Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, December 6, 2019
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MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN
Well-faring farewell
Two truths and a lie: Cheney, Iraq and viral memes
O
n a Monday morning in
September 1796, readers
of
the
Philadelphia
newspaper the Daily Advertiser
learned that George Washington,
after having served as president
for eight years, would not seek
re-election for a third term. The
news that Washington, former
commander of the Continental
Army, president of the Constitutional
Convention and first President of the
United States – in short, an American
demigod – would be stepping down
probably overshadowed the content
of his farewell address. The letter,
first published by the Advertiser
and soon reprinted by newspapers
nationwide, also contained words
of counsel for the fledgling republic.
One noteworthy piece of advice
Washington offered concerned the
recent rise of a party system, which
pitted Hamilton’s Federalists against
Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans.
Washington warned that a party
system could threaten popular
democracy, but he acknowledged
that the advent of an adversarial
system of partisanship structure
was perhaps inevitable. “This spirit,
unfortunately, is inseparable from
our nature,” Washington wrote,
and it manifests itself “under
different shapes in all governments.”
Despite his visions for non-partisan
government, Washington worried –
and correctly so – that factionalism
would take root in the District of
Columbia.
The party system framework
established by the Federalists and
Democratic-Republicans still exists
today. While the names have changed
and third parties have occasionally
experienced swells in popularity,
the two-party system has dominated
the American government for over
two
centuries.
That
American
democracy has survived this whole
time with a two-party system would
seem to indicate that Washington’s
concerns were ill-founded — but it
also doesn’t mean that his cautions
against partisanship were without
usable wisdom.
In fact, Washington’s advice
reflects present public sentiments
about our current system. A March
NBC/WSJ poll found that 38 percent
of Americans “think the two-party
system is seriously broken,” the
highest public share since NBC/
WSJ first posed the question in 1995.
Only one in 10, feel that “the two-
party system works fairly well.”
The two-party system is so
deeply entrenched in our political
landscape that it’s safe to say
Washington’s non-partisan visions
will never be achieved. That said,
the two-party system, while it is the
U.S.’s traditional model, is perhaps
not suited for our hyper-polarized
times.
Though
a
multi-party
system is a feature of many modern
democracies, it has only a few
historical precedents in the United
States. On occasion, third parties
have enjoyed fleeting popularity
– sometimes even displacing a
pre-existing party – but prevailing
currents have traditionally borne
American politics back to a two-
party equilibrium. But such an
electoral arrangement is not entirely
alien to American political thought;
it was actually promoted by James
Madison, our fourth president and
the chief author of the Constitution.
To counter the consolidation of
power in the hands of a few, Madison
advocated in Federalist Paper No.
10 the development of multiple
“factions,” or parties, to represent the
interests of a diverse populace. Like
Washington, Madison recognized
that
non-partisan
government
was a pipe dream, as splintering
into political groups is “sown in
the nature of man.” Accepting
this reality, the most realistic way
to address Americans’ political
interests would be to have a range of
factions catering to them — thereby
also diffusing power between a
greater range of the population.
Like
Washington,
Madison’s
visions did not come to national
fruition.
Madison
feared
the
consolidation of power in the hands
of a single party, which our two-party
system has been largely successful
in avoiding. That said, increasing
numbers of Americans feel their
voices aren’t represented through
the two options that dominate our
political scene.
The Democratic and Republican
parties — presently at their most
polarized in living memory —
just aren’t cutting it. Two weeks
before the 2016 election, 61 percent
of Americans said neither party
represented their beliefs. A natural
remedy for this, of course, is the
introduction of additional parties
to the U.S.’s political stage. And
a majority would be in favor:
According to a 2018 Gallup poll, 57
percent of Americans reflected a
desire “for a third, major political
party.”
Our election system can be
described
as
winner-takes-all:
The congressional candidate who
receives the most votes wins their
district, and the presidential hopeful
who receives the most votes gains
all of a state’s electoral votes. The
emergence of a major third party
under such an arrangement is
unlikely, because a vote for a third-
party candidate is often perceived as
a “wasted vote.” As such, a majority
of voters hold their noses and go with
the party that more closely reflects
their interests, but leave the ballot
box unsatisfied.
Encouraging
the
emergence
of third parties, and in doing so
providing the public with more
viable political options to represent
it, necessitates a reconfiguration
of
our
election
system.
A
proportional system — wherein
splits in the electorate’s voting
are proportionately reflected in
government — would allow far
greater freedom in one’s choice of
party without the current risk of
“throwing away” one’s vote.
Say you’re a Republican, but you
worry that the party is becoming
too conservative, and you’re sick
of inane partisan bickering. Under
a proportional system, you could
vote for the moderate party that
would inevitably emerge (parties
of all stripes exist in countries with
such an electoral system). If the 35
percent of Americans who identify
as moderates were to vote with you,
the “Centrist Party” would receive
35 percent of seats – perhaps enough
to constitute a plurality.
The Founding Fathers were wise
men who devised an electoral system
that has functioned, even thrived,
for over two centuries. They were
also not infallible. By design, they
left their American progeny with a
malleable Constitution to be altered
in accordance with changing needs.
The Democratic and Republican
parties are becoming increasingly
polarized, and on their divergent
trajectories leave more and more
ideological real estate between
them. It does not take a political
oracle to recognize that this trend is
unsustainable. If we are to improve
American democracy, we must be
receptive to propositions that will
ensure its preservation.
ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMN
Max Steinbaum can be reached at
maxst@umich.edu.
B
efore the exciting new
world of TikTok, before
we could enjoy its “For
You” page’s random, entertaining
15-second videos and long before
the proliferation of VSCO girl
jokes, there was Vine. Most young
people in the United States keeping
an eye on the internet are already
well aware of one of Vine’s most
iconic memes, “Dick Cheney made
money off the Iraq War.” The
brief, seemingly tongue-in-cheek
video of the original Vine of a guy
repeating this sentiment into the
camera has received hundreds of
thousands of views and seems like
a snapshot of millennial humor, but
the history of private war-making
in U.S. politics is long and brutal.
Private
military
contractors
—
essentially,
multinational
corporations that hire professional
mercenaries to participate and aid
in wars abroad — are an ideal tool
to ensure the human and emotional
costs of war remain largely hidden
from the American public. In her
book “The Lonely Soldier”, author
Helen Benedict details the overlap
between
private
corporations
who engaged in war-fighting and
the government officials who
supported the conflict in Iraq. As
the book and other sources detail,
the corporations involved in the
Iraq War included those such as
Blackwater Worldwide. But the
largest corporation by far was KBR,
a subsidiary of the Halliburton
corporation, of which Dick Cheney
had been the CEO before entering
the White House. In the first
year of the Iraq War alone, then-
President Bush and Vice President
Cheney handed over $39.5 billion
over 10 years in noncompetitive
contracts to KBR to provide
anything from food and water to
vehicles and weapons for soldiers
in Iraq. Suspicions of Cheney’s
war profiteering seem even more
credible given The Guardian’s
report that Cheney was paid an
extra $1 million by Halliburton
during the time he served as vice
president. The Washington Post
has also reported extensively on the
large bonuses that KBR received
during the time of the conflict.
One would assume that the
massive amount of money pouring
into private military contractors
during the Iraq War would have
translated into the efficiency and
the desired results often associated
with the private sector. But the
use of private defense contractors
has yielded mixed results abroad,
and this is particularly true
in Iraq. Indeed, an archived
2011 report from a bipartisan
government commission tasked
with investigating potential abuse
of funds in the Iraq War estimated
that there was a $60 billion total —
or $12 million/day — loss or waste in
fraud via funds allocated from the
government to private contractors
since 2001.
Though Cheney’s involvement in
the conflict seems troubling as well
as financially motivated, it would be
inaccurate to suggest that corporate
greed was the sole contributor
to the U.S.’s involvement in Iraq.
This is not necessarily a uniquely
American phenomenon — the U.K.,
for example, also has a booming
industry for private war-fighting.
What
is
uniquely
American,
though, is the breadth of other
justifications for U.S. involvement
and deployment, which is not more
reassuring than the assertion that
Cheney’s greed facilitated the
conflict itself. President George W.
Bush’s claim that Iraq possessed
chemical and/or biological weapons
of mass destruction revealed itself
to be a lie. Many in policy circles
also believed that the U.S. would
be welcomed as a benevolent
global power that could restore the
American-led deterrence in the
Middle East (a blatant falsehood,
as U.S. forces entering the region
quickly realized). But one of the
darker reasons later suggested for
the war is that the United States
needed the conflict — that the post-
9/11 power vacuum necessitated
an
international
leader
to
demonstrate it could fill the
void of liberalism, that the U.S.’s
invasion of Iraq would “reassert
and demonstrate (U.S.) strength
in no uncertain terms to a global
audience, crown itself king of the
hill, and reestablish generalized
deterrence.”
It’ll be years before we can see
what the Bush administration’s
motivations might have been, after
White House documents become
declassified or leaked. But we
can see fragments of this policy
at work today in Donald Trump’s
presidency, despite the White
House’s
repeated
isolationist
stances
toward
international
engagement.
Daniel
DePetris,
a
fellow
at
security-focused
think tank Defense Priorities,
has written about how Trump
has
repeatedly
characterized
military engagement in the Middle
East as hopeless: The president
argued that “Iraq was a disaster;
Afghanistan was a tragic waste of
lives of resources; Syria was a land
of ‘sand and death’; and the nation-
building campaigns in the Middle
East were a sad joke.” And yet, for
all of Trump’s insistence on the
futility of spending resources in
the Middle East, his rhetoric has
not aligned with reality. Recent
increases in U.S. military spending
seem to indicate that the drive for
American militarism has certainly
remained intact and has every
intention to accelerate.
Allison Pujol can be reached at
ampmich@umich.edu.
In the last six months, New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
followed through with a plan
to plant 500 police officers in
the subway and bus systems
of New York City to combat
a rise in fare evasion and
worker attacks. The policy
will fine fare evaders $100
— but with increased police
presence in public spaces,
heightened
surveillance
from new security cameras
and $249 million spent to
make these changes, New
Yorkers across the boroughs
are protesting these changes
that will disproportionately
impact
poor
communities
and people of color. This
crackdown on fare evasion
criminalizes
these
groups
instead of succeeding with
any
greater
MTA
claim,
costing the city more than
just the millions spent to
“better” it.
State Sen. Jessica Ramos,
D-N.Y., put it best: “Say we
had $249M and we could
do anything we wanted to
improve the subway system,
what
would
you
want
to
see
prioritized?”
The
MTA lacks funding for its
programs
and
desperately
needs
infrastructure
fixes
that could benefit all New
Yorkers. Tracks and stations
themselves
are
defunct
with constant delays and
maintenance issues, causing
a steady ridership decline.
What residents really want
is to be able to get to where
they’re going quickly and
safely — something that could
be fixed with a dedication
to upgrades and efficient
construction plans.
From the perspective of
the everyday commuter, fare-
beater crackdowns seem like
a misinformed judgment call
by authority figures detached
from the subway itself. The
problems most riders have
with public transit are the
inconsistent train times and
crumbling
infrastructure.
Danny Pearlstein, the policy
and communications director
for
the
nonprofit
Riders
Alliance, when speaking with
AM New York said, “The fare
evasion conversation overall
is a red herring. When the
governor talks about fare
evasion, he’s throwing the
subway’s problems back on
riders.”
Further, the recent MTA
fare crackdown follows a
pattern of harmful policing
policies,
such
as
“stop-
and-frisk”
policing,
which
disproportionately
targets
Black
and
Latinx
youth.
Just
like
“stop-and-frisk”,
the crackdown is already
impacting people of color,
with 84 percent of Brooklyn
fare evasion arrests being
Black and Latinx.
Even though nearly 40
percent
of
subway
riders
evade fares at least once
a
year,
African-American
and
Latinx
communities,
especially those that are low
income, have the greatest
likelihood of arrest for fare
evasion. The MTA crackdown
is
representative
of
the
larger burden of policing
that low-income and POC
communities face all across
the country. Just as other
policing policies and tactics,
the discretionary nature of
police power leads to the
unjust and racist targeting of
communities of color.
To be clear, the policing
and criminalization of fare
evasion
is
costly
—
and
not just financially. Over-
policing and policies such
as
“stop-and-frisk”
erode
trust
between
the
police
and the communities they
are supposed to be serving.
The MTA claims these new
anti-fare
beater
policies
will increase rider safety,
but crime in the subways
is actually down to around
one crime per million riders
— an estimated 86 percent
drop
from
1990.
Despite
arguments that criminalizing
fare evasion makes transit
safer, the reality is that
criminalizing petty offenses
destroys communities’ faith
in the police to keep their
communities safe.
So far, the introduction
of 500 police officers into
the subway system has been
a cause for concern. In a
city already grappling with
cases
of
police
brutality
and
unreasonable
arrests,
the criminalization of fare
evasion is furthering tensions
between all parties. After
videos showed young Black
teenagers
being
tackled,
tased and beaten over the
$2.75
fare,
riders
have
started a “Swipe it Forward”
campaign, and movements
like “Decolonize this Place”
have organized mass fare
evasions similar to those in
Santiago, Chile. Fare evasion
is not a violent crime and
criminalizing it only stands
to undermine any attempts
of
understanding
and
communication between the
police and citizens — two vital
components to maintaining a
safe environment.
It is time that we as a society
learn from our past policy
failures. The MTA crackdown
is only one of a long-standing
pattern
of
discriminatory
police practices that have
consequences
for
people’s
individual
and
collective
societal futures.
The
Michigan
Daily
Editorial Board stands with
protesters and believes the
New York City government
should
stop
using
tactics
that do nothing to resolve
the issues within the subway
system and, instead, only
further harass communities
of color. The money being
funneled
into
increasing
police presence in subways
and installing cameras to
catch fare evasion should be
put toward the plethora of
other issues the MTA faces
rather than being used to
intimidate
marginalized
people. With the thoughts of
guerrilla MTA signs in mind,
we implore you, in more ways
than one: Don’t snitch. Swipe.
FROM THE DAILY
Don’t snitch — swipe
T
he Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City is
cracking down on fare beaters. This crackdown is costing the
city millions, damaging subway culture and disproportionately
impacting a number of historically disenfranchised groups.
61 percent of
Americans said
neither party
represented their
beliefs
Criminalizing
petty offenses
destroys
communities’
faith in the police
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