T C « S C R I P P S T R E A S U R E C O A S T N E W S PA P E R S
COMMENTARY
E.J.
DIONNE JR.
WASHINGTON POST
Obama shows
his cool, hard,
tough side
WASHINGTON — Barack
Obama is not the man
many Americans thought
he was. This sudden real-
ization has transformed
American politics.
The sheer audacity of
the successful operation
against Osama bin Laden
has forced Obama’s friends
and foes alike to reassess
what they make of a chief
executive who defies easy
categorization and reveals
less about himself than
politicians are typically
drawn to do.
Obama is hard to under-
stand because he is many
things and not just one
thing. He has now proved
that he can be bold at an
operational level, even as
he remains cautious at a
philosophical level. His
proclivity to gather facts
and weigh alternatives
does not lead automati-
cally, in the venerable
phrase, to the paralysis of
analysis. It can also end in
daring action tempered by
prudence — for example,
making sure that addition-
al helicopters were avail-
able to our Navy SEALs.
The president’s rhetoric
has often emphasized car-
ing, compassion and com-
munity, the language one
expects from a moderately
liberal politician. Yet as
one of his close aides told
me long ago, there is inside
a very cool, tough, even
hard man. Obama is not
reluctant to use American
military power.
The fact that Obama is
not a moralist has led to
many of the frustrations
vented about him over
the last 27 months. Liber-
als don’t get why it takes
him so long to get around
to taking on the political
right over the fundamental
purposes of government
and the requirements of
social justice. Advocates
of democracy and human
rights ask why he was so
slow to invoke the word
“democracy” as a touch-
stone of his foreign policy,
and why he was so guard-
ed in his initial response to
the Arab Spring.
Supporters of a muscular
and interventionist Ameri-
can foreign policy suspect
him of believing that the de-
cline of the United States is
unavoidable and of seeing
himself primarily as a stew-
ard whose task is to manage
our steady loss of influence.
It is this last claim that
took such a profound blow
when Obama approved
the operation against bin
Laden and chose the riski-
est option involving a face-
to-face confrontation with
American commandos —
on the orders of the presi-
dent of the United States.
Obama’s conceptual
complexity means that he
rejects the idea that there
are just two alternatives:
the United States as the
world’s sole superpower,
or an America slinking
off into weakness and ir-
relevance. Binary choices
are not for him.
Instead, he sees a world
in which new powers —
China most obviously, but
also India and, someday,
Brazil — inevitably rise to
challenge American domi-
nance. The United States’
task is not to prevent the
ineluctable emergence of
other strong nations. Its
imperative is to remain an
enormously powerful force
fully capable of shaping the
globe’s new arrangements,
defending its interests and
values, and prospering in
an ever more competitive
environment.
And anyone who doubted
our willingness to project
our might as we see fit will
have second thoughts after
the events in Abbottabad.
ejdionne@washpost.com
A TURK’S VIEW
Bad news for Arab dictators:
Bin Laden, scapegoat, is dead
■ Assad, Gadhafi and the rest have no more excuses;
West must support Middle East efforts at democracy
Here is the big news!
Osama bin Laden is cap-
tured, dead and buried in
the sea “according to the
Islamic traditions.”
As a well-educated Mus-
lim I never heard of such
a tradition. For thousands
of years Muslims are ex-
pected to be buried in
24 hours following their
death, but after a special
funeral prayer on land, not
to the sea. One defense of
the sea burial — the poten-
tial for a grave to become
a symbolic attraction point
for radicals — is also non-
sense, since the Wahhabi
school of Islam, of which
bin Laden was a follower,
strongly forbids grave
markers and tomb visits.
In Wahhabi terms, God
is only the agency to pray
for, and building tombs
for regular prayer visits is
interpreted as competing
with the “oneness of God.”
If bin Laden were bur-
ied according to Wahhabi
tradition, he would have
a simple grave, located
where only God and U.S.
officials know. Maybe they
wanted God to be the only
witness about his current
address, but whatever the
reason is, there will re-
main questions until pho-
tos of bin Laden’s body are
released.
Private-prisons lobbyists count more than reality
Seven years ago, a prison
riot exploded in Palm Beach
County that ought to give
pause in 2011 to legislators de-
termined to outsource South
Florida’s state prisons to pri-
vate, for-profit corporations.
It took 30 Palm Beach
County sheriff’s deputies
in riot gear to restore order.
The riotous inmates were not
hardened criminals simmer-
ing in a maximum-security
hellhole but residents of the
Florida Institute for Girls —
juvenile offenders reacting to
the 2004-version of this cost-
cutting plunge into privatiza-
tion.
Three months earlier, a
prescient Palm Beach Coun-
ty Grand Jury report had
warned the profit-minded
private contractor running
the juvenile prison had cut
back so much on staff that
it led to a “domino effect.”
The report cited “increased
number of lockdowns, can-
cellations of physical and out-
door activities, cancellation
of educational classes, can-
cellation of various therapy
sessions, cancellations of
volunteer programs, cancel-
lations of special activities.”
So many staff reductions
and so many cancellations,
the report charged, led to
« Friday, May 6, 2011 « 9A
ASLI
SOZBILIR
CORRESPONDENT
However, in the long
term, positive consequenc-
es of this big event may be
seen in the Middle East.
Bin Laden’s capture can-
not be reviewed indepen-
dently from what is hap-
pening in the Arab world.
After U.S. intervention in
Iraq, all recent uprisings
demanding democracy
and freedom — called
“Arab Spring” — are about
to sweep old-fashioned
dictators from the region.
For the last epoch, bin
Laden was one of the char-
acters — as the scapegoat
— in the family photo with
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein,
Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak,
Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi,
Tunisia’s Zine el Abidine
ben Ali, Syria’s Bashar
Assad and Yemen’s Ali
Abdullah Saleh.
Now, as they are disap-
pearing one by one from
the photo, this loss is
another sign of the ending
of the last epoch; an epoch
of secular dictators fight-
FRED
GRIMM
MIAMI HERALD
“pent-up levels of energy
and frustration in the girls,
increased violence and defi-
ance by the girls, resulting in
more take-downs, potential
physical and sexual abuse of
the girls by the staff.” Among
other unseemly incidents
chronicled by the grand jury,
employees of the contractor,
Premier Behavioral Solu-
tions, had broken the arms of
two girls during “take-down
operations.”
Privatization wasn’t look-
ing like such a swell idea.
But the Legislature weighed
the scenario of rioting girls
against the roiling mob of
private prison lobbyists in the
Capitol hallways. The Her-
ald’s Scott Hiaasen reported
recently that the Florida Re-
publican Party has received
$1.5 million from the state’s
two largest corrections con-
tractors and their affiliates
since 2001. A million and a
half bucks can quell a lot of
ing against Islamic radi-
calism.
Bin Laden’s al-Qaida
has been always a cause
for their existence: Re-
member Gadhafi or Saleh
warning the protesters and
the world, “If we leave the
power, al-Qaida will get
it.” To some extent they are
right, but they always used
this excuse for oppression.
With the capture of bin
Laden, the dictators lost
most of their legitimate
basis. The Arab Spring
will flourish more freely;
we probably will see a new
scapegoat in a new family
photo.
The world, of course, is
not a safer place as Presi-
dent Barack Obama said
in a very naïve way. Al-
Qaida has very organized
factions everywhere from
Yemen to Turkey and its
leader’s death will not stop
them at all. What is impor-
tant in this incident is the
symbolic message given to
the world: Finally, the evil
man pays for what he has
done.
As President Obama
stressed in his speech af-
ter the capture; “Bin Laden
was not a Muslim leader;
he was a mass murderer
of Muslims.” He is right.
At least every week hun-
dreds of people were
queasiness about the private
prison industry.
Despite bothersome
problems with overbilling,
corruption, failures of state
oversight (not to mention
rioting girls) that Florida
has encountered after ced-
ing seven state prisons and
10 percent of its 102,000-in-
mate population to private
contractors, both chambers
of the Legislature were ready
to go even further. The plan
percolating through the
House would privatize six
more prisons and reception
centers in Broward and Mi-
ami-Dade counties. A more
radical plan in the Senate
would privatize all the De-
partment of Corrections op-
erations, including 14 more
prisons, in the 18 counties
south of Orlando, affecting
the jobs of 4,600 DOC em-
ployees.
Both plans are based on
an assumption that privatiza-
tion will save taxpayers mon-
ey. Maybe so, but nobody
has convincing evidence.
The state requires the use
of a private contractor must
“result in a cost savings to the
state of at least seven percent
over the public provision of a
similar facility.”
A report issued last year
CHRISTO KOMARNITSKI/BULGARIA
killed in al-Qaida bomb-
ings in Iraq, Afghanistan
or Pakistan. The threat for
all humanity is not Islam
or any other religion; it is
any kind of radicalism, and
radical movements such
as al-Qaida flourish and
nourish themselves in un-
democratic environments.
This symbolic mes-
sage I mentioned above
may transform into real
consequences if the inter-
national community does
not change its “Democracy
Bon Pour L’Orient” under-
standing toward the Mus-
lim world. Muslims de-
serve the same democratic
standards as the Western
World. They are trying to
build their democracies
with bloody struggles on
the Arab streets, and west-
erners should demand the
same kind of democracy in
Egypt, Libya or Syria that
flourishes in the West.
If not, it will also pay
the price. As the Bible says
(Luke 6:31): “Treat others
the same way you want to
be treated.”
Asli Sozbilir is a Turkish journal-
ist who specializes in minority
issues and diplomacy. She is
spending three weeks visiting
Scripps Treasure Coast News-
papers through an International
Center for Journalists program.
by the Florida Center for
Fiscal and Economic Policy
warned, “It is very difficult to
ensure that a private prison
is in fact seven percent less
costly to operate than a com-
parable public prison. This
is partly due to the fact that
finding a truly comparable
public prison is a complex
and ultimately impossible
goal given the diversity of the
inmate population and the
nature of the facilities (e.g.,
size, age, and architecture)
used to incarcerate them.”
Of course, our legislators
know that they don’t know.
Sen. J.D. Alexander, the Sen-
ate champion of privatiza-
tion, admitted as much when
he said that by privatizing an
entire region “we could more
definitely answer the ques-
tion of whether there is cost
savings.”
They don’t know. So
they’ll use South Florida,
with a legislative delegation
happy to sacrifice a few thou-
sand jobs to political expedi-
ency, as a laboratory.
The inmates driven to
riot at the Florida Institute
for Girls would not be the
last guinea pigs in the state’s
privatization experiment.
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com
THOMAS
SOWELL
CREATORS SYNDICATE
Everchanging
policies have
us paralyzed
When people in Wash-
ington start creating fancy
new phrases, instead of
using plain English, you
know they are doing some-
thing they don’t want us to
understand.
It was an act of war
when we started bombing
Libya. But the administra-
tion chose to call it “kinet-
ic military action.” When
the Federal Reserve Sys-
tem started creating hun-
dreds of billions of dollars
out of thin air, they called
it “quantitative easing” of
the money supply.
When that didn’t work,
they created more money
and called it “quantitative
easing 2” or “QE2,” instead
of saying: “We are going to
print more dollars — and
hope it works this time.”
But there is already plenty
of money sitting around idle
in banks and businesses.
The policies of this ad-
ministration make it risky
to lend money, with Wash-
ington politicians coming
up with one reason after
another why borrowers
shouldn’t have to pay it
back when it is due, or
perhaps not pay it all back
at all. That’s called “loan
modification” or various
other fancy names for
welching on debts. Is it sur-
prising that lenders have
become reluctant to lend?
Private businesses have
amassed record amounts
of cash, which they could
use to hire more people
— if this administration
were not generating vast
amounts of uncertainty
about what the costs are
going to be for ObamaCare,
among other unpredictable
employer costs, from a gov-
ernment heedless or hos-
tile toward business.
As a result, it is often
cheaper or less risky for
employers to work the exist-
ing employees overtime, or
to hire temporary workers,
who are not eligible for em-
ployee benefits. But lack of
money is not the problem.
All this constant experi-
mentation by the govern-
ment makes it more risky
for investors to invest
or employers to employ,
when neither of them
knows when the govern-
ment’s rules of the game
are going to change again.
Whatever the merits or
demerits of particular
government policies, the
uncertainty that such ever-
changing policies generate
can paralyze an economy
today, just as it did back in
the days of FDR.
The idea that the federal
government has to step in
whenever there is a down-
turn in the economy is an
economic dogma that ig-
nores much of the history
of the United States.
During the first hundred
years of the United States,
there was no Federal Re-
serve. During the first one
hundred and fifty years,
the federal government
did not engage in massive
intervention when the
economy turned down.
No economic downturn
in all those years ever lasted
as long as the Great Depres-
sion of the 1930s, when both
the Federal Reserve and the
administrations of Hoover
and of FDR intervened.
The myth that has
come down to us says
that the government had
to intervene when there
was mass unemployment
in the 1930s. But the hard
data show that there was
no mass unemployment
until after the federal gov-
ernment intervened. Yet,
once having intervened, it
was politically impossible
to stop and let the econ-
omy recover on its own.
That was the fundamental
problem then and now.
www.tsowell.com