FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010 DAVID IGNATIUS
tionship like a murky gray cloak. But in a strange coincidence we’ve also seen some dramatic evidence of the strategic “reset” in Russian-American relations — from impla- cable enmity to at least occasional part- nership. Which path is real, at a time when the nations talk of working together even as their spies continue scavenging for secrets? Let’s look first at the spy swap that fol- lowed the arrest of a dozen Russian “ille- gals” here. There wasn’t much fanfare paid to the four Russians who slinked out of Moscow in this trade: All eyes, I guess, were on the comely espionnette, Anna Chapman. But I’m told that two of these Russians were among the most important “moles” the CIA ever placed inside the Russian intelligence service. U.S. officials said the two, Alexander Za- porozhsky and Gennady Vasilenko, provid- ed the crucial first identification of Russia’s superspies inside the heart of U.S. intelli- gence — the CIA’s Aldrich Ames and the FBI’s Robert Hanssen. Public accounts of how Ames and Hanssen were caught, which appeared in their indictments and are featured on the FBI’s Web site, were
MICHAEL GERSON
Dishonoring D-Day A bust of Stalin doesn’t belong at a Virginia memorial
Astor. Astor bluntly asked: “When are you go- ing to stop killing people?” To which Stalin re- plied: “When it is no longer necessary.” Stalin found it necessary to the end of his
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days. He was a hardworking dictator, often in the office 16 hours a day. It takes considerable effort to cause the deaths of perhaps 20 million human beings. And death was Stalin’s primary political instrument. Statues and busts of Stalin were once mass- produced in Russia as icons of a political cult. Few can now be found on public display out- side the Stalin museum in his home town of Gori, Georgia, where some people remain per- versely proud of a local boy made bad. But a newly cast memorial bust of Stalin stands at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., accompanying sculptures of Franklin D. Roose- velt, Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill. A plaque recounts Stalin’s practice of “elimi- nating” his opponents. But Stalin would doubt- less be pleased by the likeness and its setting. Others are not so pleased. The Bedford
County Board of Supervisors, the local con- gressman and the Victims of Communism Me- morial Foundation have called for the bust’s removal.
Americans have sometimes viewed Stalin with more ambivalence than, say, Adolf Hitler. For a period during World War II, “Uncle Joe” was an ally. Roosevelt sent about $11 billion worth of war materiel to Stalin under Lend- Lease.
But Stalin had previously been an ally of Hit- ler as well, both inspiring and admiring Nazi methods. Following Hitler’s purge in 1934 known as the “Night of the Long Knives,” Stalin told a meeting of the Politburo: “Some fellow, that Hitler. Knows how to treat his political opponents.”
One reason that Stalin has sometimes gotten more favorable treatment than Hitler is the conviction, mainly found on the American left, that communism is less evil than fascism. Sta- lin may have been a monster, but at least he was not a genocidal racist. His methods were barbaric; but the goals of Soviet socialism — economic equality and justice — were nobler than National Socialism. This attitude once turned some Western left- ists into Stalin apologists. The durable belief in
n 1931, during the liquidation of millions of kulaks, Joseph Stalin granted an audience to George Bernard Shaw and Lady Nancy
communist good intentions led, according to journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, to “feminists applauding women who were bowed down by hundredweights of coal, Quakers applauding tank parades.”
But Stalin authored racial atrocities of his
own. Historian Andrew Roberts notes: “Stalin also committed seven major acts of racial geno- cide, against the Ukrainians in 1930-32, the Poles, Balts, Moldavians and Bessarabians in 1939-41 and 1944-45, the Volga Germans in 1941, the Crimean Tatars in 1943, the Chechens and the Inguches in 1944.” Stalin and Hitler were moral equals in near-
ly every respect — the slave labor camps, the mass graves, the night arrests, the sadistic and sycophantic circle of enablers. Stalin added forced famine — in which millions of lives were taken like a scythe takes wheat — along with show trials and purges. Stalin’s lieutenants would act out for his entertainment the plead- ings of old colleagues about to be executed. “The greatest delight,” Stalin once said, “is to mark one’s enemy, prepare everything, avenge oneself thoroughly, and then go to sleep.” The main difference between Hitler and Sta- lin is that one lost a war and ended with a bul- let in his head. The other gets a bust at the Na- tional D-Day Memorial. Officials at the Bedford memorial respond to the controversy with typical museum-speak about their “educational mission” to examine “global contexts and consequences” while be- ing a “catalyst for serious discourse.” The for- mer president of the memorial compared criti- cism of the Stalin bust to criticism of a statue depicting FDR in a wheelchair. It is extraordinary how people dedicated to the preservation of history can so effectively trivialize history by denying its emotional and moral content. How would a Pole whose father or grandfather was murdered in the Katyn For- est massacre be educated by walking past a me- morial bust of Stalin? How is Russian sacrifice in World War II honored by the image of a man who treated Russia to endless, unnecessary sacrifice? For most Americans who fought in World
War II, the war was not merely a historical event; it was a cause. They temporarily shared an alliance with Stalin, but they fought for principles he hated. His presence at their me- morial is not educational; it is offensive.
michaelgerson@washpost.com
POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
MATT MILLER Goldman’s trade
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs is being touted by the feds as a major victory, “the largest penalty ever assessed against a fi- nancial services firm in the history of the SEC.” Maybe. But Goldman’s net income was more than $13 billion in 2009. In other words, $550 million is about two weeks’ worth of earnings. A two-week furlough was a pretty modest cost at which to give the SEC its headline, without admitting wrongdoing, and move on. Did any- one at the SEC think about the public benefits of a trial, in terms of sustained media scrutiny of Wall Street’s unsavory practices, whatever the outcome? At first blush, this looks like an- other smart Goldman trade.
RUTH MARCUS Estate tax insanity
George Steinbrenner’s well-timed death — though I suspect he may not have seen it that way — points up the insanity of the estate tax situation. The billionaire Yankees owner could end up owing no federal estate tax — because there is no federal estate tax this year. Last year, Steinbrenner’s heirs would have faced a tax rate of 45 percent on the bulk of his estate. Next year, the tax is set to spring to a 55 percent rate. Congress is not going to let this happen — but it is also unlikely to do away with the estate tax altogether. You know there is something very wrong
with the tax code when estate planners say things such as “if you’re super-wealthy, it’s a good year to die,” as BDO Seidman’s Jack Nuck- olls told the Associated Press. The AP put the Steinbrenner family’s savings in the neighbor- hood of $500 million. The situation is even more messed up than it appears. While the heirs of the super-rich reap a windfall and the Treasury loses badly needed revenue, some heirs of the not-so- super-rich are facing higher tax bills because, thanks to an accompanying change in the law, they have to pay capital gains on property that would otherwise have been able to pass tax- free. Michael J. Graetz and Ian Shapiro write in
“Death by a Thousand Cuts,” “For almost a cen- tury, the estate tax affected only the richest 1 or 2 percent of citizens, encouraged charity, and placed no burden on the vast majority of Americans.” This account overstates the bite of the modern estate tax, which applied to only two of every 1,000 estates in 2009. The Obama administration has proposed re-
newing the estate tax at its 2009 level: 45 per- cent, with the first $3.5 million of an individu- al estate, or $7 million per couple, transferred tax-free. The House passed such a measure last year. That is more than adequate to protect against the supposed threat posed by the es- tate tax to family farms and other small busi- nesses. In fact, it would cost about $250 billion over the next decade, compared to current law. That’s not generous enough, though, for
Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who are pressing for a $10 million per couple exemption and 35 percent rate. The notion of repealing the “death tax” was wrong at a time of supposed budget surplus and is particularly irresponsible now.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
President Obama greets workers at a car-battery factory in Holland, Mich., on Wednesday.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Obama’s next act
n the political marketplace, there’s now a run on Obama shares. The left is disappoint- ed with the president. Independ- ents are abandoning him in droves. And the right is already dancing on his political grave, sal- ivating about November when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House. I have a warning for Repub- licans: Don’t underestimate Ba- rack Obama. Consider what he has already
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achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the country inexorably on the road to national health care and, as acknowledged by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus but few others, begun one of the most massive wealth redistributions in U.S. history.
Second, there is major financial
reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Economists argue whether it will prevent melt- downs and bailouts as promised. But there is no argument that it will give the government unprec- edented power in the financial marketplace. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regula- tions that will affect not only, as many assume, the big banks but just about everyone, including, as noted in one summary (the Wall Street Journal), “storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus.” Third is the near $1 trillion stimulus, the largest spending bill in U.S. history. And that’s not even counting nationalizing the stu- dent loan program, regulating carbon emissions by Environmen- tal Protection Agency fiat, and still-fitful attempts to pass cap- and-trade through Congress. But Obama’s most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget. The stimulus, the vast expansion of domestic spending, the creation of ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see are not easily reversed. These are not mere temporary countercyclical measures. They are structural deficits because, as everyone from Obama on down admits, the real money is in enti- tlements, most specifically Medi- care and Medicaid. But Obama- care freezes these out as a source of debt reduction. Obamacare’s $500 billion in Medicare cuts and $600 billion in tax increases are siphoned away for a new entitle- ment — and no longer available for deficit reduction. The result? There just isn’t
enough to cut elsewhere to pre- vent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases — most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and pre- vent massive growth in spending, Obama’s wild spending — and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief — will necessitate huge tax increas- es.
The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. Both presidencies were highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappre- ciated by their own side. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. (Typical Washington Post headline: “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over” — and that was six months into his presiden- cy!) Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, clos- ing Guantanamo — the list is long. The critics don’t understand the big picture. Obama’s trans- formational agenda is a play in two acts. Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two. The next burst of ideological
energy — massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and “compre- hensive” immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) — will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012. That’s why there’s so much ten- sion between Obama and con- gressional Democrats. For Oba- ma, 2010 matters little. If Demo- crats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign. Obama is down, but it’s very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he’s done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days — those that come after reelection. The real prize is 2012. Obama
sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underesti- mate him at their peril.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
A U.S.-Russia reset comes in from the cold T
his month we’ve had a reminder of the Cold War espionage legacy that still hangs over the U.S.-Russian rela-
partly cover stories. The official versions emphasize aggres- sive FBI legwork in interrogating Hanssen and monitoring his dead drops, and what the FBI site describes as the bureau’s “in- tensive physical and electronic surveillance of Ames during a 10-month investigation.” This gumshoe work was certainly necessary in building legal cases against Ames and Hanssen that could be taken to court. But the real breakthroughs came from
dangerous undercover operations inside Moscow Center by Zaporozhsky and Vasi- lenko. I was told by several sources that they managed to get access to the most sen- sitive files on Ames and Hanssen, perhaps the KGB’s most closely guarded secrets. I was told, for example, that one of the CIA’s agents was able to identify Hanssen’s fin- gerprints on correspondence he had sent to his KGB handlers. That’s how the CIA nailed him. I first heard a hint of this operation sev-
eral years ago, but the information was strictly off the record. I asked U.S. officials this week whether the embargo could be lifted now that the CIA’s moles were safely out of Moscow and in America. They said yes. The Russians already know the details:
They arrested Zaporozhsky, a former KGB colonel, in 2001 after luring him back to Moscow from the United States, where he had retired. Vasilenko, a former KGB major, was arrested briefly in 1988 and then again in 2005, when he was sentenced to prison. That’s the old spy vs. spy framework for
the U.S.-Russian relationship, the gritty nar- rative that launched a thousand spy novels. The new face (and you have to decide
whether it’s sincere) came in a speech Mon- day in Moscow by President Dmitry Med- vedev to a conference of Russian ambassa- dors. It amounts to a comprehensive Krem- lin endorsement of the reset that the Obama administration has been trying to achieve with Moscow. Medvedev specifically named the United
States as an example of “special moderniza- tion alliances with our main international partners.” He talked about cooperation on political and financial reform, technology, organized crime and counterterrorism. He said that after visiting high-tech sites in America that he saw “a very positive agen- da” and “future potential for our collabora- tion.” Perhaps most important, Medvedev slammed Iran in unusually frank language: “It is obvious that Iran is coming close to
KLMNO
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A19 EUGENE ROBINSON
the possession of potential that could in principle be used to create nuclear weap- ons.” He said pointedly: “The Iranian side itself is behaving in far from the best way.” The Obama administration rightly stresses that Medvedev’s language of ac- commodation isn’t an accident but the product of careful, consistent diplomacy. President Obama has met the Russian president eight times and spoken to him by telephone nine times. Obama’s consistent message has been that he wants a new part- nership. To get it, he has been willing to partly accommodate Moscow’s views on a a missile defense system that Russia regards as a threat. The choice for Russia and America now is how to use this fledgling partnership. If Obama is bold, he will help Russia become a truly modern nation — where journalists are no longer threatened for challenging powerful interests, where energy is no lon- ger used as an economic weapon and where bullying neighbors is a thing of the past. This kind of genuine alliance would be horrible for spy novelists — who would read a buddy novel about cooperative Russian and American agents? But it would be good for both countries and the world.
davidignatius@washpost.com
Give up the funk, Democrats
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et’s get this straight: The feder- al deficit is such a big crisis that we can’t extend benefits for millions of Americans who are un- employed, many of them in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure? But without a second thought we can extend a massive, temporary tax cut for the rich, even though asking the wealthy to pay their fair share would go a long way toward erasing the deficit? This, as helpfully laid out by Sen.
Jon Kyl of Arizona, is the Republican Party’s economic policy. It’s tempt- ing to conclude that if Democrats lose big in November, it will be their own fault because they’re running against a party that’s preaching pure incoherence. The thing is, we already know that the Republicans’ prescription for the economy doesn’t work. We gave their approach an eight-year trial under George W. Bush — basically, squeeze money out of the middle class and transfer it to the upper class, which theoretically then shows its gratitude by creating jobs for what BP’s chairman would call “the small people.” The result of the experiment has been the worst eco- nomic slump since the Great Depres- sion. That should settle the question of
what happens this fall. Democrats ought to be looking at the prospect of only modest losses, consistent with the historical pattern of mid- term elections. Instead, they are go- ing to have to fight tooth and nail to keep their congressional majorities, especially in the House. I’m of the school that contends White House press secretary Robert Gibbs did his party a favor by pub- licly stating the obvious: Control of the House of Representatives is in play. I’m also of the opinion that the Republican Party’s prospects aren’t quite as sunny as some observers be- lieve. But Gibbs’s candor seemed to jolt Democrats out of the sour lassi- tude in which they had been mired. The party has now shifted into some- thing resembling a sour frenzy, but that’s an improvement. One reason I’m not so confident of
a Republican blowout in the fall is that while polls clearly show that the country is in an anti-incumbent mood, there’s also considerable evi- dence that people see the GOP as part of the problem, not part of the solution. A new Post-ABC News poll, for example, showed that 58 percent of voters have “just some” confi- dence, or even less, in President Oba- ma’s leadership, and that 68 percent were similarly doubtful about the ability of congressional Democrats to lead. But 72 percent had little or no faith in congressional Repub- licans — which suggests to me that the GOP has work to do before its leaders start picking out new office suites in the Capitol.
Another reason for caution is that the Republican Party is out of step with the American public on so many issues. Americans want to see unemployment benefits extended. They want tougher financial reg- ulation, complete with consumer protections. Even health-care re- form, which the GOP succeeded in painting as the apocalypse, becomes more popular as the months pass and somehow the world does not end. It’s true that on some issues Re- publicans hold the more popular po- sition. On illegal immigration, for example, most Americans agree with the GOP’s get-tough, border-first ap- proach. But Latino voters are pas- sionate in supporting Obama’s pol- icy of seeking comprehensive immi- gration reform, including a path to citizenship for undocumented im- migrants who are already here. If Democrats can harness this passion, they can hold on to House and Sen- ate seats that otherwise might slip away — and, in the process, poten- tially cement the support of the na- tion’s largest minority group for dec- ades to come. After rising from the ashes of 2008 by uniting in opposition to anything Obama and the Democrats tried to do, Republicans are defined more by the word “no” than by anything else. They have a rallying cry but not a program. Are the populist, Tea Party types really going to accept the fat- cat economic philosophy of the GOP congressional leadership? Is “drill, baby, drill” a viable energy strategy after the BP disaster? Is Sen. Lindsey Graham the voice of the party on Af- ghanistan, or is Michael Steele? That’s a lot for Democrats to work with. I happen to believe that Obama and his party have established a re- markable record of achievement. Many Americans do not agree, how- ever, and the thing for Democrats to do is not to sulk and feel mis- understood but to go out and change people’s minds. Democrats need to get over them- selves. And then they need to get busy.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
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