President Obama needs more like General Buford

President Obama is angry that our intelligence agencies instead of sharing and analyzing the intelligence about Christmas underwear bomber Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab seemed to have barely done the minimum required.

General Buford  (Matthew Brady/Library of Congress/Public Domain)

In 1863 Union cavalry General Buford had intelligence gathering responsibilities to find the Confederate army that had invaded the North. He found them outside of Gettysburg.

At that point, General Buford could have done the minimum required by simply reporting to his superior the Confederate's location then withdrawing.

As a professional who took his responsibilities seriously, he quickly analyzed what he just learned. He recognized that the terrain around Gettysburg may be the best place to repel the invasion. He included that in his report and added that he was digging in to hold that ground.

For several hours on the first day of the battle, General Buford and his cavalry delayed the advance of the Confederates until enough of the Union army arrived to secure most of the positions he identified.

President Obama is asking the intelligence community to drop their "what is the least I can do and still keep my job" attitude and start acting more like professionals in the tradition of General Buford.

---

General Buford died five months after the Battle of Gettysburg from an illness probably caused by contaminated water, a common cause of sickness and death among Civil War soldiers.

---

General Buford's Gettysburg story is dramatized in Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels and General Buford is portrayed by Sam Elliott in Gettysburg, the movie based on the novel.

It's not the Nobel "Pacifism" Prize

Some have criticized the awarding of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to a commander in chief of a nation that has just announced an escalation of one of the two wars in which his nation is involved.

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for renewing America's commitment to diplomacy, the rule of law, and a decreased emphasis on the use of military force, not for pacifism

Few Nobel Peace Prize winners have been  pacifists. Many were military commanders or political leaders of nations at war.

President Theodore Roosevelt's 1906 prize was for his diplomatic work in ending the Russian-Japanese War. President Roosevelt had built his career on his record as a war hero in what was an unjust war of aggression and conquest, the Spanish-American War, and believed in the aggressive use of military force.

President Wilson's 1919 prize was for his diplomatic efforts after World War I to prevent future wars. As commander in chief he just presided over the American military's decisive contribution to the defeat of Germany and its allies.

General George C. Marshall's, the American Army's chief of staff in World War II and a major architect of the Allied victory, won the Peace Prize in 1953 for his post war reconstruction work in Europe.

The 1973 prize Henry Kissinger shared with his then North Vietnamese counterpart for negotiating the end to the war in Vietnam may have been to most disturbing and least deserving of any. Along with what has generally been judged to be the unjust use of excessive force in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger's policies set off the chain of events that directly contributed to the Khmer Rouge's massacre of millions of their fellow Cambodians.

Rather than an acknowledgment of anyone's accomplishments, the 1973 prize was perhaps more a collective sigh of relief that the Vietnam War appeared to be reaching a conclusion.

Both of the 1978 winners for their diplomatic work, Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime minister Menachem Begin had dubious histories of terrorism. During World War II, Anwar Sadat was imprisoned by the British for his efforts to work with Nazis against the British in Egypt. Menachem Begin was part of an organization that committed terrorist attacks against both the British and Arabs in Palestine before Israeli independence.

The 1989 winner, the Dalai Lama, does not claim to be a pacifist and supports the just use of force, perhaps because he sees that as among the options to achieve his goals for Tibet. From the late 1950s until the mid 1970s, the Dalai Lama was publicly silent about the CIA supported guerilla war the Tibetans waged against the Chinese. When as part of the process of normalizing relations with China, the CIA withdrew support for the Tibetan guerrillas, the Dalai Lama called on the Tibetans to cease the war, implying that he long had some authority over the fighters.

The 1993 Prize was shared by leaders who after a prolonged period of waging war against each other, agreed to peace, South African President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

Ironically in some ways the accomplishments of these South African practitioners of armed force may have been greater that those of the iconic pacifist of the 20th century, Mohandas Gandhi. After independence, India descended into a maelstrom of  Hindu versus Muslim violence with up to one millions deaths. British Indian broke into two then three nations that have repeatedly warred with each, two of which have armed themselves with nuclear weapons.

In contrast, South Africa achieved a much less violent end to Apartheid without civil or racial war or a break up of the nation. South Africa also dismantled its incipient nuclear weapons program.

The 1994 prize was awarded to three leaders who had long waged both conventional and terrorist wars with each other, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin

The 2002 prize was awarded to Navy veteran and former President Jimmy Carter for his post presidency diplomatic and humanitarian work

Vietnam War Army veteran and former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 for his environmental work.

For more information:

Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy by James Bradley, New York Times, December 6, 2009. The author writes that rather than acting as a neutral mediator of the Russian-Japanese War, President Roosevelt was a supporter of Japan and sought an end to the war on terms favorable to Japanese dominance in Asia.

All Nobel Laureates

Could Jeremiah Wright have picked a worse time?

In the recent interview in which President Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright complained that "them Jews" are keeping  him from seeing President Obama, he added that:

Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing [by] the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel...

Israel waged an unjust war and used force that exceeded legitimate self-defense needs. Israel's continued refusal to negotiate seriously on outstanding issues was another reason that the situation with Gaza deteriorated into another war.

However, calling what Israel did in Gaza "ethnic cleansing" is hateful, evil, vile, and demeans the real ethnic cleansing that has occurred in the past and continues to this day as in Darfur.

If Israel was engaged in ethnic cleansing, the populations of Gaza and the West Bank would not continue to grow under occupation, blockade, and continuing violence. That the Palestinian population is able to grow under Israeli rule is a rebuttal to charges of ethnic cleansing but in no way a justification for Israeli policies.

When ethnic cleansing occurs, vast areas are without their former populations, for example the areas of Europe without any significant Jewish population after the Nazi Holocaust or the areas of Turkey without any significant Armenian population after the Armenian genocide.

Israel can justifiably be accused of many things. "Ethnic cleansing" is not one of them.

Wright's statements become even more shameful as they were made almost at the same time as an African-American security guard died defending the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum against an attack by a anti-Semitic white supremacist.

Is a political cartoon effective if you have to think this much?

I've long loved political cartoons. I was lucky to grow up in Chicago where the work of one of the greatest cartoonist, Bill Mauldin, was regularly published in the Chicago Sun-Times. I even dreamed of being a political cartoonist.

Cartoons are meant to be simple, superficial, and taken in at a glance. The superficial, simple, at a glance reading of the New York Post cartoon would be to recognize the classic racial stereotype of a black man who was behind the stimulus bill, Obama, as the chimp.

(The New York Post does not seem to have permalinks to its content. To view the original cartoon, go to http://www.nypost.com/delonas/delonas.htm then enter February 18, 2009 to retrieve the original from their archives.)

Not only did the cartoon touch on racial stereotypes, it touched on assassination of Obama.

The New York Post and right wing media commentators are claiming that we are misinterpreting this. They claim the chimp represents House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate head Harry Reid or the Democratic party which has devolved to the level of chimps. That's way too complicated and obviously a cover for their racial insensitivity and their insensitivity to the higher assassination risk Obama is under.

One has the First Amendment right to say or publish most anything, unfortunately including hateful things. The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring such speech before publications or prosecuting it afterwards.

However, the First Amendment does not shield one from others' reactions. The First Amendment also protects reactions such as public condemnations and calls for a boycott of the New York Post.

Where were they for the last eight years?

During the confirmation hearings for Obama's nominees, Republican Senators are raising issues of ethics and conflicts of interest. On the measures to deal with the economic crisis they are raising concerns about fiscal responsibility, deficits, and balanced budgets.

Where were they the past eight years while the Bush administration engaged in some of the most illegal, unethical, and immoral conduct in our history? Where were their financial concerns when for the first time in U.S. history they cut taxes during war and ran up record spending and deficits?