I have been accused of copying Beethoven in my string quartets. So let me admit first that the study of the corpus of Western thought, and its extension, will find no more staunch defender tham myself. However, in our search for an Eternal City, there most vocal defenders of "The Western Canon" are all too often trying to bar the gates.
Published originally 27 - 10 - 2006 OpenDemocracy.net
This is an "only in America" story that takes place in the small, conservative state of South Dakota. A few months ago, the national media were obsessed with this state's effort to ban all abortions. Recently, the story has faded, eclipsed by other electoral news, most notably the sharply worsening situation in Iraq and domestic scandals. But the effort to forbid all abortions is far from an insignificant matter. It is a strategic battle in the nation's endless cultural wars and could have a lasting impact on every American woman's reproductive rights in the United States.
Is college a good deal despite rising debt? Two reports released this week help answer the question.
On Tuesday, the College Board announced that the median debt for four-year college graduates has reached $19,300. Yesterday, the Census Bureau announced that a degree is worth $22,900 a year (after comparing the average earnings of college and high school graduates).
So, no problem, right? It looks likes most graduates can pay off their debts quickly and easily.
Well, yes and no.
People under the Soviet Union used to acidly quip that there was "No Truth in News, no News in Truth" - because the main state press organs were ???????? - "News" - and ?????? - "Truth". Isvestia was recently bought by state owned Gasprom, and so has gone back to its roots as an organ of government. In the United States, it is becoming uncomfortably like reading Pravda and Izvestia from the days of the USSR. For your consideration this piece of outright propaganda by Michael Grunwald of the Washington Post - it covers the news, but in both senses of the word. Note how carefully he avoids coming out and telling the truth - that it is Desperate Republicans that are going all out to pure smear.
But the desperation isn't limited to ads that make dishonest insinuation, race baiting analogies and cable channels that are now running Republican apologist screamers in a tight loop - it is all the way into what was once called "the mainstream media". A term that needs, like "def", a formal funeral.
Stephen Walt’s realist criticisms of the Princeton Project seem to me to offer the best alternative vision of US power and the US role in the world in the decade to come. I agree with most of it, and don’t flatter myself that I could better it. What I would like to address, however, is the important remark that Anne-Marie makes at the end of her post replying to Walt. She points out that she and John Ikenberry have argued that the US must, both out of moral commitment and self-interest promote the universal values of democracy, liberty, justice, equality, and tolerance. And then she throws down the gauntlet. “If [Walt’s] view,” she writes, “and that of many of our other critics on the far left, is that these are not universal values, but only American values, then we need a much deeper debate about who we are and what we stand for as a nation.”
We do indeed.
We hear a lot about the need for a single concept and phrase like containment both to win the “big ideas” debate and work politically as a bumper sticker. This has been part of the discussion of the Princeton Project on National Security (PPNS) over on The Book Club, both with some critics saying the PPNS Report has too many issues and priorities and not one overarching one, and Anne-Marie Slaughter and John Ikenberry making the case for “Liberty Under Law” as their core organizing concept and integrating strategy.
While we do need core ideas and strategies that are not just laundry lists of position papers, they need to strike the tricky balance of being simple but not simplistic. Clear and integrating enough to be the forest, and not just the trees of this and that issue, but also not denying the complexity that is reality. I have some differences with Liberty Under Law as a core macro-idea and strategy, for later discussion. Here my point is more addressed to the PPNS critics who lapse into rose-colored history about how much and how well containment really worked as the Cold War’s single organizing concept.
George Kennan, the father of containment, had intended his original conception to be the basis for U.S. strategy against the Soviet threat in Europe. He did not intend for it to be applied to all places all the time in all ways. He strongly objected both generally to containment as a global strategy and with regard to key applications like Vietnam. Containment worked well in Europe but much less so in the Third World. Lestwe forget how much political protest there was to Third World containment (Vietnam in the 1960s-70s, Central America in the 1980s)? Moreover, so many of today’s problems and threats had their roots in this supposedly so successful single organizing concept: Iran and the 1953 coup, African countries like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in which post-Cold War instabilities and tragedies in significant part trace back to the dictators we supported in the name of containment, Afghanistan and the enemy of my enemy is my friend logic for supporting fundamentalist forces that ended up having them as our enemy, too. Containment was not the bumper sticker that we now see it as.
The myth of the just war may indeed as Mark Grimsley argues may make fascists of us all, and more than a few think it has. But it is clear that the right wing is trying to make alchemists of us all. They'd be flat earthers, except there is too much money pushing missile defense against ICBMs.
It is the day after St. Crispian's - immortalized by Henry V of England and given a pedestal of poetry Shakespeare - that it is worth reflecting on how a devastating victory on the field can still lead to a quagmire in the occupation.
But it is the last verse of the play which speaks most loudly to the results of history:
With the elections just around the corner, progressives around the country received last week’s dismal Congressional approval ratings with considerable glee. An NBC/WSJ poll reported that a whopping 75% of likely voters “disapprove” of the job Congress is doing. On the heels of the Foley scandal and in the midst of a month on track to be one of the deadliest for American soldiers in Iraq since the start of the war, Democratic strategist Anita Dunn crowed to USA Today, “It's the absolute crystallization for people of everything they dislike about Washington and congressional Republicans.” While the numbers may indeed portend major victories for the Democrats in congressional races next month, progressives who want real policy change ought to be concerned.
Rock-bottom trust in government statistics may look good for an out-of-power party looking to clean house, but they cast a foreboding shadow over a major objective for progressives: an active role for government. The need for a strong, effective, and efficient government is at the core of the progressive project. Attenuation in public trust in government makes achieving this aim a particular challenge, as low levels of trust translate into a hostile climate for government action.
A three week tour around the country has shown just how serious America's economic problems are for working people. Change will come when people outside the Beltway unite and create demand for a different course.
Since President Bush announced two weeks ago that he would hold North Korea “fully accountable” for any transfers of nuclear weapons or materials, commentators have been trying to explain what that would entail, though often making fools of themselves in the process. I wrote about the challenge a few years ago, and a few others have too, but a new article out in Nature today does by far the best job yet of explaining the technical opportunities and challenges involved, while suggesting some interesting policy measures. Check it out.
Yesterday the New York Times reported that the student lender Loan to Learn invited college officials on a Carribean vacation for two, all expenses paid. Some observers thought it looked like "an attempt to buy access into college financial aid offices."
Today, Loan to Learn cancelled the trip ($), citing an "unfortunate perception" created by "inaccurate reports in the media." But questions continue about what lenders are allowed to do to win loan business -- and what deals they are actually striking with colleges.
James Dorn is one of a long list of Westerners who keeps telling the Asian economies to do what is convenient for Westerners. The record on this is a mixed bag, the East Asian economic zone countries have sometimes done what is convenient for Europe and the US, but often does not. We don't live in an age of rising internationalism, but rising economic nationalism. The very forces which have played out inside the US after the end of the Cold War, are now playing out in the world at large.
And that doesn't bode well for the trade regime that has been constructed over the course of the last 20 years.
You might want to write a piece about the blatant racism of the Republican Party, in light of the repugnant "playboy" ad. You could have an imaginary conversation between the Secretary of State and the President as the scene.
Here's another idea: you could discuss the outrage that the Supreme Court has endorsed gerrymandering that denies the principle of one person-one vote. Amazing fact: a Democratic margin of more than 10% in the House elections on an aggregate basis isn't sure to change even 15 seats. It's obvious that the Constitution is being flouted.
You might visit the Connecticut campaign to report on that particular State of daily denials that was said by the incumbent was said at all.
Just floating ideas, because the stay-at-home typing about Senators Clinton and McCain drinking together, or the President reversing his phrasing, isn't really making the most of your talents for invective, and the nation needs large doses of that to brace itself for the extraordinarily vile advertisements and other campaign pitches of the incumbents.
Is this Thomas Dewey time for Democrats. I'm worried that it might be.
If your son or daughter is serving under the leadership of General George W. Casey, God help him or her. This man is a fool and a disgrace to the U.S. Army. Today during a press conference in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, General Casey decided to play politics and apple polish the Bush Administration rather than tell the truth. According to Casey:
The Baghdad security plan continues to have a dampening effect on sectarian violence,
Extra U.S. troops dispatched to Baghdad have had a decisive effect. . . Iraqi security forces operating in and around Baghdad also are making significant contributions in reducing the violence, he added.
Iraq isn"t awash in sectarian violence, . . .Most sectarian violence in Iraq is concentrated across a 30-mile radius around Baghdad, and, 90 percent of all violence in Iraq is taking place in five of the country"s 18 provinces.
What planet is this man on? Is he auditioning to be the Army's version of Baghdad Bob?
I read Paul Kiel's piece today on TPMmuckraker about the House Intell committee "losing" the famous NIE report on Iraq for 6 months (or maybe it was 3). No surprise he got a later call amending it to 3 months. And it struck me, then, if I didn't know already, that last week's suspension by Chairman Hoekstra of one of Jane Harman's staffers. Larry Hanauer, was completely unjustified. The proof: the calendar.
I read Paul Kiel's piece today on TPMmuckraker about the House Intell committee "losing" the famous NIE report on Iraq for 6 months (or maybe it was 3). No surprise he got a later call amending it to 3 months. And it struck me, then, if I didn't know already, that last week's suspension by Chairman Hoekstra of one of Jane Harman's staffers. Larry Hanauer, was completely unjustified. The proof: the calendar.
Josh Marshall has been flooding the zone on the story of Ken Mehlman’s tortured response to the Republican National Committee’s racially coded ad against Harold Ford in Tennessee. Basically Mehlman’s response is that, although he is supposedly the chair of the RNC, he didn’t see the ad and can’t order it pulled because of campaign finance rules against coordination. Which means, basically, that the ad was run by someone who operates independently, and runs ads that are not coordinated with the campaigns or the party committee. That allows use of money from different sources, often in larger amounts. Though why the ad is attributed to the RNC is a little mysterious to me, and his statement that he gave money to an independent person seems backward. Usually with independent expenditures, the person with the money (say, Swift-Boat financier Bob Perry) brings the money and creates the ad.
The issue of coordination within a single political committee is arcane, and if I fully understood it, I could charge politicians $600 an hour. But the first rule of coordination is not that complicated: Independent ads on behalf of a federal candidate may not be coordinated with the candidate’s committee. That’s how we balance the First Amendment right to speak for yourself with the constitutionally legitimate restrictions on campaign contributions, intended to prevent corruption.
But look at the independent ad in question. Then look at Republican Bob Corker’s own ad, here.
What message will Democrats deliver to their fellow Americans that builds on peoples’ growing convictions about the recklessness of the war? Whatever the specific content of the ‘message’, it needs to begin in Flint, Michigan or Sioux Falls or Biloxi Mississippi. More radically, let’s stop thinking ‘message’, and start thinking ‘conversation’.
As the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during the Clinton Administration, Bill Kennard often tried to do the right thing in the face of daunting odds.
That’s why it was tremendously disappointing to see him on the pages of the New York Times taking a swipe at Net Neutrality. He joins Mike McCurry as perhaps the most prominent of the Clinton Democrats to side with the big telephone and cable companies in their campaign to control the Internet.
Every governing movement needs people who can find arbitrage opportunities. Every time you or anyone else flies into DCA - National Airport, you are benefiting from some sharp eyed New Dealer who told FDR that there was a pot of money, and that it could be used to create a commercial airfield. Those who have, and hoard, pots of money don't like it, but the benefits of putting them into use are undeniable. This ability is the point of the needle - a smooth piercing of the problems of the day.
Chris Bowers has that gift, and if his use it or lose it campaign to get uncontested Democratic incumbents to put their unused cash in to the kitty doesn't make him a candidate for working in, or advising, the next Democratic Majority, then the Democratic Party needs new Human Resources people. It is officially all over the traditional media.
The other day Israeli Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann chastised his countrymen for being so upset by their losses in the recent Lebanon war. "We are too sensitive to our losses, and also to the losses of the other side," he said. "In the Yom Kippur War, 3,000 soldiers were killed. It sounds terrible, but that's small change."
Enron's Jeff Skilling was sentenced today to over 24 years in prison, and ordered to pay $45 million in restitution.
We may have hit upon the fix for the growing wage gap. Maybe if we invested in corporate crime fighting, we could rack up some nice restitution orders and send that money along to employees, pension funds and 401(k) plans.
It might not make up for all the money CEOs with compliant boards decided to pay themselves (instead of retaining workers, lowering prices or rewarding investors). But it's a start!
Two of the most frequent criticisms or concerns that John and I hear when we present the Princeton Project final report are ones raised by Dan and Peter in their thoughtful and helpful posts. First is the charge that a multidimensional national security policy will have too many dimensions for the American people to swallow; that it will be trumped every time by the appealing simplicity of the war on terror with Islamo-Fascism as the enemy. That was the appeal of containment, the argument goes: it was wonderfully simple. We can argue all we want that we face multiple threats, but voters simply won’t buy a national security strategy with too many moving parts. Second, as Peter argues particularly, the votes just aren’t there for engagement with international institutions on any basis, a strategy that he characterizes as “substituting international partnership for national power.”
Not surprisingly, we disagree on both counts.
For those who do not know it, the film Suna no onna or "Woman of the Dunes" is perhaps the perfect parable for our moment. It features an amateur entymologist who is trapped in a strange village where the dunes pour sand into the houses, and so the lead house must dig lest the others behind it collapse. He forms a relationship with the woman who lives there, and is unable to escape, even after she dies. Now go back and read the review, ask yourself if the same illogic applies to Iraq.
There seems to be a touch of the bittersweet in the air, because the composer of the music - Toru Takemitsu - has been on the mind of Ives biographer Jan Swafford and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. Takemitsu also wrote the music for another emblematic movie: Ran.
It makes more than a certain sense that this most post-modern of composers is surfacing at this precise instant - he was a glutton for popular culture, and his music forms a kind of stillness around which the movies which he scored, and the songs he knew, swirled about. We are searching for this kind of stillness in our own moment.
Enter media darling Barak Obama. Though not without dissonance.
These are also the rules derived from numerous other conflict-ridden, negotiated states in the last 100 years.
1. When the central government cannot control the countryside, it will eventually lose control in the cities as well.
2. A foreign army cannot provide security in the case of civil war.
3. It is uneconomic to use military force to obtain access to natural resources.
4. Democracy cannot be imposed on a people by a foreign military force.
5. Economic development must precede democracy.
6. A great power should not directly fight guerrilla wars: it cannot use its great power in those situations and will suffer loss to its great power by embroiling itself in such conflicts. If it must engage in such conflicts, it must use surrogates.
7. Airwar cannot provide security; it can be used to preclude the formation of large massings of soldiers, materiel, or other airforces.
8. Police have to speak the language of those policed.
9. The United States has more important national security issues than those presented in the Middle East, as important as those may be.
10. The White House really should let the generals run wars.
As if we needed another sign of the failure of progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians, now comes word that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is apparently succeeding in bringing into his government an ultra-right wing political leader, Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Beitanu party, a party comprised of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. This has been Olmert's professed goal all along--though promoting himself and his government as one of the Center-Left, with the Labor Party as the junior partner, Olmert is now extending his hand to one of the most polarizing figures in Israeli politics, someone who openly advocates for involuntary transfer of the Palestinian citizens inside of Israel (about 20% of the population) to a future Palestinian state because he calls them "fifth columnists" and accuses them of being traitors to the state. Lieberman, born in Molodova and who today lives in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, has been likened to Putin in his disregard for democracy.
Glenn McCoy goes for fraud this time. He's the Rush Limbaugh of the cartoon page - engaged in outright deception and lying, on a daily basis, and reliably picked up by every dishonest newspaper in the country out to scam your money from you. It isn't so much a vast right wing conspiracy as a... well culture of corruption. And yet there they are on the television saying "look, over there! someone else is trying to scam a penny from you." It reminds me of the pick pocket scheme in Buenos Aires, where the shill drops a few low value coins and notes on the ground and as tourists bend over to pick them up, the filch nabs their wallets.
Remember "Dow 36,000!", the American Enterprise Institute backed book? Well the commentator is still around, but he and his fellow fraudsters are now talking up Dow 12,000 as if they were right all along.
After the election, the White House will change the strategic objectives and tactical means in Iraq, but you are supposed to vote for R's to show your trust in their unrevealed and perhaps as yet decided judgment, because they won't explain what they intend to do or how they intend to implement it.
If returned to power, the incumbents in Congress will...what? For all the MSM caterwauling that the Democrats have offered no agenda, in fact potential Leader Pelosi has outlined the first 100 days. Speaker Hastert's first 100 days will be dedicated to resolving scandals quietly and quickly.
The unadorned truth about this election is that any voter punching the Republican circle on the ballot does so with a blind faith that the R's will pursue wiser courses of action than the D's, even though all evidence in the last five years proves the contrary and no promises or even coherent assertions have been made by the R's about the next two years. The President even said this weekend that he never insisted on "staying the course" in Iraq! Like the Bourbon Kings, this Administration forgets everything and forgives nothing. But his words have this meaning: the White House knows that it is losing in Iraq; or more precisely, the American forces are being squeezed out of Iraq by the escalating civil war. So after the election, changes will be made. But the voters aren't to be told this truth now.
The number of American troops who have had their security clearances revoked because they are too deeply in debt has increased nine-fold in the past five years. The US government, desperate for soldiers to send into fighting, has decided that mountains of plain old consumer debt present enough danger that these people cannot be sent to fight.
The military says it has two fears: indebted soldiers selling secrets to the enemy or soldiers, although loyal, who don’t “have their heads in the game.” Why aren’t other American employers worried about the same issue? People deep in debt may do bad things to try to save their families or they just may not be able to concentrate on their jobs if they are worried sick about foreclosures or debt collection calls.
Andy Stern and the Warren Report bloggers have been laying the foundation for a realignment of interests in which employers recognize that they need a national health care system as much as their employees do. I want to go one step further: Employers also have a very real stake in the rising level of consumer debt.
Who in Washington really supports the troops? Well, here are the facts.
Sure, politicians say they support the troops. But whose votes back up their rhetoric – and who’s just wearing an American flag lapel pin?
Now there’s an easy way to know for sure. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America’s Action Fund has tallied up every Congressional vote cast on troops’ and veterans’ issues for the last five years. We’ve crunched the numbers, and given every legislator a letter grade - the IAVA Congressional Rating. We have created a groundbreaking new web interface that will allow you (and every American) to find out for themselves where politicians stand on the issues.
Check your representatives’ IAVA Congressional Rating at www.iavaaction.org.
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