It came as a surprise (to me, at least) to remember that the State of the Union address is tomorrow night. There has been little to no coverage, little to no discussion, little to no effort. In the lead up to the President’s recent announcement on Iraq a few weeks ago, this country’s political apparatus was concerned, mainly, with the question of whether the President grasped the same reality that was apparent to nearly everyone else.
John McCain was on the first half of Meet the Press yesterday and looked tired. While the senator may be old, its apparent the burden of the war has aged him. Ted Kennedy, Russert’s second guest, was similarly muted, quiet. I don’t think we can blame either man. The war has aged all of us. There are protests - a major march in DC this weekend, events surrounding the anniversary of the war, a renewed examination of the anti-war policies of Dr. Martin Luther King on his birthday. However, for the majority of us, even for the majority of politicians, we seem to lack even the energy to argue, even the energy to disagree. I confess I am as guilty as anyone of skimming past the news stories on Iraq.
I have pled many times publically and privately, in this space and in others, for a greater diversity of thought and direction in this administration and in this country. I fear I have only one plea left. I hope desperately that I am wrong.
I will watch the State of the Union, probably in the background while I type an English paper. I will watch the Democratic rebuttal by Sen. Jim Webb, hopeful that one of the last truly passionate politicians in this country has some to share with me. I plea with either of them, with both of them, to offer some kind of hope. I plea for some thought beyond stay or go. I plea for some action beyond rhetoric gone five years stale. I plea for peace. And I plea for the energy to carry it out. Most importantly, I plea and I pray for the men and women involved in this conflict who don’t have the luxury to be exhausted.
The 300 Millionth American may not have only been born to illegal immigrants, but also to parents who participated in the post-Katrina building boom:
“The coyotes wanted to charge me more and bring me across in a car,” Ms. Alvarado said, sitting in her cramped room in a shotgun shack in the Upper Ninth Ward that she and Tony share with four other people. “But I didn’t take a single vitamin, and I came across that desert jumping fences and all that, and look, here is this boy.”
She cradled a plump bundle: Jackson Antonio, an American citizen who came into the world at Tulane-Lakeside Hospital 12 days early on Oct. 17, the day the 300 millionth American was born.
At Tulane-Lakeside, doctors are delivering 215 to 240 babies a month, which is 60 percent to 70 percent more than before Hurricane Katrina, said André du Plessis, the hospital’s chief operating officer.
When examining this issue, we ought try to remember the positive arguments for free markets in the first place: that the labor force needs the ability to expand based on, among other things, natural disasters.
MEA CULPA UPDATE: Sorry about the messed up title to the post. Fixed now.
NYT reports on the America Center in Burma, a library catering to a closed society. Yes, they mostly read Vogue and watch Brokeback Mountain, but in addition…
At midday recently, a young man carried a thick book from the library — “Nongovernmental Organizations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” — while he nursed a cup of tea. Was he nervous about coming to the center? “It’s my right to have human rights,” he said.
So, why isn’t there a library that comes with every American deployment? Why aren’t there 10? Isn’t there something to be said for spreading democracy by letting people read about it? The next time a talking head (read: Glenn Beck) tells you there’s no option instead of war, ask yourself this question: is there no alternative because there’s no alternative or is there no alternative because you can’t think of one?
Yes, I know the big four races have yet to be decided yet, but I will go out on a limb and argue that, no matter what happens, this election on a national level has been a push. Some reasons why:
Despite Presidential disapproval ratings, wrong track numbers and Congressional disapproval ratings significantly higher than they were in 1994, the Dems did not pull off a revolution. There was no 50 seat overturn in the House. Speaker Pelosi will be lucky to have a thirty seat majority, full of representatives who are not all lock-step with the party.
At the same time, no one can argue that a blow has been rendered to Republicans tonight. Republicans across the spectrum, from Rick Santorum to Lincoln Chaffee have been sent home in a way that would be startling under any other circumstance.
The CNN exits show corruption as the most significant issue on voters’. But terrorism is only a point behind. The economy is only a point behind that. And Iraq is only a point behind that. Sound familiar? Anything like the electoral ennui of 2004?
So where are we in the early hours of November 8th? Americans are mad. Americans are very mad. But this election was far too close for a revolution. This election was far too close to even indicate a shift. A disgraced majority leader, a representative accused of sexually harassing young boys, two drawn out wars far far away, and a Congress considered by many to be among if not the worst ever. And there was no revolution. Does it really appear that Americans put much confidence in Speaker Pelosi to make them feel better? Do they feel that way about President Bush?
I said I would wait to make my 2008 predictions until the “candidates” do, until this election offered us some clear sense of voter opinion. I have never been more convinced of the possibility that a well-financed independent with an ear to the people could revolutionize this country’s politics.
that “Dave Lamberti” will benext congressman from the Iowa 3rd.
I’m guessing she’s kidding.
Sorry for the delay on this, but I’ve been fuming for a few weeks about the President’s refusal to even acknowledge Ahmadinejad’s request for a debate on the issues of American Middle East relations. While I understand that the President can’t do this himself (at least not at this point in foreign policy history), surely someone from the administration could have. Instead, Ahmadinejad went to the CFR and got questions from the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Brent Scowcroft. And, as you might imagine, American FP doctrine pretty much won against a guy who denies the existence of the Holocaust. Anybody surprised?
The blogfather Markos Moulitsas writes for the Cato Unbound blog under the tagline The Case for the Libertarian Democrat
Like me, these were people who didn’t instinctively reject the ability of government to protect our personal liberties, who saw government as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see the government as the source of first resort when seeking solutions to problems facing our country. They also saw the markets as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see an unregulated market run amok as a positive thing. Some of these were reluctant Republicans, seeking an excuse to abandon a party that has failed them. Others were reluctant Democrats, looking for a reason to fully embrace their party. And still others were stuck in the middle, despairing at their options—despondent at a two-party system in which both parties were committed to Big Government principles.
I rather like his analysis style, which continues in much this way throughout the piece. His assessment is probably the reason most of my ballot marks on my first ballot this year (I voted in my good ol’ Iowa 3rd absentee) were beside the Ds. Socially, America is again defining itself as an individual empowerment society (Kos cites Silicon Valley), and I’ve thought for a while that the parties will have to both shift towards libertarianism for their survival in the next 10 years.
A quick note: Inspired by Chris’ (heroic?) return to the blogosphere, I decided to make mine. It’s taken a little effort, but I’ve finally adjusted enough to college life at the Catholic University of America enough to take the time to blog again. I have to admit, there’s a part of me that’s definitely missed it.
To that end, let me offer a piece I wrote for the student newspaper that I wish I could have put in front of a more intellectual audience. :)
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who first won his gold metal in craziness by disputing the existence of the Holocaust, decided this July that his country is in major danger. That danger comes not from Western weapons but from Western words. A Presidential decree released via state media declared that Persian translations would replace over two thousand foreign words, including “pizza,” “cabin” and “chat.” While Ahmadinejad’s paranoia is not questioned here, the strangest reactions often breed the best questions. If dangerous, totalitarian leaders consider the words of the free world dangerous, why can’t the free world’s words actually defeat their regimes?
American military success in Afghanistan and Iraq has always been qualified by the restrictions of a proportional response, one which does not unnecessarily kill civilians or, equally important, offend local customs. While this mission is far more abstract than the traditional objectives of war like taking a capitol or securing a beach head, it is critical for a military power opposing only terrorists and not the societies they hide behind. Unfortunately, however, US foreign policy seems only concerned with trying to win hearts and minds after invasions rather than before them. While Middle Eastern leaders like Ahmadinejad use mechanisms like state-controlled media and terrorist groups use local tribal or religious leaders to advance their cause, the United States has offered only the dramatically underfunded efforts of organizations like the Voice of America as rebuttal to extremism. American enemies like Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents share one quality above all others: they engage in debates the United States outright ignores.
To solve the similar problem of opposing a different ideology, President John F Kennedy created a Peace Corps, sending groups of volunteers to former Communist states both to aid development and to counteract the American capitalist stereotype. The American argument against Islamofascism ought never spread misinformation, propagandize or rely on fear. It doesn’t have to. It only has to tell the truth: free societies leave parents better able to care for their children, allow individuals greater personal success and allow everyone a voice in local affairs. That argument cannot and will not spread if it is only allowed to rot away in a Plato textbook or in the collective intelligence of the State Department. A new era of ambassadorship is required to spread the American argument in the Middle East, one which includes a massive media response, rapid reaction to the words of local leadership and a new crew of young leaders who accept cultural norms while passionately arguing for and demonstrating their beliefs. Ahmadinejad understands the continuing struggle for the public consciousness in his country and knows that his hold on power can continue best when he watches his words. Are we watching ours?
Live from the State Fair - Chris and I went to the forum on biodiesel and other alternative energy. Photos here. My notes are below, edited only to account for the fact that I can’t spell. P.S. Apologies for not posting this earlier. I tried, but my Palm refused to copy/paste my notes into the WordPress form. I was sad.
Continue reading ‘ISF 2006 - Renewable Fuels Forum Notes’
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick follows Justice Anthony Kennedy to the ABA conference in Hawaii and comes back with Kennedy’s interesting ideas about the role of America’s rule of law in the world:
“Our best security, our only security, is in the world of ideas, and I sense a slight foreboding.” The world of ideas may be far from Honolulu. But the world of ideas is the only place Kennedy calls home. To that end, he assigns himself a seemingly impossible task: He wants to define “rule of law” so we can start to peddle the concept worldwide. It is not enough to sell the world on the U.S. Constitution, he says. That is merely a set of “negative commands.” He is looking for a positive formulation for the rule of law.
I like that Kennedy is willing to deputize lawyers as ambassadors of the American idea; I think we can ask the same thing of all professionals in this country.
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Andrew Romero add to the mag’s cover story on the new Oliver Stone flick with a brief history of the American myth:
In America, the underlying faith is that in a truly free and democratic society, every man and woman has the potential to realize greatness, that freedom and openness liberate and ennoble ordinary citizens to do extraordinary things. The Triumph of the Common Man is a myth deeply rooted in American culture, and unlike some popular myths, it is true enough. Tom Hanks may have played a fictional character in “Saving Private Ryan”—the small-town American called to arms—but World War II was won by a million citizen soldiers very much like him.
There is, unfortunately, another, less admirable myth that Americans concoct to explain crises and disasters. It is rooted in the paranoid streak that runs through pop culture, the conspiracy theories that blame some sinister (and usually make-believe) Other for whatever went wrong. In 1950, many frightened Americans wanted to know: how could Russia have gotten the bomb so soon after America won World War II? There must be traitors among us! railed Sen. Joe McCarthy and other conspiracists, as they tore up the country looking for communists under every bed.
The authors argue that, if even Oliver Stone can choose the former instead of the latter to define September 11th, the event is something fundamentally different to American history. I, for one, am a little weary at analogies connecting the event to Pearl Harbor or anything of the like: the non-state element of the attack makes this something fundamentally different. I will say, for the era in which we now live, 9/11 has come to summarize both the hopes and fears of the Information Age: the inevitable conflicts between liberty and security, the empowerment of the individual to be used to lift up or to cut down and the ideological battles raging in the hearts of many for centuries.
CSM sums up US rebuilidng in Iraq:
The US-led reconstruction effort in Iraq - comparable to the Marshall Plan after World War II - is drawing to a close, but falling short of its original goals.
Of 14,000 planned projects, more than 500 have not been started. Others are in progress including a new oil pipeline to run through northern Iraq.
Corruption and mismanagement of building projects took their toll, particularly in the early stages. Rebuilding has also been battered by insurgent violence.
In a soft power war, we have to remake what is destroyed, or we breed terrorism. The insurgency will continue as long as we continue to lose hearts and minds.
Reason’s Brian Doherty offers a very interesting piece on moral culpability in the Middle East, taking each side individually to task and chiding bloggers for monday morning quarterbacking:
States get cut moral slack that individuals never do. No individual would be forgiven for carrying out a private grudge, against even the most evil of people, by blowing up his entire neighborhood—not even after giving 24 hours’ warning. Much of the world nods understandingly when such acts are acts of state.
The whole piece is worth reading, if only from a philosophical standpoint. Morally, I’ve always been of the view that war is a sin which humanity takes on itself collectively when it does not take greater steps towards institutions which avoid it. Certainly one would not expect UN or US intervention at the drop of a hat, but it seems hard to argue that this conflict would occur in every possible post-WWII foreign policy enviornment. Admittedly, I can’t point to one or two things that could have prevented it, but still.
If you ever wondered exactly how things in the Middle East could be this bad for this long, the NYT has produced a nice graphic for you.
Just look at all those arrows.
