence the importance of
forcing Iraq to allow unmonitored interviews of scientists outside the
country, with their immediate families safe. (A friend of mine who
worked with the UN inspectors in the early period says, "Give me three
hundred green cards,and I will give you all the evidence anyone could
possibly want." )
Unfortunately, the Korean situation illustrates the dangers of waiting.
SH has grand ambitions to dominate the whole middle East. If we wait
until his programs are more mature and the threat from his WMD is "imminent"
in the sense that there is reason to believe he is about to use them (a la
Japan being about to go to war in 1941), which some people claim should be
the standard for using force to stop his programs, we will face the problem
we now face in Korea -- the price of firmness will be much higher. I
think the analogy relevant to Saddam is not, as some (who favor war as I do)
argue, Munich, but rather Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland -- a clear
violation of international obligations, at a time when resistance would have
been quite easy. (When I get in the office tomorrow, I will send anyone you
is interested the notes I used for a debate with an Arab League rep on this
issue, which state my views at greater length. Our talks were ships
passing in the night; at dinner afterward, he said to me, "Get on with it; no
Arab will miss him.")
In the Korean case, the US has essentially no good options: The
military option is much riskier than with Iraq; negotiation does have the
drawback of paying more bribes for what we had already bribed for.
Personally, I think the Admin is being both too tough and too weak --
they have not seriously threatened military force (as Clinton did in 1994,
when we were moving hundreds of planes and thousands of troops to back the
implict threat of military force) but have called for a "diplomatic
solution." But they seem to want a parthenogenic diplomatic
solution that will come by magic: They have claimed they won't talk to
Pyongyang until NK gives up what is at issue -- its nuclear program.
Their theory seems to be that the Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans will
convince NK to pull back. That may well be the right approach, but they
can only carry our water if they can point both to serious US threats if NIK
does not respond and the possibility of serious incentives if it does.
So far, the US has no strategy except hope --- and hope is not a strategy.&
nbsp;
Personally, I would do two things different from the Admin: First, I
would say that if they start reprocessing the Pu, we will use force to stop
them. That (reprocessing) is a red line on the road to nuclear weapons,
and our last easy way to stop them with minimal force. (Of course, to
do that, we would have to be ready to deal with the far larger war they might
start in response, but that problem will only get harder the longer their
programs go on unchecked.)
Second, I would say that if (as they claim) what they are worried about is a
US (or ROK) attack as the rationale forNorth Korea developing nuclear
weapons, the US will unconditionally, and in advance, commit not to attack
them, if they give up their NW program (unless, of course, they attack the
South). I would, in fact, also be ready to offer other inducements, as
we rightly did in 1994 and stopped them pulling enough material out of the
Pu-generating reactors for soemthing like 10 bombs a year, but for
openers, I would just say, "no bombs, no attack."
The idea, which Powell floated today, that we are going to use sanctions to
destroy their economy is fatuous: All we can cut off is food.&
nbsp; Aside from the morality of trying to coerce the regime by starving the
general population, China has made clear for a long time that they will not
let NK starve. The regime can struggle along with whatever they earn
from legitimate exports (coking coal, mostly) through China, and illegitimate
exports of arms. Economic sanctions strategies scarcely ever work ,
except in the context of an internal political process (as in South Africa).&
nbsp; And if we dont' have some credible threats on the table and some real
incentives to offer, not jsut China, but Japan and ROK also, will be
unable to mediate.
Interestingly, an adminstration that come to office thinking that planning
for nearly simultaneous wars with Iraq and NK was "old-think" now faces the
real prospect of just that.
On terrorism, we have to expect more attacks. The terrible problem of
dealing with terrorists is that, so long as their infrastructure remains in
existence, we can stop 9 out of ten of their plans, and the tenth is still a
big problem. It remains true, however, that terrorism is, for any
individual, a low level risk -- as long as Al Queda doe snot have WMD.
Much of what we are doing makes a good deal of sense, but even I am worried
that we are compromising some basic values for very little real benefit.&
nbsp; For example, I find it unacceptable that we can hold a US citizen in US
territory on the hearsay affidavit of a mid-level DOD official with no
judicial review. And, if the stories that the CIA is using torture
techniques overseas on some theory that they are beyond the reach of US law,
that crosses a fundamental line. Morality aside -- and I dont' mean to
say it can be put aside -- the trouble with torture is that it will always
produce confessions and information, but very soon the information is useless
simply because it is coerced.
I would be interested in what the class thinks about small pox vaccinations
-- which all of us had. I tend to be in favor of encouraging ordinary
citizens to get the vaccination. If the risks are in the
one-in=a=million category, they are trivial. There was a one in a
million chance of dying from the vaccine in our era. There is also a
one in a million chance of being killed if you drive 50 miles, but none of
us, rightly, worry much about that risk.
On the other hand (1) there is some significant risk not to the person who
gets the vaccination, but also to those with whom they come into contact, and
, at least arguably there are so many more people now with compromised immune
systems that this risk may be higher, (2) there may be a safer vaccine in a
year or so, and (3) some people who purport to know the business claim that
post-attack vaccination would work. (The argument relie sont he --true
-- proposition that post-exposrue vaccination works to prevent the disease --
and proposes is that when there is an outbrweak, all contacts with exposed
peole will quickly be vaccinated, and then all contacts with them, etc. in a
process called "ring" immunization. Personally, I am inclined to doubt
this -- all the experience is with naturally occuring outbreaks, not
situations in which there has been a deliberate attempt to spread the virus
widely -- and not in societies as mobile and anonymous as ours.
But it's a serious argument. I suppose one way to judge is, "Would you
get the vaccination if it meant staying in your house for two weeks
afterward."
Anyway, let's hope that 2003 sees us through all these crises safely (but I
am not hopeful it will see us through them peacefully or unscathed.)
Walt