Remember, ISIS has gone from nothing to becoming the replacement for al Qaeda, the most well-known jihadi organization in the world. How? By taking on the 800-pound gorilla of the world, the United States of America.How exactly then would that create recruitment for wannabe jihadis?Because if you are one of the many jihadi organizations or one of the many radical Sunni organizations in Syria that is sort of struggling for market share and adherents, that's one thing. If you become the organization that battles the United States, the crusaders, the West – if you become the face of radical Islam that is up against this new crusade – now, all of a sudden, you are the place everyone wants to come to. You're the place everyone wants to send money to. There's a lot of this that has to do with fundraising.
Showing posts with label Fareed Zakaria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fareed Zakaria. Show all posts
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Zakaria: ISIS wants U.S. '800-pound gorilla' to fight them
I've been saying this from the start, nevertheless, here you go, an expert opinion:
Monday, November 3, 2014
Zakaria: An Arab Spring country passes the 'democracy test'
Are we all happy about this? If not, why not? Because it doesn't fit our paradigm?
Going deeper, Zakaria posits that Tunisia succeeded where Egypt failed not because Tunisia's Islamists were better, but because Tunisia was more modern, literate globalized, urban and better-educated, with stronger civic groups and labor unions:
Going deeper, Zakaria posits that Tunisia succeeded where Egypt failed not because Tunisia's Islamists were better, but because Tunisia was more modern, literate globalized, urban and better-educated, with stronger civic groups and labor unions:
"And so, there was relative parity between Islamists and their opponents. Tunisia's Islamic parties shared power, in other words, not because it was better than the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt] but because it had to. Tunisia had more of the preconditions that have historically helped strengthen democracy than did Egypt."
By Fareed Zakaria
November 3, 2014 | CNN
Can Arab countries be real democracies? Well, one of them, Tunisia just did well on a big test.
More than twenty years ago, the scholar Samuel Huntington established his famous "two turnover test" for fledgling democracies. He argued that a country can only be said to be a consolidated democracy when there have been TWO peaceful transitions of power.
Tunisia passed Huntington's test after last weekend's election, when – for the second time – a ruling establishment agreed to hand over power. Tunisia's relative success is in marked contrast to the abysmal failure of Egypt, the Arab world’s largest and once most influential country.
As in Tunisia, Egyptians also overthrew a dictator three years ago...but after Egypt's brief experiment with democracy, in which the Muslim Brotherhood was elected and then abused its authority, today the country is ruled by a repressive dictatorship.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
News digest / Catching up on news (09.07.2014)
Here's more good stuff from my mailing list that I didn't have time to re-post on TILIS:
"Russia sees a military solution in Ukraine even if the West doesn’t." By Editorial Board, September 5, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/Yj13ir
"To recline your seat or not? Stop arguing. Capitalism already won this stupid war." By Oliver Burkeman, September 3, 2014, Guardian. URL:http://gu.com/p/4x9fj
"The Senate Republicans’ foolish fight over ambassadors." By David Ignatius, Septmeber 2, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1w4aflz
"A second Sunni Awakening?" By Fareed Zakaria, September 2, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1lz1QpE
"Putin's Trap: Why Ukraine Should Withdraw from Russian-Held Donbas." By Alexander J. Motyl, September 1, 2014, Foreign Affairs. URL:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
"Why does Putin wage war with Ukraine?" By Boris Nemtsov, September 1, 2014, Kyiv Post. URL: http://www.kyivpost.com/
"Labor Day: The Beginning of a Breakthrough." By Robert Kuttner, August 31, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1Chs0SW
"We need to tell the truth about what Russia is doing in Ukraine." By Wesley Clark, August 31, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4x6hh
"A Market Basket of dignity." By E.J. Dionne, August 31, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1owAqLW -- AT LEAST ONE CEO NOW GETS IT; I GUESS WE JUST HAVE TO FIRE THEM ALL SO THEY WILL UNDERSTAND
"Russian nationalism and the logic of the Kremlin's actions on Ukraine." By Henry E. Hale, August 29, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4x5tq -- REMEMBER, IN UKRAINE NATIONALISM IS CALLED 'FASCISM'; IN RUSSIA IT'S PATRIOTISM
"Why Russia Wants the Federalization of Ukraine." By Alexander Motyl, August 28, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1tH7Uxu
"NC Pension Deal: How Wall Street Ends Up Getting Cash Meant for Main Street." By David Sirota, August 26, 2014, International Business Times. URL:http://www.ibtimes.com/nc-
"Subverting the Inversions: More Thoughts on Ending the Corporate Income Tax." By Dean Baker, August 26, 2014, CEPR. URL:http://www.cepr.net/index.php/
"Donetsk POW March: When Is A Parade A War Crime?" By Carl Schreck, August 25, 2014, RFE/RL. URL: http://www.rferl.org/content/
"Hawks Crying Wolf." By Paul Krugman, August 22, 2014, New York Times. URL: http://huff.to/1BJIHpT -- I BELIEVE THAT 'CHICKEN LITTLE' IS THE MORE APT FAIRY TALE HERE.
"If this is real religion, then you can count me as an atheist." By Giles Fraser, August 22, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xx22 -- TAKE NOTE, CONSERVATIVE XENOPHOBES: MODERATE MUSLIMS ARE SPEAKING OUT
"Never an excuse for shooting unarmed suspects, former police chief says." By Joseph D. McNamara, August 19, 2014, Reuters. URL:http://www.reuters.com/
Friday, September 5, 2014
Zakaria: What's really wrong with the Middle East
This analysis by Zakaria is must-read stuff for everybody, but especially my dear conservative friends who are all ginned up for another open-ended U.S. troop engagement in the Middle East -- this time to fight ISIS.
On talk radio I am hearing supremely ignorant and stupid stuff that boils down to plain xenophobia anti-Muslim rhetoric. These conservative talking heads conflate ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood as if they are all one organization working in cahoots with grand, global aims. They only get away with such balderdash because of Americans' ignorance and eagerness to believe the worst about all Arabs and Muslims.
By Fareed Zakaria
September 5, 2014 | Washington Post
Watching the gruesome execution videos, I felt some of the same emotions I did after 9/11. Barbarism is designed to provoke anger, and it succeeded. But in September 2001, it also made me ask, “Why do they hate us?” I tried to answer that question in an essay for Newsweek that struck a chord with readers. I reread it to see what I got right and wrong and what I’ve learned in the past 13 years.
It’s not just al-Qaeda. I began by noting that Islamic terrorism is not the isolated behavior of a handful of nihilists. There is a broader culture that has been complicit or at least unwilling to combat it. Things have changed on this front but not nearly enough.
It’s not an Islam problem but an Arab problem. In the early 2000s, Indonesia was our biggest concern because of a series of terrorist attacks there after 9/11. But over the past decade, jihad and even Islamic fundamentalism have not done well in Indonesia — the largest Muslim country in the world, larger in that sense than Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and the Gulf states put together. Or look at India, which is right next door to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s headquarters in Pakistan, but very few of its 165 million Muslims are members of al-Qaeda. Zawahiri has announced a bold effort to recruit Indian Muslims, but I suspect it will fail.
Arab political decay. The central point of the essay was that the reason the Arab world produces fanaticism and jihad is political stagnation. By 2001, almost every part of the world had seen significant political progress — Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, even Africa had held many free and fair elections. But the Arab world remained a desert. In 2001, most Arabs had fewer freedoms than they did in 1951.
The one aspect of life that Arab dictators could not ban was religion, so Islam had become the language of political opposition. As the Westernized, secular dictatorships of the Arab world failed — politically, economically and socially — the fundamentalists told the people, “Islam is the solution.”
The Arab world was left with dictatorships on one hand and deeply illiberal opposition groups on the other — Hosni Mubarak or al-Qaeda. The more extreme the regime, the more violent the opposition. This cancer was deeper and more destructive than I realized. Despite the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and despite the Arab Spring, this dynamic between dictators and jihadis has not been broken.
Look at Syria, where, until recently, Bashar al-Assad actually had been helping the Islamic State by buying oil and gas from it and shelling its opponents, the Free Syrian Army, when the two were battling each other. Assad was playing the old dictator’s game, giving his people a stark choice — it’s either me or the Islamic State. And many Syrians (the Christian minority, for example) have chosen him.
The greatest setback has been in Egypt, where a nonviolent Islamist movement took power and squandered its chance by overreaching. But not content to let the Muslim Brotherhood fail at the polls, the army displaced it by force and moved back into power. Egypt is now a more brutal police state than it was under Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned, many of its members killed or jailed, the rest driven underground. Let’s hope that ,10 years from now, we do not find ourselves discussing the causes of the rise of an Islamic State in Egypt.
What did I miss in that essay 13 years ago? The fragility of these countries. I didn’t recognize that if the dictatorships faltered, the state could collapse, and that beneath the state there was no civil society — nor, in fact, a real nation. Once chaos reigned across the Middle East, people reached not for their national identities — Iraqi, Syrian — but for much older ones: Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and Arab.
I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government — communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial — but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Zakaria: It was Maliki who lost Iraq (with Dubya's help)
You can check out Fareed Zakaria repeating his points from the Washington Post on CNN:
This week I heard Rush Limbaugh ranting that Obama "owned" what's happening in Iraq. He kept repeating that word, "owns," like it was a GOP talking point.
What does that mean though? It comes from the CEO-managerial culture where the top guy accepts ultimate responsibility for whatever happens on his watch. Except, of course, the analogy falls short here, because CEOs don't take the blame for stuff that happens in other companies, or indeed, in other countries where the company doesn't even operate.
So now the GOP wants to recycle the same old "solutions" that didn't work in Iraq before: a small U.S. ground force; training the Iraqi army; more airstrikes; and even regime change (!) of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Forget it.
By Fareed Zakaria
June 12, 2014 | Washington Post
It is becoming increasingly likely that Iraq has reached a turning point. The forces hostile to the government have grown stronger, better equipped and more organized. And having now secured arms, ammunition and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from their takeover of Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — they will build on these strengths. Inevitably, in Washington, the question has surfaced: Who lost Iraq?
Whenever the United States has asked this question — as it did with China in the 1950s or Vietnam in the 1970s — the most important point to remember is: The local rulers did. The Chinese nationalists and the South Vietnamese government were corrupt, inefficient and weak, unable to be inclusive and unwilling to fight with the dedication of their opponents. The same story is true of Iraq, only much more so. The first answer to the question is: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lost Iraq.
The prime minister and his ruling party have behaved like thugs, excluding the Sunnis from power, using the army, police forces and militias to terrorize their opponents. The insurgency the Maliki government faces today was utterly predictable because, in fact, it happened before. From 2003 onward, Iraq faced a Sunni insurgency that was finally tamped down by Gen. David Petraeus, who said explicitly at the time that the core element of his strategy was political, bringing Sunni tribes and militias into the fold. The surge’s success, he often noted, bought time for a real power-sharing deal in Iraq that would bring the Sunnis into the structure of the government.
A senior official closely involved with Iraq in the Bush administration told me, “Not only did Maliki not try to do broad power-sharing, he reneged on all the deals that had been made, stopped paying the Sunni tribes and militias, and started persecuting key Sunni officials.” Among those targeted were the vice president of Iraq and its finance minister.
But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.
The turmoil in the Middle East is often called a sectarian war. But really it is better described as “the Sunni revolt.” Across the region, from Iraq to Syria, one sees armed Sunni gangs that have decided to take on the non-Sunni forces that, in their view, oppress them. The Bush administration often justified its actions by pointing out that the Shiites are the majority in Iraq and so they had to rule. But the truth is that the borders of these lands are porous, and while the Shiites are numerous in Iraq — Maliki’s party actually won a plurality, not a majority — they are a tiny minority in the Middle East as a whole. It is outside support — from places as varied as Saudi Arabia and Turkey — that sustains the Sunni revolt.
If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for “losing Iraq,” what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? I would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country’s collapse. But let’s remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.” He reminded me that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki’s government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian.
Washington is debating whether airstrikes or training forces would be more effective, but its real problem is much larger and is a decade in the making. In Iraq, it is defending the indefensible.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Zakaria: Liberal arts (still) matter
I meant to post this sooner. Commencement season has just passed and the rest of us long-ago grads get to reap commencement speakers' collective wisdom....
UPDATE (05.06.2014): Here are similar thoughts and sentiments from St. John's College president Christopher Nelson, reviewing Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael S. Roth. Nelson and Roth agree that a "liberal education" has meant different things, historically, to different people, especially in America.
What is the Earthly Use of a Liberal Arts Education?
By Fareed Zakaria
May 23, 2014 | Huffington Post
You are graduating at an interesting moment in history -- when the liberal arts are, honestly, not very cool. You all know what you're supposed to be doing these days -- study computer science, code at night, start a company, and take it public. Or, if you want to branch out, you could major in mechanical engineering. What you're not supposed to do is get a liberal arts education.
This is not really a joke anymore. The governors of Texas, Florida and North Carolina have announced that they do not intend to spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Florida Governor Rick Scott asks, "Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don't think so." Even President Obama recently urged students to keep in mind that a technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history. Majors like English, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline.
THE VALUE OF A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
But it is important to have a healthy sense of the value of a liberal education. But first, a point of clarification. A liberal education has nothing to do with "liberal" in the left-right sense. Nor does it ignore the sciences. From the time of the Greeks, physics and biology and mathematics have been as integral to it as history and literature. For my own part, I have kept alive my interest in math and science to this day.
A liberal education -- as best defined by Cardinal Newman in 1854 -- is a "broad exposure to the outlines of knowledge" for its own sake, rather than to acquire skills to practice a trade or do a job. There were critics even then, the 19th century, who asked, Newman tells us, "To what then does it lead? Where does it end? How does it profit?" Or as the president of Yale, the late Bart Giamatti asked in one of his beautiful lectures, "what is the earthly use of a liberal education?"
I could point out that a degree in art history or anthropology often requires the serious study of several languages and cultures, an ability to work in foreign countries, an eye for aesthetics, and a commitment to hard work -- all of which might be useful in any number of professions in today's globalized age. And I might point out to Governor Scott that it could be in the vital interests of his state in particular to have on hand some anthropologists to tell Floridians a few things about the other 99.5 percent of humanity.
But for me, the most important earthly use of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to write. In my first year in college, I took an English composition course. My teacher, an elderly Englishman with a sharp wit and an even sharper red pencil, was tough. I realized that coming from India, I was pretty good at taking tests, at regurgitating stuff I had memorized, but not so good at expressing my own ideas. Over the course of that semester, I found myself beginning to make the connection between thought and word.
I know I'm supposed to say that a liberal education teaches you to think, but thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. The columnist, Walter Lippmann, when asked his thoughts on a particular topic is said to have replied, "I don't know what I think on that one. I haven't written about it yet."
There is, in modern philosophy, a great debate as to which comes first -- thought or language. I have nothing to say about it. All I know is that when I begin to write, I realize that my "thoughts" are usually a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them. It is the act of writing that forces me to think through them and sort them out. Whether you are a novelist, a businessman, a marketing consultant or a historian, writing forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas.
If you think this has no earthly use, ask Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Bezos insists that his senior executives write memos -- often as long as six printed pages -- and begins senior management meetings with a period of quiet time -- sometimes as long as 30 minutes -- while everyone reads the memos and makes notes on them. Whatever you will do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly and -- I would add -- quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill. And it is, in many ways, the central teaching of a liberal education.
HOW TO SPEAK YOUR MIND
The second great advantage of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to speak and speak your mind. One of the other contrasts that struck me between school in India and college in America was that an important part of my grade was talking. My professors were going to judge me on the process of thinking through the subject matter and presenting my analysis and conclusions -- out loud. The seminar, which is in many ways at the heart of a liberal education - and at the heart of this college - teaches you to read, analyze, dissect, and above all to express yourself. And this emphasis on being articulate is reinforced in the many extra-curricular activities that surround every liberal arts college -- theater, debate, political unions, student government, protest groups. You have to get peoples' attention and convince them of your cause.
Speaking clearly and concisely is a big advantage in life. You have surely noticed that whenever someone from Britain talks in a class, he gets five extra points just for the accent. In fact, British education -- and British life -- has long emphasized and taught public speaking through a grand tradition of poetry recitation and elocution, debate and declamation. It makes a difference -- but the accent does help too.
The final strength of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to learn. I now realize that the most valuable thing I picked up in college and graduate school was not a specific set of facts or a piece of knowledge but rather how to acquire knowledge. I learned how to read an essay closely, find new sources, search for data so as to prove or disprove a hypothesis, and figure out whether an author was trustworthy. I learned how to read a book fast and still get its essence. And most of all, I learned that learning was a pleasure, a great adventure of exploration.
Whatever job you take, I guarantee that the specific stuff you have learned at college -- whatever it is -- will prove mostly irrelevant or quickly irrelevant. Even if you learned to code but did it a few years ago, before the world of apps, you would have to learn anew. And given the pace of change that is transforming industries and professions these days, you will need that skill of learning and retooling all the time.
These are a liberal education's strengths and they will help you as you move through your working life. Of course, if you want professional success, you will have to put in the hours, be disciplined, work well with others, and get lucky. But that would be true for anyone, even engineers.
I kid, of course. Remember, I grew up in India. Some of my best friends are engineers. And honestly, I have enormous admiration for engineers and technologists and doctors and accountants. But what we must all recognize is that education is not a zero sum game. Technical skills don't have to be praised at the expense of humanities. Computer science is not better than art history. Society needs both -- often in combination. If you don't believe me, believe Steve Jobs who said, "It is in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with liberal arts -- married to the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."
That marriage -- between technology and the liberal arts -- is now visible everywhere. Twenty years ago, tech companies might have been industrial product manufacturers. Today they have to be at the cutting edge of design, marketing, and social networking. Many other companies also focus much of their attention on these fields, since manufacturing is increasingly commoditized and the value-add is in the brand, how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained. And then there is America's most influential industry, which exports its products around the world, entertainment, which is driven at its core by stories, pictures, and drawings.
A GOOD LIFE, NOT JUST A GOOD JOB
You will notice that so far I have spoken about ways that a liberal education can get you a job or be valuable in your career. That's important, but it is not its only virtue. You need not just a good job but also a good life.
Reading a great novel, exploring a country's history, looking at great art and architecture, making the connection between math and music -- all these are ways to enrich and ennoble your life. In the decades to come, when you become a partner and then a parent, make friends, read a book, listen to music, watch a movie, see a play, lead a conversation, those experiences will be shaped and deepened by your years here.
A liberal education makes you a good citizen. The word liberal comes from the Latin liber, which means "free." At its essence, a liberal education is an education to free the mind from dogma, from controls, from constraints. It is an exercise in freedom. That is why America's founding fathers believed so passionately in its importance. Benjamin Franklin -- the most practical of all the founders, and a great entrepreneur and inventor in his own right -- proposed a program of study for the University of Pennsylvania that is essentially a liberal arts education. Thomas Jefferson's epitaph does not mention that he was president of the United States. It proudly notes that he founded the University of Virginia, another quintessential liberal arts college.
But there is a calling even higher than citizenship. Ultimately, a liberal education is about being human. More than 2,000 years ago, the great Roman philosopher, lawyer, and politician, Cicero explained why it was important that we study for its own sake -- not to acquire a skill or trade -- but as an end unto itself. We do it, he said, because that is what makes us human: It is in our nature that "we are all drawn to the pursuit of knowledge." It is what separates us from animals. Ever since we rose out of the mud, we have been on a quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe and to search for truth and beauty.
So, as you go out into the world, don't let anyone make you feel stupid or indulgent in having pursued your passion and studied the liberal arts. You are heirs to one of the greatest traditions in human history, one that has uncovered the clockwork of the stars, created works of unimaginable beauty, and organized societies of amazing productivity. In continuing this tradition, you are strengthening the greatest experiment in social organization: democracy. And above all, you are feeding the most basic urge of the human spirit -- to know.
I still remember a debate from college English when it was my turn to lead the class discussion. Socratically, I led the class to agree that the point of an education was to learn "the best which has been thought and said" in the world.
Certainly what we hear today is just the opposite: we should all become coders and engineers... except, funnily enough, the children of America's very rich and elite, who still study the humanities as the best training for enlightened citizenship and leadership....
Certainly what we hear today is just the opposite: we should all become coders and engineers... except, funnily enough, the children of America's very rich and elite, who still study the humanities as the best training for enlightened citizenship and leadership....
Here's a still timely excerpt from 19th-century social and political philosopher Matthew Arnold:
For a long time, as I have said, the strong feudal habits of subordination and deference continued to tell upon the working-class. The modern spirit has now almost entirely dissolved those habits, and the anarchical tendency of our worship of freedom in and for itself, of our superstitious faith, as I say, in machinery, is becoming very manifest. More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman’s right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy....
Replace the word "machinery" with "computers" or "technology" and you're talking about the modern world. And "threaten as he likes, smash as he likes" is about as succinct a description of concealed-carry and right-to-carry laws as I could think of. Indeed, the Tea Parties and libertarians embody the "individual-as-hero" way of thinking today.
By Fareed Zakaria
May 23, 2014 | Huffington Post
You are graduating at an interesting moment in history -- when the liberal arts are, honestly, not very cool. You all know what you're supposed to be doing these days -- study computer science, code at night, start a company, and take it public. Or, if you want to branch out, you could major in mechanical engineering. What you're not supposed to do is get a liberal arts education.
This is not really a joke anymore. The governors of Texas, Florida and North Carolina have announced that they do not intend to spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Florida Governor Rick Scott asks, "Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don't think so." Even President Obama recently urged students to keep in mind that a technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history. Majors like English, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline.
THE VALUE OF A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
But it is important to have a healthy sense of the value of a liberal education. But first, a point of clarification. A liberal education has nothing to do with "liberal" in the left-right sense. Nor does it ignore the sciences. From the time of the Greeks, physics and biology and mathematics have been as integral to it as history and literature. For my own part, I have kept alive my interest in math and science to this day.
A liberal education -- as best defined by Cardinal Newman in 1854 -- is a "broad exposure to the outlines of knowledge" for its own sake, rather than to acquire skills to practice a trade or do a job. There were critics even then, the 19th century, who asked, Newman tells us, "To what then does it lead? Where does it end? How does it profit?" Or as the president of Yale, the late Bart Giamatti asked in one of his beautiful lectures, "what is the earthly use of a liberal education?"
I could point out that a degree in art history or anthropology often requires the serious study of several languages and cultures, an ability to work in foreign countries, an eye for aesthetics, and a commitment to hard work -- all of which might be useful in any number of professions in today's globalized age. And I might point out to Governor Scott that it could be in the vital interests of his state in particular to have on hand some anthropologists to tell Floridians a few things about the other 99.5 percent of humanity.
But for me, the most important earthly use of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to write. In my first year in college, I took an English composition course. My teacher, an elderly Englishman with a sharp wit and an even sharper red pencil, was tough. I realized that coming from India, I was pretty good at taking tests, at regurgitating stuff I had memorized, but not so good at expressing my own ideas. Over the course of that semester, I found myself beginning to make the connection between thought and word.
I know I'm supposed to say that a liberal education teaches you to think, but thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. The columnist, Walter Lippmann, when asked his thoughts on a particular topic is said to have replied, "I don't know what I think on that one. I haven't written about it yet."
There is, in modern philosophy, a great debate as to which comes first -- thought or language. I have nothing to say about it. All I know is that when I begin to write, I realize that my "thoughts" are usually a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them. It is the act of writing that forces me to think through them and sort them out. Whether you are a novelist, a businessman, a marketing consultant or a historian, writing forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas.
If you think this has no earthly use, ask Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Bezos insists that his senior executives write memos -- often as long as six printed pages -- and begins senior management meetings with a period of quiet time -- sometimes as long as 30 minutes -- while everyone reads the memos and makes notes on them. Whatever you will do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly and -- I would add -- quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill. And it is, in many ways, the central teaching of a liberal education.
HOW TO SPEAK YOUR MIND
The second great advantage of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to speak and speak your mind. One of the other contrasts that struck me between school in India and college in America was that an important part of my grade was talking. My professors were going to judge me on the process of thinking through the subject matter and presenting my analysis and conclusions -- out loud. The seminar, which is in many ways at the heart of a liberal education - and at the heart of this college - teaches you to read, analyze, dissect, and above all to express yourself. And this emphasis on being articulate is reinforced in the many extra-curricular activities that surround every liberal arts college -- theater, debate, political unions, student government, protest groups. You have to get peoples' attention and convince them of your cause.
Speaking clearly and concisely is a big advantage in life. You have surely noticed that whenever someone from Britain talks in a class, he gets five extra points just for the accent. In fact, British education -- and British life -- has long emphasized and taught public speaking through a grand tradition of poetry recitation and elocution, debate and declamation. It makes a difference -- but the accent does help too.
The final strength of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to learn. I now realize that the most valuable thing I picked up in college and graduate school was not a specific set of facts or a piece of knowledge but rather how to acquire knowledge. I learned how to read an essay closely, find new sources, search for data so as to prove or disprove a hypothesis, and figure out whether an author was trustworthy. I learned how to read a book fast and still get its essence. And most of all, I learned that learning was a pleasure, a great adventure of exploration.
Whatever job you take, I guarantee that the specific stuff you have learned at college -- whatever it is -- will prove mostly irrelevant or quickly irrelevant. Even if you learned to code but did it a few years ago, before the world of apps, you would have to learn anew. And given the pace of change that is transforming industries and professions these days, you will need that skill of learning and retooling all the time.
These are a liberal education's strengths and they will help you as you move through your working life. Of course, if you want professional success, you will have to put in the hours, be disciplined, work well with others, and get lucky. But that would be true for anyone, even engineers.
I kid, of course. Remember, I grew up in India. Some of my best friends are engineers. And honestly, I have enormous admiration for engineers and technologists and doctors and accountants. But what we must all recognize is that education is not a zero sum game. Technical skills don't have to be praised at the expense of humanities. Computer science is not better than art history. Society needs both -- often in combination. If you don't believe me, believe Steve Jobs who said, "It is in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with liberal arts -- married to the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."
That marriage -- between technology and the liberal arts -- is now visible everywhere. Twenty years ago, tech companies might have been industrial product manufacturers. Today they have to be at the cutting edge of design, marketing, and social networking. Many other companies also focus much of their attention on these fields, since manufacturing is increasingly commoditized and the value-add is in the brand, how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained. And then there is America's most influential industry, which exports its products around the world, entertainment, which is driven at its core by stories, pictures, and drawings.
A GOOD LIFE, NOT JUST A GOOD JOB
You will notice that so far I have spoken about ways that a liberal education can get you a job or be valuable in your career. That's important, but it is not its only virtue. You need not just a good job but also a good life.
Reading a great novel, exploring a country's history, looking at great art and architecture, making the connection between math and music -- all these are ways to enrich and ennoble your life. In the decades to come, when you become a partner and then a parent, make friends, read a book, listen to music, watch a movie, see a play, lead a conversation, those experiences will be shaped and deepened by your years here.
A liberal education makes you a good citizen. The word liberal comes from the Latin liber, which means "free." At its essence, a liberal education is an education to free the mind from dogma, from controls, from constraints. It is an exercise in freedom. That is why America's founding fathers believed so passionately in its importance. Benjamin Franklin -- the most practical of all the founders, and a great entrepreneur and inventor in his own right -- proposed a program of study for the University of Pennsylvania that is essentially a liberal arts education. Thomas Jefferson's epitaph does not mention that he was president of the United States. It proudly notes that he founded the University of Virginia, another quintessential liberal arts college.
But there is a calling even higher than citizenship. Ultimately, a liberal education is about being human. More than 2,000 years ago, the great Roman philosopher, lawyer, and politician, Cicero explained why it was important that we study for its own sake -- not to acquire a skill or trade -- but as an end unto itself. We do it, he said, because that is what makes us human: It is in our nature that "we are all drawn to the pursuit of knowledge." It is what separates us from animals. Ever since we rose out of the mud, we have been on a quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe and to search for truth and beauty.
So, as you go out into the world, don't let anyone make you feel stupid or indulgent in having pursued your passion and studied the liberal arts. You are heirs to one of the greatest traditions in human history, one that has uncovered the clockwork of the stars, created works of unimaginable beauty, and organized societies of amazing productivity. In continuing this tradition, you are strengthening the greatest experiment in social organization: democracy. And above all, you are feeding the most basic urge of the human spirit -- to know.
Zakaria: 'Obama doctrine' is right for today
I doubt that Obama's foreign policy moves add up to a coherent doctrine; nevertheless, it's true that Obama does what most Americans want on any given foreign policy issue, which is, basically, not much.
The "problem" with Obama's popular approach to foreign policy, from the perspective of U.S. pundits and wonks, is that "doing what the public wants" is almost always the opposite of "leadership." Furthermore, the U.S. must "lead" on every major issue and geo-political crisis, say U.S. pundits; failing to be seen as "in-charge" automatically diminishes U.S. influence.
They believe U.S. presidents are supposed to drag the public and Congress by the ears into foreign adventures if that's what's necessary; to them that's what being commander-in-chief is all about.
The fundamental danger of American overreach never crosses their minds. (We're seeing a tiny taste of it now in the VA scandal, with a system pushed beyond capacity, and a GOP Congress that has refused to spend more money on our troops in the name of fighting the deficit).
Considering that the media, academia and think tanks almost universally cheered on the Great War on Terror and the disastrous invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, they have little or no credibility left when it comes to telling the public they are wrong.
Of course I disagree with some of Obama's foreign policy moves, especially on Ukraine -- he should be sending military supplies at least -- but nothing Obama says or does makes me worry for our future the way Dubya did.
"Prudence" is the operative word that skipped a few presidencies: from father over the head of Bubba and Dubya to Obama who cleaned up their imprudent messes....
"Prudence" is the operative word that skipped a few presidencies: from father over the head of Bubba and Dubya to Obama who cleaned up their imprudent messes....
By Fareed Zakaria
May 29, 2014 | Washington Post
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Zakaria: Putin stands to lose in Crimea; still, U.S. must lead
Generally, I agree with Fareed Zakaria: "The crisis in Ukraine is the most significant geopolitical problem since the Cold War." Why? First, Ukraine is different. Crimea is not a sliver of Georgia or Moldova. Crimea is a chunk of Europe, a place where European wars were fought, where the U.S. and Russia have both given explicit guarantees to protect Ukraine's sovereignty and current borders. Ukraine's nuclear weapons were the collateral to those guarantees in 1994.
Second, Zakaria is joining a lot of pundits, including Russians (!) who say that Russia's forceful annexation of Crimea will be bad for Russia in the long run. When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Putin was practicing 19th century politics, he meant that Putin was putting value on land/geography over economic and diplomatic partnerships. Putin is winning in terms of 19th-century statecraft, but losing in terms 21st-century realities. Indeed, the whole world is lining up against Russia -- even China refuses to back Russia. (The principle of national sovereignty matters not a little for China in the cases of Tibet and Taiwan). Putin is wrong to think that the West will forgive and forget his annexation of Crimea. There can be no "reset" in relations after this. (And it is quite likely a more hard-line Republican President will succeed Obama, if not a Republican Congress, so U.S.-Russia relations will only worsen!) Crimea is the sad successor in a long line of Russian interference in its "near abroad" after Transdniestra in Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. The West has had enough. Putin may win Crimea but he will lose trust and partnership with the West.
Third, Zakaria points out that, by subtracting Crimea from Ukraine, Putin is actually making Ukraine less pro-Russian. It's simple demographics/electoral politics. Unless Putin's grand design includes annexation of Eastern Ukraine -- and any attempt at this would risk all-out war with NATO and the West -- he is bound to lose the Ukrainian mainland. And so Putin has taken a piece of Ukraine only to lose Ukraine proper.
Fourth, Putin's actions have revived fears in Eastern Europe -- in Poland and the Baltics, most sharply -- about Russian expansionism and its dreams of reconstituting the Soviet Union.
Finally, Zakaria is right that the U.S. must lead in this crisis in Ukraine. The EU by its bureaucratic nature takes too long to take decisions. And its members have different relationships with Russia, and varying degrees of economic interdependence. We can already credit American leadership with strong statements from Germany that Putin's actions will lead to "catastrophe" and "massive damage to Russia, economically and politically." Don't believe for a second that German Chancellor Angela Merkel made such statements on her own without any diplomatic U.S. cajoling!
By Fareed Zakaria
March 12, 2014 | Washington Post
The crisis in Ukraine was produced by two sets of blunders, neither emanating from Washington. The European Union’s vacillations and — most significantly, of course — Russia’s aggression created the problem. But it will be up to President Obama to show the strength and skill to resolve it.
For years, the European Union has been ambivalent toward Ukraine, causing instability in that country and opposition from Russia. The union’s greatest source of power is the prospect of it offering membership. This magnet has transformed societies in southern and eastern Europe, creating stability, economic modernization and democracy. For that reason, it is a weapon that should be wielded strategically and seriously. In the case of Ukraine, it was not.
Ukraine is the most important post-Soviet country that Russia seeks to dominate politically. If Europe wanted to help Ukraine move west, it should have planned a bold, generous and swift strategy of attraction. Instead, the European Union conducted lengthy, meandering negotiations with Kiev, eventually offering it an association agreement mostly filled with demands that the country make massive economic and political reforms before getting much in the way of access, trade or aid with Europe.
But let’s not persist in believing that Moscow’s moves have been strategically brilliant. Vladimir Putin must have watched with extreme frustration in February as a pro-Russian government was toppled and Ukraine was slipping from his grasp. After the Olympics ended, he acted swiftly, sending his forces into Crimea. It was a blunder. In taking over Crimea, Putin has lost Ukraine.
Since 1991, Russia has influenced Ukraine through pro-Russian politicians who were bribed by Moscow to listen to its diktats. That path is now blocked. Princeton professor Stephen Kotkin points out that in the last elections, in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, representing to some extent the pro-Russian forces, won Crimea by nearly a million votes, which is why he won the election overall. In other words, once you take Crimea out of Ukraine — which Putin has done — it becomes virtually impossible for a pro-Russian Ukrainian ever to win the presidency. Remember, Ukraine is divided but not in half. Without Crimea, only 15 percent of the population will be ethnic Russian.
In fact, the only hope that Russia will reverse course in Crimea comes precisely because Putin might realize that his only chance of maintaining influence in Ukraine is by having Crimea — with its large Russian majority — as part of that country.
Putin has also triggered a deep anti-Russian nationalism around his borders. There are 25 million ethnic Russians living outside Russia. Countries such as Kazakhstan, with significant Russian minorities, must wonder whether Putin could foment secessionist movements in their countries as well — and then use the Russian army to “protect” them. In any case, Russia has had to bribe countries with offers of cheap gas to join its “Eurasian Union.” I suspect the cost to Moscow just went up.
Beyond the near abroad, Russia’s relations with countries such as Poland and Hungary, once warming, are now tense and adversarial. NATO, which has been searching for a role in the post-Cold War era, has been given a new lease on life. Moscow will face some sanctions from Washington and, almost certainly, the European Union as well. In a rare break with Russia on the U.N. Security Council, China refused to condone Russia’s moves in Crimea. Moscow’s annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia was recognized by Nicaragua, Venezuela and two island nations in the South Pacific. That might be as many as will recognize the annexation of Crimea.
I have generally been wary of the calls for U.S. intervention in any and every conflict around the world. But this is different. The crisis in Ukraine is the most significant geopolitical problem since the Cold War. Unlike many of the tragic ethnic and civil wars that have bubbled up over the past three decades, this one involves a great global power, Russia, and thus can and will have far-reaching consequences. And it involves a great global principle: whether national boundaries can be changed by brute force. If it becomes acceptable to do so, what will happen in Asia, where there are dozens of contested boundaries — and several great powers that want to remake them?
Obama must rally the world, push the Europeans and negotiate with the Russians. In this crisis, the United States truly is the indispensable nation.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Zakaria: Blame Bush for today's Iraq violence
The escalating violence there isn't something that President Obama can wag away with a dissaproving finger, or "surge" through with thousands of troops. It's too late, the damage was done 10 years ago.
As Zakaria rightly notes, Dubya's policy in 2003 of de-Baathification in Iraq pitted an ousted Sunni elite against a new Shia majority. Their sectarian fight continues to this day.
It didn't have to be this way. If only some smart, informed people had been in charge, with a little intellectual nuance.
By Fareed Zakaria
January 11, 2014 | CNN
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Zakaria: Beware the dark side of conservatism
Zakaria may tend to lift material from other journalists, but even so, he's lifting the right stuff. This one gets posted in full! I mean, this is simply epic. Check it out [emphasis mine]:
But compared with almost any period in U.S. history, we live in bourgeois times, in a culture that values family, religion, work and, above all, business. Young people today aspire to become Mark Zuckerberg. They quote the aphorisms of Warren Buffett and read the Twitter feed of Bill Gates. Even after the worst recession since the Great Depression, there are no obvious radicals, anarchists, Black Panthers or other revolutionary movements — save the tea party.
And here's the upshot of his smackdown:
The era of crises could end, but only when this group of conservatives makes its peace with today’s America. They are misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic of myth and memory yet passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial, quasi-capitalist democracy that has been around for half a century — a fifth of our country’s history. At some point, will they come to recognize that you cannot love America in theory and hate it in fact?
Ouch! And so... as my Tea Party friends dust themselves off and wipe the figurative blood from their noses, here's a stylistic note for my journo colleagues: it really is incorrect and misleading to refer to the "tea party" in the singular. They should always be referred to in the plural. They have no overarching organization, leadership, common platform, or even history of playing nicely with each other. They run the gamut from billionaire-funded astro-turf operations like Americans For Prosperity to local coffee klatches in Flyoverville, MO.
This is why blithering, bilious idiots like Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint or Ted Cruz can rightly claim to speak for the Tea Parties: they have just as valid a claim to leadership of this brainless millipede of an "organization" as anybody does. To be totally honest, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have the most legitimate claim. They speak directly to the Tea Parties everyday, and humor their every paranoid anti-government fantasy.
By Fareed Zakaria
October 17, 2013 | Washington Post
The crisis has been resolved, but this respite is temporary. We are bound to have more standoffs and brinkmanship in the months and years ahead. To understand why, you must recognize that, for the tea party, the stakes could not be higher. The movement is animated and energized by a fear that soon America will be beyond rescue.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) put it plainly at the recent Values Voter Summit in Washington: “We’re nearing the edge of a cliff, and our window to turn things around, my friends, I don’t think it is long. I don’t think it is 10 years. We have a couple of years to turn the country around or we go off the cliff to oblivion.”
Cruz dominated the summit’s straw poll, taking 42 percent of the vote, more than three times his nearest rival. His fundraising committees reported this week that they took in $1.19 million in the third quarter, double the total in the preceding quarter. Cruz’s national approval rating may be an abysmal 14 percent, but to the base of the Republican Party he is an idol.
The current fear derives from Obamacare, but that is only the most recent cause for alarm. Modern American conservatism was founded on a diet of despair. In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr. began the movement with a famous first editorial in National Review declaring that the magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” John Boehner tries to tie into this tradition of opposition when he says in exasperation, “The federal government has spent more than what it has brought in in 55 of the last 60 years!”
But what has been the result over these past 60 years? The United States has grown mightily, destroyed the Soviet Union, spread capitalism across the globe and lifted its citizens to astonishingly high standards of living and income. Over the past 60 years, America has built highways and universities, funded science and space research, and — along the way — ushered in the rise of the most productive and powerful private sector the world has ever known.
At the end of the 1961 speech that launched his political career, Ronald Reagan said, “If I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” But the menace Reagan warned about — Medicare — was enacted. It has provided security to the elderly. There have been problems regarding cost, but that’s hardly the same as killing freedom.
For most Americans, even most conservatives, yesterday’s deepest causes are often quietly forgotten. Consider that by Reagan’s definition, all other industrial democracies are tyrannies. Yet every year, the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranks several of these countries — such as Switzerland — as “more free” than the United States, despite the fact that they have universal health care.
For many conservatives, the “rot” to be excoriated is not about economics and health care but about culture. A persistent theme of conservative intellectuals and commentators — in print and on Fox News — is the cultural decay of the country. But compared with almost any period in U.S. history, we live in bourgeois times, in a culture that values family, religion, work and, above all, business. Young people today aspire to become Mark Zuckerberg. They quote the aphorisms of Warren Buffett and read the Twitter feed of Bill Gates. Even after the worst recession since the Great Depression, there are no obvious radicals, anarchists, Black Panthers or other revolutionary movements — save the tea party.
For some tacticians and consultants, extreme rhetoric is just a way to keep the troops fired up. But rhetoric gives meaning and shape to a political movement. Over the past six decades, conservatism’s language of decay, despair and decline have created a powerful group of Americans who believe fervently in this dark narrative and are determined to stop the country from plunging into imminent oblivion. They aren’t going to give up just yet.
The era of crises could end, but only when this group of conservatives makes its peace with today’s America. They are misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic of myth and memory yet passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial, quasi-capitalist democracy that has been around for half a century — a fifth of our country’s history. At some point, will they come to recognize that you cannot love America in theory and hate it in fact?
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Zakaria: It's about democracy, not Obamacare
Some of my Republicans friends ask me, "Why can't Obama compromise just a little?" His consistent refusal to negotiate on repealing, delaying or denuding Obamacare is the real problem, some of them honestly -- and mistakenly -- believe.
Zakaria sums up best why President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid must not negotiate:
But what cannot be allowed to stand is the notion that if a group of legislators cannot convince a majority in both houses and the president to agree with them, they will shut down the government or threaten to default until they can get their way. That is extortion, not democracy.I would be happy to see President Obama compromise on the budget, taxes, spending – even healthcare. But he cannot compromise on the principal that the rules of democracy must be respected, whatever the outcome. If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would have hoped President Bush would have also been uncompromising.
In our political system, negotiating is what you do when you don't have the votes to get everything you want. Obama has the votes to keep Obamacare. Republicans don't have the votes to repeal it. So why should Obama negotiate to defund or diminish a law he believes in, and has the votes to keep?
For the sake of our republican democracy, Obama and Reid cannot establish a precedent by giving in to extortion. The Founding Fathers did not envisage Congress repealing laws through the budgeting process. If they get their way now, Republicans will do it again. You know it, I know it. If Obama caves and the Tea Party Republicans get their way, even Democrats might try this tactic one day, who knows?
And it's not just about us -- it's about how others see us, warns Zakaria:
If American politicians start playing fast and loose with the rules, doing whatever it takes to get the results that they want, what does that say to people in Russia, Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela who get pious lectures on the rules of democracy? It tells them that something is deeply wrong with the American system these days.
We don't negotiate with hostage-takers, period. That's the lesson. There can be no waffling on this point. It will only encourage more unacceptable behavior.
By Fareed Zakaria
October 3, 2013 | CNN
It is the defining moment of a democracy – an outgoing leader celebrates the election of a new one, from the opposing party. Think of George H.W. Bush welcoming Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter doing the same for Ronald Reagan. Across the world, this is the acid test of a real democracy. Mexicans will tell you that they knew that they had gotten there when President Ernesto Zedillo, after seventy years of one-party rule, allowed free elections and stood with his newly-elected successor and affirmed his legitimacy.
The basic and powerful idea behind this ritual is that in a democracy, the process is more important than the outcome. If a genuine democratic process has been followed, we have to accept the results, regardless of how much we dislike the outcome. The ultimate example of this in recent American history might be Al Gore’s elegant acceptance of the process – complicated, politicized, but utterly constitutional – that put George W. Bush in the White House.
It must also have been difficult for Richard Nixon to grin and accept the results of the 1960 election – a poll marred by voter fraud that John F. Kennedy won by a narrow margin – but he did. And as vice president, he reported the results to the Senate, saying:
“This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent. I do not think we could have a more striking example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people of developing, respecting and honoring institutions of self-government. In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win.”
That is what is at stake in Washington this week. The debate going on there is not trivial, not transitory – and not about Obamacare. Whatever you think about the Affordable Care Act, it is a law that was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then signed by the president, and then validated by the Supreme Court as constitutional. This does not mean it cannot be repealed. Of course it can be repealed, as can most laws. But to do so, it would need another piece of legislation – one that says quite simply “The Affordable Care Act is hereby repealed in its entirely” – that passes the House and Senate and is then signed into law by the president.
But what cannot be allowed to stand is the notion that if a group of legislators cannot convince a majority in both houses and the president to agree with them, they will shut down the government or threaten to default until they can get their way.That is extortion, not democracy.
I would be happy to see President Obama compromise on the budget, taxes, spending – even healthcare. But he cannot compromise on the principal that the rules of democracy must be respected, whatever the outcome. If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would have hoped President Bush would have also been uncompromising.
So, how to solve the crisis? Many have wondered when the grown-ups in the Republican Party will force the House minority to call off this campaign. But that misunderstands the changed nature of American government. There are no more “grown-ups” in Washington, in the sense of a powerful political establishment that can get younger members of Congress in line. There are, instead, 535 political entrepreneurs, each seeking reelection and worried only about his or her fate.
Consider what happened with immigration reform, when almost the entire Republican establishment wanted to make a deal with the Democrats and yet a minority of House members once again were able to derail things. John Boehner is not leading his party, he is being led by its most passionate and radical wing. This crisis can only end when members of that wing understand that what they are doing is anti-democratic and harmful to the country.
Meanwhile, there is a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity. The debt ceiling is an absurd anachronism that should not anyway exist. Only a handful of countries around the world have anything like it. And the president cannot actually make sense of it.
Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron points out that were Congress to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, the president would have to choose between two Congressional mandates on him. First, Congress passed spending and taxation levels for the year, which the president must faithfully execute. But then it does not raise the debt ceiling. So either the president must ignore the Congressional action requiring him to spend and tax at the levels they have set, or he has to ignore the fact that they did not raise the debt ceiling. Were this to happen, the president should declare that he is going to obey the more substantive law – actually asking him to spend money and levy taxes – and ignore the procedural one. He would then borrow the money he needed to, to enforce Congress’ will.
Were President Obama to do this, it would solve the current crisis, and also end the prospect that the crux of America’s financial power – its sovereign debt and the dollar’s role of the world’s reserve currency – could ever again be held hostage through thoroughly undemocratic parliamentary games.
Finance aside, America’s global influence derives in large measure from the strength of its democracy. If American politicians start playing fast and loose with the rules, doing whatever it takes to get the results that they want, what does that say to people in Russia, Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela who get pious lectures on the rules of democracy? It tells them that something is deeply wrong with the American system these days.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
No forgiveness for liberal Iraq hawks
No Forgiveness for Bush’s 'Useful Idiots,' the Liberal Hawks Who Led Us into War
By Michael Ratner
March 19, 2013 | AlterNet
Ten years ago, between January and April 2003, it is estimated that an unprecedented 36 million people around the world took to the streets in protest against the Iraq War. They believed the war unjust, the evidence of a threat flimsy, and the costs, in terms of lives and otherwise, potentially astronomical. Worldwide protests, from Rome to Manhattan, brought together hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions to collectively voice opposition.
In any just government, these astounding numbers would give pause to the war-wagers in power. In a truly democratic America, these sentiments should have been represented in Washington. And surely this moment should have been the cue for our “liberal media” to echo the cautionary cries of our protesters to deafening levels. Instead, our reliably bellicose Republican congressmen were joined in support by an overwhelming majority of our so-called liberal representatives, and war went ahead as planned.
Even more alarmingly, in the months preceding the start of the war, the pages of the New York Times would greet us with more banging of the drums: a demand by Thomas Friedman that France be kicked out of the Security Council for its refusal to join up, or a startling piece of war propaganda by then soon-to-be executive editor Bill Keller, fantasizing about the impact of a one-kiloton nuke detonated in Manhattan – 20,000 incinerated, many more dying a “gruesome death from radiation sickness.” But make no mistake: although the New York Times has a shameless history of supporting war after war, other prominent mainstream journalists and intellectuals were eager to ride the bandwagon. These names include George Packer of the New Yorker, Newsday’s Jeffery Goldberg, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, Fareed Zakaria, Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Paul Berman to name a few.
The late Tony Judt sized up this whole lot most aptly with the label “Bush’s Useful Idiots.” The “useful idiots,” he said, were those from within the liberal establishment who, either through a misguided attempt to project strength, willfully played along with preposterous WMD claims, or simply allowed themselves to get carried away with the imperialistic fervor surrounding a new call to war, abdicating the responsibilities upon which liberal ideology is based. Instead, they aligned their positions with the neo-conservative architects of the Iraq War.
Since then, of course, we have seen one devastating report after another about the impact of the war: the allegedly misguided estimations of scope, length, Iraqi public opinion, and cost. We have also seen reports of a monumental death toll of Iraqis as a result of the war: 600,000 Iraqis have suffered violent deaths from the war, according to estimates by the Lancet. The number, as predicted, is staggering.
As the reports worsened, each of the “useful idiots” began issuing a mea culpa, asking passively for forgiveness. To this, we have to call out the stunning insincerity of these apologies, and reply with a “hell no” that embodies the ignored cries of the millions on the streets in 2003. We cannot be asked to believe that the elite of our liberal establishment could not see what millions of us screamed until our voices were hoarse.
To whom are these leaders really apologizing, and for what exactly? Not one of these apologies has been delivered to any of the millions of families in Iraq which have been destroyed forever. Not one of the apologies is for supporting the idea of a war that senselessly puts Iraqi lives on the line. Nor is there an apology for promoting a war founded on torture: when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi finally gave Bush administration officials the claims they were looking for, an obviously manufactured link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, we did not hear the outcry against his torture that we hear in torture debates today. Nor were there serious inquiries into the reliability of the information even though it was clear, and as al-Libi himself later admitted, that he would have said anything to end the torture.
No: the apologies we hear are for the war’s lack of success; for the impact on their own brands and political capital.
What’s even more frightening is that nothing has happened to the political capital of these leaders. Hillary Clinton has issued her cursory apologies, and now finds herself as the front-runner candidate for the 2016 elections. Her apology is for making the wrong calculation in 2003, which likely cost her the presidency in 2008.
But here is the real problem: the liberal establishment still has not learned its lessons. Those who opposed the Iraq War 10 years ago are exposed today, not as having some kind of stronger moral fortitude, but simply having made the right political calculation. President Barack Obama will take his credit for ending the unpopular Iraq War, which he opposed as a senator. He will do so while dropping bombs in residential neighborhoods in Libya, and expanding the drone program, which kills scores of civilians, in Pakistan and now extending it into Yemen, Somalia, and soon, possibly, into Syria.
And just as 10 years ago, the media fails us today in carrying a real debate. Not one of the prominent thinkers and actors in our liberal establishment has reflected on the true costs of war, or made any changes to their decision-making priorities.
So today, as we look back on a criminal war, and a human rights catastrophe, we may as well be looking forward as well, because it looks exactly the same. Unless we truly hold those who betrayed their oath of office to account for the devastation they’ve caused, the useful idiots of our next war will be us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)