Category Archives: The World

No, actually, ‘Islamist’ has a pretty clear meaning

Just got a release from CAIR on this subject:

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 1/3/13) — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today distributed a commentary urging media outlets to drop the term “Islamist” because it is “currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context.”…

In this connection, the group offered an op-ed from Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national communications director. Here are the first few grafs:

As many people make promises to themselves to improve their lives or their societies in the coming year, here is a suggested New Year’s resolution for media outlets in America and worldwide: Drop the term “Islamist.”

Hooper

The Associated Press (AP) added the term to its influential Stylebook in 2012. That entry reads: “Islamist — Supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”

The AP says it sought input from Arabic-speaking experts and hoped to provide a neutral perspective by emphasizing the “wide range” of religious views encompassed in the term.

Many Muslims who wish to serve the public good are influenced by the principles of their faith. Islam teaches Muslims to work for the welfare of humanity and to be honest and just. If this inspiration came from the Bible, such a person might well be called a Good Samaritan. But when the source is the Quran, the person is an “Islamist.”

Unfortunately, the term “Islamist” has become shorthand for “Muslims we don’t like.” It is currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context and is often coupled with the term “extremist,” giving it an even more negative slant…

Look, I sympathize with people who feel like their group is marginalized or misunderstood. But I’m sorry, “Islamist” has a clear meaning in newswriting, one that the AP set out quite well. It most assuredly does not mean “Muslims we don’t like.”

What it does mean, and what professional journalists are careful to use it to refer to, is someone or something based in a worldview that holds “the Quran as a political model.” It’s about theistic government (which is not the same as being influenced by the principles of one’s faith in seeking to serve the public good, although of course the two things can coincide). If that comes across as pejorative, that’s because in the West, we believe in pluralistic government that neither dominates, nor is dominated by, a particular faith. So yeah, even when we’re not talking about an Islamist extremist (another very useful word, which by its employment lets anyone who understands English know that not all Islamists are extremists), we’re talking about someone whose political views are fairly inimical to values we hold as fundamental.

“Islamist” is also useful from an American context (since we do distinguish between the political and the religious) because it allows us to separate the political viewpoint from Islam itself. It’s important to most of us to respect the faith, even as we disagree with the idea of its being used as a basis for government.

Distinctions are important. “Islamist” allows us to make distinctions. I’d be surprised, and disappointed, if any news organizations respond as CAIR asks here.

Your ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ scoreboard

How many strikes DOES Rice have against her?

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Just to get something new up on the blog for discussion, I thought I’d share something I read in the WSJ today. It was about Susan Rice, and, this being the WSJ, it didn’t exactly build her up.

In fact, it was (if to be believed) a pretty damning account of her handling of a crisis situation in Sierra Leone during the Clinton administration.

Basically, she stood up for, championed and espoused a deal involving, and rewarding, a revolutionary faction that apparently would make other child-soldier-exploiting, limbs-hacking, baby-raping elements in Africa look good by comparison. And it all came to a bad end very quickly, so that the U.S. was completely discredited as an arbiter in that country, and Tony Blair had to send the Tommies in and, in Blair’s own words, “sort out” the bad guys and put things to rights.

So… more abuse heaped on poor Susan Rice by a columnist who carries water for the other side of the aisle, right?

But here’s the thing I’m noticing about Susan Rice…

There is so much stuff out there that makes her look bad.

First, there’s her getting it wrong about Benghazi days after she should have gotten it right. But if there’s only that, well, I suppose we can dismiss that as McCain and Graham chasing a Great White Whale. The guys are just obsessed, right? Anyone’s entitled to a bad day on national television.

But then there was the Rwanda stuff, which truly did not make her look good.

Then, while I’ve been sick, apparently other stuff has come out bearing on Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Bret Stephens anyway, who wrote this column today as well as an earlier one on those incidents.

Think about this…

Susan Rice is being talked about to replace Hillary Clinton. Now, there’s a woman with some political enemies. Ask her; she’ll tell you. Ask any Democrat, for that matter.

And yet, think about it… Has anyone ever gone around telling story after story about her indicating gross ineptitude, a political tin ear, aggressive cluelessness? I mean, they might have hated her, but no one ever said she was bad at the job — any job — per se.

In fact, I’m trying to think whether I can recall a secretary of state nominee ever who was dogged by so many stories — true or not — of fouling up royally in the course of conducting U.S. foreign policy. I can’t.

Which is disturbing.

OK, that’s it. I’m worn out; going to bed. But I wanted to throw out something new for y’all to talk about. Show I’m still kicking.

Is Rwanda a bigger problem for Rice?

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I was intrigued by this argument over at Foreign Policy, saying that there are big problems in Susan Rice’s record, and they have nothing to do with Benghazi:

GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo — Televised comments made by Amb. Susan Rice shortly after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi have dominated the debate over her probable nomination for secretary of state. This is a bit surprising, since it’s clear that she played only a marginal role in the affair and appears to have just been reading from the briefing notes provided. It’s also unfortunate that the “scandal” has crowded out a healthy discussion of her two-decade record as U.S. diplomat and policymaker prior to Sept. 2012 — and drawn attention away from actions for which she bears far greater responsibility than Benghazi.

Her role in shaping U.S. policy toward Central Africa should feature high on this list. Between 1993 and 2001, she helped form U.S. responses to the Rwandan genocide, events in post-genocide Rwanda, mass violence in Burundi, and two ruinous wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

She did not get off to an auspicious start. During her first year in government, there was a vigorous debate within the Clinton administration over whether to describe the killing in Rwanda as a “genocide,” a designation that would necessitate an international response under the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention. In a now infamous incident from that April, which was reported in her now State Department colleague Samantha Power’s book, A Problem from Hell,Rice — at the time still a junior official at the National Security Council — stunned her colleagues by asking during a meeting, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional midterm] election?” She later regretted this language,telling Power, “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” And she has indeed emerged as one of the more forceful advocates for humanitarian intervention in U.S. foreign policy. Unfortunately, she has also often seemed to overcompensate for her earlier misstep on Rwanda with an uncritical embrace of the the country’s new leaders…

I didn’t realize any of that. Nor did I know about this:

Perhaps the most damning anecdote — told by French academic Gérard Prunier and confirmed by New York Times journalist Howard French — was of a private converation Rice had after her first trip to Central Africa around this time: “Museveni [of Uganda] and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that. The only thing we [i.e., the United States] have to do is look the other way.”…

Um — why can’t we just keep Hillary as SecState?

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As the Susan Rice contretemps continues to simmer — with another moderate Republican joining Lindsey Graham et al. in expressing dissatisfaction with her — I find myself wondering…

Why can’t we just keep Hillary Clinton in the job? Near as I can tell, she’s done pretty well at it. While I didn’t favor her for the nomination in 2008, I’ve always considered her to be a person who, if you gave her a tough job, whatever it is, she’d handle it pretty well — and I think her tenure as SecState has borne that out. She comes across as, to use Ken Kesey’s phrase, deadly competent. In other words, on a spectrum that had Lillian McBride on one end, Hillary Clinton would be on the other.

You’d never see Lindsay Graham claiming Hillary Clinton wasn’t up to the job (aside from the fact that they’ve always sort of been pals).

Also… am I the only person that this Hillary-retiring business sort of snuck up on? Everybody’s talking about it now like we always knew she wouldn’t be part of a second Obama administration, but somehow I’d missed that.

I don’t think I’d heard a word about Sec. Clinton’s plans to leave until we started talking about possible replacements. I know there was an election going on and everything, but somehow that had just gone right past me.

And yeah, I realize that conventional gossip would have her running for president in 2016. Warren Buffett, among many others, would like to see that. And this would certainly free her up for that.

But until such time as she does launch a campaign, I sort of wish she’d stick around. At least it would put a temporary end to this endless jousting about her successor…

Look out! China only about a century behind now

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The hulk of the Varyag before it was turned into the Liaoning.

Mike Fitts, whom I can rely on to keep me apprised as to foreign military intel, particularly of a naval variety, calls my attention to this report about China beginning flight operations on its first aircraft carrier:

While we here at Killer Apps were enjoying the last day of our Thanksgiving holiday, the Chinese navy was busy conducting its first ever takeoffs and landings from its brand new aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, with brand-new J-15 fighter jets.

Some observers have hailed this as the start of a new era in naval history while others aren’t so impressed. So far, the U.S. Defense Department seems unconcerned.

“We are aware of media reports that the Chinese successfully landed an aircraft on the deck of a carrier,” said Pentagon press secretary George Little during a briefing with reporters this morning. “This would come as no surprise. We’ve been monitoring Chinese military developments for some time…

Which is impressive, until you read this:

The Liaoning was built with the hull of an incomplete Soviet carrier that China bought from Ukraine in 1998, claiming that it would be turned into a casino or something. Instead, China completely refurbished the ship, installing new engines, modern electronics, and sensor systems, turning the old hulk into a “starter carrier.”…

Really? China is this gigantic economic powerhouse with superpower ambitions, and yet they had to buy their first carrier third-hand, and spend 14 years tinkering with it before the first plane lands on its deck?

This got me to thinking — how many built-from-scratch carriers did little old Japan next door have in during WWII — seven decades ago? Looks like about 25 that were actually commissioned, from various sources I’ve glanced at. (Burl, help me out.)

And when was the first time a pilot landed on a carrier? An American did it in 1911. Of course, the ship wasn’t moving. The first to land on a moving warship was Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning of the Royal Navy, in 1917. The first purpose-built aircraft carrier (as opposed to a repurposed hull) was Japan’s Hōshō in 1922.

It is believed that China will commission its first homemade carrier in 2015 or 2016 — as much as 94 years after the first Japanese flattop. It will be sometime after that before the Chinese navy has worked itself up into having an effective naval air operations force.

Yeah, I know — these new ships will do things that would look like magic from the perspective of 1922. But still. As fast as China is running to catch up, it’s rather stunning to consider how very far that nation is behind in the simple fact of naval aviation.

Graham may not vote against Rice for SecState

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I thought this was interesting. After several days of being the point man on criticism of Ambassador Susan Rice, one might think (by the news coverage) that at the very least, Lindsey Graham would vote against confirming her were she nominated for secretary of state.

Well, on “Meet the Press” Sunday, he kept up the heat on the ambassador, but refused to say he’d vote against her:

GREGORY: Senator, can Susan Rice– can Susan Rice be confirmed of Secretary of State if nominated by the president?

SEN. GRAHAM: I– I don’t know. You know, I’m deferential to the president’s picks. I voted for Kagan and Sotomayor. President, oh– Senator Obama voted against John Bolton, Elido and Roberts. He had a very high bar for confirmation. I have a very low bar. I’m going to listen to what Susan Rice has to say, put her entire record in context, but I’m not going to give her a plus for passing on a narrative…

GREGORY: But your…

SEN. GRAHAM: …that was misleading to the American people…

GREGORY: You wouldn’t filibuster her nomination?

SEN. GRAHAM: ….and whether she knew it was misleading or not. I’m going to wait and see what the State Department’s review has, but I’m very disappointed in– Susan Rice…

That may sound, to people who like a simple, dichotomous, partisan world, to be be inconsistent. But it’s actually completely consistent with the senator’s oft-expressed maxim that “elections have consequences” — which means you let the president have the people he chooses, barring some gross disqualification.

And bottom line, Graham indicated, it’s not Rice he really blames anyway. He seems mostly ticked that the administration put forward someone who didn’t know squat about Benghazi to speak publicly about it:

I’m saying that the ambassador that had nothing to do with Benghazi– why would you choose someone who had nothing to do with Benghazi to tell us about Benghazi? That’s kind of odd. The president said, why pick on her? She didn’t know anything about Benghazi. She was the most politically compliant person they could find. I don’t know what she knew but I know the story she told was misleading….

(W)hat about the months before this attack? What about the rise of al Qaeda in Benghazi? What about the British ambassador closing the consulate in Benghazi because it was too dangerous for the British? What about the Red Cross leaving? What about all of the warnings come out of Benghazi? Did the CIA tell the president that Benghazi is falling into the hands of al Qaeda? And I blame the president more than anybody else. Susan Rice is a bit player here. Was he– was he informed of the June attack on our consulate where they blew a hole where 40 people could go through? Was he aware of the August 15th cable where Stevens was saying we can’t withstand a coordinated al Qaeda attack? There are 10 militia groups all over Benghazi. I blame the president for… making this a death trap. I blame the president for not having assets available to help these people for eight hours…

Still, even with blaming the president, the Lindsey Graham who likes to work across the aisle asserts himself if Angry Graham lets his guard down for a moment:

I’m just not here to pick on the president. I look forward to working with him on immigration and solving the fiscal cliff problems. But I’m going to get to the bottom of Benghazi and hold him accountable for a national security breakdown…

He might find it’s tough to do both of those things, but we’ll see.

One other interesting thing from this interview was the senator’s musing on what’s wrong with his party:

We’re in a big hole. We’re not getting out of it by comments like that. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. … We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration. And candidate Romney and the primary dug the hole deeper. You know, people can be on public assistance and scheme the system. That’s real. And these programs are teetering on bankruptcy. But most people… on public assistance don’t have a character flaw. They just have a tough life. I want to create more jobs and the focus should be on how to create more jobs, not demonize those who find themselves in hard times…

What a sad difference four years makes

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Four years ago, I went on and on about all the signs that, following the election of Barack Obama, we were going to put the more petty and pointless forms of partisan bickering behind us, and move forward in addressing the nation’s challenges.

A central theme at the time was the conciliatory relationship between the president-elect on one hand, and Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham on the other — particularly on national security. Here are some of the things I wrote back then, in my last few months at the newspaper:

That last one is particularly poignant in light of the McCain/Graham reaction to the president’s possible choice for new secretary of state, and the president’s reaction to that reaction:

If there was still any thought that President Obama and Senator John McCainmight eventually move past their once-bitter White House rivalry toward a cooperative governing agenda, it was all but dashed on Wednesday.

The two men who battled for the presidency four years ago spent the day bumping chests and marking their turf over the attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the possibility that Mr. Obama might soon nominate Susan E. Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, as his next secretary of state.

Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, began the ping-pong volley of sharp-edged commentary in the morning, calling Ms. Rice “unqualified” to serve as secretary of state for her public statements about the September attack in Benghazi. He vowed that he and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, would do anything “within our power” to block her appointment. The president responded at a news conference in the afternoon, accusing Mr. McCain of trying to “besmirch” Ms. Rice’s reputation and daring him to “go after me” if he wants to.

Mr. McCain then took to the Senate floor to denounce the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack and to call for a select committee to investigate. He accused the president and his staff of misleading Americans about the events in Benghazi and said Mr. Obama has created a “credibility gap” with the public on the issue.

That story concentrated on McCain, so here’s a quote from a Graham press release:

“Mr. President, don’t think for one minute I don’t hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi. I think you failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack.

“We owe it to the American people and the victims of this attack to have full, fair hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate. Given what I know now, I have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle.”

This Benghazi thing that people I respect are bickering over — I’ve never fully gotten it. Way back on Sept. 27, I wrote in puzzlement to Graham’s office, trying to understand what they were all worked up about. Kevin Bishop responded with some links (all from the MSM that some Republicans maintain have ignored the issue), which I found helpful.

OK, yes, I see that statements from the administration following the attack were muddled, back-and-forth. But there were three significant reasons why I couldn’t see it as the “debacle” that Graham describes:

I expect a certain amount of confusion, especially in the initial days, about such an out-of-control incident. The fog of war is a real phenomenon. And a terrorist attack involving a lot of people and extreme violence in a remote part of the world is as foggy as anything. Personally, I’m impressed that authorities in that part of the world managed to identify suspects after such a melee.
Of course the administration was talking about the inflammatory video. It had already threatened embassy security in one country in the region, and sparked violence in several other locales in the following days. And to think this, initially, was part of that pattern was perfectly reasonable. But even when the administration knew better, it still had a significant problem dealing with the fallout from that video in all those other places. So it was not out of place to keep talking about it.
This is the biggest reason. And if it weren’t for the fact that I screwed up and lost a key link, I would have written about this back in September. Just minutes after I had posted that our ambassador had been killed, apparently (I thought) in connection with another video-related protest (my headline was “So now one of these random rioting mobs has killed a U.S. ambassador“), I posted this addendum: “Of course now, all of that said, the administration is saying that maybe this was planned, rather than being a crowd spontaneously getting out of control…”

Unfortunately, as you can see if you click on it, the link I provided on that new development was to the wrong story — it went back to something about the video, not the item that told me the administration was changing its story. This occasionally happens when I’m running multiple windows and tabs (sometime more than 20 at a time) and doing a lot of copying and pasting.

So I don’t know where I learned that, although I’m sure it was one of the usual MSM sources I rely on, the ones you see in my Virtual Front Pages — the NYT, the WSJ, the Washington Post, something along those lines. I wouldn’t have believed it and passed it on, otherwise.

So I can’t say, “Look, senators, you’re wrong. See what the administration said that day.” But I can never quite connect with their narrative that the administration was hiding the hand of terror in this incident, because I got the impression from the administration that it was terrorism on the very first day. And I continued to see reports to that effect going forward, becoming more definite with the passage of time, as I would expect.

If Susan Rice persisted in saying something different, maybe that’s a problem. She was either misinformed, which would not be good, or deliberately trying to portray the incident as something other than what it was. Why she would do that, I’ve never fully understood, but there’s that possibility, I suppose.

Yeah, I know, there’s this whole narrative where the administration failed to heed cries for more security, or failed to react quickly enough to the attack itself, and sure, go ahead and investigate that. A U.S. ambassador was killed. We should know everything that went wrong so that we might keep it from happening again.

But all this chest-puffing, finger-pointing “debacle” talk is over the top. We don’t need this right now.

I subscribe to Thomas Friedman’s assertion that this is a very dangerous time in the region, starting with the meltdown of Syria and on through a litany of other delicate situations that make that part of the world more of a powder keg than usual. This would be an excellent time to go back to having partisan hyperbole stop at our shoreline. The way it did four years ago.

Obama debate performance: Just ONE cup of coffee too much

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Again today, The Onion captures the essence:

Obama Takes Out Romney With Mid-Debate Drone Attack

BOCA RATON, FL—Saying that the high-value target represented a major threat to their most vital objectives, Obama administration officials confirmed tonight that former governor Mitt Romney was killed by a predator drone while attending a presidential debate at Lynn University.

Sources said the drone attack, which occurred at approximately 10:10 p.m. Monday night, obliterated Romney in the middle of a statement on Chinese-purchased U.S. securities, sending his dismembered limbs and internal organs into the audience and leaving a smoking pile of charred flesh and bone in his seat.

“The information we have received from military personnel in the field indicate that tonight’s drone strike took out Mitt Romney, a former businessman the Obama administration has long considered a serious danger, especially in past few weeks,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney, describing the operation as “an unmitigated success.” “The president personally authorized the strike earlier this evening, and as soon as we had visual confirmation that the target in the drone’s sights was, in fact, Mitt Romney, we eliminated him.”…

So maybe President Obama didn’t quite go that far last night, but he was certainly on the attack to a degree that often seemed, to me, unseemly.

By the way, I tried to post this last night, but ran into technical problems — I had left my laptop’s mouse at the office, and my wife’s desktop internet connection was running so slow I figured I’d never get to bed. So here’s what I wanted to share, which was my Twitter feed from the debate. These started at 9:21 p.m. As usual, all Tweets are by me except where another screen name is indicated:

Obama needs to chill. Looks desperate. Nobody wants an Interrupter in Chief…
The Fix ‏@TheFix Worth noting: Obama has attacked Romney on every question thus far. #lynndebate
Peter Beinart ‏@PeterBeinart The egyptian govt needs binders of women to fully develop
Romney is coming across as calmer, which, when we’re talking national security, can sometimes count more than the words being said.
Yeah, Madeleine Albright redux! “@politico: Obama: “America remains the one, indispensable nation.” #debates”
@howardweaver: @BradWarthen that one redux’es WAY farther back than Albright.
Yeah, but I liked her cover version…
In Godfather terms, Romney is playing the Man of Reason tonight. Obama at times seems to be shooting for Crazy Joey Gallo…
OK, I’ve heard the president say he “ended the war in Iraq” too many times. He didn’t do that; the Surge did.
The thing is, I generally approve of the job Obama’s done in the world. But he’s not selling it very well tonight…
If Obama loses this election, and does so because of this debate, I wonder, will it be because he just had ONE CUP OF COFFEE TOO MUCH TODAY?
That’s what I wanna hear! RESOLVE! “@DepressedDarth: I will build 5 new Star Destroyers if I’m elected president. #finaldebate”
grannykate ‏@katespalmer @BradWarthen Surge changed tide. POTUS brought troops home
So would McCain have. Even Bush was on track to do that…
Almost an hour into this, and neither Obama nor Romney has indicated what he would do about Quemoy and Matsu. This is unacceptable.
Slate ‏@Slate RT @fmanjoo: Here’s the place for Obama to say, “Ask Osama Bin Laden if I apologized. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Because he’s dead.”
Yeah, kinda what I thought… “@washingtonpost: FACT CHECK: Obama did not go on “apology tour” http://wapo.st/SjFXqM #debate”
In what alternative universe did this “apology tour” take place? I totally missed it. Yet so many GOP tweeters assert it as article of faith
The president’s calmed down some. Hasn’t jumped anxiously down Gov. Romney’s throat in awhile.
No, Mr. President, we were no longer “bogged down” in Iraq when you took office. Not after the Surge. Stick to the good things you HAVE done
SunnyPhilips ‏@SunnyPhilips Sad many Americans would rather watch HoneyBooBoo or other trash TV than debates impacting their country’s leadership.#theirvotecountstoo
OK, I give up: What’s a Honey Boo-Boo?
SunnyPhilips ‏@SunnyPhilips Ha. You’ve made my day.
Romney’s strategy tonight has been not to commit major errors tonight. No big strategy proposals, just no screwing up. Generally working…
Nicholas Kristof ‏@NickKristof Candidates take a break from bashing each other to jointly bash China. 太过分了!
If Obama would blame China for Gamecocks’ two losses in a row, he could win South Carolina.
Ramez Naam ‏@ramez China holds only about 8.2% of US federal debt. Most is held by Americans. http://bit.ly/kaOUzI
Really? I’m not seeing that… “@ebertchicago: Obama looks cool. Romney looks sweaty. Will post-mortems agree? #debate”
Scott Huffmon ‏@WinthropPoll Foreign Policy debate: Good thing there are no issues with South America or most of Africa or Europe to be dealt with !
Obama mentions Pacific strategy. About time we got into mega strategy. Still no mention of Quemoy and Matsu…
My Navy Brat nervous system is still twitching indignantly over the horses and bayonets thing…
Nicholas Kristof ‏@NickKristof Foreign policy debate spent more time on Israel than on Europe, India and Africa combined. That’s not our world.
Aaron Gould Sheinin ‏@asheinin Serious tweet: Seeing lots of Republicans calling the debate a draw.
That’s because they wanted their guy to be as combative as Obama was — which frankly was NOT a good thing…
I liked that they shook hands civilly and smiled at each other at the end. How pitiful is it that I’m clinging to something that small?
Dan Gillmor ‏@dangillmor If Romney can persuade the public that he’s the peace candidate — there isn’t one — then the American people are truly out to lunch.
But he might with some, purely on demeanor.
Anyone else think Romney was going particularly after women tonight, rocking back and not being Mr. Aggressive?
David GregoryVerified ‏@davidgregory The President is determined to pick a fight tonight; Romney determined to avoid it. What does that say about where each camp sees the race?
A lot.

That last one posted at 10:50 p.m.

So… what did y’all think — both during, and upon reflection? I haven’t had much time for reflection, so I leave you for now with the stream-of-consciousness.

Was the point on ‘On Point’ about ‘point’ off-point?

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You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point.

— “The Big Red One“

This morning, driving back toward downtown from an event in Lexington, I was listening to an experienced U.S. diplomat —Chas Freeman — pontificate at length on U.S. foreign policy.

Which is all screwed up, according to him.

Now I’m perfectly satisfied to admit that Mr. Freeman probably has more foreign affairs knowledge in his left little finger than I do, but after awhile, I got a little sick of listening to his deep, low, world-weary voice explaining to Tom Ashbrook and the rest of us how stupid everyone involved in U.S. foreign policy, except him of course, has been for the last couple of decades. Not in exactly those words, but that seemed the upshot of the parts that I heard.

Not that he didn’t say some things that make sense. When he mentioned how irrelevant we have become in South America, our own Monroe-Doctrine backyard, he was sounding the theme of one of the first editorials I wrote when I joined The State‘s editorial board in the early ’90s. But then, having spent part of my youth down there, I’ve thought this country has given Latin America short shrift since I was about 9 years old.

He also made the case, as everyone does, that there’s something a bit screwy about awarding our biggest ambassadorial posts according to a political spoils system — a point that probably would have greater weight had he not been a career foreign service guy himself, but that doesn’t mean the complaint should be dismissed.

But in making that case, he said something that sounded backwards to me. I don’t have the exact wording (not being able to find either a transcript or the audio yet from this morning’s show), but it went something like this… To stress how dumb it is for top ambassadorial posts to go to presidents’ big campaign donors, he asked whether, in a military situation, you’d put your least experienced soldier up on the point?

And I thought, well, yeah… I think that’s exactly what they do in the Army. Or used to. Maybe it’s a discredited doctrine, but I seem to recall having been told that new replacements tend to be sent up to point as a matter of policy, rather than risk someone more valuable to the squad in that exposed position. Sure, if your enemy knows what he’s about, he’s going to let the point man pass and open fire on the main body, but in case your enemy is also inexperienced and shoots at the first thing he sees, why make it someone valuable?

Now, this goes firmly into the category of stuff I think I know, and never having served in the infantry (or the Navy or the Air Force, or anything beyond Tenderfoot Boy Scout), there’s a chance that Chas Freeman knows more about this than I do, too. Although, near as I can tell from his bio, he was never a grunt, either.

But if I’m right, I’m glad to have caught the owner of that supercilious voice out on something.

So, can any former (or current) soldiers or marines out there help me out on this one?

This IDF recruit more than ready to take on Ahmadinehad (subliminal message: ‘Hatin’ is bad’)

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At some point I’ll post something serious today, but I just had to share this, too:

The video shows Ron Bronstein, an enlistee in the Israel Air Force, “shuffling” through the basic training process to the tune of LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem.

In the video, Bronstein dances in the midst of many mundane basic training backdrops that are all too familiar to Israelis who have done military service.

And in case you just can’t wait for something serious: Bibi decided to take the ‘subtle’ approach at the U.N. yesterday, just days after Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad’s Yom Kippur address to the body…

A dangerously simplistic view of foreign affairs

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Just got a very strange release, considering that it comes from a state senator (albeit one with national ambitions):

BEAUFORT, S.C. – South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis today released the following statement regarding the vote tomorrow in the United States Senate on Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment to end U.S. aid to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya, pending the satisfaction of certain conditions.

“Today I call on South Carolina’s senators, Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, to cast their vote in support of Sen. Paul’s amendment,” Davis said. “If these countries want to be our allies and receive our money, then they should act like it.”

“The conditions to receiving foreign aid set forth in Sen. Paul’s amendment are reasonable: the Libyan police must hand over to U.S. officials the suspects in the recent attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi; the Egyptian government must vow to protect our embassy; and the Pakistani government must release from custody Dr. Shakil Afridi, a man who risked his life to provide us with information that confirmed the location of Osama bin Laden.

“Simply put, bad behavior should not be rewarded. America currently gives approximately $4 billion a year to Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, and all we get in return is disrespect and violence. Sen. Paul put it exactly right: ‘American taxpayer dollars should not go to Libya until the murderers are delivered to justice. Nor should they go to Egypt until the Egyptians prove that they are willing and able to protect our embassy. Finally, not one more penny of American taxpayer dollars should go to Pakistan until the doctor who helped us get bin Laden is freed.’”

Really? That’s your view of it? That “all we get in return is disrespect and violence”? Do you really suppose that we have close ties to Pakistan just because Pakistan wants it? We have that relationship because, despite all the godawful aggravation we get out of the relationship, we need it. As maddening as the many factions of that nation, many of them openly hostile, can be, that’s a door we need propped open, at least a little. Just whom are punishing if we cut off that relationship entirely? Is that what it’s actually about to you — the lousy $4 billion?

And you’re going to blame the new, Libyan government, a thing largely of our creation, for what some bad actors — people they have arrested — did? Do we so little value the fact that we have a friendly regime there after more than a generation of Gaddafi (a cause to which ambassador Stevens devoted the end of his life) that we’ll just throw it away because Sen. Paul is peeved and wants to save the money?

And Egypt — is it your plan to say, now that Mubarak is gone, we don’t want to be close to you anymore, Egypt? Is that our response to the Arab Spring? Sure, it’s problematic the role the Muslim Brotherhood is playing, but isn’t that a reason to hold the new regime closer, rather than pushing it away? Do you want to return to the days of Nasser? You sure about that?

Of all of these, the one I’d like to get tough with is Pakistan, because I’ve had it with their playing footsie with terrorists. But I know that’s an emotional, rather than a coldly rational, response. And that adolescent emotional urge on my part was quite satisfied for the time being by the raid on Abbottabad, and the many strikes in the lawless northwest before that.

This isn’t a foreign policy proposal; it’s domestic posturing. And I’m sorry to see my friend Tom Davis reaching outside the purview of his office to engage in it.

The demonstrators chanted, ‘Free Libya, Terrorists Out’

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Perhaps I’m the last one to know this — other people regularly consume news sources that I don’t often see — but in case there are others who also missed it, I pass on this perspective on what happened in the streets of Libya last week:

Sept. 11 is now a date that signifies a national tragedy for Libya as well as the United States. The attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, has upset the delicate political transition from dictatorship to democracy that was unfolding here. It also has obscured parliament’s prudent selection Wednesday of Mustafa Abushagour—a moderate Islamist and respected technocrat—as prime minister. Yet spontaneous street demonstrations throughout the week denouncing the attack and seeking to pressure the government to act against its perpetrators suggest that Libyans are determined to build an inclusive society, free from fear…

On Wednesday night in Tree Square in Benghazi, we witnessed crowds expressing heartfelt disappointment, shouting slogans like, “Free Libya, terrorists out!”…

Based on our dozens of interviews in Benghazi, most Libyans are appalled by the consulate attack. One female medical student at a Benghazi demonstration captured the mood: “The Americans are guests in our country and Islam requires us to treat them well.”

According to a recent Gallup poll, Libyans hold a more favorable attitude toward Americans than they do even toward Canadians. As days have passed since the attack, Libyan popular condemnation has increased. A meeting took place on Thursday evening at the Shbelia Hotel to coordinate citizen action against the militants…

That’s not the whole story, of course. The authors of that oped piece also witnessed anti-American demonstrations. But from their perspective, the opposite attitude is more common.

Just FYI in case you missed it…

‘So remember, guys: Don’t use your phones…’

This is an occasion for national unity, not sniping

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This would be a good moment to remember the thing about partisan politics stopping at the water’s edge.

I got a release from Lindsey Graham last night — I’m just now getting to it in my email — that quoted the senator as saying the following:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on foreign policy, launched a sharp attack against the Obama administration on Wednesday, saying the president’s lack of leadership would “lead to an explosion in the Middle East.” … The American disengagement, lack of leadership, and leading from behind is leading to uncertainty and doubt on all fronts. … There is no substitute for leadership by the United States and every group within the region is uncertain about who we are and what we believe.”

The thing is, when I watched the accompanying video, for the first few minutes I didn’t hear that sort of tone. Instead, the senator said the sorts of things I would expect a politician who cares about foreign policy to say. He talked about how this should not be allowed to weaken our strong ties to the new democratic leadership of Libya. He stressed that the attack — whether calculated or spontaneous — was the work of a tiny minority who do not reflect our relationship with that country.

He even expressed agreement with what Secretary of State Clinton had to say. And I like that, even though part of it may be the longtime mutual admiration society that Hillary and Lindsey have going.

Then, toward the end, he launched into the GOP talking points about the administration’s alleged failures. About the only thing I might agree with him on is that I wish we were acting more effectively to keep Assad from killing his own people in Syria.

But in his eagerness to criticize, the senator implied, if he did not exactly say, two things he should know are not true:

That somehow the mess of the last couple of days is the administration’s fault.
That the way forward in light of the ongoing “Arab Spring” movement is simpler and clearer than it is.

Given his respectful ties to some of the key people in the administration’s national security team, and the many areas of agreement he has with them, I would think Senator Graham would be hesitant to throw out the people he knows in favor of the uncertainties Romney would bring.

But that’s me engaging in wishful thinking, I guess. Just because Sen. Graham is occasionally an iconoclast, I like to tell myself he can be that all the time. Obviously, I’m not in charge of his re-election in two years…

Details emerging about that stupid video

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The AP is getting credit for achieving what so many others have been striving to do the last couple of days — which is to sorta, kinda get some details on who seems to be responsible for the anti-Islam video that has sparked multiple anti-American protests:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The official said authorities had concluded that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was behind “Innocence of Muslims,” a film that denigrated Islam and the prophet Muhammad and sparked protests earlier this week in Egypt, Libya and most recently in Yemen. It was not immediately clear whether Nakoula was the target of a criminal investigation or part of the broader investigation into the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya during a terrorist attack…

Now a reasonable person would assume that at this point, some of those rioters would go, Ummm… It took America two days to even begin to get a clue about who produced this video, and it turns out he says he’s from Egypt. Maybe it’s just a TAD illogical for us to be blaming anyone who happens to be an American for this.

But no such luck, because logic has nothing to do with this.

From 1902: World’s earliest movie in color

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Lately, I’ve been marveling at some of the silent films TCM has been showing from before 1910. But none of them impressed me as much as this:

The world’s first colour moving pictures dating from 1902 have been found by the National Media Museum in Bradford after lying forgotten in an old tin for 110 years.

The discovery is a breakthrough in cinema history.

Michael Harvey from the National Media Museum and Bryony Dixon from the British Film Institute talk about the importance of the discovery.

The previous earliest colour film, using the Kinemacolour process, was thought to date from 1909 and was actually an inferior method.

The newly-discovered films were made by pioneer Edward Raymond Turner from London who patented his colour process on 22 March 1899.

The story of Edwardian colour cinema then moved to Brighton. Turner shot the test films in 1902 but his pioneering work ended abruptly when he died suddenly of a heart attack.

Watch the video. It’s pretty cool. Some guy just invented it on his own, and shot home movies of his kids — but he couldn’t figure how to make it work with a projector. So they were never seen, until now (with computer help).

This Turner, I assume, is not to be confused with colorization pioneer Ted…

So now one of these random rioting mobs has killed a U.S. ambassador

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As I noted about the protest in Egypt yesterday on my Virtual Front Page, “As is so often the case with most vehement protests in this region, it’s about some film that most Americans have never heard of. In fact, the Post reported, ‘It was not immediately clear what film they were referring to.'”

Since then, people protesting the exact same idiotic thing that no one at the embassy, and none of the 300-million-plus people in this country except for that one guy, had anything to do with, killed the United States Ambassador to Libya.

President Obama says “Make no mistake, justice will be done.” And you know Obama — if you make his list, your posterior is grass.

But come on — what can we really be done to prevent this kind of thing happening again? That’s what I want to know. What do we do about the fact that in that part of the world, homicidal mobs crop up for no logical reason whatsoever at the drop of a hat? Oh, I suppose we could do like Bud and Doug would have us do, and pull all Americans out of the rest of the world and roll up the welcome mat and board our windows here at home.

We’ve already decided as a nation (well, the rest of y’all have; I haven’t) that we don’t like the neocon approach of using every bit of leverage at our command — economic, diplomatic, humanitarian and yes, when called for, military — to make every possible effort to help those countries join the post-Medieval age.

So, other than disengaging with the world entirely — which, by the way, would just mean other Westerners would be murdered at random, and locals if they can’t find any Westerners, for the most absurd of non-reasons — does anyone have any suggestions? ‘Cause I don’t.

Eleven years on

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This morning, I passed a couple of American flags at half-mast, and for about 10 seconds went through the usual frustrating exercise of trying to remember who died. Then I realized that it was the 11th already.

OK. I can see that we would mourn. Unfortunately, 11 years later, that seems to be the only part of our national response that we’re able to agree on in the public sphere, in terms of shorthand, easily understood responses.

As I look at the cartoon commemorations by Robert Ariail and Bill Day, above and below, I don’t see either as capturing what seems to me the proper response — although Robert comes closer. The idea that we’re simply marking another year is true enough. But the implication that we are prisoners of something (who marks time by scratching on a wall? prisoners do) seems off to me. As for the cascade of tears in Bill’s cartoon — well, that was a common cartoon response in 2001, but 11 years later, Lady Liberty needs to have pulled herself together enough to figure out what to do next.

I say this not to criticize my friends the cartoonists. The problem is that they feel obligated to do something to mark the day, and yet there IS no clear, shared, national response that is better defined than what they did. If you’re a cartoonist, you know what to do on the Fourth of July. There is a whole vocabulary of clearly understood images and shared values through which you can communicate to a reader. On 9/11, not so much. There’s sadness, and there’s the passage of time.

For my part, right after the attacks, I had a pretty clear idea of how we ought to respond. Yes, there would be a military response — that seemed obvious to everyone at the time — but I saw the need to go far beyond that, in terms of broad engagement with the world, economically, diplomatically and in humanitarian terms. You can read the editorial I wrote for Sunday, Sept. 16, 2001, on this old blog post.

While I would change a word here and there with the benefit of hindsight, the general thrust of what I believe should be the proper response would be the same.

The bad news is that as a nation, we have practically torn ourselves apart arguing over proper responses since then. On the other hand, the good news is that among our nation’s leaders, there is more of a consensus on what to do. Back to bad news, that doesn’t really extend much beyond aggressive military actions (for Bush, it was invasions; for Obama, a pattern of assassinations). Our leaders’ responses tend to be ad hoc, rather than arising from a coherent vision of the United States playing a constructive role on all fronts in the world.

I’ll be interested to see what speeches our presidential candidates give today, to see what their visions are. Because as a nation, I still think we need a coherent, common vision of the proper way to react to 9/11.

I like Ryan’s foreign policy ideas for themselves, NOT as a justification for his domestic proposals

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We think of Paul Ryan as an über-libertarian on fiscal issues and as a social conservative. What I didn’t know anything about until this morning was how he stood on the most urgent questions a commander in chief faces — which is pretty critical in the event that Romney is elected, and something happens to him.

One expected the opinion writers of The Wall Street Journal to be hugging themselves with pleasure over Ryan’s fiscal notions. But today, Bret Stephens writes in the Journal about a speech Ryan gave to the Alexander Hamilton Society last year in which he expressed himself on foreign policy. Here’s the speech, and here’s the column. An excerpt from the latter:

Here, in CliffsNotes form, is what the speech tells us about Mr. Ryan. First, that he’s an internationalist of the old school; in another day, he would have sat comfortably in the cabinets of Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Also, that he believes in free trade, a strong defense, engagement with our allies—and expectations of them. Also, that he wants America to stay and win in Afghanistan. Furthermore, that he supports the “arduous task of building free societies,” even as he harbored early doubts the Arab Spring was the vehicle for building free societies.

It tells us also that Mr. Ryan has an astute understanding of the fundamental challenge of China. “The key question for American policy makers,” he said, “is whether we are competing with China for leadership of the international system or against them over the fundamental nature of that system.”

Within the speech itself, perhaps the most cogent observation is that the United States doesn’t have the realistic option of fading as a world power the way Britain did, and the way so many on the left and right would like it to do:

Unlike Britain, which handed leadership to a power that shared its fundamental values, today’s most dynamic and growing powers do not embrace the basic principles that should be at the core of the international system.

Now, that’s the sort of thing I agree with. What I don’t agree with is that we have to do all the things Ryan wants to do domestically in order to afford the kind of global position that we can’t afford to surrender. Which takes us into all sorts of other debates that I’m sure we’ll get into before the election…

Anyway, that’s where he loses me. What I didn’t get from the column, and did get from the speech itself, is that for Ryan, the need to maintain U.S. responsibilities in the world is yet another excuse for doing what he wants us to do on the homefront. Of this, I am unconvinced. I agree we have to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t necessarily believe his ideas are the way to do it. Bottom line, we get back to where we started — in his case, his view of America’s role in the world is that of an über-libertarian on fiscal issues…

Stephens is less divided in his admiration. In part, he admires Ryan for setting out clear ideas without any of the softened edges with which presidents must speak, giving little consideration to the fact that House members with no diplomatic responsibility are far freer to speak frankly on such matters.

The truth is, I have generally agreed with the actual actions Mr. Obama has taken as commander in chief (although my views on Afghanistan more closely track Ryan’s). And those speak louder than words, however stirring.

For instance, Stephens likes the way Ryan talks tougher about the Chinese. But it is Barack Obama who has shifted future defense planning toward the Pacific Rim with China in mind, and recently decided to send Marines to Australia in keeping with that strategy.

In any case, this is the beginning of a learning process about Ryan. Although I’m already inclined to agree with Stephens that, in terms of ideas at least, the GOP ticket seems upside-down.

bradwarthen.com

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