On the Newstand: David Rieff on Imperial Grunts

Unfortuantely theCardinal has company. Being the introvert that he is this is a less than thrilling prospect but there is little choice in the matter. This is doubly frustrating because he would like to carefully read and respond to David Rieff's cover reivew of Kaplan's Imperial Grunts found in this weeks TNR. I did not expect a positive review from Rieff and I was not disappointed. Rieff figures that the worst thing he can do to Kaplan is to tie his views to Donald Rumsfeld's:

This is not to say that Kaplan's views are uncontroversial. To the contrary, his basic contention--that the heart and soul of the American military is now its expeditionary component, above all the Marine Corps, and its commando component, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM)--is one that many senior officers and military intellectuals within the War Colleges and Service Academies would repudiate. But they would do so at their peril, since, as Kaplan himself notes, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's implementation of the Global War on Terrorism has made SOCOM "a war fighting command in more than name only," and, however imperfectly (Kaplan blames this on turf battles within the Department of Defense), "the executive arm for the War on Terrorism." (General Eric Shinseki discovered, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that speaking before Congress in opposition to Rumsfeld's opinions resulted in forced retirement.)

Kaplan is a man with whom Rumsfeld would be hard pressed to find fault. Like Rumsfeld, he has no patience with what he calls "the formalized rigidity" of cold war-era military institutions unsuited for the wars and the counterinsurgency operations of the early twenty-first century. Like Rumsfeld, he believes that military successes during the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 demonstrated the viability of "deftly combining high-technology and low-tech unconventional warfare." And, perhaps more enthusiastically even than Rumsfeld, Kaplan sees the tactics being developed in the field by U.S. Special Operations forces as those that America "would employ to manage an unruly world."

Rieff is horrified at Kaplan's admiration for America's Armed Forces and for the comparison he draws to a previous conflict:

When the soldiers he meets do not remind him of Roman legionnaires, Kaplan is apt to compare them to Lewis and Clark or other early heroes of America's push westward, or else to what he calls "the gleaming officer corps of the Confederacy, without which the nation would not have been able to fight its later wars quite as well as it had." I wonder what the African American officers of today's U.S. military would make of that. The abdication of critical faculties implicit in such a historical comparison is startling in a writer as historically minded as Kaplan. The "gleaming" tradition to which he alludes helped to keep the military segregated until 1949, while its integration was a first step in the desegregation of the South. Indeed, the rise of a new American military that is probably the most intelligent, creative, and successful institution with regard to race relations in the United States represents a victory for the military tradition that looks back to the 54th Massachusetts and the Tuskeegee Airmen, not to Nathan Bedford Forrest's terrorism or to Stonewall Jackson sucking on his lemons at the First Battle of Manassas.

But this is not the most significant of Kaplan's many analogies between the American armed forces of today and its predecessors. The one that is most central to his argument views today's soldiers' fight against Islamists and terrorists as something very close to the Indian-fighting army of the nineteenth-century American West. Those wars too, Kaplan argues, were imperial in nature, and he refers without any further elaboration to "the new American empire west of the Mississippi River." His travels seem to have hardened him in this view: "As I traveled from continent to continent with the American military in the first years of the twenty-first century, my most recurring image would be the one that Remington himself might have painted: singular individuals fronting dangerous and stupendous landscapes."

This is breathtaking. Here is a serious writer in 2005 admiring the Indian wars, which in their brutality brought about the end of an entire American civilization. But then Kaplan goes to some lengths to describe the peoples who lived in North America when white settlers began to arrive as virtually without any civilization worthy of the name. "The North American Indians," he writes, "were a throwback to the nomadic horse peoples of the Eurasian steppe ... They [also] invited comparison with another imperial nemesis: the nineteenth century Pushtuns and Afridis of the Northwest Frontier of British India." And he concludes: "Beyond the Mississippi or Missouri rivers, the American military found a Hobbesian world in which internecine ethnic warfare, motivated by competition for territory and resources, was the primary fact of life."

The primary fact of life? Whatever else one can say about American Indian life in the nineteenth century, the primary fact was the arrival of the white settlers and the military forces that accompanied them, who drove the native peoples off their land, massacred tens if not hundreds of thousands of them, and deported the others to reservations far from arable land or the plains on which they had hunted. Kaplan may claim that a figure such as Remington--whom he admires as the American Kipling--stood for America's "righteous responsibility to advance the boundaries of free society and good government into zones of sheer chaos, a mission not unlike that of post-cold war humanitarian interventions," but the assertion is obscene. I doubt very much that many Indians would share Kaplan's enthusiasm for "Remington's mythic universe [in which] those early imperialists, the cavalry officers and the pathfinders, appropriated the warrior ideal of their Indian enemy, which was marked by bravery and steadfastness." Kaplan has been watching too many John Ford movies. Has he never heard of the Trail of Tears? Does he really think that describing Geronimo as having "lived out the last years of his life" at Fort Sill, Oklahoma adequately conveys what took place? Is describing the streets of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas as being named for the various "North American Indian tribes with which the US Army negotiated truces" really a historically licit way of accounting for what took place, or how those truces were made? And what on earth does it mean for Kaplan to claim that the habit that American soldiers now have of referring to their postings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, Colombia, or the Philippines as "Indian Country" and, in Kaplan's view, that, like the Indian Wars, the war on terrorism is "really about taming the frontier," should not be understood as a "slight" against Native North Americans?

Rieff in full political correctness mode belabors the Indian theme for a couple of paragraphs before getting back to other things he hates about Imperial Grunts:

Too romantic and sentimental to be called analysis, too ideological to count as reportage, and yet too journalistic to be a straightforward polemic, Imperial Grunts is a disorganized and in many ways an incoherent book. Just when Kaplan the reporter is exercising his considerable talents to their best advantage, Kaplan the ideologue interrupts with his doctrine. As a result, there are times when Kaplan's narrative seems like an extended exercise in free association. In one representative passage, Kaplan is on the front line with a Marine unit moving into Fallujah during the first, abortive assault on the city in the spring of 2004, and splendidly describes the "grunts''' slow advance under fire. But then his attention shifts away from the battle and toward geo-strategical speculation and imperial history. Staring at enemy snipers a few hundred meters away in one paragraph, he opines in the next that "the third world urban environment was like the Old West." A few hundred words later, having briefly doubled back to a description of the fighting, then left it again, Kaplan is cantering from his belief that the martial spirit of "the Old Confederacy [stilli nhabits] the soul of the American military," to comparing the U.S. military's fight in Iraq to the British army's suppression of the Indian Mutiny, to a meditation on the role of the media on the conduct of military operations in the early twenty-first century. Then, after a space break, Kaplan is back to being a reporter again.

The American military deserves better than this kind of hagiography, just as it deserves better than to have to carry out the thankless and even hopeless missions that Kaplan would like to assign it--missions that, if the experience in Iraq proves anything, will fall clumsily short of any Kiplingesque grandeur. In fairness, Kaplan was never especially enthusiastic about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "The American empire of the early twenty-first century," he writes, "depended on a tissue of intangibles that was threatened, rather than invigorated, by the naked exercise of power." For Kaplan, the real success story of America's commitment to policing the planet (which he calls the "battle space for the American military") is the work of small units of elite U.S. troops, and sometimes even individual soldiers, controlling the world quietly in countries ranging from Yemen to Mongolia.

Rieff concludes his review somewhat perplexed with the book but hopeful that American soldiers really aren't like they are described by Kaplan:

The paradox is that he has written anything but a triumphalist book. The oddest thing about this odd book is its insistence on the transience of the American empire, even as he leaves no stone unturned in his effort to glorify it. "To be an American in the first decade of the twenty-first century was to be present at a grand and fleeting moment," he observes in his first chapter, "Injun Country." It was "a moment that even if it lasted for several more decades would constitute but a flicker among the long march of hegemons that had calmed broad swaths of the globe." He then goes on to enumerate various empires and their lifespans, from the Achaemenids to the British, by way of the Chinese, the Vandals, the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans, and of course the Romans.

But then he teaches that "a liberal empire like America was likely to create the conditions for its own demise, and thus to be particularly short-lived." So this is not Kipling, it is Spengler. Kaplan is tragically wrong-headed even within his own frame of reference. Put the case, debatable as it is, that the United States is an empire in the same sense that Britain, or Portugal, or Spain, or Rome were empires. Further put the case, as Kaplan also does, that this empire will be gone in no more than several decades. Why on earth would any American patriot, "a believer in the essential goodness of American nationalism," as Kaplan puts it, or anyone who just wishes America well, condemn the country to what, on his own account, will be a not-so-long march toward a bleak and broken future? Why not strive, in this case, to create a multi-lateral international order that, taking into account the inevitable rise of new hegemons such as India and China, organizes the international system as favorably as possible toward the interests of the United States?

The Kipling of "The White Man's Burden," whom Kaplan goes to such lengths to defend, was not beseeching the United States to become an imperial power with all the eloquence at his command, while simultaneously holding in his head the vision of the proximate dissolution of that empire. But this seems to be Kaplan's vision, insofar as anything consistent can be extrapolated from his breathless dithyramb to the boots on the ground. Or are we back to Larteguy's lonely centurion, acutely conscious that back in Rome everything is going to hell even as he faithfully carries out his duty on the forward ramparts of the empire--SOCOM in swords and sandals? The good news is that this may describe Kaplan more accurately than it describes his grunts. He reports that "the grunts I met saw themselves as American nationalists, even if the role they performed was imperial." He does not explain the distinction, but it seems to be a sign at least of good sense in these American soldiers. So there is hope for the Republic yet.

The End of the Bush Doctrine

Ask 10 experts what the Bush Doctrine is and you may end up with 10 different answers. What they would agree on is that the Bush Doctrine (whatever the hell it might be) is dead. Michael Rubin from the conservative AEI is no exception.

On January 20, 2005, George W. Bush outlined the goal of his second term. "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he said. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Less than a year later, the Bush doctrine is dead, the victim not of outside circumstances, but rather lack of will and ineptness. While Bush may be sincere, across the Middle East, his administration's willingness to sacrifice those seeking freedom has become legendary.

Speaking of the Military

The myth-buster Michael Fumento went to Iraq and hung out with the Marines charged with defusing IEDs.

Army Recruitment Continues to Fall Short

This is quite sobering - the Army had hoped to add 50,000 recruits this year but it will be fortunate to add 30,000.

Slow Posting Friday

Once again my paying job intereferes and it will be highly unlikely that I will be able to post for a good part of the day tomorrow. Chances are that I'll be able to get stuff up late tomorrow afternoon or evening. Thanks.

On the Newstand: American Prospect on Francis Fukuyama and The American Interest

TAP has a lengthy profile of Francis Fukuyama and his break with the neo-cons. I would comment but there is so much here that I'll just let it stand on its own and revisit it if I get the chance:

Fukuyama was once a neoconservative’s neoconservative, but it would be difficult to classify him thus today. “The Neoconservative Moment,” his devastating 2004 National Interest article on Charles Krauthammer, opened the rupture. By November 2004, Fukuyama was alienated enough to have voted for John Kerry. And last month, Fukuyama’s new journal, The American Interest, which he helped found after breaking with the National Interest, debuted. The American Interest does not represent a wholesale repudiation of the past; the premier issue did publish the work of stalwart neocons and war supporters (The Atlantic’s Robert Kaplan, Anne Applebaum of The Washington Post). But it also featured Zbigniew Brzezinski and fellow Iraq War apostate Eliot Cohen.

Fukuyama’s own essay in the volume was a withering critique of Bush administration foreign policy, which, he wrote, has “squandered the overwhelming public support it had received after September 11.” And in April he is publishing After Neoconservatism, a book drawn from a series of lectures he gave at Yale this past spring in which he again critiqued neoconservative hubris. It’s easy for liberals to read too much into this schism; it’s not as if Fukuyama is likely to go rushing into Hillary Clinton’s arms anytime soon, much less Russ Feingold’s. But what is fair to say is that The American Interest epresents a new and fascinating sun in the expanding galaxy of opponents of Bush administration policy. In those Yale lectures, Fukuyama also outlined a strategy for rescuing neoconservatism. But it’s important to note that his strategy looks less like neoconservatism as we know it today than it resembles a synthesis of neoconservatism, realism, and even liberal internationalism. (Indeed, speaking of Clinton, he is functionally to her left on Iraq.) Is Fukuyama proposing a midcourse correction to neoconservatism, or something so at odds with neoconservatism as we understand it that it becomes another thing entirely? It’s not overstating the case to say that the future of the American foreign-policy debate may hinge, to a considerable extent, on the answer to that question.

In May, while we sit in his office at Hopkins, I press Fukuyama to specify the scope of the threat he believes the West faces. True to form, he breaks the problem down into its constituent parts. “Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan,” he says, “we are probably at war with no more than a few thousand people around the world who would consider martyring themselves and causing nihilistic damage to the U.S., and probably hundreds of thousands of sympathizers who provide active support, though would not commit violence themselves. Beyond that, you’ve got lots of people who are potential sympathizers or indifferent on any given day. And there are many who are actually quite sympathetic to the West and America but who just don’t like our foreign policy. This struggle is going to look more like a police and intelligence operation than a war, though the stakes could potentially be enormous.”

The depths of Fukuyama’s apostasy from the Bush doctrine became clear when “The Neoconservative Moment” was published last summer. In it, he accused the movement of having lost its bearings, leading the country into an unnecessary war. He dismantled Bush’s Iraq policy piece by piece, condemning it as “utterly unrealistic in its overestimation of U.S. power and our ability to control events around the world.” While such sentiments had become commonplace among liberals -- Princeton’s John Ikenberry made a similar case in “The End of the Neo-Conservative Movement” in the spring 2004 issue of Survival -- the fact that someone with Fukuyama’s credentials was voicing them was new. “Four years after 9/11, our whole foreign policy seems destined to rise or fall on the outcome of a war only marginally related to the source of what befell us on that day,” he wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed (extracted from his American Interest essay). “There was nothing inevitable about this. There is everything to be regretted about it.”

The fact that Fukuyama portrayed the administration as having betrayed the very neoconservative agenda it had claimed to champion must have made his critique especially painful to his erstwhile mentor Wolfowitz. In particular, Fukuyama noted three foreign-policy blunders he predicted would harm the country’s prestige for years to come. The administration had launched an ill-conceived social-engineering project (“If the United States cannot eliminate poverty or raise test scores in Washington, D.C., how does it expect to bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it?”); it had underestimated the importance of using international institutions to help legitimate U.S. foreign policy; and -- perhaps most hurtful to the neocons -- it had likened the threat of Islamic terrorism to the United States with the threat it posed to Israel, adopting “the Israeli mind-set” regarding the Middle East. “Are we like Israel, locked in a remorseless struggle with a large part of the Arab and Muslim world, with few avenues open to us for dealing with them other than an iron fist?” he asked.

The charges rocked the neoconservative world. Krauthammer accused Fukuyama of anti-Semitism, comparing his ideas to those of Pat Buchanan. “Frank forfeited being ‘one of us,’” says Irwin Stelzer, editor of The Neocon Reader. “It didn’t feel like a debate within the group; it felt like an attack from an outsider.” On the other side of the spectrum, of course, Fukuyama’s makeover has been greeted favorably. The Center for American Progress’ Lawrence Korb believes Fukuyama’s break has hurt the neoconservatives’ position. “I always quote him when I debate the neocons, and they don’t know what to do,” Korb says. “They can’t dismiss him so easily.” Although some neoconservatives have criticized the war’s execution, its justification had remained sacrosanct. “Fukuyama has taken the lead intellectually in moving to the next step of the conservative criticism of the war,” says Rise of the Vulcans author James Mann. “And in doing so, he has hit a raw nerve. There are a number of internal debates concerning military strategy that have been largely kept from the public. Hawks inside the government have told me that if Iraq fails, there is going to have to be a complete re-examination of America’s international-security plans, and that everything will be up for grabs. “Fukuyama’s criticisms,” concludes Mann, “only make that more likely.”

The most divisive aspect of Fukuyama’s argument has been his claim that Islamic terrorism is not an existential threat to the United States. It is a theme that he says has been influenced by the French scholars Gilles Kepel (The War for Muslim Minds) and Olivier Roy (The Failure of Political Islam), who argue that political Islam has demonstrated itself to be a failure everywhere it has taken power, and that the Islamic terrorist movement had been largely a failure prior to 9-11. Those attacks, as well as the Iraq War, gave it a new lease on life.

The seeds of these ideas, however, are buried deep in Fukuyama’s own work. In his original 1989 National Interest article, “The End of History?”, he singled out Islam as the only viable theocratic alternative to liberalism and communism, although one he doubted would have “any universal significance.” In the preface to Our Posthuman Future, he dismissed the threat of Islamic radicalism as “a desperate rearguard action that will in time be overwhelmed by the broader tide of modernization.” Critics have faulted Fukuyama for clinging to his end-of-history thesis, accusing him of systematically underestimating events that challenged it, whether it was Yugoslav nationalism in the ’90s or Islamic radicalism today. “Fukuyama’s an optimist, which blinds him to a lot,” says Paul Berman, the author of Liberalism and Terror. (Reviewing “The End of History” in The New York Review of Books, Alan Ryan dubbed Fukuyama “the conservative’s Dr. Pangloss.” “If what we’ve got is what History with a capital H intends for us,” he wrote, “then we, too, live in the best of all possible worlds.”.

Krauthammer argues that it’s Fukuyama’s secular sensibility that blinds him to the appeal of radical Islam. “It has 1 billion potential adherents, which means that [Osama] bin Laden’s ideology has the potential to appeal to infinitely more people than the Aryan ideas of Nazism ever did,” he told me. “Frank has a stake in denying the obvious nature of the threat, but the fact is that history returned after 9-11 … . There are people running around trying to acquire anthrax with which to wipe out an entire city. If that doesn’t qualify as an existential threat, I don’t know what does.”

Fukuyama replies that these are the kinds of sentiments America should resist. “For the U.S. to treat every Muslim as a potential suicide bomber is precisely what fanatics like bin Laden want,” he says. “Iraq before the U.S. invasion was certainly not an existential threat. It had an existential threat to Kuwait, Iran, and Israel, but it had no means of threatening the continuity of our regime. Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups aspire to be existential threats to American civilization but do not currently have anything like the capacity to actualize their vision. They are extremely dangerous totalitarians, but post threats primarily to regimes in the Middle East.”

Korb agrees. “The bombing in London was terrible, but it wasn’t like the Blitz,” he says. “Terrorists can make life unpleasant, but bin Laden isn’t going to end up running Great Britain, while Hitler very well might have.”

The difference between Fukuyama and his critics is as much philosophical as empirical. Whereas Krauthammer and Berman emphasize Islamic terrorism’s potential for imminent violence, Fukuyama takes the long view, reasoning that political Islam won’t win the larger ideological war regardless of how much damage it inflicts. While it might seem that Fukuyama is splitting hairs, he points out that the assumptions we make about the quality of the risk will determine how we respond to it. “In a counterinsurgency war, we are seeking to kill or neutralize a relatively small number of insurgents who are swimming in a much larger sea of less committed people,” he says. “This makes purely military responses to the challenge particularly inappropriate, since counterinsurgency wars are deeply political and dependent on winning hearts and minds from the beginning.”

The article tries to explain the reason for Fukuyama's break and the reactions of those on the right and the left about his apostasy:

The truth is that Fukuyama is a social scientist at heart, an intellectual whose goal is to think through the conditions required for the goodsociety. And it is his intellectual agenda that is the editorial force behind The American Interest. Fukuyama is the chairman of the magazine’s editorial board (the editor is former National Interest Editor Adam Garfinkel, who arrived fresh from writing speeches for Condoleezza Rice). Its stated mission is to explore the very issues -- international institutions, state building, economic development, U.S.–European relations -- in which Fukuyama fears neoconservatives have lost interest. “I think of the magazine as a two-way mirror between America and the world,” he tells me. “It is going to be a thoroughly international magazine, with as many foreign contributions as American. We’re going to analyze America’s behavior on the global stage, and the forces that shape it -- not just strategic, but also economic, cultural, and historical.”

One reason Fukuyama’s apostasy resonated beyond neoconservative circles was that the arguments he marshaled -- about terrorism, the limits of military power, and America’s relation to the world (to Islam in particular) -- reinforced doubts that conservatives of varying degrees had harbored since the war began. Gary Rosen, the managing editor of Commentary and the editor of the collection The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq, perceives Fukuyama’s critique of neoconservatism as a necessary stage in the creed’s development. “He understands that, in the long run, we’ll need military, political, and financial help from our allies,” Rosen says, “and that a unilateral foreign policy can take us only so far. Neoconservatism has always been a critical outsider’s perspective. He wants to turn it into a practical, long-term program for dealing with the world.”

Bob Boorstin of the Center for American Progress credits Fukuyama with making neoconservatives face the facts about Iraq. “He’s introduced reality into the equation,” says Boorstin. “Although a lot of these other folks put forward doctrines like democratic realism, the ‘real’ is always missing, which has been the problem with the administration’s Iraq policy since the beginning.” The University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer, another conservative who jumped ship on Iraq, characterizes Fukuyama as “a prudent Wilsonian” for the caution with which he advocates the spread of democracy.

Kristol brushes aside Fukuyama’s critique as a distraction from what he believes is a larger truth. The days when America was satisfied by détente with a regime like the Soviet Union are over; the Wilsonian project of spreading democracy -- whether via military power or diplomacy -- is now an integral part of American foreign policy, Kristol says. “It simply isn’t convincing anymore to say that we don’t have to care what happens in far off places like Afghanistan or North Korea. Or, to take the liberal internationalist side, that we are in a post–Cold War era where commerce replaces politics. The realists have lost: What goes on inside other states is important, and everybody now acknowledges that.”

Then we get to see Fukuyama in his element lecturing about his beliefs and ideas:

After a brief introduction by Yale political philosopher Seyla Benhabib, Fukuyama opens the lectures on an uncharacteristically personal note. “I have always regarded myself as a neoconservative,” he says, “and have always been proud of wearing that label. I had always thought that I shared a common worldview with many other neoconservatives, including many of my friends and acquaintances who served in the administration of George W. Bush. And yet, unlike most of my fellow neoconservatives, I was never persuaded of the necessity of waging the Iraq War, and I found myself increasingly dismayed as I watched the way that American foreign policy was actually being implemented by the Bush administration.”

For Fukuyama, the Castle Lectures are an opportunity to think through the foundations of neoconservatism. He believes its principles are sound and wants to rehabilitate its reputation -- though he acknowledges that the word “neoconservative” has become so closely identified with the Iraq debacle that it is beyond rescuing. Among those principles are that the United States should be wary of international law and institutions, that it should care about the internal character of states, that it should formulate a foreign policy that reflects the values of liberal democratic societies, and that it should sometimes use military power as a legitimate vehicle to pursue these goals. To these principles he adds one -- skepticism about social engineering -- that was at the very foundation of the neoconservative movement that coalesced around The Public Interest, the original neoconservative journal founded in 1965 by Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell. It is in the Bush administration’s attempt to restructure Iraqi society and government that Fukuyama perceives a dramatic break with traditional neoconservatism. Drawing on research he did for his most recent book, State-Building, Fukuyama reviews the history of America’s attempts at creating governments abroad. The fact is, he explains, that nation building seldom works, and when it succeeds, it does so at a very high price. “Of the 18 nation-building exercises the U.S. has engaged in, only three -- Germany, Japan, and South Korea -- have been unambiguous successes,” he says. “And in each of these, the U.S. had to use huge forces and left them there for decades.” Is this, he asks, the future of the U.S. involvement in Iraq?

But the question Fukuyama really wants to answer is how a movement founded to check the ambitious domestic agenda of the Great Society became a manifesto for such an ambitious foreign policy. The answer, he explains, has to do with the way the Cold War ended. The realist school had dominated U.S. foreign policy since the end World War II. Given the fact that the Soviet Union was going to be around forever, argued realists like Henry Kissinger, the United States had to learn how to live with it. Against this school, a minority argued that America should resist the Soviets on moral grounds. The collapse of the Soviet Union vindicated the minority to a degree they never dreamed.

Fukuyama suggests that the lesson some took from the experience was twofold. First, it convinced them that all totalitarian regimes are ultimately hollow. In After Neoconservatism, he suggests that neoconservatives have inappropriately universalized the Eastern European experience. Second, it taught them that the more your critics tell you that you are wrong (“the Soviet Union will be around forever,” for example), the more likely you are to be correct. “The rapid, unexpected, and largely peaceful collapse of communism validated the concept of regime change as an approach to international relations,” he explains. “And yet this extraordinary vindication laid the groundwork for the wrong turn taken by many neoconservatives in the decade following that would have direct consequences for their management of the post–September 11 war on terrorism and the Iraq War.”

The fact that Fukuyama traces the Iraq debacle to the triumphalism that followed the collapse of communism shows just how far he has come in his thinking. After all, his end-of-history thesis was as much a source for as a product of the American exceptionalism and hubris that has foundered in the streets of Baghdad. It isn’t as if he has dramatically switched allegiances in the manner of Whittaker Chambers or David Horowitz. What Fukuyama’s break (and, more importantly, his new magazine) may signify, however, is that the debate among conservatives on Iraq, on neoconservatism, and on the future direction of American foreign policy will be much more robust -- and much more fought out in the open. This wouldn’t have happened if Iraq had been a success. Even someone like Fukuyama, who opposed the war from the start, would probably have maintained a discreet silence if the troops had been greeted with flowers and the country weren’t on the brink of civil war. But they weren’t, and it is. And Fukuyama is one of the few from the neoconservative camp who is openly questioning the principles that led to the war. History, apparently, is not over quite yet.

On the Newstand: American Prospect on the Apollo Alliance

They're delusional in thinking that basically making energy more expensive will create 3 million jobs, but the Apollo Alliance's call to end our reliance on foreign energy sources is right on target. The $300 billion is a bit out there, but compared to Iraq isn't that cheap?

The mission of the 2-year-old, Washington, D.C.–based Apollo Alliance has come to represent a bold vision of progressivism. Named for President Kennedy’s moon shot, the alliance’s goal is to mobilize a sweeping federal commitment to energy independence, with the triple-whammy promise of creating good jobs with new technology, bolstering national security with energy independence, and saving the planet from carbon emissions.

Apollo calls for grand-scale federal and state investment -- $300 billion over 10 years -- to underwrite a suite of policy measures designed to stimulate the development of clean-energy industries. The alliance claims the measures would create more than 3 million jobs, eliminate American dependence on Middle East oil imports, lead to 15 percent of U.S. electricity coming from renewable sources, and reduce national energy consumption by 16 percent.

On the Newstand: TNR on the Anti-War Protestors

We are reaching a Kaplan overload here today. This time it is Lawrence Kaplan writing at TNR. Kaplan hung out with anti-war protestors this past weekend and reported on what is wrong. Most revealing to me is the fact that CISPES, a cold war relic, is still around! Here is what Kaplan has to say:

If you really want to end the Iraq war, a march sponsored by International answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), with its catalogue of fringe causes and well-advertised sympathy for dictatorships, may not be the most persuasive vehicle. At the pre-march rally, one speaker drones on about Israeli "apartheid"; another, angry about something in the Philippines, shrieks in Tagalog. fuck bu[swastika]h; america: fighting terrorism since 1492--the crude placards and t-shirts tend to be the norm rather than the exception. Even some of the protesters recoil. As we sit on a bench watching teenagers prepare to carry a row of coffins draped with American flags--one is dropped, clumsily and obscenely, on its side--Nancy McMichael, a Washington, D.C., resident who protested the war in Vietnam, shows me that she has torn the event's official label in half. Her sticker, part of which formerly read, end colonial occupation: iraq, palestine, Haiti..., has been customized, leaving only the half that says, stop the war.

Fringe issues, however, dominate the day. Where the Vietnam antiwar movement focused directly on the war, with parts of it evolving over time into a broader indictment of "the system," today's march walks backward, addressing a litany of pet causes before it even gets to Iraq. The list of indictments--which can be sampled at the Palestine tent, the Counter-Military Recruitment tent (motto: "An Army of None"), and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador booth (cispes is still at it!)--dilute the message, creating the feel of a comic-book convention rather than a popular movement. Roger Yates, a demonstrator from Martinsburg, West Virginia, becomes so frustrated with the protest's incoherence that he grabs a bullhorn, jumps on a newspaper vending machine, and beseeches the marchers to remember why they came in the first place. "One thousand different causes won't hurt Bush," he yells. "If we don't focus on Iraq, it'll be like we were never here!"

Kaplan goes on to mention that anti-war activists have a tendency to undercut "their own aims." They usually are more unpopular than the war they are protesting. He then tries to explain why the unpopular war in Iraq lacks broadbased opposition: no draft and no common culture.

Fred Kaplan Wants Karen Hughes Back in the US

To put it mildly Fred Kaplan is not a huge fan of W's and that tends to color his commentary but every now and then he raises valid points. Kaplan is confused about Karen Hughes' MidEast tour noting that she is not necessarily the best person to be conducting public diplomacy. He contrasts her with Phil Donahue's best friend the infamous Vladimir Posner. Posner was a tool of the Kremlin during the Cold War, but the man sounded like the guy next door. Well assuming that the guy next door was a KGB agent and had a poster Leonid Brezhnev hanging over his bed.

Kaplan's point is that we need someone who understands Arab culture, that speaks the language and can associate with the people that they are dealing with. I believe that Karen Hughes was a good selection to head our public diplomacy efforts, but she should be organizing, strategizing and planning the things that she did to get W into the White House. During the 2000 campaign and the early days of the administration she had Ari Fleischer in front of the cameras. That is what she needs now a face and a voice to our efforts.

theCardinal' Book Fair Wish List

The Miami Book Fair International is just over a month away so I figured I throw out my dream list of author's to see. I should have done this sooner and sent it to Mitch or Christina but alas it is too probably too late now. Considering the nature of our group I stick mostly to non-fiction writers and only mention fiction writers who dab in politics. Here we go:

• Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown - My money says that Rushdie will be there. When he was in hiding he popped up at B&B for an event so it would be a little odd for him to snub Miami now.

• Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poetry and War: Journey's and Essays and Thomas Jefferson: Author of America - The prolific, brilliant and iconoclastic writer would definitely pack the house.

• Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century - It really is not that brief and calling it a history of anything is dubious. Despite this Friedman is knowledgeable writer and one with influence it would be interesting to hear him speak.

• Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground - My sophomore year of college I was forced to read Kaplan's essay "The Coming Anarchy", I have been a huge fan ever since . Kaplan is an incredibly astute and gifted writer and observer. I would gladly give everybody on this list up just to see him.

• Richard N. Haass, The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course - Haass' slender volume is a revelation and a blueprint for the administration to follow. How ironic if he proves to be more influential from the outside than when he was with the administration.

• Bing West, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah - West already co-authored the best boots-on-the-ground book of the war in Iraq, The March Up. He goes for seconds here in what is said to be a harrowing account of a critical battle against insurgents.

• David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power - Ok I have no idea if Rothkopf is a good speaker or not but I'm a complete dork and I would be interested to hear what he has to say about the NSC.

• Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence - I'm curious.

• Carlos Alberto Montaner, Libertad y Sus Enemigos - Unfortuantely Montaner's events are only in Spanish. A brilliant individual who also happens to have a lively and entertaining speaking style. The breadth and depth of his knowledge is what makes him so much fun to listen too. Everytime he has a new book out he shows up to the fair so I imagine he'll be there.

• Mario Vargas Llosa, La Tentacion de lo Imposible - This slender volume based on lectures delivered at Oxford deals with Victor Hugo and his masterpiece Les Miserables. This is hardly worth a visit from this renowned writer but he's probably in town anyway and with Montaner around there's a chance he'll show up.

• Henry Kissinger - He does not have a book to promote but I would love to get him to sign my copy of Diplomacy and the first two volumes of his memoirs.

Lula Gets Lucky

It's been a long while but Lula got some good news and it had nothing to do with his car insurance. An ally has been selected as the speaker of the lower house. What kind of country is it when the communist candidate is the voice of moderation?

Algeria Votes on Peace Plan

Algerians are headed to the polls to vote on a plan that hopes to put a decade of violence in the history books. Human rights activists don't like it and it would be best if at some point a reconciliation commission similar to South Africa's would be established. It is highly unlikely that something like that can be implemented in the Maghreb any time in the near future.

EU and Egypt Cut Red Tape

The WaPost also has two stories on stifling buraucracies. In news that is sure to thrill Oktoberfest celebrants and apparently the mayor of Munich the EU will once again allow Bavarian barmaids to wear plunging necklines while working beer gardens. This was one among many EU regulations that are getting a second look. In Egypt there is also some reform afoot although it has little to do with beer and or cleavage, they're shutting down the Mugamma - the nightmarish Kafkaesque monstrosity that houses the elusive bureacratic mandarins who issued (when they felt like it) certificates of birth and death, licenses, permits etc.

Freedom of Speech

The WaPost has two interesting pieces on speech issues in Asia. First comes the not so surprising news that free speech in Vietnam is a dicey thing. Speaking your mind can still get you arrested. In China not only do they restrict what you say but now the Reds are trying to tell people how they say things:

To millions of Chinese, particularly boys and girls in the provinces who constitute the main audience for pop-oriented variety shows, Hong Kong and Taiwanese speech has come to mean being cool. The reason is simple. Most of the music and performers making teenage hearts throb here have long originated in the freer atmospheres of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

As a result, some hosts and hostesses of mainland variety shows have taken to throwing Taiwanese slang words and Hong Kong tones into their on-air speech, associating themselves with the cool radiating from those two centers of the Chinese-language pop industry. Saying "very pretty" with a drawn-out hao hao piaoliang ye as they do in Taiwan, for instance, has been branded more with it than the direct hen piaoliang of standard Mandarin.

But for nearly a year, the government broadcasting authority has been engaged in a purification project, designed to halt what officials feel is the creep of vulgarity and non-Chinese influences into programs offered by the country's 3,000 national, provincial, city and county stations. The campaign fits into a general tightening of government controls over broadcasting and other media, including additional Internet rules banning "unhealthy news stories that will mislead the public."

Bolton Sticks Up for UN

Ideological biases are annoying to me when they are not acknowledged which is what makes reading the top newspapers so annoying. Case in point is John Bolton's visit to Capital Hill yesterday. The WashTimes emphasized John Bolton's concern that about the pace of reform at the UN and acknowledged his opposition to Henry Hyde's plan to cut off funding to the UN to encourage reform. The WaPost stressed Bolton's opposition to the funding cut issue noting that his stand pretty much kills the measure. The left coast's paper of record LAT highlighted Bolton's call that UN agency's recieve voluntary contributions and couldn't bring itself to mention Bolton's opposition to Hyde's measure. They even implied support by mentioning Kofi's chief of staff's stated opposition and remaining quiet on Bolton's opinion. How slimey is that?

Hughes in Turkey

The Bash Karen Hughes Tour stopped in Ankara, Turkey yesterday before moving on to Istanbul. Both NYT and WashPost report pointed questions about Iraq. My personal favorite quote from one of the female human rights advocates who met with Hughes was, "States cannot interfere through wars." So what is that whole Cyprus thing about. Then there were complaints about the American occupation. I found it odd that a self-described Kurdish activist decried the war considering that the biggest fear the Turks had about the war was an independent Kurdish state bordering them and giving aid and comfort to Kurds in Turkey.

Saddam's Dream Team

WashTimes reports on Saddam's defense strategy. It is mostly a series of obstructionist tactics questioning the authority of the court trying him. A key component will be to argue that the US invasion is illegal, that Saddam is still the president and thusly the whole trial is illegitimate. The Atlantic had a good article on Saddam's defense team. The article even mentioned the source of the WashTimes article:

And in practice there are about twenty-five who form a core team, and among whom the real work has been divided. They include several lawyers in Baghdad of Iraqi nationality—this being a statutory requirement for practicing before the special tribunal. One of those is an attorney named Khalil al-Dulaimi, who was the first to see Saddam Hussein, last December, and who then came under threat of death and has since gone into hiding; the others in Iraq, whose visits to the defendants have been extremely limited, have wisely kept a lower profile—indeed, they remain anonymous for now.

Rice in Haiti

Condi has been dispatched to Haiti to talk up the elections. Rice urged Haitians to "reclaim (thier) right to elect a new democratic leader." The quote of the day and understatement of the week comes from Congressman DeWine who is travelling with Sec. Rice. Trying to guard against high expectations for the elections (I was not aware of high expectations) he declared, ''Haiti is full of disappointments.''

Karen Hughes in Saudi Arabia

Both the NYT and WashTimes give less than glowing reports of Karen Hughes' efforts in Saudi Arabia with NYT obviously being gloomier. Both noted that a townhall meeting women covered from head to toe complained about how they were portrayed by the media in America insisting that they were happy and even declaring that they did not want to drive. WaPost had the most comprehensive coverage noting that Saudi women may not want to drive but they may want to vote eventually.

Katrina Aid

Foreign Policy's website has helpful listing of the aid offered to the US after Katrina hit.

On the newsstand: The Atlantic

It's not on newsstand just yet but the November issue of The Atlantic promises to be good reading. Leslie Gelb (Pres. Emeritus of CFR) and (I swear I'm not making this up) Anne-Marie Slaughter argue that the US needs to go back to declaring wars:

But Iraq is only the latest in a long line of ill-considered and ill-planned American military adventures. Time and again in recent decades the United States has made military commitments after little real debate, with hazy goals and no appetite for the inevitable setbacks. Bill Clinton, having inherited a mission in Somalia to feed the starving, ended up hunting tribal leaders and trying to nation-build. Ronald Reagan dispatched the Marines to Lebanon saying stability there was a "vital interest," only to yank them out sixteen months later, soon after a deadly terrorist attack on the Marine barracks. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson settled us slowly into a war intended to prevent another "domino" from falling to communism, but in a manner that tore the nation apart and ultimately led to defeat. Too often our leaders have entered wars with unclear and unfixed aims, tossing away American lives, power, and credibility before figuring out what they were doing and what could be done.

Gelb and Slaughter want to rein in the executive branch:

We propose a new law that would restore the Framers' intent by requiring a congressional declaration of war in advance of any commitment of troops that promises sustained combat. The president would be required to present to Congress an analysis of the threat, specific war aims, the rationale for those aims, the feasibility of achieving them, a general sense of war strategy, plans for action, and potential costs. For its part, Congress would hold hearings of officials and nongovernmental experts, examine evidence of the threat, assess the objectives, and explore the drawbacks of the administration's proposal. A full floor debate and vote would follow.

In the case of a sudden attack on the United States or on Americans abroad, the president would retain his power to repel that attack and to strike back without a congressional declaration. But any sustained operation would trigger the declaration process. In other words, the president could send troops into Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban in response to 9/11. But if he planned to keep troops there to unseat the government and transform the country, he would need a congressional declaration. (Without one, funding for troops in the field would be cut off automatically.)

In "The Agenda" John Sellers lays down the odds for the Nobel Peace Prize. Seems a little dated because a frontrunner is the leader of the Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko. He does confess that an organization or individual associated with Tsunami relief will probably win.

In a timely piece the infamous Richard Clarke wonders why the administration has been unable to secure the fatherland...I mean homeland despite talking it up all the time. Honestly it is not his best. Clarke allows his hatred of the Bushies to get in the way and he just throws things up against the wall to see what sticks. W doesn't like spending money domestically! Uh what about that Medicare boondogle and those nightmarish highway bills. The NRA is running the country so terrorists are buying guns! So we're too liberal on gun laws? See how well another Patriot Act does in Congress, the current law would not make it to the Oval Office much less one placing restrictions on guns.

Finally the quintessential New New Journalist William Langewiesche turns in a typically mammoth piece on A. Q. Khan the father of the Islamic Bomb.

Book Pages: A Whole Bunch of Books

If you want to read up on the MidEast or Islam the Middle East Quarterly has helpfully posted all of its reviews on one page. Happy hunting...

In the Tanks: More on the Chinese "Peace Mission"

In case you are really, really interested in what went down in Peace Mission 2005 the Jamestown Foundation has put together a good summary. As I had mentioned previously Peace Mission had little to do with combatting terrorism:

The naval power and operation on display were patently unrealistic against a terrorist organization, but quite suitable for operations against a regional naval power. Indeed, the exercise was old fashioned power politics at work, aimed squarely at the governments in Pyongyang and Tokyo, to pressure North Korea to go back to the six party nuclear talks and Japan over its border claim to the Kurils. A recent breakthrough in Beijing in the six-party talks last week may in fact attest to the former...

As expected from a first-time exercise between countries with only three months of planning, it was stage-managed from start to finish. It was primarily a Chinese firepower demonstration exercise with Russian support, and combined two major, regular training exercises that both China and Russia normally hold separately. Under the auspices of the SCO, China has held a joint counter-terrorist exercise around August with a neighbor since 2003. The Russians were able to give their annual strategic exercise an extra twist by navigating their Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 bombers over a different route. The Russians used four Tu-22M3 strategic bombers and two Tu-95MS on a conventional strike mission to soften up the defenses before the amphibious landing. Using the Tu-95MS is intriguing it is a cruise missile carrier ill-suited to the conventional bombing role in comparison to the Tu-23M3 but the crews would have had the opportunity to carry out mock cruise missile attacks against possible targets in Northeast Asia. It would be interesting to know if China gave them a rigid flight plan over its airspace so as to not compromise sensitive installations.

Foreign Policy - The Maxim of the FoPo Set

Yes I subscribe to it and read it regularly but I have a real hard time taking Foreign Policy seriously. There is the more bland than bland name, the to-slick-for-its-own-good format and the obligatory surveys, lists and indexes. Haven't you noticed that this is the same gimmick employed by the lad mags - lotsa lists with questionable methodology? Agree or disagree the lists draw readers. Evidence of this is the rather violent reaction by consuls, ambassadors and experts to the Failed States Index. The latest gimmick is giving you the opportunity to vote on your top five public intellectuals. FP helps you out by listing 100 and giving you the opportunity to write in a candidate. I wrote in Carlos Alberto Montaner.

Iraqi Constitution: A Divider Not a Uniter

According to a report issued by an NGO - the proposed Iraqi Constitution could potentially cause more harm than good. Creating more divisions and possibly leading to civil war.

Just Say No to Turkey

Frank Gaffney, Jr. neo-con extraordinaire does not want Turkey in the EU and he serves up a couple of reasons:

• Turkey is awash with billions of dollars in what is known as "green money," apparently emanating from funds Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states withdrew from the United States after September 11, 2001. U.S. policymakers are concerned this unaccountable cash is laundered in Turkey, then used to finance businesses and generate new revenue streams for Islamofascist terrorism. At the very least, everything else on Mr. Erdogan's Islamist agenda is lubricated by these resources.

  Turkey's traditionally secular educational system is being steadily supplanted by madrassa-style "imam hatip" schools and other institutions where students are taught only the Koran and its interpretation according to the Islamofascists. The prime minister is himself an imam hatip school graduate and has championed lowering the age at which children can be subjected to their form of radical religious indoctrination from 12 years old to 4. And in 2005, experts expect 1,215,000 Turkish students to graduate from such schools.

  Products of such an education are ill-equipped to do much besides carrying out the Islamist program of Mr. Erdogan's AKP Party. Tens of thousands are being given government jobs: Experienced, secular bureaucrats are replaced with ideologically reliable theo-apparatchiks; 4,000 others pack secular courts, transforming them into instruments of Shari'a religious law.

  As elsewhere, religious intolerance is a hallmark of Mr. Erdogan's creeping Islamofascist putsch in Turkey. Roughly a third of the Turkish population is a minority known as Alevis. They observe a strain of Islam that retains some of the traditions of Turkey's ancient religions. Islamist Sunnis like Mr. Erdogan and his Saudi Wahhabi sponsors regard the Alevis as "apostates" and "hypocrites" and subject them to increasing discrimination and intimidation. Other minorities, notably Turkey's Jews, know they are likely next in line for such treatment -- a far cry from the tolerance of the Ottoman era.

  In the name of internationally mandated "reform" of Turkey's banking system, the government is seizing assets and operations of banks run by businessmen associated with the political opposition. It has gone so far as to defy successive rulings by Turkey's supreme court disallowing one such expropriation. The AKP-dominated parliament has enacted legislation that allows even distant relatives of the owners to be prosecuted for alleged wrongdoing. Among the beneficiaries of such shakedowns have been so-called "Islamic banks" tied to Saudi Arabia, some of whose senior officers now hold top jobs in the Erdogan government..

• Grabbing assets -- or threatening to do so -- has allowed the government effectively to take control of the Turkish media, as well. Consolidation of the industry in hands friendly to (or at least cowed by) the Islamists and self-censorship of reporters, lest they depart from the party line, have essentially denied prominent outlets to any contrary views. The risks of deviating is clear from the recently announced prosecution of Turkey's most acclaimed novelist, Orhan Parmuk, for "denigrating Turks and Turkey" by affirming in a Swiss publication allegations of past Turkish genocidal attacks on Kurds and Armenians.

  Among the consequences of Mr. Erdogan's domination of the press has been an inflaming of Turkish public opinion against President Bush in particular and the United States more generally. Today, a novel describing a war between America and Turkey leading to the nuclear destruction of Washington is a runaway best-seller, even in the Turkish military.

  This data point perhaps indicates the Islamists' progress toward also transforming the traditional guarantors of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's legacy of a secular, pro-Western Muslim state: Turkey's armed forces. Matters have been worsened by Mr. Erdogan's skillful manipulation of popular interest in the European bid to keep the military from serving as a control rod in Turkish politics.

The Real Diehl - Competing With Chavez

Jackson Diehl has a must read piece in today's WaPost. He talks about Chavez buying friends in Latin America and appealing to the populist anti-American sentiment that has never really gone away. He also mentions our friends Presidents Toledo and Uribe. Both of them head governments that have successfully nurtured growth. True Toledo is reviled but Uribe according to a recent poll is admired at home and abroad (albeit among the elites). Diehl mentions their prescription for beating Chavez and I will add something else be a geo-green or even a neo-con. Here's Diehl:

That's why when Uribe and Toledo did speak about Venezuela, to their contacts in Congress and the Bush administration, the message was a simple one: Stop talking about Chavez, and start competing with him. Chavez-bashing, whether by Pat Robertson or Donald Rumsfeld, only sends his poll numbers soaring; meanwhile, say the Latin presidents, hard-pressed leaders are wondering if Washington has anything that matches Chavez's largesse. The opportunities to compete are readily available. There is, for example, an Andean free-trade agreement with the United States that the two presidents would like to wrap up by the end of October.

Their pitch would be more convincing if they were willing to stand up against Chavez's breach of democratic norms and interference in other countries, both violations of regional charters. But they also have a point: The Bush administration would have a lot more impact if it behaved as if the United States, rather than Venezuela, was the hemisphere's economic leader.

The Pope and His Rival

It is not catalogued as such but it is a miracle that Hans Kung did not drop dead the moment he heard that Joseph Ratzinger was pope. In an encouraging development the two one-time friends and then bitter rivals met and even had dinner together. In the end they found that they actually still have a great deal in common. The NYT link does accuse Ratzinger of taking a rightward shift after Vatican II and Kung remaining a good liberal, but that is simplifying things. If someone like Ratzinger wanted reform but not as much as Kung does that make him a conservative or a pragmatist? And if someone like Kung wants to encourage reforms that challenge the very foundation of the church does that make him a liberal or a heretic? It is all subjective so the Times should have kept quiet on that count.

It Sounds So Simple...

Stephen Hadley is still trolling around Asia and he has a plan for crushing the Taliban and other Islamic extremists:

"In Pakistan, we need to be doing what we do in Afghanistan, having forces up on the border," he said. "What we and the Pakistanis and Afghans can do is share intelligence" and "coordinate our activities on the border." Ideally, he added, Pakistani forces would drive guerrillas west "so they flee into our arms and the Afghans'."

But Hadley strove not to take sides in the quarrel between the two nations, which have a long and complicated relationship. After a 2 1/2 -hour dinner with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Sunday night, Hadley expressed understanding of the Afghan argument that Pakistan is the source of its problems with guerrilla attacks but did not fully endorse it.

It does sound easy, but obviously it is not because four years after 9/11 Osama and Mullah Omar are still wandering around.

Sharon Survives

I'm not quite sure how good his singing voice is or if he even knows Destiny's Child, but Ariel Sharon should be busting out this tune today. He's still going to have to face Bibi sooner or later but Likud has bought Sharon some time. This will give his Gaza strategy some time to work. The attacks last week showed the brilliance of his plan. Without the settlements in Gaza Sharon and can unleash whenever attacked. In addition the removal of the settlements forces the Palestinians to look inwards to their own problems and exposes the extremists who seek the destruction of Israel.

Let a Flower or Two Bloom

openDemocracy.com has a story on the challenges faced by Chinese based NGOs.

The US Wants to Keep the Internet

The US wants to continue to govern the internet but some countries don't like it. Here is the funniest thing I've read all day:

"This situation is very undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable," said Sha Zukang, the ambassador from China, which this week imposed new rules that allow only "healthy and civilized" news to be read by the mainland's 100 million Web users.

China's government will determine which news is healthy and which news is not.

Mr. Cason Bids Adieu

James Cason has been an all around pain in the rear to Fidel Castro. Despite provocations and attempts to sideline him Mr. Cason handled his job at the Special Interest Section in Havana with aplomb. When his predecessor Amb. Vicky Huddleston left the post the Cubans were quite relieved, she had been a nightmare for them. Then they get Cason who was just as bad if not worse. Now they anxiously await the arrival Michael Parmly who will probably be offering them more of the same. They must really miss Wayne Smith.

In The Tanks - Foreign Militants in Iraq

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has published a report examing the state of foreign militants in the insurgency in Iraq. A number of surprising and not so surprising facts:

• Algerians contribute the most insurgents - 20% - those crazy Saudi Wahabbis only offer 12%, which is less than Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Egypt.
• Saudis are the most sought after militants because they usually bring cash and make good tv when they martyr themselves
• The Saudi government has gone out of its way to limit Saudi militants
• Foreign militiants constitute at most 10% of insurgents - about 3,000 and could be as small as 4%.
• The foreigners are involved in the most violent attacks
• Syria has become a tourist destination since it is the venue of choice for entry into Iraq
• Sunni nationalism appears to be the single most important contributing factor for the insurgency

Alvaro Uribe - Two Hands Are Better Than One

Alvaro Uribe got to be president of Colombia by promising a "mano dura" for leftist narco-terrorists. The hard hand has hurt FARC and now he is showing another hand by making overtures to the ELN and FARC.

In The Tanks - Alvaro Vargas Llosa on MDGs

Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a few choice words for the MDGs and he makes a number of valid points:

Foreign aid was invented in 1948 with President Truman’s Four Point Program. In almost six decades, some 2.3 trillion dollars have been dished out worldwide to poor countries by rich ones—about half the cost of World War II! In that time, not a single country has significantly reduced poverty as a result of foreign aid.

If we examine U.S. foreign aid in the last decade, we find that there is no relation between these transfers and the reduction of poverty. In Egypt, extreme poverty as a percentage of the population has remained the same despite the money given to that country, the second biggest beneficiary of U.S. largesse. China, while receiving two thousand times less aid than Egypt, reduced extreme poverty by half. Bolivia, one of the eleven biggest recipients of U.S. assistance, has managed to double the percentage of people living in extreme poverty.

As much as I love to knock the effectiveness of foreign aid I am curious if he is including the Marshall Plan in that 2.3 trillion dollars and if he thinks that it did not work. Let's forget this and move on to the trade not aid part of his argument which is much more persuasive:

One wonders why a learned man like Jeffrey Sachs, who until a few years ago advised poor countries to open their economies, is today the intellectual force behind the Millennium Development Goals approach. He is pushing rich countries to devote 0.7 percent of their GDP to foreign aid. He argues the figure is not arbitrary because it would take 0.6 percent of their GDP to give one dollar every day to the more than one billion destitute people worldwide. But, as economist Surjit Bhalla has responded, if you take into account the fact that one dollar will buy you different amounts of goods and services in different countries, in terms of purchasing power, foreign aid already adds up to twice the amount needed to give one dollar a day to every destitute person!

In fact, aid to the least developed countries has consistently gone up in absolute terms. In the last fifteen years, the U.S. has doubled the aid given to those nations. The United Kingdom has almost tripled it. Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have expanded theirs by between 50 and 60 percent.

Foreign aid has become a propaganda tool. It does not have as much to do with alleviating poverty as with blaming rich countries for being rich. It is interesting to note that the U.N. report includes detailed lists of how much aid each donor country is giving but not of how much aid each recipient country is getting. In other words, the donors, rather than the beneficiaries, are accountable for the money!

It is no surprise extreme poverty will not be halved by 2015. It is only because of China and India, two countries that have been opening up their economies, that extreme poverty has been somewhat reduced in total numbers since 1990. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where a large portion of foreign aid is destined, extreme poverty has actually risen by two percentage points; in Latin America it has declined by just over one percent!

Very few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have engaged in major reform; and in Latin America, reform has been half-hearted or misguided compared to reform in Central Europe or Eastern Asia.

Democracy Haitian Style

Clinton wanted to go into Haiti to re-establish democracy in that country even though it never really was all that established. Later on the US looked the other way or encouraged the overthrow of Aristide - the guy we put in place to re-establish democracy. Now Haiti is getting ready to hold elections and to put it mildly they aren't going to be pretty. The prefered candidate from Aristide's Lavalas Family party was not allowed to run. The most popular pres of the past 20 years also opted not to run. Then again that popular pres, the former President for Life "Baby Doc" Duvalier would probably get killed on the tarmac if he opted to return and honestly he should be. Through it all Haiti remains the poorest country in the hemisphere:

Close to 80 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, and 42 percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to the UN's World FoodProgram.

Haiti's national budget of $300 million is less than the budgets of many large US school districts. Sewage flows freely through the streets, there is often no electricity, and only one traffic light in the whole capital is functioning.

Worse yet, there is a near absence of law enforcement here, according to Amnesty International, which reports that "politically motivated arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial executions, deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians, rape, death threats and intimidation are routine and are perpetrated with impunity."

Violence has claimed almost 800 lives since September 2004 and some parts of the capital remain no-go areas even for the UN troops. In May, the US embassy ordered nonemergency staff to leave Haiti along with their families.

Aren't we glad that the Haitians have the right to vote? Haiti is Exhibit A that democracy is not a cure all for a nation's problems.

Book Pages: The Fate of Africa

I've been eyeing Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to The Heart of Despair; A History of Fifty Years of Independence since it came out. It has garnered a number of positive reviews and after hearing it compared to The Scramble for Africa now I know I have to read it. Here are excerpts from Roger Bate's Weekly Standard review:

From Cairo to Cape Town, from Dakar to Djibouti, Meredith understands what is important and what the reader will want to learn. I say "probably" simply because I can only judge the writing on the countries I know something about; but where I have knowledge, he is spot on. If the rest of the book is as accurate as the chapters on Southern Africa, this is a seminal work.

I read the chapter about the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda more avidly than any part of any nonfiction book I have ever encountered. It is compellingly written and appalling to comprehend. Even Francophiles will be disillusioned by that country's politics, and disastrous and mendacious involvement in the Rwanda crisis. But no country gets a free ride. Britain's colonial legacy and contemporary policies are rightly decried in several chapters (notably on Sudan and Egypt), as is America's calamitous involvement with Mobutu Sese Seko's leadership in Zaire and the debacles in Liberia and Somalia. The Sudanese import of Osama bin Laden and Islamic influences in the region get an interesting, careful, and highly critical discussion as well.

Bate then discusses how Meredith explains how Africa got itself into this mess and the excuses made for it:

Starting with a chapter on the independence of Ghana from Britain in 1957, Meredith details the always painful, and generally disastrous, experience of African self-rule. The notable exception is Botswana, a country that moved peacefully from British colony to democratic African state, with private property rights, rule of law, economic growth, and
increasing standards of health care (albeit a huge AIDS problem). But while Botswana is a shining star on the continent, its luminescence is enhanced by the catastrophes around it, its achievements more moderate by Asian standards. Of 53 countries, only Botswana and post-apartheid South Africa may be considered successful.

The current trend, much favored by United Nations advisory panels, is to say that Africa has unique problems of geography and disease, which is why it is poor. Meredith blames governance. Uncaring colonial powers gave way to despotic African leaders, often pawns in the Cold War. Today, corrupt leaders must shoulder the blame. Africa is a continent where people still go into government to make money. As Meredith explains about Nigeria (although the analysis can easily be applied to other countries), during colonial times, it was seen as acceptable to rip off the government: "The same attitude prevailed with the coming of independence. The state was regarded as a foreign institution that could be used for personal and community gain without any sense of shame or need for accountability. Plunderers of the government treasury were often excused on the grounds that they had only 'taken their share.'"

The most fascinating parts are the portraits of the "big men," the leaders, most of whom were despots, ruling in the belief that they were infallible or God-like. Mengistu Haile Miriam of Ethiopia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu of Zaire, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, to name but a few. Accustomed to endless praise, it is not surprising to learn that absolute power tended to corrupt them absolutely.

Finally we close with some perspective on famine relief:

Although this book was written too early to discuss this summer's Live 8 concerts and Tony Blair's move to push Africa up the political agenda at the G8 summit, Meredith does deal most interestingly with the Live AID concerts of 1985 and how the money raised was largely wasted, given that the cause of Ethiopia's famine was the vile Mengistu regime. That section demonstrates Meredith's skepticism about aid, and leads this reader to the conclusion that nothing changed then, and nothing will change now, unless Africans and their leaders make change a priority--something Meredith concludes is possible, and is happening in many places.

Meredith first traveled up the Nile from Cairo in 1964 as a 21-year-old and claims that, in many ways, his "African journey has continued ever since." His careful, detailed analysis, his dispassionate but not detached writing, and his evident wit mean that we might all hope his journey continues for much longer.

Italy and the Euro

Italy is about to explode the Euro's stability pact and the EU is going to have to make a decision. For this and other reasons Italy's Finance Minister is leaving in frustration:

Fitch said the national debt is already forecast to rise from 106.9pc of GDP last year to 109pc in 2006, but could now start galloping upwards on a dangerous trajectory.

The IMF warned this week that the deficit is likely to reach 5.1pc next year, with growth of just 1.4pc after zero in 2005.

Vicenzo Visco, an ex-finance minister, said the real reason for the resignation was the melt-down of Italy's public accounts. "Fazio is an excuse. The truth is that he couldn't put together a budget and couldn't allow this stain on his record," he said.

The EU has so far backed away from a major clash with Italy over its breach of the Stability Pact's 3pc limit, responding to good faith pleas from Mr Siniscalco for more time.

Brussels will almost certainly take a much tougher line if budget discipline now appears to break down altogether.

HSBC warned in a recent report that Italy is in grave crisis and may be forced out of the eurozone, chiefly because its has failed to kick its inflationary habits since exchange rates were fixed irrevocably a decade ago.

Unit labour costs have soared compared to northern Europe, leaving Italy trapped inside the currency bloc with an exchange rate over-valued by some 20pc. HSBC said Italy's export performance was "truly appalling" and likely to get worse.

The Other 9/11

Ok maybe it is just right wing wishful thinking but could it be possible that a Cuban agent killed Salvador Allende? Considering that Castro may have offed Camilo Cienfuegos and left el Che to die I would not be surprised.