More Middle Eastern-style democracy at work

The "march of democracy" continues in the Middle East, where the Palestinian President had to dissolve his government in the midst of a Hamas-Fatah civil war in which the bad guys (Hamas) have the momentum and significant support from the people. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, violence continues and tensions between Sunni and Shiites are growing.

Remembering Ronald Reagan

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Reagan's speech at the Brandenberg Gate, in which he famously urged Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." Two years later, the Germans themselves tore it down. While Reagan had his flaws and made his share of mistakes, the Brandenberg speech deserves to go down in history as one of the high points in American presidential rhetoric.

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Also, Reagan's presidential diary is now available on bookshelves. I saw the book's editor, historian Douglas Brinkley, interviewed on C-SPAN recently. Some of the passages he read out loud might surprise people today. Among other things, Reagan reacted to the murder of more than 200 Marines in Beirut not with a reckless desire to send more ground forces in; instead, he saw it as a sobering reminder that the Middle East was a dangerous morass to be avoided. He also viewed the death of any innocent civilian caused by American bombs as a failure, not as an acceptable loss. Many so-called conservatives today would likely take exception with those two points--and perhaps in the fullness of time they will be proven right--but it's refreshing to remember that at least one Republican president in the not-so-distant past viewed military intervention as an option of last resort, and took great pains to avoid entangling the U.S. in the Middle East.

Don't bother running, Chuck

Meanwhile, another guy who shouldn't bother running for president is Senator Chuck Hagel. While I appreciate his service in Vietnam and the fact that he has not blindly toed the GOP party line on Iraq, his principal criticism of the war is worse than stupid: that it has damaged our standing in the Middle East.

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I hate to break it to you Senator, but:

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1 - Our standing there was never great to begin with.

2 - If there is any place on earth whose opinion should mean the least to us, it's the Middle East. The values of Arab society are so utterly antithetical to our own and to modern civilization in general, that Arabs should be much more worried about how the rest of the world views them than should we.

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You can hear Senator Hagel's full speech to the Council on Foreign Relations by downloading the podcast from the iTunes store.

Richardson a disappointment

Bill Richardson's appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday was the worst performance I've ever witnessed of a major candidate for the presidency. If you didn't catch the interview, you can view it online at the Meet the Press website or download the podcast from the iTunes store. His pathological tendency to take both sides of an issue at once and to avoid giving direct "yes or no" answers must make even Bill Clinton blush. Much as I hate to say it, I've officially scratched him off my list of candidates I could in good conscience vote for.

Oh for the love of...

It's inevitable, isn't it? Every election this asinine issue of "who's a real hunter, and who's not" comes up. You know what? If I ran for president, I'd have no hesitation admitting that I've never hunted. Not only that, but--gasp!--I've never golfed either, and I'd have no hesitation admitting that too.

It's sad how predictably shallow this presidential race has become, almost before it even began. Witness the media's obsession with who's raising more money than who, and their decision to reduce the Democratic field to just Obama and Clinton, ignoring far more qualified and compelling candidates like Bill Richardson. I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more!

Senator Kennedy still doesn't get it

This morning I turned on "Meet the Press" just in time to hear Senator Ted Kennedy say, once again, that it's the Senate's job to "do the will of the people." Is it really? Then why do we need a Senate at all, Mr. Senator? Why not dispense with the institutions of representative democracy and go to direct popular votes on every issue?

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It's amazing to me--and quite frightening, when you really think about it--that someone can spend his entire adult life in the Senate and still not understand the basic constitutional role of that body. It makes you wonder how many other senators fail to understand their constitutional duties, as well. Quite a few, I'm guessing.

Hillary is "in to win"

It comes as no surprise to anyone: Senator Clinton has finally thrown her hat in to the ring. Didn't she promise the voters of New York she wouldn't run? Ah well, even if she did, such vows are meaningless in the fork-tongued world of politics. I have nothing personal against the woman, but I think it says a lot about our shallow electorate that she is considered the presumptive front-runner. Why? Because she was First Lady to an adulterous president? Hmph, makes sense to me.

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Yes, I know, she's a very bright and capable woman. I don't doubt it for a moment. And as far as experience goes, she's no less qualified than most of the other senators running; actually, more qualified, when compared to Obama and Edwards.

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So far, the only Democrat in the race who impresses me is Bill Richardson, who has exactly the kind of resume voters should look for in a potential president. But the sad reality is, he doesn't have a snowball's chance for three shallow reasons: he doesn't have a lot of name recognition, he doesn't have the generic "good looks" that voters look for in a president (because, you know, that's so important), and he doesn't have the personality of a smooth-talking used car salesman.

34,452 Iraq civilians said killed in '06

But hey, at least Saddam is dead! That kind of makes it worth it, right? Right?

The uncertain future of Afghanistan

This morning, on Foreign Exchange, Fareed Zakaria interviewed the Afghan ambassador to the U.S. about the uncertain future of Afghanistan. Although neither of them said it, the sad fact is that the worsening situation in that country is a direct result of our invasion and indefinite occupation of Iraq. Although the neo-cons adamantly denied it at the time, any sane military planner could have foreseen (and many did) that taking on another, ever larger, nation-building occupation when the mission in Afghanistan was far from complete was a terrible idea. I would go so far as to say it was one of the worst American foreign policy blunders in my lifetime. It's strange to me that so many Republicans, who spent years attributing our loss in Vietnam to the half-measures of the LBJ administration, turned around and wholeheartedly embraced the half-measures of the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am no fan of idealistic, interventionist foreign policies, and I believe--as many conservatives used to believe--that wars should be fought by necessity, not choice, and then only with the maximum amount of resources and military might possible. And it should go without saying that you fight only one war at a time, unless presented with no other choice. The future of Afghanistan is uncertain because this timeless wisdom was carelessly brushed aside by a collection of overly idealistic fools in the highest levels of power.

Plan B for Iraq

The politicos are starting to talk about what happens if the president's new plan fails. I've given that some thought myself, and here's my multi-part solution:

1. Give up on the idea of creating a peaceful, democratic Middle East. If the people of that region really want peace and democracy, they can fight for it themselves. No externally imposed solution is ever going to last until Sunnis and Shia stop hating each other, Israel, and the West, and that ain't gonna happen any time soon.
2. Take half of what we're currently spending on the War in Iraq and push it into developing alternative sources of energy; a far-sighted strategy that will help wean Americans off of oil, diminish the Middle East's importance to our national interests, and get us back in the business of being bold innovators and pioneers rather than bloated, dependent addicts.
3. Take the other half of what we're currently spending on the War in Iraq and push it into radically increasing our Special Operations forces and putting far more Human Intelligence (HUMINT) assets on the ground in the Middle East. Wherever terrorist groups set up camp, take the fight to them with the troops who do it best, rather than through gigantic, conventional, occupational forces that are merely sitting targets, sources of resentment, and magnets for violence.
4. While we're at it, throw in the more than four billion we spend annually on Israel and Egypt. Israel is a successful democracy that can easily defend itself against every Arab nation combined, and Egypt is an unconscionable waste of money all around (unless you count 80%+ anti-American sentiment, pro-Sunni insurgent television shows, and 25 years of Hosni Mubarek money well spent). That four billion could be much better spent on items 2 and 3.

Where do we go from here?

A powerful and depressing realization struck me last night after watching the president and then his critics speak about our "new direction" in Iraq. It was the realization that most of our elected leaders are suffering from one of two fatal delusions about Iraq, and in some cases from both: the first delusion is that 21,000 extra troops can actually help restore order there, and the second is that a "political" solution is possible for Iraq. The first betrays a criminal naivete about military operations and the nature of the conflict we're fighting, and the second betrays a profound ignorance of how deep and violent the divisions in Iraqi society really are. We continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Sunni insurgents and Shia militias--driven by hatred of the West and distorted religious faiths that deny the humanity of each other and Infidels alike--are capable of and willing to behave like civilized democrats. They're not.

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Thus, we are caught in a horrible dilemma: hoping for a political solution that will never come, and unwilling to commit anywhere near enough troops and resources to decisively quell the violence.

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Furthermore, the "clear and hold" strategy our president wants to pursue begs the question, for how long? When you clear and hold any area in Iraq, the enemy combatants know the Americans won't be there forever. Long after we're gone, there will still be Sunnis and Shia who hate each other, with Iran and Syria meddling from across the border. Unless someone can fabricate the strategy and means to resolve all of those problems at once, the violence in Iraq will continue to worsen.

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At least the president is sending a naval carrier group and antiaircraft guns to the region. We're going to need them for the bloodbath ahead.

To surge or not to surge...

This is a tough issue for Democrats. If indeed they deny funds for a troop surge as appears likely, then Republicans for years to come will place the blame on them for the disaster that is Iraq. I can hear it already: "If only we had made that one last troop surge," they will say, "we could have quelled the sectarian violence and democracy would have flourished. But no, the Democrats had to pull the rug out from under the military's feet, just like they did in Vietnam." I know, I know, it's ludicrous, but this is politics.

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My own reluctant conclusion about a troop surge is this: too little, too late. It would take a lot more than an extra 2o to 40 thousand troops at this point to quell the sectarian violence. The time for overwhelming strength was at the beginning of this conflict, when it might have helped prevent the violence from erupting in the first place. I am frankly skeptical that any amount of force the U.S. could have mustered would have kept the lid on all the ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms that Saddam kept in check through brute force and terror.

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Meanwhile, the president of Egypt is again snubbing the U.S. by refusing to shut down a pro-Sunni insurgent TV channel.

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Egypt, incidentally, is the 3rd highest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, after Iraq and Israel. Money well spent on making the Middle East more democratic? Well hey, at least it's kept Mubarek in office for 25 years.

The Top 5 books I read in 2006

5. American Guerrilla: My War Behind Japanese Lines, Roger Hillsman
4. In Our Image: America's Empire in the Phillippines, Stanley Karnow
3. Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945, Max Hastings
2. John Adams, David McCullough
1. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Numbers 3 to 5 are excellent books that help put current conflicts like the war in Iraq in a healthier historical context than most people, both for and against the war, frankly have. Numbers 1 and 2 I would commend for their warm and moving accounts of two great (if unappreciated, in the case of Adams) presidents and their relationships with other famous men (Jefferson, in the case of Adams, and William Seward, in the case of Lincoln).

Honorable mentions that didn't make my Top 5 are Freedom & Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate by George Carey and The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria. The latter, in particular, I would commend to anyone who believes that democracy is an unqualified good that can work anywhere.

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One book I found a little disappointing was Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren. It was informative and worth reading for anyone who needs more proof about how utterly dysfunctional Arab states really are, but not as gripping an account of combat as I had hoped.

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The rest of the non-fiction books I recall reading in 2006 were:

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1776, David McCullough
In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, Rick Atkinson
Martin Luther, Martin Marty
Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II, Stephen Ambrose

Revolutionary Wealth

I only caught a little bit of this on Book TV, and apparently it was a re-run. I have to confess that I haven't read any of Toffler's work yet, so I'm not endorsing his conclusions, but I did find the portion of the conversation I watched to be thoughtful and thought-provoking. If the U.S. really is spearheading a new civilization and way of life, and I believe that it is, I wish more Americans would consider what they want our historic legacy to be; will history remember us as just another empire that succumbed to selfish materialism and the arrogance of power, or will it remember us as something more, something nobler and better?

Stop apologizing to the Moslem world

This editorial captures some the frustration I feel about our approach to the Islamic world. Among the many mistakes this administration has made, one of the most baffling is its belief that it must flatter and cajole Moslems to get them to embrace Western-style democracy and values. The fact is, while there are many good Moslems in the world, their religion as it is practiced in most of the world today is inimical to our form of government and our values, not to mention modernity as a whole. Western civilization is by no means perfect, but it doesn't need to keep apologizing to Moslems or obsessively worry about upsetting their feelings. The problems in the Middle East have much less to do with mistakes made by the West than they do with deep-seated cultural and religious problems inherent to their societies. The sooner we stop pretending otherwise the better. Let them worry about how the rest of the world perceives them.

Thoughts after Election Day

So, the Democrats won both houses of Congress, a majority of the governerships, and Rumsfeld's head on a platter. Happy days are here, right? A new golden age of peace, prosperity and virtuous government is upon us at last, right? We'll see. In 1994, when the GOP swept both houses of Congress, I was still an active Democrat, but I wasn't terribly sorry about the results of that election. I thought it would do some good for the Democrats to be a minority again and spend some time in the political wilderness. I thought the GOP might actually make some needed reforms and do some good. And in a few small cases like welfare reform, I thought they did. But whatever change they brought was pretty far from the bold promises of the "Contract with America" (which, you might remember, included term limits for members of Congress). I vividly remember John Kasich telling a reporter, who asked in 1997 why the Republicans hadn't eliminated hundreds of useless federal programs like they'd promised, "You just don't get it. The jig is up around here when it comes to cutting the budget." Apparently the spirit of reform that had brought them to power two years earlier evaporated quickly once they were in the majority. My cynicism about our two-party system deepened, and when George W. Bush "won" the presidency in 2000, I made this prediction to some of my close friends, Republican and Democrat alike: even if he served for a full eight years, we would still have a Marxist tax code, social security, estate taxes and abortion when he left office. I said it to my Democratic friends to put their minds at ease, and I said it to my Republican friends as a cynical statement of just how far I believed Bush would really push his "conservative" agenda. And I stand by that prediction. Aside from his consistently conservative social-religious views, there was (and still is) little that is genuinely conservative about this president, or about most Republicans these days. The fact is, whatever spirit of reform occasionally grips one of our two major parties, it always evaporates quickly once they're in power. Despite some sincere people on both sides of the aisle, neither of these two parties has a serious, lasting interest in any kind of meaningful reform. Above all else, they are interested in seizing and maintaining power. With a system that effectively shuts out third parties and thus healthy competition, they have no compelling reason to change, so this cycle continues every decade or so. Now the pendulum has swung back in the Democrats' favor... for a time. We'll see how long it lasts and how much good they actually do. My expectations are pretty low, considering the sorry act they're following. If they could at least provide some restraint on federal spending and a recklessly interventionist foreign policy, I would be grateful. But I'm not holding my breath.

Thoughts on Election Day

I have no interesting predictions to make about the outcome of today's election. I tried to vote but couldn't because I forgot to register within the 30-day window (I recently moved to a new county). Doh. At first I was disappointed, but my straight Libertarian protest vote wouldn't have helped elect a single person to office anyway. As angry as I am at the GOP's rampant betrayal of real conservative values like fiscal responsibility and prudent foreign policy, I just can't bring myself to be an enabler for a stagnant, intellectually bankrupt two-party system. If the Democrats win the House and/or Senate today, it won't be because they captured the public's imagination with better ideas. As is almost always the case, the one party out of power will win because the electorate eventually got too disgusted with the (only other) party in power. Boy, what an inspiring system. As long as the American public doesn't have to grapple with any new ideas... that's the important thing. And speaking of new ideas, I've been thinking more and more about a suggestion floating around out there that we move Election Day to Veterans Day. I like it, for a number of important symbolic reasons, but with the qualification that I would like it to be on Veterans Day weekend. If you want to maximize voter participation, it makes a hell of a lot more sense (to me, anyway) to hold elections on a Saturday than it does on a Tuesday.

Old-school conservatives speak out

This weekend on "Foreign Exchange," Fareed Zakaria interviewed Andrew Sullivan, the author of the new book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost it, How to Get it Back. Sullivan's unorthodox advice for Tuesday's election? Vote Democratic. Meanwhile, Fareed has an excellent article in Newsweek about rethinking our strategy in Iraq, and George Will derides Cheney and the war in Iraq in general. Whether you agree with them or not, it's refreshing to see "old-school conservative realists speaking out." It's just a shame it took them so long.

Bill Frist's take on Afghanistan

Bill Frist is probably right, but you can't help but wonder what the GOP would say about a top-ranking Democrat going to Afghanistan and suggesting that its government should include the Taliban. At any rate, it's encouraging to see top Republicans beginning to candidly acknowledge that military force alone will not be sufficient to defeat the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The ugly truth is that if we really want democracy in the Middle East and South Asia, we will have to accept the fact that Islamic extremists will be voted into office. Hopefully the results in Afghanistan and Iraq will be more encouraging than in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.

Conservatism and the "National Will"

While I share Gingrich's concern over the inordinate power of the Supreme Court, I always cringe when I hear so-called conservatives suggesting a course of action that would better reflect the "national will." Conservatism as a philosophy never put much stock in public opinion; in fact there was a time when conservatives saw it as their duty to resist the shifting tides of public opinion as much as possible, recognizing it as a force of mischief in the world, and in democracies in particular. The U.S. Senate was originally conceived as an institution that would resist popular passions and debate issues solely on their merit, which is why senators were not originally elected directly by the people but chosen instead by their state legislatures. The Supreme Court, even moreso, was intended to be immune to the viscitudes of fickle popular opinion. I would expect Gingrich of all people to know this, since--despite his obnoxious personality--he has spoken intelligently in the past about our structure of government and its Founders' intent.