Covering the Important News

This made me laugh. What would we do without cable news channels?

Update: And watch this to see CNN's version of the Harris/Sullivan dialogue. It's the proverbial car wreck you can't stop watching... As one of the comments suggests, replace the word atheist with black or Jew, then imagine how this clip plays.

A Dialogue On Faith

I've been meaning to point out a wonderful dialogue taking place on faith and atheism between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. It started several weeks ago and is still ongoing. Harris has, I think, done a bang-up job. It's an enjoyable read.

And Here We Are Again...

So I was recently poking around wikipedia trying to find a quote from the documentary Fog of War, and, on the Fog of War wiki page, I came across a list of 11 lessons that appeared in Bob McNamara's book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. These lessons are different from the ones that appeared in the film (that list was actually developed by the filmmaker, Errol Morris, over McNamara's objection). Reading this list I was quite stunned at how accurately and completely they sum up our current disaster. It's eerie. Keep in mind that the book was written in 1996, seven years before we embarked on our Iraq adventure. Here they are:

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.

4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.

5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…

6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.

9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

Score One for Edwards

After Russ Feingold dropped out of the '08 sweepstakes I was a little bit surprised how quickly liberal bloggers (the Kossacks in particular) hitched themselves to John Edwards's wagon. I didn't care terribly for Edwards in '04, and I'm not that excited about his candidacy this time either. However, Edwards scored points with me when he made waves recently by stating that he would raise taxes to support his universal health care plan. I haven't seen much critical discussion of his plan, and the details I've seen reported are fairly vague. In other words, I don't know if his numbers are realistic or if the plan is a good one. But the mere fact that the man is willing to admit that it will cost money, and that those costs will have to be offset with higher taxes speaks highly to me of Edwards. We've been hearing about health coverage as a major issue for many election cycles at this point, but nothing has been accomplished (nor we have even come close to making progress), because delivering on health care promises will be expensive and painful, and while voters have expressed their desire for health care reform, they've never ratified any willingness to make sacrifices (in terms of taxes or other spending cuts) in order to make it happen. Of course, voters have never had a chance to do so, because politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are content to promise reform while pretending no sacrifice will be necessary. If real progress is to be made, we need to have a serious and frank discussion about what it will cost and how to pay for it. Edwards is the first candidate I've seen who seems to be willing to take part in that discussion. Kudos to him. I'm a long way from jumping on the Edwards bandwagon, but I'm now willing to start taking him seriously.

Israel's Right to Exist

Since Palestinian/Israeli negotiations have been hung up for a couple years over the issue of Hamas refusing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, international lawyer (and Palestinian advisor) John Whitbeck has written a column what the right to exist means to Palestinians. He points out that Israel has never clearly spelled out its own borders, and Israeli texts show all of Palestine as encompassed within Israel. Moreover, it would be an acknowledgment of the moral justification of the initial expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and for all that has followed since then:

To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.

Forcing Palestinians to make this concession, Whitbeck argues, is a tactic in bad faith and a roadblock to progress to peace negotiations.

A Sane Iran Policy

Jacob Weisberg (with an assist from Ken Pollack) breaks down the US strategic policy towards Iran. Weisberg notes that our aggressive saber-rattling will have the same effect in Iran as it has had in so many other places around the globe: to entrench the very regime we hoped to unseat.

Such belligerence seems unlikely to produce the result we desire for a variety of reasons. For one, our bluster is essentially empty. The United States lacks plausible military options for taking out Iran's nuclear program and dealing with the potential reaction, especially now that we are bogged down in Iraq. It is also proving extremely difficult to get the rest of the world to go along with the kind of comprehensive sanctions that would bite. Meanwhile, America's hostility is supplying Ahmadinejad with an external demon for his propaganda and helping him cover over his domestic failures. This American push for futile sanctions follows a familiar pattern, extending from Cuba to Burma to North Korea to pre-invasion Iraq—places where economic isolation and threats have fueled not regime change but regime stabilization.

On the other hand, it is difficult for the US to support human rights and democracy advocates, because a) they tend to say a lot of bad things about us and b) the Bush administration is too toxic for any Iranians to want to be associated with it:

The president, who has managed to make democracy a dirty word in many parts of the world, may by now retain only the ability to taint liberal heroes with guilt by association. Last summer, Iran's other leading dissident, Akbar Ganji, declined to meet White House officials when visiting Washington, saying—with reference to both Iraq and Iran—that "you cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it."

Weisberg believes that, if the US let him, Mohamed ElBaradei could pour cold water on the situation and maneuver the parties to a negotiating table, where the US could simultaneously make progress on the nuclear weapons issue and undercut Amedinejad domestically. It's worth a shot...

Kerry and Khatami at Davos

Andrew Sullivan linked approvingly to this blog post ripping into John Kerry for making comments critical of the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in the presence of (gasp!) Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran. That disturbed me, so I sent him this email:

Mr. Sullivan,

I would be interested to read an explanation for your approving link to Hot Air's blog post ripping John Kerry for his comments at Davos. His comments seemed fairly reasonable; we have consistently burned our diplomatic bridges whether the topic was Iraq, global warming, the International Criminal Court, land mines, nuclear weapons, capital punishment, or torture. And we are facing a crisis of confidence and international isolation. We have been, as Kerry said, diplomatically tone deaf, and it has hurt us badly. I think Kerry is hardly wrong in voicing these concerns. For the most part, they don't seem terribly contrary to comments you yourself have made.

Is the crime merely that he voiced these opinions in the presence of Mohammad Khatami (or "the pig" as Hot Air refers to him)? Should our policy discussion be stifled whenever a Muslim might be listening? Should we imagine that none can see our network news, or read our newspapers or (heaven forbid) your blog? Hot Air suggests that "Khatami's masters" will thrill at these comments critical of the Bush administration. I thought you had disowned the idea that dissent gives aid and comfort to our foes. Isn't frank and open discussion part and parcel of deliberative democracy, even when others are listening? It's not as if they didn't hear all of this from Kerry in 2004 (and having heard it, Iran famously endorsed George W. Bush in the general election -- so much for being thrilled by Kerry's rhetoric).

Furthermore, I'm not certain that vilification of Khatami is terribly useful. Many responsible statesmen have suggested that engaging Iran in a regional dialogue would be to our benefit. Who do we think that dialogue will be with? We may not agree with Khatami across a broad array of issues (and certainly I agree his policies on homosexuality were abhorrent), but is Ahmadinejad better? Is Khamenei? Within the spectrum of politics in Iran, we might not do much better than Khatami. He at least pushed in directions we favored on democracy, on foreign relations, on the rule of law. If we wait to find someone who agrees with us on everything before even engaging in dialogue, then we'll wait (as the Bush administration has) for something that will never happen. Iran is not Iowa, and it is not going to become Iowa simply because we refuse to talk to them. If politics is, as Otto Van Bismarck stated, the art of the possible, we should realize that moderates like Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani are our most likely allies in Iran. That doesn't mean we have to agree with them or even treat them as friends, but gratuitous demonization is not going to further our dialogue.

The 'Supporting the Troops' Mantra

Is the fact that all modern politicians feel obligated to preface and conclude any remark on the war with testimony to their deep and profound support for the troops based on a lie? Jerry Lembcke, a sociologist at Holy Cross College, researched and wrote a book on the phenomenon of people spitting on Vietnam veterans. His conclusion? It never happened (see here for a Slate review of the book). And nobody even claimed it did until 5 years after the last Americans came home. Writes Lembcke: "A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war." Given how politically powerful the notion of people defiling the troops has become, Lembcke's findings are frankly astounding to me. It makes for quite a study in memes and conventional wisdom. This urban legend has left a deep mark on the way we think and talk about war in America, and I don't doubt in the least, has had an impact on the general lack of resistance to Bush's Iraq policy. And it could very well all be bullshit. Wow!

Crime Not War

A follow-up to my post from December about the Brits tiring of the "war on terror" meme, CSM reports that Britain's top prosecutor, Ken Macdonald, criticized war-based rhetoric for provoking a fear-driven response and threatening traditional civil rights. Said Macdonald: "London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, soldiers." Macdonald followed-up: "On the streets of London there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'." Ouch.

Well, I'm sure Alberto "the Constitution just doesn't say that" Gonzalez will come out with some equally thoughtful and well-considered statements any day now.

Scooter and Me

Nick Bromell, an English professor at UMass - Amherst, has written a a brilliant column on his childhood friend L. Scooter Libby, fundamentalism, liberalism, and truth. I can't recommend it highly enough. He gets a bit abstract at points, but his discussion of liberalism and self-doubt and Truth is, I think, dead on the money (and quite Rawlsian at that).

Behavioralism and Foreign Policy

or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon have an interesting article in Foreign Policy Magazine applying behavioral theories to foreign policy. Their finding echoes Cass Sunstein's mortality salience theory (discussed on TBWJ last August). Kahneman and Renshon write:

In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses—only a few of which we discuss here—incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.

This is hardly a surprising finding to me, and, in fact, this is largely what we discussed back in August. Hawkish foreign policy theories seem to be far more politically attractive than they are meritorious. Kahneman and Renshon discuss a few examples in the article, but it would be interesting to see Renshon's book which goes into greater depth on the topic.

The "vision problem" discussed in the article strikes me as particularly troubling. The inability or unwillingness to try to understand (often coupled with scorn and derision directed towards those who try to understand) the context around the actions of others and to try to see how our own actions appear from other perspectives seems to underlay a great many of our foreign policy difficulties.

Telecom Mergers and Net Neutrality

Tim Wu, who you might recall led the push (along with Larry Lessig) for net neutrality last year, has a great article in Slate about the state of telecom regulation after last week's approval of the AT&T-BellSouth merger. We're basically down to AT&T and Verizon now. As Wu says, Ma Bell is back.

I am fairly impressed, however, with the concessions the Democrats forced on the AT&T-BellSouth merger (Copps's concurrence here). The new entity will operate under a fairly robust net neutrality requirement for two years, will be prohibited from tying DSL to other services, and will be required to provide naked DSL for no more than $20/mo. It will be obligated to offer broadband to 100% of its customers by the end of the year, with at least 30% of new deployments directed to low income and rural areas. It will be divested of some of its wireless spectrum licenses. It will repatriate 3000 overseas jobs to the US. Finally, the FCC reinstituted price-capping on enterprise services for the new company for the next four years. Not bad..

Seeking a Foreign Policy Strategy

Here's another fine Post column by another Tufts University academic. Daniel Drezner (who, by the way, has a fine blog) discusses various proposals for an overarching organizing principle for US foreign policy. I have to note once again that his summary of the Fukuyama position looks strikingly like my own position. Have I become a neoconservative? Help!? Damn you for your sensibleness, Fukuyama!

Culture Studies

The Washington Post has an interesting column today on the role of culture in political and economic development, written by the head of the Culture Matters Research Project at Tufts University, where they have been surveying global cultural practices and how they affect developing nations.

The Brits Have Had Enough

CSM reports that Britain is abandoning the phrase "war on terror", and looks into the general muck-up Bush and Blair have made of British-American relations. If there's anyone Bush has screwed over more than America, it's Britain. Somewhere deep in his heart, Tony Blair has to know what an incredible mistake he made casting his lot with Bush. So much for the "Special Relationship". It may be some time before we see that meme revived.

Also a TimesOnline column by Matthew Parris gives probably the best assessment of the Baker report I've seen so far. Parris notes that most of the recommendations in the report are bunk and have no hope of success. That, he says, was never the point. There is no success to be had anymore. But this is a plan that responds to both success and failure in exactly the same way: withdrawing the troops. Quote:

The plan itself won’t work. As the BBC’s eloquent and curiously underrated Washington correspondent, Justin Webb, put it on the radio this week, “it is the tone” not the detail of Baker’s report that is important and new.

That’s true. The tone says: “We’ve lost.” The tone says: “We should have seen this coming.” The tone says: “All we can do now is play a losing hand.” General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of the General Staff, missed the point magnificently this week when he worried aloud that the trouble with a set deadline (of 2008) was that we might have to quit without having achieved our war aims. Poor, upright, soldierly Sir Mike has not realised that that is the whole idea.

But Mr Baker has, and furious neocons realise it too. The term realpolitik has become a cliché in media treatment of the ISG report this week but the irony is this: Baker’s conclusions are anything but realistic: they represent unrealism of the most fanciful kind. His route map is to La-la Land. He knows it. His report is the sugar. The pill is Defeat.

Insurance Industry as Environmental Activist

The Washington Post has a good story insurance adjustments for climate change. The author could have done a better job of parsing out how much this is actually focused on climate change and how much is just a reaction to the insurance industry getting pasted by Katrina (or whether and to what extent those are actually different stories). I'm also a little curious as to why the insurance industry refuses to offer insurance at all to high risk areas rather than just raise prices to cover the increased risk. Risk markets are, in general, pretty interesting stuff. I'm looking forward to my insurance course next semester.

Having recently visited the Outer Banks in North Carolina, I find it a little shocking that the insurance industry is just now waking up to the fact that it is a disaster waiting to happen. It is essentially just a big sand bar sitting off the coast that people have built houses on. I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for people who view one of those houses as a good vehicle for retirement investment. Might as well take that money to Vegas...

The Other Side of Hugo Chavez

Hugo Chávez played into American caricatures with his anti-Bush campaign at the UN, but it bothered me in the aftermath of the speech to hear certain US officials and commentators refer to him as some sort of tyrant or dictator. We would do well to recall the he is, in fact, wildly popular in Venezuela. Current polls have him beating his opponent in tomorrow's election by a 2-1 margin. Like most South American countries Venezuela suffers from an immensely unequal division of wealth (the article cites one claim that the poverty rate in Venezuela is 70%). Chávez has redirected oil wealth to provide education, health care, and basic sustenance for the nation's many impoverished citizens. It's far from clear whether Chávez's policies will accomplish much in the long term, but he has at least taken steps to address the problem, which itself represents a change from past leadership.

In posts past I've wondered what is the proper means to address the lingering impacts of colonialism in South America and other developing regions. Even a hardened libertarian like Nozick calls for redistributive policies where an allocation of resources was achieved through means not consonant with Lockean justice in acquisition. Until the recent wave of populist leaders was elected in South America redistribution of this sort was likely impossible as the wealthy by and large controlled the levers of power. Now that it is possible, the West and the international development institutions (the UN, IMF, World Bank) appear to have little interest in providing assistance, guidance, and advice in this process. This sort of pure redistribution is heretical to modern economic principles, but I think we need to recognize these situations as a special case, one where the general principles don't apply well (which is why all these populist leaders were elected in the first place). I don't know if what Chávez is doing is right, but if it's not I wish we could respond with constructive criticism rather than blanket condemnations...

More Fukuyama and Neocon Theory

Back in June I posted on a Francis Fukuyama appearance at the Miller Center. Greg Djerejian has a post on a London Review of Books review by Stephen Holmes of Fukuyama's After the Neocons (and he includes a fairly lengthy excerpt of the review). As I noted in my previous post, I find Fukuyama's account of what he views to the be the real neocon thesis to be fairly compelling. Quoting from Holmes:

The thesis is that democracy is the most effective antidote to the kind of Islamic radicalism that hit the US on 9/11. Its exponents begin with the premise that tyranny cannot tolerate the public expression of social resentment that its abuses naturally produce. To preserve its grip, tyranny must therefore crush even modest stirrings of opposition, repressing dissidents and critics, with unstinting ferocity if need be. In the age of globalisation, however, repressed rebellions do not simply die out. They splash uncontrollably across international borders and have violent repercussions abroad. Middle Eastern rebellions have been so savagely and effectively repressed that rebels have been driven to experiment with an indirect strategy to overthrow local tyrannies and seize power. They have travelled abroad and targeted those they see as the global sponsors of their local autocrats.

Fukuyama goes on to describe how the Bush administration's policy in Iraq and the in the Middle East generally has strayed from the neocon theory in critical ways (for example that their actual approach to promoting democracy in the Middle East was foolish and ineffective).

There is some merit to the theory as Fukuyama presents it. I think it stops at least one step too soon, however. There are geopolitical (and probably socioeconomic) considerations driving anti-Americanism that pass beyond redirected frustration with local tyrants. Palestine is an obvious example, but there are others. These issues need to be dealt with as well, and part of the value of democratization is to bring those issues to the forefront and provide a venue for them to be addressed. The Fukuyama's theory is laudable in that it perceives that the focus of this conflict should be on people, rather than states, and that non-democratic states can serve as roadblocks to us reaching the people. But I think his analysis of what is driving those people falls short. Democracy is a step in the process, not the endgame.

The conflict this summer in Lebanon provides a good example of this. When Israel mounted its offensive on Lebanon, this was an issue the US needed to address if we were serious about dealing with terrorism's root causes. But because we were insulated from popular opinion by the tyrannical governments of our Middle Eastern "allies", and because the administration does not see addressing popular political concerns as part of the neocon mission statement, we completely failed to confront the issue.

It is not good enough to push for democracy, then simply abandon the governments that result from that democratic process as we've done in Palestine and Lebanon. Grievances that arise from a legitimate democratic process should be taken seriously. And to the extent that there is actual merit behind those grievances we need to take steps to address them in order to buy the political capital we need to credibly dismiss those grievances that don't have merit. I'm not sure Fukuyama's neocon theory is any better than the Bush administration's theory on that point.

Posner on Friedman, Libertarianism, Dogmatism

I've been meaning to blog this for the past week, but better late than never, I guess. Over on the Becker-Posner blog, Richard Posner has a nice comment on Milton Friedman's passing. In it he discusses Friedman's influence and liberal economics, and takes a position I find myself largely in agreement with. Frieman's greatest contribution, Posner says, was to hammer home the point that, in general, people are better at representing their own interests than third parties (i.e. the government) are. But, Posner argues, there are exceptions to this general rule (and Posner gives an example of one), and Friedman failed to recognize them. Friedman's market efficiency advocacy became a dogma in which he was too deeply personally invested.

Additionally, Posner takes issue with Friedman's theory (shared with Friedrich Hayek) about the correlation between economic and political freedom. He looks at China and India as counterexamples running in opposite directions (and also mentions European social democracies).

I tend to share Posner's caution with respect to market dogmatism. I feel the need every now and again to point out that this is not necessarily the same as being a market skeptic. Posner certainly is not a market skeptic; he's a legal pioneer precisely for his tendency to bring economic arguments into legal analysis. I'll take this opportunity to duck behind his cover to note that I am a great fan of distributed solutions to many problems, and markets are a wonderful form of distributive problem-solving. But I tend to doubt that there are any one-size-fits-all solutions to human social problems, and dogmatism for any particular solution will sometimes run amiss.

Public Service Announcement

I've mentioned this to a couple people, but here's your reminder: watch Battlestar Galactica. It's awesome. Download it, rent it, buy it, whatever (it starts with a miniseries, then seasons 1 & 2, season 3 is on the air now). It's a well-written drama with a strong political bent (but not in the obnoxious, preachy Star Trek style) and a surprisingly good cast. And it's dark. Really dark. I love it.

ps. After watching several other good TV serials and miniseries (Firefly, The Wire, Band of Brothers, and yes even Lost) I get the feeling that a creative shift is taking place with the good story-telling moving from cinema to TV. There's just so much more you can do with 20 hours a year for 5-6 years compared to 2 hours, and maybe another 2 hours a couple years later if you're lucky. HBO showed the audience was out there (Sopranos, The Wire, etc.) and download sales and soaring DVD revenues have provided the money for movie-like production quality (Firefly cost $1m per episode to make and I have to imagine Galactica costs more than that).