The Rutland (Vt.) Herald, Jan. 26, 2012
President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address Tuesday to draw a distinction between going forward toward a brighter future and going back to the policies that brought us economic disaster.
He used the success of the Navy Seals who apprehended and killed Osama bin Laden as an example of what teamwork and cooperation can accomplish. He sketched out a hopeful message that contrasted favorably with the dark and bitter language emanating from Republican candidates who remain convinced the nation is on the road to perdition.
Economic fairness was at the center of his message. "You can call it class warfare all you want," he said. But he said economic fairness was a matter of common sense. Evoking the so-called Buffett rule, he said it made no sense that billionaire Warren Buffett's secretary paid a higher tax rate than Buffett did. Buffett himself agrees, and to underscore the point, his secretary was in the gallery with first lady Michelle Obama.
The inequities of the tax code have become all the more obvious in recent days as Mitt Romney's tax returns have become public. Romney, with an income of about $20 million a year, also paid a lower percentage than Buffett's secretary.
The point that Obama needs to make clear to the American people is that he seeks to raise taxes on the wealthy not out of envy or resentment or ideology, but as a matter of economic necessity. If the nation is to improve education, health care, infrastructure and energy technology, it needs resources. The choice is there: Find the resources that will allow us to pursue a positive agenda or continue to lavish tax benefits on the wealthy and on favored corporations. Republicans don't like that agenda, and so they oppose efforts to find the resources to pursue it.
Republicans faced a Franklin Roosevelt moment in 2009: They figured that if Obama succeeded in carrying out a positive agenda to rescue the economy and institute a pioneering program in energy, technology and public works, they would face political oblivion. Knowing that the best defense is a good offense, they went on the offensive to try to deny Obama a New Deal-like success that would marginalize Republicans.
The result has been gridlock, and the economy has sputtered. But it is "getting stronger," as Obama said. He faces the enormous challenge of running for re-election at a time when unemployment is still above 8 percent. But as he noted in his address, the private sector has created 3 million jobs in the last 22 months. That's after job losses numbering 8 million during the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009.
He highlighted the success of his administration in rescuing the U.S. auto industry, a bailout for which Republicans thrashed him. Obama can tell voters that he was willing to absorb the criticism in order to do the right thing, restoring thousands of jobs as a result. One consequence, he said, was that General Motors has returned to its position as the No. 1 automaker in the world.
It was interesting that Obama bracketed his message with a discussion of his successes in ending the Iraq war and killing bin Laden. It was a way of framing his three years in office by events that are undeniably positive. The success of Obama's foreign policy — including his handling of the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, as well as his success in attacking al-Qaida and the Taliban — leaves Republicans floundering for grounds to attack him. They have settled on bellicose rhetoric, verging on war-mongering, about Iran.
Obama felt compelled to state that all options were on the table with regard to Iran and its nuclear program, but he said a peaceful resolution was a far better option than war. That is a view that, GOP saber rattling notwithstanding, the American people are likely to share.
The Cape Cod Times, Jan. 24, 2012
Even before new recruits step onto the painted yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or San Diego, they have already been told by their recruiters that discipline — personal discipline — will be required in order to earn the title of Marine.
It won't matter whether a recruit learns how to spell discipline correctly (drill instructors will make every effort to ensure they can), but every graduate will have the concept relentlessly imprinted every moment at boot camp. One cannot graduate from boot camp without conforming to the Marine Corps' definition of discipline, which controls everything, including when to use the toilet.
The four Marine Scout Snipers recorded urinating on dead Taliban fighters suffered a grave lapse in discipline that goes against all their military training and, most likely, all they'd been taught about respect for others before joining the Marines.
According to Headquarters Marine Corps, a Marine who aspires to the military occupational specialty of Scout Sniper must meet higher standards — including standards of discipline — than the typical infantryman. Among the requirements are a General Technical score of at least 100 in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, no courts martial or nonjudicial punishment in the last six months, no history of mental illness and a perfect score on the physical fitness test. Candidates, the directives say, should also "possess a high degree of maturity, equanimity and common sense."
There is no excuse for the snipers' behavior, and the act, as it appears on YouTube, is reprehensible. The smiles on the faces and the chuckles of the Marines recorded in the video are disturbing. Those bodies, not long before, were living, breathing beings who were certainly sons of parents, and were perhaps husbands, fathers and brothers. They were also, not long before, enemies determined to end the lives of the men now accused of desecrating their corpses.
The act of desecration was intended to dishonor the dead, but it dishonored the four Marines in particular, and the Corps and the armed services in general. It was meant to deprive the dead of their dignity, but it was the four Marines who relinquished their own.
When U.S. troops were dragged through the streets and desecrated in Mogadishu, Somalia, or when Blackwater contractors were burned and hung from the Fallujah bridge in Iraq, it enraged and appalled civilians and it motivated servicemen and women, but it didn't grant license for payback.
For the vast majority of Americans, these circumstances can only be discussed vicariously: We're sitting in an ivory tower whose walls extend from sea to shining sea. Anyone's first reaction to either the video or reports of the incident says plenty about our own belief structure and moral fabric, but it says nothing of how we would react had we been standing in those Marines' boots, wearing their desert camouflage and carrying their body armor half a world away from home.
Every war has its outrages, but not all of those outrages meet the standards of war crimes.
They are immoral expressions of the horror that is war, and they should serve as reminders of why we should commit our sons and daughters to war only when we have no other choice.
Perhaps application of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which, recruits are frequently informed, offers more protections to a defendant than the civilian legal system) will bring dishonorable discharges and confinement, as happened to the reservists convicted of outrageous, humiliating crimes against prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Graib prison.
The UCMJ is the appropriate vehicle to apply justice to the four Marine Scout Snipers accused of desecrating bodies. Their personal decisions led to personal actions, and so they will bear personal consequences. Calling their acts war crimes, however, is not warranted.
