p15, v9.16 — Left / Right & Legals

Left / Right & Legals

Mountain Views News Saturday, April 18, 2015

MVNews this week: Page 15

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 18, 2015

HOWARD Hays As I See It

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Greg Welborn

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GREG Welborn

“That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country.”

- Hermann Goering

There’s a big debate going on in Washington, about nothing
less than how the United States engages with the world in
matters of war and peace.

One side argues that this president and future ones be given
wide latitude in taking actions on their own, unhindered
by Congressional grandstanding and second-guessing. The
argument is focused on the need for the administration
to have the ability and flexibility to act decisively, without
Congressional meddling.

The other side argues it’s Congress’ duty and responsibility under the Constitution to
publicly debate, oversee, scrutinize and ultimately decide whether or not to authorize
actions affecting our nation’s security.

In this particular debate, it’s President Obama and most Congressional Democrats
taking the latter side, arguing for more Congressional involvement. It’s the Republicans
who argue that the president be given free reign – while Congress remains on the sidelines.

The issue is renewal of the War Powers Act, which has been held up now for months.
But on the issue more in the news lately, the framework of a nuclear deal with Iran, the
positions are reversed.

Republicans have it backwards. With the president trying to make peace, negotiating
with leaders of other nuclear powers to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,
they feel obliged to use their Congressional majorities to do whatever they can to scuttle
the deal and alienate us from our negotiating partners. If a president wants to make war,
however, under their version of the War Powers Act they’d just stay out of the way, do what
they can to grease the skids and let it happen.

If anything, Congress’ role should be to help make peaceful resolution easier and war
harder - not the other way around.

There’s a real concern because so many of those making the case for war now were
doing the same thing thirteen years ago – with disastrous consequences. Rep. Mac
Thornberry (R-TX), current chair of the House Armed Services Committee, warned
then that our policy of containment towards Saddam Hussein had led Iraq to become
“one giant WMD factory”. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) predicted military action to remove
him “would not be very difficult”. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), then in the House, said
attacking Iraq was “long overdue”, and that its people would “taste freedom for the first
time in decades.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned that the risks of continuing to deal with Saddam
through more diplomacy were “simply unacceptable”.

That was then. Today, many of those Sunni Muslim soldiers of Saddam’s army we sent
packing after the invasion have gone on to form the military backbone of the Islamic State.

In his column last week, Greg Welborn cited the nuclear deal with North Korea as a lesson
in the futility of preventing dictators from getting bombs. Maybe the problem with that
deal was one of bad timing. The “Agreed Framework” negotiated under President Clinton
was signed in October 1994. Three months later, Republicans took over both houses of
Congress.

From the outset they branded the deal “appeasement”, and did their best to prevent us
from keeping our end of the bargain (fuel oil shipments, a light water reactor, etc.). Then,
under President Bush, North Korea was in the “axis of evil” and we used accusations they
were enriching uranium as justification to kill the deal.

Although our concern was keeping North Korea from getting nuclear weapons, theirs
was getting rid of sanctions and normalizing relations with the outside world. We’ll never
know what would’ve happened had the deal negotiated under Clinton been kept, but we do
know what happened as a consequence of it being killed under Bush: North Korea pulled
out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, kicked out the international monitors and
cranked up production. While under the deal plutonium production had been successfully
halted for eight years, now the estimates are that North Korea has a half-dozen plutonium
warheads and a couple dozen “nuclear weapon equivalents”.

Those responsible for that outcome and the disaster in Iraq are now telling us why talks
with Iran are a bad idea. They’re advising Republican presidential candidates. In trying
to make their case, they’ve taken Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s word on what the deal
entails over that of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Sen. McCain,
who predicted that incursion in Iraq “would not be very difficult” now calls Sec. Kerry
“delusional”, and 47 senators send a letter to Iranian leaders warning them not to expect
the United States to keep its commitments.

We’ve seen it before; efforts to maintain the peace scuttled because some were simply
too anxious to start the bombing. Herr Goering thought it an easy matter to sway public
opinion away from peace and towards war. But not this time – our memories are still fresh
and the consequences of those actions are still with us.

As Malcom X said, “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” Too
many of us stand with the president and the other world leaders in support of resolution
through negotiations with Iran, and whatever lines we’re fed by those arguing for a
different approach, we’re not falling for it.

THE DROUGHT OF WISDOM

California is suffering from a record drought – perhaps one for
the history books. But the drought to which I refer is not the
water drought, but the wisdom drought. Rain comes and goes in
California – always has, always will - but the stupidity among the
Liberals who run this state seems unending.

A harsh statement, you might be inclined to argue back. How
can I possibly blame politicians for the fact that it hasn’t rained
much in the last 4 to 5 years? But I’m not holding them accountable for how much it
rains; I’m holding them accountable for what they did with the water when it rained a lot
and was plentiful, and now for what they’re doing with the water when it’s in relatively
short supply.

California is an arid state. It is on the low end of rainfall volume in the United
States. We get more than the truly desert states, but certainly less than the east coast
and Midwest. But that’s a given. We’ve always been at the low end, on top of which
we’re subject to the occasional drought. Even severe droughts are not unheard of in
California. Again, though, all this is normal; all this has been known to the state’s
leaders since the state was founded. That’s why previous generations put so much effort
into building what once was one of the greatest reservoir and aquifer systems of its time
in the nation.

Our present problems are the result of short-sighted and callous politicians who
allowed that system to fall into disrepair, who refused to build any new storage facilities
over the last 30+ plus years when our population grew to 40 million people, and who
gave into the ruinous policy prescriptions of the crazy wing of the environmentalist
movement.

The numbers tell the story pretty clearly. In an average year, California receives
enough snow and rain to accumulate 200 million acre feet of water (an acre foot is an
acre of land covered 1 foot deep). During that same average year, California consumes
approximately 60 million acre feet. The consumption estimates I found actually ranged
from 40 million to 60 million acre feet. I’m giving the politicians the benefit of the
doubt, going with the higher estimate. Even still, in an average year, there’s more than
enough water to use and – if we had intelligent leadership – to store for the dry years. In
fact, in normal years – let alone “wet” years – we are relative to our consumption needs
flooded with water.

On the opposite end of the spectrum in droughts, the water received can decrease
substantially while the usage stays fairly constant. That just emphasizes the need to
store the water we do receive. Here’s where the bunglers in Sacramento did the bungling.
Environmental laws intended to protect various fish species and wetland habitats have
us dump half the normal water we receive out to the ocean. That’s 100 million acre feet
flushed out to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific to save a couple of fish. Carly Fiorina,
former CEO of Hewlett Packard and thus a pretty sharp cookie, quoted one estimate
that 70% of our rainfall is flushed out to sea.

The magnitude of the water we throw away is staggering in its own right, but it might
be attributable to some sliver of logic if this actually helped the fish. Unfortunately,
the “endangered” fish populations have decreased over the last 40 years, which is also
roughly the time period during which no new reservoirs were built. The best laid plans
of mice and Dems have truly gone awry.

The failure to build those reservoirs and damns is the other component of our present
problem. Even if we decided to keep the water we get in average and good years, we
would need to store it some place. Environmental groups have passed laws and used
the courts to effectively block the construction of any new significant storage facility
since 1980. In a weird way, we have to grant the logic of this last one. If you’ve passed
laws mandating that you not keep the water you get, why would you spend any money to
build damns or reservoirs to store the water you aren’t keeping?

Liberals are always surprised when their policy prescriptions make things worse, and
California’s water policies are no exception. One of the unintended consequences of
refusing to store more water in order to “help” the environment is that farmers in the
great valley are being forced to dig their wells deeper, thus reducing the water table
lower than is probably good for us. The law of unintended consequences has not been
suspended.

The sad reality is that even under the most dire of circumstances this year (official
measurement of rain and snow fall for the year won’t end until June 30th), we will have
received enough water to meet our needs if we had captured and kept everything that
fell from the sky. The lack of water can’t be blamed on Mother Nature. All she did was
expose the drought of common sense and wisdom that passes for political leadership in
Sacramento.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several
civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles
area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached at
gregwelborn2@gma/5l.com

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