All posts by David Siegel

How would vaccine choice work?

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Chris Christie (R), governor of New Jersey and likely presidential aspirant, recently announced that parents should have choice over obtaining vaccinations. Though he has since stated this choice should not be applied to the measles vaccine, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another presidential aspirant, has taken up the call for vaccine choice. Such statements raise an important question: Is it possible to have true vaccine choice without endangering the most vulnerable members of the population, so that everyone’s rights are protected? This is no idle question, given recent outbreaks of the potentially deadly measles virus.

A comparison with the evolution of public smoking laws provides an avenue to see how vaccine choice might work. It used to be the case that one could smoke anywhere. Then it gradually became apparent to the public that smoking had negative health effects, not only for the smoker, but also for some of the people in the vicinity of the smoker. At first, this led to a patchwork of public and private rules banning smoking in tightly enclosed areas such as airplanes and restaurants and workplaces. Over time these rules were extended to places in which smoke could more indirectly impinge on others, such as dorm rooms and hotel rooms and doorways.

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The attack on Charlie Hebdo was about strategy, not comics

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Let’s start by getting something straight: the attack on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo was terrorism. It was planned, carefully targeted, and intended to spur people other than those who were attacked to take actions in line with the terrorists’ goals. Unable to accomplish these goals via conventional means, the perpetrators chose the tactic of terrorism instead. The strategic goals of the terrorists are what are important in understanding their actions and how to counter them, not the ideas they toss around as easy supposed justifications for their actions.

The actual identity of the target was symbolically important but incidental to the strategic goal of the attack. Yes, the perpetrators might have found Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons deeply offensive. But they also surely knew that the magazine is not unique in its offensiveness, has relatively small print numbers, and would only gain more attention after the attack. In fact, the magazine now plans a print run over thirty times greater than usual. So in what way does that target suit their goals?

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A moral case against voter ID laws

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Like millions of other Americans, I voted last Tuesday. I did not face long lines and there were no barriers to my entry to the polling station. Everyone was quite friendly, and it was a pleasant experience.

They were so friendly, in fact, that they even offered a service to voters, advertised by a sign on the wall: Voters, presumably those who would have difficulty walking into the polling station due to disability, could wait in their idling cars, honk their horns and have someone aid them in voting curbside.

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Going beyond military force to defeat ISIS

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I have in this space previously argued that “hearts and minds” approaches to counterrorism and counterinsurgency are superior in many cases to those based on military force, even taking into account the incredible expertise and professionalism of our armed forces. The planned response to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as presented by the president on Sept. 10, places too much emphasis on military force and risks the sort of negative outcome suggested by satirists.

The situation in Iraq and Syria is of course complex, but it has one particularly salient feature: There is a substantial constituency in both countries that views ISIS as preferable to its alternatives and offers the group either tacit or material support. Without this support, ISIS is a collection of terrorists with arms inferior to those of local militaries which has nowhere to hide and no promise of significant expansion. With this support it is a de facto state. The distinction between a nongovernmental actor and one that holds territory like a state is crucial.

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Bad strategies and strange bedfellows

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Why does it often seem like a long-term settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be reached? The easy — and false — answer is that one side or the other just doesn’t want peace. That it will stop at nothing until the other side is annihilated. While it is certainly true that some members of each side believe this, the idea that each side is some monolithic entity wanting only one thing is a convenient fiction for spurring hatred, nothing more.

Neither Israel nor Palestine is a unitary actor. The people who make up Israel and Palestine have diverse preferences, in particular over how to address the defining conflict of the era. Like-minded people on both sides join together into factions that then jockey for dominance. Some of these factions on both sides would take peace in an instant if any reasonable offer were made.

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The effectiveness of drone strikes

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Should the U.S. use an expanded campaign of drone strikes in Iraq to help push back the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)? Among the many issues this question raises is the practical one: Are they effective in reducing attacks?

On the surface it would seem that they are, in that they enable the removal of potentially high-value targets with minimal risk to our troops. Looking a little deeper, though, reveals some problems. Many are discussed in a recent report from the Stimson Center, which suggests that heavy use of drone strikes “risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts.”

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Why military force is usually the wrong choice for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency

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I’ll open my first contribution with a confession: I chose a deliberately provocative title. Though of course I did this to draw attention, the statement is nevertheless true.

Before delving into why, let’s ask an easier question: Why is the title provocative? In other words, why would we expect military force to work in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency? The reason, I believe, is that in both terrorism and insurgency there are armed, organized people trying to kill us. This recalls war, and anything short of a show of military force in war smacks of appeasement. Even if a settlement is sought, force acts as a signal of strength. And without force, an enemy comparable to us in strength can run right over us.

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Why wouldn’t people want to reduce inequality?

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From the Monkey Cage:

We’ve heard a lot about how economic elites – the so-called 1 percent — have greater  policy influence than the mass public and more access to the seats of political power. The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding campaign contributions (McCutcheon v. FEC) would seem to exacerbate this trend (though see this), removing still more limitations on the influence of the rich. The continuing accumulation of capital in the hands of the rich will only make this problem starker.

Given this, why haven’t we as citizens in a democracy done something about it? After all, most of us are not rich and, as political scientist Larry Bartels notes here, we usually think of democracy as a system in which the elected officials who pass the laws must satisfy us, the people.

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