While We Set Their VCR Clocks They Set Policy

While doing my daily skim through the Brookings Institute website I found this op-ed written by Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

According to his resume Mr. Telhami should be among the foremost experts on the Middle East today, and that's what I'm going to talk about. Thomas Jefferson said that the Earth belongs to the generation that inhabits it. Never is this truth more clear than following a massive change in the global system, in this case the end of the Cold War. During the 1980's and 90's the economic world became a nightmare for business leaders who couldn't adapt to rapidly changing technology and international rule sets. For many executives learning to deal with the Japanese, email, and conference calling were simply tasks that couldn't be accomplished. Now, in the security and international policy realms we find ourselves in a similar situation.

While most Americans of my generation vaguely remember the Cold War the first formative images in international policy for most of us were the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gorbaychev's birthmark. Mr. Telhami's article belies his formative years doing duck and cover drills in school. Simply the terminology he uses implies that the old zero-sum game is in overtime. Mr. Telhami talks about "balance of power" and at one point compares a potential pullout of Iraq to the American pullout of Saigon, or more specifically he says, with reference to a retreat from Iraq potentially inciting Islamist militancy,

"America's enemies, including the Soviets, did not attack the United States once we abandoned Saigon and bared our defeat."

What? How is that relavent? I never read about any Maoist terrorists waging an asymetrical war against the U.S. during the 70's, nor were the Soviets likely to openly attack the U.S. after we'd pretty much agreed that Mutually Assured Destruction was the name of the paradigm in which we were living. For that matter, I'd like to point out that it wasn't long after the fall of Saigon that we were paying CIA clandestine services officers to train Osama bin Laden and give him stinger missles to fight the Ruskies. It's a brave new world! I digress.

For my part I am grateful in the extreme to Mr. Telhami's ilk for their part in making sure that I didn't grow up on the set of Mad Max. I don't want to be percieved as disrespectful, nor do I discount the gift of decades of experience. I just question the relavence of being a ski jump medalist in the summer Olympics. If Mr. Telhami represents the pinnacle of thought on the modern Middle East situation then we're in trouble. Thankfully he doesn't. We're fortuneate to have a number of people who have adapted to the paradigm that the fall of the Soviet Union has created, but the fact that this sort of article gets plastered on the front page of the Brookings website "above the crease" (visible without scrolling down) frightens me. While I certainly believe that institutions like Brookings are to be lauded for their ability to include varied viewpoints, I must say that this is evidence that the "wise old men" of our nation should really consider if they are prepared to accpet the challenges faced by a world map that looks a lot more like a diagram of the Internet overlapping a lava lamp than the old maps that ensorcelled the Soviet Union as though "Here be monsters".

The following is the email I sent Brookings:

I'm curious about the relavence of mr Telhami's discussion of "America's enemies, including the Soviets" not opting to attack the U.S. following the Saigon pullout in relation to inciting militancy by pulling out of Iraq. While considering the present in the context of history is, of course, imperative, viewing Iraq in the fame of a Cold War proxy war seems ridiculous. By the time Vietnam ended the MAD ruleset had not only been sold worldwide, it was on clearance at Wal-Mart. A more accurate comparison might be the Goths stepping up their raids into Roman territory following pullouts from northern outposts. While that comparison has obvious flaws, the psychology behind those raids and asymetrical attacks on U.S. soil are significantly more simmilar than Cold War containment/proxy wars versus pre-emtive warfare and stabilization operations. I'd be happy to entertain arguements, but that sort of thinking (i.e. Cold War type) is what keeps certain strategic factions within the Pentagon focused on China as the next emerging near-peer competitor. Sorry, the Manthorpe Curve is defunct, and it's time to define our world in much more complex terms than the zero sum game. This is more like playing the stock market than poker. Investments carry risks, but sometimes the riskiest investments can carry massive payoff. Last generations military decision makers were staring across a table at their opponent trying to guess what kind of hand he was holding. This generation's must be more like market analysts trying to determine what the payoff is and how long after investing before we call it a win or loss.

Holistic Medicine for America

In reading another blog that I frequent I came across a bit, rather proudly written by an activist Green pointing out that corporations had taken over America causing everything from obesity to war. I wanted to respond to this myopic view, however the blog is member-only, so that was that. It did, however, prompt what I think is a rather nice little bit about the true causes of many issues which plague America today.

The major problem with the thought process of most activists is that while they note the symptoms of the disease they take what amounts to a centralized symptom and call it the illness. Large corporate power structures seeking to cut bottom lines are composed of members of our society. Therefore, they are part of the ailing body. If the legs hurt we do not necessarily amputate the legs. We must to seek a more inclusive diagnosis. If the ailments of the extremeties are caused by problems with the heart, we do not simply cut out the heart. We must seek a more pragmatic solution. What are the problems of the heart, and how do we treat them? In this case the legs represent everything from obeise members of society to malfunctioning electoral systems. They cannot simply be removed without damaging the body, so we must seek out the cause of the ailment. The heart represents the institutions which have driven our ascendancy as a nation (capitalism, democracy, corporate power, military might, etc.), so we cannot simply cut it away, we must reform it.

I would put forth that we have already begun this process, that one merely has to take a step back to see. For example, during the 80's we reached a tipping point in consumer culture. Americans bought everything that was pitched to them. All one has to do is compare 80's marketing to the marketing of eras previous and subsequent. Previously marketing had been geared more towards pragmatism. In the 90's marketing began to apeal to everything from pragmatism to artistic taste and spiritual satisfaction demonstrating a growing dissatisfaction with consumer culture. It is, of course, strangely ironic that only after the peak of consumer culture is nearly twenty years past (just ask any marketing exectuve) do we find ourselves with words like "consumerist" in the lexicon.

Throughout the 90's and 21st century we have seen a growing backlash towards irresponsible corporations, to the point that companies like Whole Foods (a supermarket chain devoted to organic/free-range/environmentally sound products) have begun to thrive in earnest. This is but one symptom that has begun to turn around. The natural tendency of activists is to note only the areas in need of change, not the areas that have changed. The frequent response among activists to any assertion that change has occoured is a "that's not enough" attitude. By putting forth that a process is under way one hardly presupposes that it is complete. By assuming a "We're on the way!" attitude activists are more likely to find support. Simply put, people bandwagon. Whole Foods didn't begin to thrive because activists put photos of caged pigs in newspapers. Whole Foods began to thrive because they provided an easy, fashonable, and well executed alternative to eating factory farm produce. Activists are important in the system because they spread knowledge of a flaw in the system. However, the flaw will seem to go largely ignored until someone, usually an entrepeneur or politician, presents another viable option. The test of a viable option is, of course, that it does not cause any dramatic change in a person's life. While being Vegan and growing one's own produce requires immense effort, shopping at Whole Foods simply requires the expenditure of more money. By making the interior of the store more attractive and the level of service superior to a normal super market Whole Foods provides a viable (indeed superior) option for almost anyone living at or above the median lifestyle. Using similar logic, I put forth that when gas prices (either through taxation or natural economic forces) rise very much beyond their present level (I'll state that any amount significantly over $2 a gallon should suffice). Americans will begin to purchase more fuel-efficient cars on a large scale, producing competition in that aspect of auto manufacturing.
Activists (both left and right) have already given America numerous reasons to reduce it's consumption of oil, however since Americans like SUV's and sports cars, until the cost of fuel is taxing to the point that these become financially impractical for Americans to own they will continue to purcase them, unless, that is, someone comes up with a fuel-efficient SUV. Hell, a lot of the sports car set has already defected to the Honda Civic. Why not? They all knew that it would save them on gas, and the market has provided a million ways to make your Civic cooler with bolt-on parts.

Activists are the system's natural response to ailment. They function like antibodies, attacking those things which infect the system. However, a healthy immune system functions better than an ailing one. It is my belief that activists need to be organized and educated. While in Europe most activist groups unite under the banner of political parties (forcing random counterculture elements to simply refer to themselves as anarchists, something I find most ammusing) in America our activist groups tend to be decentralized and lack any sort of focus. The result is that serious activists who want to drive change are absorbed by major political parties and organizations leaving perfectly good movements to fill their ranks from the afforementioned counterculture elements. As an examle, my mother supports almost every aspect of the Green platform, however there isn't much of an organized Green Party here so she gives money to the Sierra Club and volunteers for the local Democrats. I would like to applaud the Green Party's focus on seeing Greens elected to local office in areas with a heavy liberal bias. That is exactly the kind of grass-roots effort we need. In America we have a tendency towards top-down thinking, based on the idea that the head leads the body. While this system is not entirely flawed, a healthy brain in a body riddled with tumors and illness will hardly be able to repair the entire form. It is my opinion that it is better to think of the system as a pyramid. One must lay the foundations layer by layer before the capstone can be put in place. By strengthening the immune system thus, the Greens are helping to lay the foundations for a stronger body. Well, it's late and I'm rambling. Hmmm... fried peanut butter sandwiches... excellent....

The Infinite Power of the Masses (Is Valued at $9.34 Trillion)

Just a note on current reading... In 2000 Hernando de Soto, the famed Peruvian economist, published a book called The Mystery of Capital. According to his studies the total wealth of the shadow economy, extralegal assets filling legal niches in the third world (e.g. houses to which no one has a title) is $9.34 trillion. To put it in context let's just say that it's immensely more than the total wealth held legally in those countries. The reason: the legal structure necessary for ownership doesn't exist in the third world. The result: $9.34 trillion dollars disconnected from the global economy and 80% of the inhabitants of the third world unable to connect their functional economies to the global economy. Talk about a glass ceiling. Time to talk less about bringing democracy to these nations and more about bringing bureaucracy to them. The nearly instantaneous addition of a functional and legitimized middle-class to the third world would almost surely bring about democratic change within a generation.

A Note For Bill

Bill is unable to read this because Bill suffers from a combination of cataracts, macular degeneration, and retinal detachment stemming from a congenital defect. You see, Bill is guilty of the apparently unforgivable sin of being born to a mother who suffered from chicken pox during her pregnancy, and, as is frequently the case in this scenario, Bill didn't come out exactly as he was supposed to. He's not deformed to the point of being miserably handicapped. There aren't any missing limbs, and his brain is in superb working condition, so superb in fact that Bill managed to finish two years of college and even now earns a little money helping people who aren't particularly computer literate set up web sites and install software. He hasn't too much difficulty getting around as he has a nearly flawless map of Memphis stored in the area of his brain dealing with navigation and spatial relationships. He'd probably have little difficulty at all if he didn't constantly walk into telephone poles and flower planters, frequently injuring him just enough to make his life difficult and painful, but not enough to hospitalize him.

As Bill and I walked towards my house tonight so that I could get him the makings of a few sandwiches and some iced tea he held his left eye open with one hand, turning his head at specific angles attempting to counteract the effects of the macular degeneration. On the walk we chatted about his condition, Bill slowly and carefully explaining his situation, not angry with the world that had left him this way, but rather somewhere between disappointed and hopeful.

Bill told me that about seventy percent of Memphis' homeless are either "mentally disabled or substance abusers." He said that he falls into that "other" category, the men and women who just fall through the cracks of the system. As someone who is through experience wary of drug addicts and alcoholics, I wondered for the first few blocks of our walk together if Bill wasn't selling me the Brooklyn Bridge. After all, maybe the milky color of his eyes had something to do with smoking crack, and perhaps I was just unable to notice any of the classic symptoms of an alcoholic with which I am so familiar. No, Bill had approached me with a great deal of reluctance, only asking for anything at all after he was sure that I wanted to listen, lacking entirely the practiced nonchalance of a freeloader. We must've exchanged three or four sentences of casual greetings before he inquired if it would be alright for him to ask me what he was sure was "a redundant question." I, being flat broke and sure that I wouldn't be moved to offer money, but just a pastrami sandwich from my fridge, decided to listen to his pitch. And so, upon my invitation, a blind beggar accompanied me on my walk home. The drivers of several cars looked strangely at us, their aversion to Bill's disheveled state quite clear on their faces. I found myself almost glad that Bill couldn't see them.

When asked what sort of assistance he received from the government he replied that Social Security, a system we all know to be on wobbly legs at best, sent him $117 a month, of which 27 cents remained now, two-thirds of the way through the month. "There isn't much way to withdraw 27 cents from a bank, and it wouldn't do me much good if I could," Bill lamented. Bill told me that Tennessee was good enough to provide him some level of health coverage through Tenn-Care, a nearly bankrupt and poorly managed attempt at providing health care to Tennessee's poor. However, like many attempts at reforming health care for the "indigent," to use Bill's own term (a term that filled me with the frightening images of Dickens' world), Tenn-Care fails to provide for preventive medicine of any sort, instead choosing to await serious illness or injury to be useful. I asked why it was that he received so little in the way of government assistance, and was floored. Bill, a man unable to walk without periodically impacting random objects, does not qualify as one-hundred percent blind, and thus does not qualify for full disability. "When I'm fully blind," the anticipation in Bill's voice sending a shiver down my spine, "I'll get a lot of help."

Gathering that I was interested in politics Bill asked my opinion regarding embryonic stem cell research, knowing that many researchers believe that it could correct the effects of both the macular degeneration and the detached retina. "I really believe," he firmly told me, "that if I just had the money something could be done, something to fix all this." The only answer I had for him was that, yes, most probably, something could be done.

Bill was polite in the extreme, a shy sort of politeness that comes from a combination of good manners and constant rejection. If only my own generation could muster this sort of politeness in their daily life. As I walked with Bill I thought of Bellevue Baptist Church, a massive religious complex in the overwhelmingly Republican East Memphis sometimes referred to as "Six Flags Over Jesus." I imagined the massive sums of money that were brought in every year though donations and fund-raising events, such as their Broadway-like annual Christmas pageant, "The Singing Christmas Tree," a production of such magnitude as to require the participation of hundreds of cast and crew. I remembered a specific scene from one year during my childhood in which blacklights made the innumerable phosphorescent hands of the cast glow. I imagined those hands and the money that had purchased the phosphorescent paint put to use to help Bill and the millions of other Bills around the world. I imagined a world in which a structure the size of Bellevue Baptist Church might house Bill. I imagined a disability system in which a man who is functionally blind could receive more than $117 a month to help him survive, and I imagined a world in which Bill would not have to be blind, a world where preventive medicine and ongoing treatment would be available to him, a world in which the proven miracle of stem cell transplants would be allowed to give him back his sight. I imagined a world in which people understood that Christ did not mandate that the meek wait their turn to inherit the earth or that only mud return the sight of blind beggars. I imagined, and I prayed, but I gave Bill a good sweat shirt and $7, enough for him to stay three nights at the shelter, because I can't seem to muster Bill's hopeful tone, just an angry one.

To Arms!!!

Dear readers, I must apologise to you for my prolonged absence from the blog. I've been up to my chin in projects since my last post, and I simply haven't had the time to research anything new. However, between trying to fix an old Roper gas stove, painting, yardwork, moving in, and working on the Kerry campaign, I've noticed I'm still bitching about one thing more often than not. So here's a quick shout out to my kids in DC. Keep your heads down, because if you think gun violence is bad now...

I'd like to thank a bipartisan group of Congressmen (I had originally intended to target specific individuals, but hey, let's spread the love.) for making sure that Washington, DC, my home until one week ago, is going to be safer. Presuming the District of Columbia Personal Protection act passes the Senate in coming months the law abiding citizens of the District will no longer have to worry about those annoying little gun registration laws passed by the city council so long ago. Now, before I go any further, I'd like to point out that this bill is a piece of House of Reps grandstanding used by Dems to give them a little Second Amendment flava and Republicans for the opposite reason. It's no more a real piece of legislation than a letter to the editor of the Washington Times is a real piece of journalism, however, that doesn't change the fact that the citizens of DC are still looking under their beds for their enfranchisement.

I'll spare you the obnoxious details. Simply put, DC has strict gun control laws, extremely strict. Forget packing a handgun unless you're specially licensed as an armed security guard or a cop. Shotguns and rifles are legal, but you've got to register them with the Metro PD, and don't expect to transport them out of your house unless they're locked and unloaded. The bill repeals these regulations, put in place by the city council and mayor of the District of Columbia, without the consent of the citizens of the District. In fact, they don't even get a Congresman to vote on the issue. Now, I won't even get into the DC Taxation Without Representation bit right now, but sufficed to say that really starts getting agitating when Congress takes that rare oportunity to exercise it's power of the District's local laws. Folks, just so you're aware, DC is the only place in the country where they can do that.

As a nod to the "spirit" of the bill (H.R. 3193 By the by) I'll go ahead and point out that DC has a high violent crime rate. The idea, denounced by anyone with one whit of knowledge regarding gun violence statistics, is that if the law abiding citizens of DC had guns they'd be able to kill the bad guys. Okay real simple, you remember high school algebra, right? If 1 + x = 1 then x = 0, right? Meaning x has no value. Try this on. Canada + lots of legal guns = minimal gun violence and Italy + strict gun control = minimal gun violence, then what must be true of both lots of legal guns and strict gun control? That they both have little effect on gun violence? That, perhaps, they function similarly to the "0" in the previous equation? Don't peg me for a gun control nut here. I'm a gun lovin', trigger pullin' freak when it comes down to it. When I first moved to DC I was upset to discover that I couldn't obtain a conceal and carry permit, but that doesn't make me delusional regarding the role of gun control in violent crime or able to read the Second Amendment backwards and hear a message from Charlton Heston. The simple fact here is that DC doesn't want guns. The city has made it quite clear that this legislation is unnecessary and unwelcome.

To add insult to injury the bill cites that one of its goals is to "REFORM D.C. COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY TO RESTRICT FIREARMS." It cites a 1906 law regarding the killing of wild birds and animals which states that,: "The District of Columbia shall not have authority to enact laws or regulations that discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms." Believe me, I'm going to be on the look out for any laws of this nature which apply to segregation and women's sufferage, and I'll be emailing them to Mr. Ford and Mrs. Blackburn respectively. Frankly, Mr. Tanner, I just expected more from you. Welcome, dear readers to the land of dangerous precedents. Seems like we're visiting frequently lately.

This subject has become, at this stage, quite personal to me, as the legislation was voted for by every West Tennessee Congresman. Thank you, John Tanner, Marsha Blackburn, and Harold Ford Jr. I'll be in touch.