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Monday, August 11, 2008
The guns of August, redux
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Russia’s decision to invade neighboring Georgia, an ally of the United States, has laid bare Russia’s renewed expansionist ambitions. Unfortunately, it has also exposed the limits of U.S. power to do much about it.
While Georgian officials plead for Western assistance, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney issue statements of condemnation and vague warnings of repercussions. And so far, the Russians haven’t been much dissuaded.
To the contrary, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian officials privately admit that their goal is the removal of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the country’s democratically elected leader. That is a chilling possibility. Should Russia succeed in deposing Saakashvili, it will in effect have turned Georgia from a U.S. ally into a Russian vassal state, in the process further exposing the United States as impotent.
Just as important, Russia will have sent a message to other nations in its sphere of influence, such as Ukraine, warning that their independence may depend on their willingness to toe the Russian line, and that the West can’t and won’t defend them. As Saakashvili described the stakes in an op-ed article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, if Georgia falls, other states “will have to consider whether the price of freedom and independence are too high.”
The situation is rife with historic parallels, none encouraging. This is Hungary in 1956, when the Hungarian people revolted against Soviet control, expecting military support from the West, then dying by the thousands when that support did not come. It is also Munich in 1938, when Britain and other European powers agreed to stand by and allow Nazi Germany to seize part of Czechoslovakia. And it is Afghanistan in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and President Jimmy Carter, like Bush today, was left to bluster and threaten.
In protest of that invasion, Carter did what he could, recalling the U.S. ambassador, organizing an international boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, freezing sales of grain from American farmers to the Soviet Union and severely restricting trade. A Russian coup of Georgia’s leadership would call for a response at least as severe, but given the state of U.S. diplomatic leverage, Bush may have trouble matching Carter’s actions.
The most aggressive response to Russia’s invasion has been offered by GOP presidential candidate John McCain, who suggests that NATO renew efforts to make Georgia a full member of the alliance. Of course, if Saakashvili is ousted and replaced by a leader friendly to Russia, that option would no longer be available.
However, it’s worth noting that if McCain’s recommendation were carried out, the United States would be obligated to intervene militarily to defend Georgia against attack from Russia. That’s a very large step, and our leaders should never make commitments that they are not fully willing and able to carry out.
Even if only implied, such statements can lead to tragedy if our friends come to count on them too heavily. The people of Georgia now know that all too well.
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The voucher delusion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“We shouldn’t be trying to raise our test scores above Alabama’s,” state Sen. Eric Johnson pointed out in a recent speech on education. “We are not competing with Alabama anymore. Georgia should be trying to raise them above Austria’s and South Korea’s.”
As a statement of goals, the senator is exactly right. He recognizes that our children will have to compete in a global marketplace, against the best and brightest from around the world, if they are to continue to enjoy the quality of life that America has provided their parents.
Unfortunately, his primary prescription for attaining that goal — taxpayer-funded vouchers to finance private-school education — is founded more on ideology than on common sense or experience.
Johnson, who has announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor in 2010, claimed in his speech to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation that the only way we can match the education performance of other nations is through the magic of competition. As he put it, “That kind of success will only be created by the marketplace, not a monopoly.”
That is of course demonstrably false. If that kind of success can be achieved only by the marketplace, how can we account for the educational achievements of Austria and South Korea, the very nations Johnson chose as standards? Schools in those nations are controlled at the federal level far more rigidly than American schools. There and elsewhere, nations have somehow accomplished what Johnson claims cannot be done here in America.
Johnson’s proposal also ignores the poor record of voucher programs here in the United States. While he promises that “if we offer every parent the freedom to choose the best school and allow the funding to follow every child to their chosen school, Georgia will skyrocket to the top of every educational measurement,” nothing in the research data justifies that lofty claim.
Most important, Johnson ignores the true nature of Georgia’s challenge, which is as much cultural and multigenerational as institutional.
For far too long, education wasn’t considered important here — not by government officials, who feared the taxes required to build a first-rate system; and not by business, which in addition to fearing taxes saw ways to make profits with a lesser educated work force that also demanded lower wages.
That is no longer the case, as many government and business leaders, including Johnson, acknowledge. But decades of neglect under that previous strategy have left Georgia a difficult cultural legacy. Parents who themselves have a poor education often aren’t able to help their children with higher-level math, science and English demanded in a modern curriculum. More importantly, they are also less likely to stress the importance of school and to be involved in their child’s education.
That’s the crux of the problem. If you talk to teachers and administrators, the single most important indicator of a student’s success is the involvement and commitment of their parents. Children of involved parents already excel in test scores, graduation rates, etc., while those of uninvolved parents do not. Those are the children most in need of help.
Unfortunately, that is a hard dynamic to alter, and it can change only over time and generations. But rather than try to address it, Johnson’s approach would compound the damage.
His premise is that, armed with tax vouchers, parents who had previously not been involved would be transformed into active, informed consumers who investigate and make smart choices about their offspring’s education. There is no reason to believe that miracle would occur.
Johnson’s approach also ignores the chaotic, even reckless, nature of the marketplace. For-profit, private schools would indeed pop up to attract voucher-bearing students, but as in any line of business, a good percentage would be run by incompetents or those looking to make a quick buck.
In most endeavors, that “creative destruction” would be tolerable. But to a student with one good shot at an education, it would be a disaster.
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“Back in the saddle, again….”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back by popular demand (or disdain, as the case may be).
Vacations are great. I think I need to take another one. 11 days out in the wilderness, no cellphones, newspapers, Internet, etc. But usually, not much happens anyway in August.
While I was gone, some kind of sporting competition — synchronized diving is a sport? — has apparently begun in China. War broke out in the other Georgia — I wonder how many conservative congressmen would be whining about the ineffectual U.S. response to Russia’s action if a Democrat occupied the White House?
Oh, and John Edwards. One test of character is how well you step up to admit the mistakes we all make. The way you handle the aftermath can either compound or mitigate the original damage. In Edwards’ case, he has compounded it greatly.
Finally, I see where Skip Carey and Bernie Mac died. Those are both big losses. Both men could bring a big grin to my face — in fact, now that I think about it, they kind of shared the same gruff persona and sense of the ridiculousness.
Anyway, whazzup out there?
