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What your mother taught you to do

On 9/11, a bunch of fanatics, hiding somewhere in the caves of Afghanistan, were able to pull off a one time stunt. Spectacular, harmful – but still just a stunt. In response to this act, twenty well-trained secret agents could do a much better job than the whole war on terror has been able to accomplish.

President Bush and his men elevated a bunch of wackos to the status of a main enemy of the greatest military power on Earth. Bin Laden could not ask for more.

As it has become obvious now, the war in Iraq is a mistake. When a country makes a mistake, it needs to do what your mother told you to do when you misbehaved: first, one needs to apologize, and then one needs to repair the damage done to others.

From a practical standpoint, this would require President Bush to acknowledge his incompetence and to step down voluntarily for this reason.

It seems unthinkable now. Should we wait for more to happen?

Written December 11, 2006

Americans walled in

The hypocrisy of the idea of building a wall on the Mexican border is that illegal immigrants come here not because they are people more inclined to break the law than others. They are needed here, and for every illegal immigrant working here there is an American employer breaking a law.

Instead of spending billions of dollars to build the wall, and then even more billions to staff and maintain it, we can just execute our current laws here that ban employment of undocumented immigrants. If there is not any work, they will not be coming. However, everybody knows that this law is unenforceable here. The wall, in fact, is against American employers.

Written September 26, 2006

How to leave Iraq without leaving it?

The prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq seems to be fruitless. Our soldiers die and get wounded. Opponents claim that the Iraqi insurgency is fueled by America’s presence there. Supporters warn that if the Americans leave, a civil war would erupt. The best solution would be to leave Iraq without leaving it. Can it be done? Yes.

We need to leave Iraq as quickly as logistics allow. Before leaving, we need to establish a few self-contained military bases there that would allow us to come back and deploy our Army with a full force within a matter of a few weeks, if needed. We should tell the Iraqis that we expect them to govern themselves in their best interest, with respect to international laws. We should offer them economic help. We might expect some increase of sectarian violence just after we leave. However, we should state that if things would go out of control there – we may define some benchmarks – we would be back on short notice.

There is both hope and rational arguments that when left alone, Iraqis will find a peaceful way of working together. If things would turn worse and we would need to go back, most Iraqis would see us as liberators then.

Written September 07, 2006

The war in Iraq is already won, by Iran

Listening to arguments of proponents of our prolonged military presence in Iraq – Bill O’Reilly of Fox News would be a good example – one can conclude that the war in Iraq is already won, by Iran.

This makes the war in Iraq even more like Vietnam. We were there not because of the Vietnamese, but because of the Soviet Union and China. Now we need to stay in Iraq not because of the Iraqis, but to oppose Iran, Syria and all Islam extremists around the World.

At the time the war started, I wrote a column “What else can go wrong?”. Reading that text now, particularly the last paragraph, is chilling.

Written August 10, 2006

Knowing where we are heading

The current immigration law did not work as intended, and it resulted in millions of aliens working here illegally. Many politicians want to try to resolve the problem of illegal immigrants and illegal border crossing first, and then fix the currently not functioning legal immigration system. It is like pumping water from a sinking boat first, and fixing the hole in the bottom of the boat later.

In my approach, before we would decide what to do with illegal aliens, we would need to know how we want to handle legal immigration in the future. Therefore, for the sake of discussion, we need to put the current immigration mess aside, and agree on a system of legal immigration that is good for the country, and that would not cause us such havoc again. Knowing where we are heading, we can go back to the currently illegal immigrants and decide if and how some of them might be allowed to legalize their status.

Written July 07, 2006

How to end the war in Iraq in nine weeks

The first twins, Barbara and Jenna, need to enlist in the Army, and select a unit that will guarantee that they are sent to Iraq immediately after basic training. If this happened, Bush opponents would likely suspect a big propaganda hoax, guessing that the twins would be given some deskwork assignments far from the danger zones. To show that the twins’ enlistment is for real, the Army would have no choice but to assign them some real front-line duties. Even if they were looked after, the situation in Iraq is so unpredictable that the chances of the twins being killed would be close to those of any other soldier serving there.

The twins’ enlistment in the Army would cause some confusion at first. However, by the time it became obvious that the girls really wanted to go through with it, Laura and Barbara would form an anti-war lobby. The war would be over before the twins finished their nine-week basic training.

Rarely in the history of humankind has so much depended on so few.

Written June 17, 2006

So little, so late

Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is history. Finally, there is a measurable success in an otherwise murky situation. Someone will collect $25 million dollars. It appears that money motivated someone to provide critical information to Americans.

Zarqawi was behind cruel murders; he passionately killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. At a certain point within his three years of operation, at least a few thousand people knew of his whereabouts. No one decided that the killing should stop. It appears that Americans were not able to convince even one person within the leadership of the underground opposition in Iraq to switch to our cause. Someone took our money, but no one there seems to believe in our cause. This is troubling.

Zarqawi is gone. Americans achieved so little, so late.

Written June 12, 2006

What is the rush on the immigration bill for?

Last week, the Senate rushed to pass its version of the Immigration Reform bill. As critics rightfully are pointing out, this bill repeats major weaknesses of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It just added stronger language, proving one more time that politicians believe that magic spells solve problems. There is only a slim chance of finding a compromise with Congress, as most congressional representatives are even further from reality and common sense – they would like to expel all illegal immigrants and make it hard for them to return. Nevertheless, commentators say that legislators will try to pass a new immigration bill before the November election, as it might be an election issue. Let us make it an election issue, and let leave it to the voters to decide. What is the urgency in passing – what is likely – a new bad immigration law now, instead of waiting until after voters would have a chance to speak out?

Written May 30, 2006

No amnesty for illegal aliens

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 did not work as intended. Candidly, this law did not have provisions for American employers to get legally the foreign workers they needed. Many aliens who were able to find jobs here could not do it legally either. Realizing that the existing immigration law is flawed, law enforcement agencies did not enforce it. Now, when this faulty law has resulted in 12 million illegal residents in the country, the legislators are turning around and telling them “It is your fault; you have to pay a hefty fine to legalize your status.” Illegal immigrants did not vote in the faulty law, Congress did. It is time for Congress to take responsibility for its actions and recognize that the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was a bad law that needs to be revoked. No amnesty is necessary. Congress needs to apologize to all Americans and foreigners that were inconvenienced by the bad law.

Written May 25, 2006

A simple way of stopping illegal immigrants from coming

Now that the economy is in good shape, almost every illegal immigrant finds a job here and stays. If somehow we could convert the current economical boom into a crisis, there would be no more jobs here. Immigrants living here illegally would go back home, and new ones would not be coming. One of the possible ways to convert a current boom into a recession could be by implementing new taxes needed to build the wall and pay for effective border control. With new taxes, people would have less money to spend; therefore, there would be less need for goods and services provided by illegal aliens. A new wall and enhanced border control might actually stop many illegal immigrants. With fewer of them, there would be no more abundant supply of cheap labor; therefore, the costs of products and services would go up. With Americans having less money and higher prices, the crisis might become permanent; therefore, there would be no jobs for illegal immigrants, and most of them would leave for good.

Written May 22, 2006

Politicians are right; reality is wrong

Twenty years ago, Congress presumed how fast the economy would grow in the future, and how many foreign workers it might need. It passed immigration laws with quotas specifying the number of immigrants allowed in to the country every year. However, even Congress cannot predict the future. Economy grew faster than expected, absorbing 12 million more people than bureaucrats anticipated. Instead of eliminating the hurdle of these ridiculous immigration laws, now lawmakers want to build a wall to stop new workers from coming. If reality disproves what politicians envision, it is bad for reality.

Written May 18, 2006

Can we agree

not to use

words

like “liberal” or “conservative”?

“Liberals hate it” – one can read this on the billboards advertising some conservative radio station. In their disgust for conservatives or “neocons”, liberals perfectly mirror the same attitude, despite the fact that they cannot afford to put it on billboards. There is a pending war, immigration is a mess, 46 million Americans have no health insurance, and our social security fund might dry out soon. Can we discuss these issues without name-calling? Can we agree to discuss our problems without using words like ”liberal” or “conservative; but by finding what the facts are, and by trying to understand what they mean to us in the context of the knowledge accumulated during about 5000 years of our civilization?

Written May 15, 2006

Ask your doctor if

(fill the blank)

is good for you

TV is full of one-minute tutorials on many medical conditions. Every lecture ends with a suggestion: “Ask your doctor if (fill the blank) is good for you”. Health is precious to every person, and emotions easily prevail over reason. TV commercials appeal to our feelings and try to sell to us the magic pill that our doctor might have overlooked.

My doctor spent long years in medical school and she continuously upgrades her knowledge. She is an expert that I trust. If, after a one-minute evening “class”, I would feel a need to ask her if (fill the blank) is good for me, it would mean that I do not trust her anymore. Therefore, she could not be my doctor then.

Freedom, that Americans value so much, means also that nonsense has the same right to be propagated as wisdom does. There are so many commercials about drugs – apparently, they work well for pharmaceutical companies. It also means that a meaningful number of Americans place more value on one-minute TV education over long years in the medical school. In other words, feelings govern a reason.

Written May 10, 2006

Polls on immigration confirm what is known already, Americans do not understand much

It is unproductive to ask Americans what they think about immigration. Public is simply misinformed and emotionally charged by, let face it, chauvinistic feelings. Politicians and intellectuals failed to analyze the problem before phrasing solutions. To begin with, we have this immigration mess because Americans do not understand this issue and did what they thought was right. We have to ask Americans to rethink their position on immigration. Even if most Americans would agree on a wrong solution, it still would be just the wrong solution.

Written May 04, 2006

Who is at the crossroads?

“Immigrants at crossroads” calls Chicago Tribune headline today. Are they? About 11 millions of them stay here despite that it is illegal. Many have risked their lives when crossing the border. At the same time, Americans are evenly split on whether to keep immigrants here or send them back home. Who is at the crossroads? Nothing would be resolved until we have the courage to name what the problem is.

Written May 01, 2006

Something needs to be done...

Five-year-old Josh Martin of Naperville was playing with his 8-year-old brother during a family trip to a Lowe’s improvement store. Josh ended up trapped in one of the store’s display safes. It appears that it was not the first incident that the child was endangered when playing with display safes in Lowe’s stores.

“Something needs to be done, I want to see the safes secured” – says Josh’s mother. She is right, exactly two percent right. She should be reported to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as a neglecting mother.

The stores, Lowe’s or any other store, are not children’s playground. They are not designed for this purpose, and stores do not have personnel to monitor children running along the aisles. The stores are public places and it is the responsibility of a parent or a guardian to have children under continuous supervision.

Josh stayed locked in the safe for fifteen minutes, and they are lucky that this was the only distress they experienced. When playing unsupervised in the store, Josh could drink Windex, eat rat poison or be given candies by a child molester.

Written April 29 2006

Cutting the branch...

“Baby boomers” are reaching retirement age. There will be more people collecting Social Security checks, and fewer will be working. Many are concerned that the Social Security system might become insolvent. Several years ago, the media was full of predictions that the system could collapse soon. It did not, due to the economic boom. Indeed, the Social Security fund received extra cash from new employees, many of them immigrants - 12 million of them here illegally. By throwing illegal immigrants out of the country and building the wall to prevent the new ones from arriving, Americans would cut off a critical source of cash inflow into the Social Security fund. They would cut off the branch they are sitting on.

Written April 25, 2006