Monday, May 30, 2011

Paying for College

May 30, 2011, 8:00 a.m.

Allocating Costs; Setting the Price

The Sunday Des Moines Register of May 22, 2011, had a major, page one spread about the rising costs of a college education. Except it wasn't about the cost of education. It was about the rising price of that education, comparing the increase in the share of those costs allocated to tuition with the rising price of peanut butter, milk and eggs. More on the Register's piece on down the blog.

First, here is my 300-word-limit response in the next week's Sunday Register, May 29:

Legislature shifted the cost of education
Nicholas Johnson
Des Moines Register
May 29, 2011, p. P20

"The Challenge for Students, Parents and Schools: Runaway Tuition" (May 22), helped focus attention on the rising price of a college education.

Unfortunately, it conflated the "price" (to the student and parents) with the "cost" (to the universities) of that education.

Can universities do more to reduce the costs of education? Can they increase the quality and utility of that education? Absolutely.

However, it's both unfair and inaccurate to suggest that the sole cause of rising tuition is the increase in costs resulting from poor management by the Iowa Board of Regents and administrators.

A major reason for the increase in tuition is not the cost of education, but the allocation of those costs between taxpayers (who receive a public benefit from a well educated workforce) and the private beneficiaries (the students who go on to better jobs and lives).

When California universities charged no tuition, that didn't mean they had no costs. It meant taxpayers paid those costs.

The most appropriate allocation? That's a debate worth having.

But for now, let's recognize that it is the Iowa Legislature that has chosen to allocate an ever-increasing share of the costs to students' tuition; not
the Iowa Board of Regents, universities' administrators or faculty members.
Here are some early excerpts from the Register story the week before, followed by some comments.

Iowa's two largest universities expect to pocket millions of dollars in extra tuition revenue next fiscal year, with the vast majority going to pay for
additional faculty, programs aimed at lowering dropout rates and other student services, officials said.

That decision comes as the cost of earning a four-year degree in Iowa at a public university continues a steep march upward and pushes students to take on more debt, which, at $26,066 per graduating student, is the fourth-highest average in the country.

In the past 30 years, the average cost of tuition and fees at an Iowa public university has jumped 707 percent, more than four times the rate of inflation. College costs have increased each of the past 30 years for students and their families.

Meanwhile, a new survey shows families and students saddled with rising tuition and debt, stagnant wages and an uncertain job market are questioning whether a traditional college education is their ticket to the American dream.

Some universities are trying to respond to the converging forces with innovative classroom approaches and three-year degree programs. . . .

Americans are reassessing what they get for their tuition dollars.

Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center say the higher education system does not provide a good value for the money they spend, and 75 percent say college is too expensive for most Americans to afford, according to findings released last week.
Jens Manuel Krogstad, "Runaway tuition: A challenge for students, parents and schools," Des Moines Register, May 22, 2011, p. A1.

I acknowledge in the response to the Register's report, "Can universities do more to reduce the costs of education? . . . Absolutely." Frankly, I don't know enough to support that "absolutely" judgment. It's based simply on the intuition and experience that virtually every individual, business, government agency, and institution that is willing to address in detail its systems and processes, goals and operations, can probably come up with ways to reduce costs, at least a little -- often while improving quality and outputs.

It may well be that the salaries of universities' personnel, and the other costs of education (as distinguished from the price of education, tuition), have increased significantly further and faster than inflation in the costs of producing other goods and services. If so, that's a matter well worth investigating. If the increases represent necessary costs, held to the minimum, wise investments, and other consequences of skilled, creative and attentive management, that's one thing. If not, if alternative decisions could have produced greater quantity and quality of service at lower cost, that's another.

The point, for purposes of critiquing this Register story, is that it only addresses the increases in the price of education, not the costs of providing that education.

Beyond that, there was another opinion piece in the Sunday paper [May 29] of even greater relevance to America's future than my 300 words.

Robert Reich, the former U.S. secretary of labor, is now an author, columnist, blogger, and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkley, testifies before Congress from time to time. The Register published as an essay an excerpt from his May 12 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. It's vey much worth reading in its entirety; indeed it could be characterized as must reading for every American and public official.

To give you an idea of his subject, and thesis, here is is lead paragraph:


In the course of answering those questions, here's what he had to say about the role of higher education:



Government could have enforced the basic bargain. But it did the opposite. It slashed public goods and investments -- whacking school budgets, increasing the cost of public higher education, reducing job training, cutting public transportation and allowing bridges, ports and highways to corrode. . . .

He concludes:

The fundamental economic challenge ahead is to restore the vast American middle class. That requires resurrecting the basic bargain linking wages to overall gains, and providing the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce. As we should have learned from the Great Prosperity -- the 30 years after World War II when America grew because most Americans shared in the nation's prosperity -- we cannot have a growing and vibrant economy without a growing and vibrant middle class.
"To restore the vast American middle class" is going to require, among many other things discussed by Reich, a restoration of affordable post-high school college education -- as well as a reduction in the price of community college education, and skills training in the trades.


# # #

Saturday, May 21, 2011

The School Bored, Take Two

May 21, 2011, 11:45 a.m.

The Press-Citizen's Opinion Editor, Jeff Charis-Carlson, asked that I provide, in 300 words or less, a full analysis of what our local, departing, school board members should do between May and September, when their terms run out. Given how much they accomplished prior to this month, 300 words turned out to be plenty of space to itemize what they might do by September. Here is my reply to Jeff, as published in this morning's paper. [Old photo is illustrative only, and does not picture current Board members or Superintendent.]

Just What's a Board to Do?
Nicholas Johnson
Iowa City Press-Citizen
May 21, 2011, p. A17

As I used to say when I was a board member, "You may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief."

The departing Iowa City School Board members have received their share.

Now their terms are coming to an end.

As Frank Sinatra used to remind us:

Oh, it's a long, long time from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game.

The current board, with its uncanny skill at "the waiting game," now finds its days growing short as they rush past on their way to September.

It would be nice if they could resolve the Hills Elementary issues before they left, but that's unlikely -- and possibly even unwise.

Come September we'll have a new board -- and unless more incumbents decide to run for re-election, a new board majority. It will, necessarily, find itself confronting more challenges than it can resolve in short order.

What that board would find helpful from each of those departing are at least three things:

» Their individual, personal assessments of where the district is, the major challenges and opportunities it confronts, and the possible solutions -- both those theoretically ideal and those politically possible.

» Their personal assessments regarding what the rest of the country and world are doing in K-12 education -- best practices, evaluations of innovations, what works and what doesn't, and what ought to be given serious consideration by the next school board.

» What would they recommend regarding the process of goal setting and reporting on progress, relationships between board members, and between the board and the superintendent -- in short, governance?

The present board members may not have identified and solved all the problems. But they do have insights and experience to share.
Nicholas Johnson -- who manages and teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law -- served on the local Iowa City School Board from 1998 to 2001.

Here are some of the readers' comments the column produced:


4:38 AM on May 21, 2011

I also think of a quote. It's by Mark Twain:

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board"


7:36 AM on May 21, 2011

This Board has turned dysfunctional and has not been able to pull together- for the good and bad of that. It was time for rubber stamping to stop, it still is. Many new and hard questions have been put on them, but it seems like they spend more time dodging topics than looking into them in constructive manners. Hopefully the new board will be more responsive to the public and its need for input and questions answered. Now the question is - who wants the job?


8:09 AM on May 21, 2011

"Their personal assessments regarding what the rest of the country and world are doing in K-12 education -- best practices, evaluations of innovations, what works and what doesn't and what ought to be given serious consideration by the next school board."

The majority of the current Board has never been interested in the actual issue of education....will they suddenly make up talking points about it?

Now issues like signs at meetings...that is something they do care about, or endless discussions of who should go to school where...that is something our Board should make a priority.


8:56 AM on May 21, 2011

The ICCSD has shown no interest in what the rest of the country is doing. The rest of the country is implementing expanded open enrollment, they are encouraging home schooling, they are stopping the social engineering, they are addressing the problems with union control/lenght of tenure pay increases, and tenure based retention, they are focusing on pay for performance.

Most of all there parents are demanding a new focus on teaching reading, writing, and math. Teaching study skills and accountability - of teachers, students, and parents.

There is no interest in Iowa City in discussing any of these issues. Only in playing with the boundaries and fretting about economic inequality issues. Not teaching the children.

# # #

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Bike to Work, Bike for Life

May 17, 2011, 6:45 a.m.

Bicycles as Problem Solvers

Iowa City is once again devoting a week to reflecting upon, and riding upon, bicycles as a preferred system of small town transportation. Emily Schlettler, "Bike to Work Week Celebrated," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 17, 2011, p. A3.

The conclusion from the bike, car, and bus race across town, from the Coralville Library to the Iowa City Library? "[T]he commute takes about the same amount of time, no matter what mode of transportation." As Schlettler quotes Coralville City Council member Tom Gill as saying, "'Why burn the gas? The commute by bike is more convenient and quicker.'"

Of course, there are many more reasons than efficiency and comparable speed for biking. Here are some of them:

Costs. Even without $4 or $5 gas, operating a car is extraordinarily expensive -- and even more in time than in money. Years ago, when the average mileage was 7500 miles a year, I calculated (a) the total costs of car ownership: amortization of the purchase price, gas and oil, repairs, insurance and license fees, parking fees, tolls, and so forth. (b) The amount of time it would take the average car owner to earn the money to pay these costs -- plus the time it takes to drive the car, take the car to the mechanic and pick it up, pump the gas, look for parking, and similar non-transportation, car-related time consumption. (c) The total time totaled 1500 hours a year. (d) To take 1500 hours to go 7500 miles is an average of 5 miles an hour -- something you can do without an automobile in a very brisk walk. (e) Can't get from Iowa City to Des Moines that way? Think again. You start working, I'll start walking. I'll be there before you. And that's walking! A biker who's in shape ought to be able to average 20 miles an hour and get there days before you do. This may not be a reason to never own, rent, or otherwise operate an automobile. But unless you are so wealthy that "money is no object," it is certainly something to think about for trips around town when a bike would do as well, or better than, a car. You can acquire, operate, maintain and insure a bicycle for roughly 1% of the cost of a car.

Time Saving, Convenience. Parking in an urban area can be a real hassle, as well as an added cost, whether navigating a parking garage or looking for street parking. My rule of thumb when looking for street parking in the Georgetown area of Washington was to pick the first parking space I could find within one mile of my destination. The 15-minute walk would take less time than driving around and around looking for a closer place to park. Iowa City's not that bad, but you can no longer pull up in front of your downtown destination (and not have to deal with parking meters!), as was the case when I was a boy. And don't talk to me about parking garages! The ticket often turns into nothing more than a hunting license, as you drive around and around, ever upward, until you end up parking on the roof. And allow plenty of time to exit, especially if you're coming from an event where numerous other attendees are in line ahead of you trying to get out.

You don't have to warm up your bike in the winter. You don't have to search for your car keys (if you have a combination lock for the bike). The odds are good there will be either a bike rack, or something else to lock your bike to, right outside the front door of your destination. And you will be taking up about 1/30th the space required for a car when you do so.

War for Oil. We send our brave soldiers off to war around the world in search of an answer to the perplexing question: "How did our oil get under their sand?" It costs us taxpayers trillions of dollars to provide this military protection for our oil companies -- not to mention tens of thousands of lives, and hundreds of thousands of wounded, Americans and others, military and civilian. Bicycles do require a little lubricant for the chain from time to time, but aside from that their only demands for energy involve peddling with your leg muscles.

And Speaking of Muscles -- and Obesity. You can bike outdoors all over town for a month for far less than what your favorite fitness center will charge you to bike in one place indoors. And if you're interested in firming up, and losing a little weight -- and who isn't -- biking just may be your answer. It's cheaper than Lipitor and better for your heart -- as well as a positive for prevention of diabetes and cancer. In fact, virtually every bit of advice about our health, regardless of the disease or injury in question, ends up coming back to "diet and exercise."

Multitasking. "Don't move your thumbs while I'm talking." Students sit in class with their laptops, managing their Facebook pages. Couples sit in restaurants, each on their cell phone. Kids think they can do their homework while watching TV, talking on the phone to one person, while texting another. Whatever you think about those kids of electronic multitasking, bicycling offers another that is in no way socially offensive. You have to go to work, or shop for groceries. If you drive, maybe you'll listen to the radio, music, or engage in the risky behavior of talking on a cell phone or texting. But if you hop on your bike, instead of hopping into the car, for those trips (or even portions of them; drive to cheap parking, with a bike rack and your bike; bike the rest of the way) you're multitasking: building exercise into your day in a way that takes no additional time (or money!) whatsoever. Bike baskets can carry many of the items you formerly drove to the store to get; and if you want to do more, the relatively cheap bike trailers will enable you to carry almost anything -- up to and including your small child.

Stress Reduction. Driving can be noisy, aggravating and stressful. Biking makes virtually no noise and is more calming and peaceful; the additional oxygen to the brain makes you more creative. You are closer to nature and know you're doing something that uses no fuel, is non-polluting, and healthier for both you and the Planet. And that's just for the commuting and shopping trips. With 80 miles of bike trails locally, there's also safe recreational riding -- such as the Clear Creek trail from Iowa City to the Coral Ridge Mall, or the Iowa River Corridor Trail from the City Park to the new Terry Trueblood Recreation Area and lake along Sand Road. That will really clear your mind.

The list could go on and on, but as a concession to the necessary shortness of a blog entry, and life itself, it will stop here.

Finally, for old time's sake, a republication of a column I wrote on the subject for the New York Times some 38 years ago. A little background: I was then working as an FCC Commissioner in downtown Washington, D.C., living in Maryland, and commuting by bicycle each day along the C&O Canal towpath. The facts it contains are from 1973, and the theme of the column is as much an anti-automobile and petroleum-based transportation system tirade as pro-bicycle -- as befits the early '70s. But many of the points are still valid. Chapter 7 ["Antidote for Automobiles"] in Test Pattern for Living, published by Bantam Books at about that time (and now available for free download), strikes a similar theme.

"Bicycles are Model Citizens"
The Bicycle -- It's Like Giving Up Smoking
New York Times
August 2, 1973, p. 35, col. 2

I ride a bicycle. Not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice.

I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution tonnage in the United States.


Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are working for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all.

No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on, you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure and care for.


You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind.


You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts, it should last almost forever.

Your satisfaction comes from within you, and not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the [C&O] canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people, folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrol," men unloading trucks.

Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limousine.



The automobile accounts for at least 66 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all-carbon monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year.

One million acres of land are paved each years, there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon.



The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

Happy biking -- not just for "Bike to Work Week," but the other 51 weeks as well.

# # #

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Religious Indictment of Republicanism

May 14, 2011, 7:00 a.m.


Catholic University Professors Say Republican Budget
Violates Basic Catholic Moral Teachings

-- President John F. Kennedy, January 9, 1961


-- "Tzedakah," Judaism 101.

-- "Islam,"





Federal Government.










State Government.

Now here are a couple of examples from Des Moines.










Local Government.


















Build that and they will come.
"Understanding TIFs," October 5, 2006.










President Kennedy once put it this way:


# # #

Monday, May 09, 2011

Justice Was Done

May 9, 2011, 4:45 p.m.
And see, "Bin Laden Killed -- Significance? The Two-Trilion-Dollar Assassination" May 1, 2011; and the additional points made in Gregory Johnson, "The Impact and Consequences of Osama Bin Laden's Assassination," May 1, 6, 7, 10, 2011.

Examining Heads
Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that [Osama Bin Laden] the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.

-- President Barack Obama, CBS "60 Minutes," May 8, 2011
Bin Laden is dead. Many Americans seem to believe that the only appropriate thing to say on such an occasion is "USA! USA!" or "We're Number One!" They may even be right about that. At a minimum, for anyone to sit back and reflect on what we did and how and why we did it risks an accusation of "un-American" at best. That makes this blog entry one of the most difficult to write.

No matter how precisely it is conditioned and qualified, given the emotional subject matter the odds are good that at least some readers will come away with the impression that I (a) do not fully and appropriately appreciate the accomplishment of the Navy SEALS who killed Ben Ladin, (b) the daring and skill of President Obama and his advisers, or, worst of all, (c) am somewhat ambivalent about the desirability of eliminating Bin Laden.

All those assertions would be false.

Clearly, the world -- not just the United States -- is better off without Bin Laden; and the intelligence gathering, planning, training, and professional execution of those plans by the Obama Team and Navy SEALS qualifies as one of America's greatest intelligence and special operations accomplishments ever.


Moreover, there are no claims here of either expertise, or the knowledge supported by research, regarding international law or criminal law. These are just some random thoughts about the events of a week ago.

1. Justice. What does the President mean by "Justice was done"? "Bringing someone to justice," or saying "He got justice," carries at least two possible meanings. (a) It can mean "revenge," or "retribution" -- "an eye for an eye." This was the meaning in America's "lawless" wild west -- where the advice to "shoot first, ask questions later" enabled anyone carrying a gun to play all the parts: legislature, complainant, investigator, arresting officer, county attorney, grand jury, judge, jury, warden and executioner, and to play all of them within a fraction of a second. It was what enabled the KKK to carry out lynchings without the bother of troublesome "legal technicalities." It's the mafia's approach to settling scores, the urban gangs' protection of their territory, and the cause of the tens of thousands of dead Mexicans who got in the way of the drug cartels.

(b) But bringing someone to justice can also mean that someone believed to be guilty is put through the judicial system, and process -- and provided its protections -- before they are killed or otherwise punished. Some of those involved in terrorist plots in the U.S., including that on 9/11, have been "brought to justice" in this sense. Clearly, had Bin Laden, like the others, been brought to justice in this sense, and a judge and jury concluded that Bin Laden was in fact, as Obama asserted, the "perpetrator of mass murder on American soil," the President could then accurately assert (if one accepts that a jury verdict is the definition of "legal truth") that Bin Laden did "deserve what he got." (Although, even then, were he given the death penalty, he would probably have died by lethal injection under medical supervision rather than a shot to the head in a bedroom in the middle of the night.)

Thus, we must conclude that our President was using the word "justice" in the American wild west sense.

2. Killing in Context. Not all killing is "murder." A reasonable apprehension that one is under attack and at risk of being killed may turn the killing of the attacker from "murder" into "self defense." Reckless, though sober, driving at excessive speed, with absolutely no intention of killing anyone, may turn a pedestrian's death from "murder" into "manslaughter." The insanity of the defendant may protect him. And, of course, the debate continues in state legislatures and elsewhere regarding the circumstances under which "assisted suicide," or the aborting of a fetus, should be punished as murder.

3. Examining Heads. President Obama says, "anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."

(a) As mentioned above, such a statement totally ignores with a verbal leapfrog the matter of process. Of anyone found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of "mass murder" it can fairly be said that he did "deserve what he got," up to and including the death penalty. However, under our legal system of "justice" we make a distinction between a before-trial assertion and a post-conviction verdict.

(b) To say of someone that he "needs to have their head examined" is to close off any possibility of civil and rational discussion and exploration of issues.

This runs totally counter to what the President asserts is his approach to the exploration of issues and decision making:
[O]ne of the things that we've done here is to build a team . . . where everybody speaks their mind. . . . [W]hat I've tried to do is make sure that every time I sit down in the situation room, every one of my advisors around there knows I expect them to give me their best assessments.

(c) The fact is that not everyone agrees regarding the virtue of wild west assassinations. Of the 193 countries in the United Nations, 49% have abolished the death penalty. "Use of Capital Punishment by Nation," Sixteen U.S. states have banned the death penalty. Many of the world's great religions look askance at killing. When the U.S. military did its "recruiting" with a mandatory draft, even the military recognized the rights of "conscientious objectors" to refuse to serve in positions potentially requiring killing in war.

(d) Among those "some who voiced doubts about this approach" among the President's advisers, we cannot know the nature of their objections. But it does seem to me not totally unreasonable for someone to hold the view that we would have better served our national security by capturing and interrogating Bin Laden than by assassinating him.

For these and other reasons it does seem to me a bit out of line for the President to suggest that all who disagree with him do so as a result of mental deficiency or psychiatric disability.

4. War and Other International Law. Of course, a major exception to the prohibition of murder is "war." (a) For example, suppose it was the Pakistan Army rather than the Taliban that was running things in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden was the commanding general in charge inside the Pakistan Army Afghanistan headquarters, and, at the request of the Afghanistan government, the U.S. Congress had passed a declaration of war against Pakistan that included driving them out of Afghanistan (which they had invaded; as with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War). Under these circumstances, I believe that killing Bin Laden -- whether by bombing the headquarters where he was, or by making it a special ops mission -- would be justified under the rules of war and not considered murder.

But an analysis of the rationale for Bin Laden's assassination a week ago is not this clear cut.

Whatever it is we are doing, it is not a nation vs. nation war in the old World War II, or Gulf War I, sense. The U.S. military are the only combatants wearing uniforms. We are not fighting a nation, we are fighting an "ism" -- terrorism, "the war on terrorism."

It is apparently our theory that it is a "war," subject to the rules of war, because we say it is a war, rather than, say, an international police crime-fighting effort.

Because this is not a war against any one nation, does this mean that we can, in the name of "war," enter any and all nations, without their invitation or permission, whenever we want to so long as we can offer a credible claim that there are "terrorists" in that country? Apparently so. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq as "wars of choice," fly drones over Yemen (also on assassination missions) -- and now Pakistan.

President Obama acknowledged as much:
Obviously, we're going into the sovereign territory of another country [Pakistan] and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it's a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who's in this compound, and, you know, we've spent Special Forces in -- we've got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision.
Insofar as we were "conducting a military operation" in "the sovereign territory of another country," doesn't that raise the same issues whether it turns out to be Bin Laden or that Dubai prince?

The facts regarding the potential capture, but ultimate assassination, of Bin Laden remain unclear, at least to me. However, my understanding of international law (which may be wrong), is that those facts make a difference: If this were a conventional war, and our enemy wore uniforms, and we were in a position to kill one of them, but it was clear that they were off-guard, unarmed and wished to surrender, it is then not OK to assassinate them. Indeed, there have been instances in which American military have killed either enemy combatants, or what seem to have been innocent civilians, in such situations and been court martialed for doing so.

No, to be clear, I am in no way suggesting our brave SEALS should be court martialed. Of course not. It may very well be that, regardless of the circumstances, it was appropriate and legal to kill him. But it does seem to me the distinctions are worth noting and reflecting upon anyway.

This was not shooting at someone in a uniform, who was shooting at us, on a battlefield in a country to which we had been invited to conduct military operations. This was entering the territory of a sovereign nation with a military operation, not only without invitation or permission, but with advance notice of repeated objections to our conducting military operations there. Although located in a town with Pakistani military installations, the home in which Bin Laden was shot was in a suburban residential neighborhood. It was the middle of the night, in a private home with some 20 residents, in the bedroom where he was with his wife. Best as I can tell from newspaper reports, although he was "resisting" (after all, who wouldn't), he was unarmed and represented no physical danger to the SEALS.

Not incidentally, not only was there some question as to whether this operation was going to work, there was some question as to whether the man they found there was, in fact, Bin Laden.

President Obama:
This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence that we had was not absolutely conclusive. This was circumstantial evidence that he was gonna be there. . . . But we didn't have a photograph of bin Laden in that building. There was no direct evidence of his presence. . . . And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I mean there're a lot of moving parts here. . . . as outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did -- and I cannot praise them enough they did an extraordinary job with just the slenderest of bits of information to piece this all together -- at the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation. I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences. . . .


PRESIDENT OBAMA: When they landed [presumably this is a reference to landing back in Afghanistan] we had very strong confirmation at that point that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that in fact it was him. We hadn't yet done DNA testing, but at that point we were 95 percent sure. . . .
5. Concluding Comments.

The entire "60 Minutes" interview is available in video, below, followed by textual excerpts that I found relevant to the discussion above.


I'm as pleased as anyone that Bin Laden is no longer walking the earth. I do not think that anyone needs be prosecuted for war crimes. But the President is invoking "who we are":
But we don't need to spike the football. . . . [W]e don't trot out this stuff [photos of Bin Laden's wounds] as trophies. . . . [T]hat's not who we are. . . .

We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body . . . consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body. . . . [T]hat, again, is somethin' that makes us different.
And so I ask, "who are we?" Because the answer to that question, our occupation of the world's moral high ground, is going to involve a little more than the sophistication of a Grade B Hollywood western in which we all cheer when the white hats kill off the black hats in the final scene.

"Obama on Bin Laden: The Full '60 Minutes' Interview," CBS, May 8, 2011 -- the video, followed by relevant textual excerpts:




And so the fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information. . . . [T]here were sufficient risks involved where it wasn't as if any of the folks who were voicing doubts were voicing somethin' that I wasn't already runnin' through in my own head. You know, we understood that there were some significant risks involved in this. . . .



KROFT: Why haven't you released them [photos of Bin Laden]?


You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. . . .

KROFT: Was it your decision to bury him at sea?



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Sunday, May 01, 2011

Bin Laden Killed -- Significance?

May 1, 2011, 9:30 p.m.

The Two-Trillion-Dollar Assassination

[See Amy Belasco, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011.]

Media started reporting this evening [May 1] that American military have killed Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Of course, it's a big story, a major development in the "War on Terror," and clearly a courageous and competently executed major military accomplishment.

However, the remarkable thing, it seems to me, is not just that the American military, CIA and its allies have succeeded in killing him, it is that it has taken us nearly 10 years to track him down and do so.

Especially is this so when we discover that he was found, not on the run, moving from cave-to-cave in northwestern Pakistan, but inside a million-dollar compound with 12-18-foot walls, a few blocks from a military academy (the Pakistan version of West Point), 40 (or 75?) miles from the national capital. (Photo credit: T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency and New York Times.)

The White House, having learned its lessons regarding the limitations on the persuasive capacity of birth certificates, reports that our military apparently has not only the paperwork and photos, but is prepared to show the world Bin Laden's DNA and body.

Oh, they're not? They "buried" his body at sea? They're now saying, "Trust us. We've matched his DNA. Sorry about the body"? Oh, well, never mind. Maybe the White House didn't master the birth certificate lessons as well as first thought. Maybe they will soon be making public Bin Laden's long-form death certificate.

But the story is being hyped by the media I've been reading and watching as the virtual end of our "War on Terrorism" -- a "Mission Accomplished!" as it were, and a cause for jubilation.

That part is not clear to me, at least not at this point.

(1) Al Qaeda is not a hierarchical organization, like the U.S. Department of Defense, or a major corporation with a single CEO. Bin Laden has not been "running" the day-to-day operations of Al Qaeda. Nor will his replacements do so. Think a U.S. presidential campaign, or the "environmental movement" -- thousands of people sharing a belief, an ideology, a goal, who are otherwise pretty much on their own in coming up with activities they think will advance that end. Bin Laden has been a symbol, an icon, "the founder," a way to increase tee shirt sales by displaying his photo. This role was not buried at sea; it will, if anything, increase following his death. Think Elvis, and how much more money he earns in death than he did in life. ("The King's earnings after death topped what he made while alive by 1988." "Richest Dead Celebrities," Feb. 23, 2011.)

We need to pay attention to the statement by Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban: "If he [Bin Laden] has been martyred, we will avenge his death and launch attacks against American and Pakistani governments and their security forces. If he has become a martyr, it is a great victory for us because martyrdom is the aim of all of us." Issam Ahmed and Owais Tohid, Osama bin Laden killed near Pakistan's West Point. Was he really hidden?; The world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, was not hiding in a cave along the lawless border with Afghanistan, as many believed. Instead, US forces killed him 75 miles north of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad," Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 2011.

So much for the blow we've struck against Al Qaeda; a loss, for sure, but one that provides advantages to Al Qaeda as well, and increased risks to us.

(2) To the extent the movement needs a leader, there lots of "second in command" to fill that role.

(3) Indeed, there is as great a likelihood -- if not more -- that his having been killed will increase terrorist recruitment and intensify terrorist attacks against America and its allies, rather than reduce them. To the extent there are both moderate and extremist elements in that part of the world who express objection to Americans' values, our military presence, their civilian deaths from our unmanned but well-armed drone planes, what they view as our offenses against Islam (e.g., the minister's burning of the Koran), there is no reason to believe their hostility toward us will change for the better.

That does not diminish the courage, extraordinary skill and accomplishment of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), including Navy Seals, or the congratulations, awe and appreciation they are owed.

But it may mean that we should moderate our celebration and postpone the jubilation until we get a firmer fix on what Bin Laden's death means for our future.

We're still awaiting the President's promised remarks at this point in time. Presumably he'll cover many of these points -- and possibly move me to have more to say.

[May 2, 2011, 9:25 a.m.: The text of his remarks is now available, "Remarks by the President on Osama Bin Laden," Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 2, 2011. Apparently he felt that was not the time or occasion to address some of the issues raised above.]

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