Friday, November 28, 2008
Change I Could Believe In
Here’s a quick thought that the tragedy in Mumbai motivated:
Barack Obama’s election to replace George W. Bush as President provides a golden opportunity for the U.S. to correct one of the most dangerous debilitating mistakes of the Bush era. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush inexplicably refused to name our enemy, and instead attributed our problems to a tactic. The grossly misnamed “war on terrorism” obscured what should have been evident for all to see: We are at war with Radical Islam. Or perhaps, it would be fairer to say that Radical Islam is at war with us, because no matter what the Islamists do, we stubbornly refuse to identify them as our true enemy.
As I write these words, it is not yet clear PRECISELY who the Deccan Mujahadeen is. While some reports suggest that it might have some sort of Al Qaeda connection, it appears likely that the Mumbai attacks were not “true” Al Qaeda operations a la the Cole bombing or 9/11. It is nevertheless already clear, however, PRETTY MUCH who the Deccan Mujahaheen is: yet another violent Radical Islamist group.
Will Obama choose to use his new bully pulpit to speak the truth that Bush dared not utter? Or more precisely, the truth that Bush let leak a few teams before retreating behind the saccharine GWOT terminology? Will Obama retire the GWOT, and confront, instead, the true enemy? Will President Obama lead the West in a direction that might prevail--a direction that starts by actually identifying the enemy?
If so, that would be a change I could truly believe in.
Just one more thing to watch as we learn who we have elected…
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Friday, November 07, 2008
May the Faithful Prove Prescient
Last night, standing amidst a small group of friends, including some to whom my host had just introduced me, holding a glass of champagne, one of the assembled suggested a toast.
“What should we toast?” asked another.
“How about Barack Obama?” said a third. Numerous eyes turned towards me—perhaps not the only McCain voter in the room, but likely the most vocal one (I do live in San Francisco, after all).
I shrugged and raised my glass:
“To President-elect Obama. May the faith that so many have placed in him prove fully warranted.”
All agreed that the toast was proper regardless of affiliation or preference.
It was more than simply a face-saving attempt on my part. It was—and is—heartfelt. We are finishing eight years that I characterize as having had incompetent governance and irresponsible opposition. It is time that we do better on all fronts. The country has chosen Obama as the person to lead us there, and I hope that he does.
Yet my reference to “faith” was a careful, deliberate choice. Though most Obama supporters spoke of hope, what I heard from them was more aligned with faith. Obama supporters—strong Obama supporters—have assured me that when the dust settles and he actually moves into office, he will: govern as a Clintonian centrist; galvanize a truly “progressive” agenda; end affirmative action and racial preferences and setasides; and elevate the status and standing of black leaders and leadership. At least some of these supporters will soon find themselves sorely disappointed. It is, as a friend noted, a testament to Obama’s genius that he could convince all of these believers that he is, at heart, one of them. I could not join them for the simple reason that I could not share their faith. My read on our President-elect remains that though he is certainly “the kind of guy with whom I hang out,” his policy instincts are protectionist, accommodationist, and redistributionist. Still, I concede that my lack of faith is based on little more than the faith of his supporters; his record is thin enough for many to see him as many things.
All of which leads to the next, and critical question: What cues might we—or more honestly, I—receive over the next couple of months? What might our President-elect do over the next few months to convert me into a believer? What steps might he take to move the Democratic Party back to where it was—or at least, where I believed it had been—for the many years in which I was an enthusiastic supporter? I have been pondering that question, and I’m beginning to devise answers.
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Monday, April 30, 2007
Copyright v. Freedom
I’ve been a bit delinquent in my blogging lately (it does tend to come in phases), but I have encountered a number of items worthy of an entry. A week-and-a-half ago, for example, the Institute for International Education (IIE) invited me to meet with a delegation visiting from China. I met four Chinese “scholars,” though it was not clear to me that they were all scholars. Two were from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau; they said little or nothing. Wang Yefei, the deputy director of the Copyright Bureau, did most of the talking (actually, I did, but among the four of them, he was responsible for the lion’s share of the dialog). Zhao Hongshi, also from the Copyright Bureau and somewhat Mr. Yefei’s junior, also asked several questions. (The whole thing took place in simultaneous translation; none of the visitors spoke English).
The topic of our conversation was copyright enforcement—which was, apparently, the theme of their entire trip.
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
Inchoate Imperialism Part II: Policy Prescriptions
A week-or-so ago I posted an essay arguing that if we want to devise reasonable policies for dealing with the Middle East, we must first understand the region. That assertion is uncontroversial. The rest of my argument was likely more so: I explained that the fundamental idea that has shaped the modern Middle East is an inchoate sense of imperialism among the region’s Sunni Arabs. A second toxic philosophy entered the mix with Khomeinism, an expansionist revolutionary movement in the spirit of nineteenth century European socialism and anarchism, though cloaked in the language of Shiism. The region’s other philosophies, including both Zionism (which has long played a significant role) and Kurdish nationalism (which is growing in importance rapidly) are expressions of self-determination among the region’s ethnic minorities—and thus inherently antithetical to both inchoate imperialism and revolutionary Khomeinism.
This essay picks up where that one left off. It addresses the questions that really interest people: So what? Assuming that my explanation is correct, what should the U.S. (and the broader West) do about it? What, if any, policy prescriptions flow from this understanding? And how do they differ from what we are doing now?
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Monday, March 12, 2007
Recalibration and Realignment?
I’ve been noodling over a political quandary for a while now. I left the Democratic Party because, in my opinion, it has drifted very far into dangerous leftist territory. Conventional wisdom in the MSM, on the other hand, has spun the story in precisely the opposite direction. The conventional story seems to be that the recent injection of pro-life, anti-gun-control advocates has moved the Party to the center. Why has my perception been so different?
I found the answer in last week’s Weekly Standard, in an article about Rudy Giuliani and social conservatives. So here’s a conjecture that helps me make sense of many seeming anomalies:
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Saturday, March 10, 2007
Opportunities and Challenges in the Global Information Age
The Commonwealth Club invited me to speak a few days ago. I was pleased to draw a full room (about 40 people), and I prepared my comments for a general audience. My title, with a none-too-subtle nod to Digital Phoenix, was: Phoenix Rising: Opportunities and Challenges in the Global Information Age.
The basic thrust of my comments started with my belief that we are living through a global transition from an industrial age to an information age. Different parts of society will undergo that transformation at different paces, but each one will navigate a predictable pattern of opportunity, displacement, backlash, and reassessment. Selected digital industries (specifically software & entertainment) made the transition early. We should therefore be able to learn valuable lessons by studying their transitions and applying them, albeit in general terms, to areas of greater significance. My first goal in this talk was to show how a pattern that has emerged very cleanly in the debate over music downloads can inform our understanding of the debates over offshoring/protectionism and globalization/terrorism. My second goal wasto outline specific lessons that we can learn from these parallels--and actions we can take to improve both our individual lots and the world as a whole.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Inchoate Imperialism. Part I: A New Narrative
The Need for a New Narrative
It is hardly a secret that the nature of our involvement in the Middle East has changed significantly over the past few years. This change, which has manifested itself in both American military and diplomatic involvement and in the interest and education of individual Americans, is likely to be long lasting. In the early phases of this education process, most Americans who had not exhibited much prior interest in the region took their cues from leaders they trust: those partial to the Bush Administration took most of its assertions at face value, while those who dislike it rejected most of those assertions with equal ease, and turned instead to leaders of the left.
Over the past several months, however, an increasing number of bright, educated people of various political and philosophical orientations without deep prior backgrounds in Middle Eastern history who have reached a common conclusion: there’s something wrong with the stories we’ve been hearing. Those reaching this conclusion may or may not question the veracity and the good intentions of the leaders they once chose to follow, but they all question the quality of the lessons.
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Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Something vs. Something
Anyone watching Israeli politics these days would have to notice a shocking incoherence--even by Israeli standards. Most of the folks that I know figured that we were witnessing weak politicians jockeying for power amidst a failed government. Over the past couple of days though, I’ve seen a couple of people suggest something else. In their view, all of the talk about “achieving peace” by forcing Israel to commit suicide has motivated Israeli politicians to throw their own individual peace plans into the ring. After all, you can’t beat something with nothing.
While I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon to let a failed government off the hook, I do think that Israel needs to say something--particularly to counter the resurgence of PR surrounding the non-serious “Saudi Plan.” Here’s my suggestion:
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