Mortenson: Withdraw 248 U.S. Soldiers, Fund All Afghan Higher Ed

A full house at Frost Arena greets Greg Mortenson as he preapres to speak at South Dakota State University, November 3, 2010

The Heidelbergers joined about 5000 other people at SDSU's Frost Arena last night. Nary a basketball in sight: we gathered to hear author, adventurer, humanitarian (and ELCA Lutheran!) Greg Mortenson talk about how to save the world one conversation and one school at a time.

The author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools offered a lot of practical and political insight into what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and what we Americans might do to make it better.

Mortenson is an Army veteran, so he has great respect for and understanding of the military. This old soldier said there is no military solution to ending the Taliban's terrorism and oppression of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan and bringing our soldiers home. Asking our 18-year-olds to be soldiers is hard enough; asking our young soldiers to be diplomats and humanitarians at the same time, says Mortenson, is an enormous burden. Building some sort of peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan requires something more.

The military gets this. Mortenson said that General Petreaus has made Three Cups of Tea, about Mortenson's efforts to build relationships with village elders and build schools for girls in Afghanistan and pakistan, required reading for senior military officials. The U.S. military also brings Mortenson to 28 military bases a year to conduct briefings for Afghanistan-bound troops on local culture.

Mortenson sees education, especially education for girls, as the key to peace throughout the world's poorer and less stable countries. Educating women leads to lower infant mortality, increased literacy, and a decrease in population growth. Mortenson says flatly that there are too many people on the planet (cue awkward shifting from some audience members). He says we can lessen the strain on our natural resources without any controversial policies. He's not mandating forced birth control or limits on family size. He believes letting girls go to school will result quite naturally and justly in those girls growing into women who assert their rights to control their destiny, to work and participate freely in the economy and culture, and to have fewer yet healthier children.

Mortenson puts into financial perspective how easy it would be for the U.S. and the West to shift from military to humanitarian solutions. President Obama doubled our troop presence in Afghanistan last year to 100,000 pairs of boots on the ground. At $100 billion a year, that's $1 million per soldier. Mortenson says he asked the Afghan minister of education to cite a dream budget for the country's higher education system. $248 million a year, said the minister. Bring 248 American soldiers home, and you'd have the money to fund all 24 of Afghanistan's universities, and then some.

Or try this: Bring five soldiers home. Use the corresponding five million dollars to build an Afghan version of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Train a new corps of Afghan engineers and geologists to lead the country's exploitation of newly discovered rare earth minerals and other ores that could be worth hundreds of billions. Let Afghanistan make itself rich, says Mortenson, with a meager investment in education.

Or why not aim even bigger: Mortenson says that worldwide, 120 million children are not in school. 78 million are girls. Millions of them are slaves, bought and sold to produce rice, soccer balls, fireworks, and many other things we use. Educating one child takes a few dollars a day in some places. Mortenson says spending $60 billion dollars over the next ten years would eradicate worldwide illiteracy. That's $6 billion a year—no small sum... but only 6% of what we spend each year making war in Afghanistan.

Mortenson said the Taliban fear education—an awkward position for such supposedly pious men, as Mortenson cites a line from Muhammad declaring the ink of the scholar holier than the blood of a martyr. Holy or not, smart people, especially smart women, are the enemy of their fear- and force-based power. Since 2007, the Taliban have destroyed 2400 schools, three quarters of them girls' schools.

But Mortenson says the Taliban have yet to destroy one of the schools he's helped start in the region, in large part because he gets the locals themselves to build the schools. And overall, Afghanistan's greatest success under American/NATO occupation is in education. Mortenson says that in 2000, 800,000 Afghan children, mostly boys, were in school. In 2010, nine million Afghan children are in school. 2.8 million of those children are girls. That's still a terrible imbalance, but it's enormous progress from when the Taliban held Kabul.

Typical political labels don't fit in this discussion. But for those of you blog readers addicted to such things, Mortenson is no big-government liberal. He said our initial top-down approach to rebuilding Afghanistan, the Bonn Agreement, failed because it was too centralized. Mortenson said the post-World War II Marshall Plan was "brilliant" because it was decentralized and provincialized. Mortenson said General Petreaus boils his model for building a healthy and peaceful Afghanistan down to three bullet points: listen, respect, and build relationships with the people, especially with the elders. Ultimately, said Mortenson, people in Afghanistan and Pakistan want the same things we do: they want their children to live, and they want their children to learn. We can help make that happen, but we will do it with brains, not bullets.

Americans Concerned Weak Economy Threatens Global Status

Bob Ellis tags his blog with the line "Exposing the Pernicious Lie." I think he's referring to his own content.

South Dakota's nuttiest wing proves its penchant for believing what it wants and ignoring what is. Bob Ellis gloats and chortles over a lefty poll that he says says America is less respected globally. Ellis, of course, blames America's diminished standing on President Obama's greeting of foreign dignitaries.

But the poll doesn't say that. Let's go to the source, Democracy Corps:

Although the public continues to give the president strong ratings on a range of national security issues – indeed, above his overall approval rating – there is evidence of rising public concern about the president’s handing of these issues. Historical doubts about the Democratic Party on national security show signs of reviving and many voters worry the president and his administration are not dealing forcefully enough with terrorist suspects. Additionally, the troubled economy is driving down public perceptions of America’s strength and standing in the world ["The Politics of National Security: A Wake-up Call," Democracy Corps-Third Way survey, 2010.03.08].

What Ellis gets wrong:

1. The poll doesn't say America's standing has gone down overseas; it says some Americans think our standing has gone down overseas. As any lawyer will tell you, asking any witness to speculate as to the mindset of someone else is cruising for an objection.
   
2. The poll says President Obama actually has majority support domestically on most foreign policy and national security issues:
   
   
3. The President also gets pretty good support (51% to 37%) for saying he'll repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, something the Bob Ellis worldview says will harm our military.
   
4. It's the economy, stupid:

...a regression analysis shows that this sentiment is driven even more strongly by perceptions of Obama’s performance on the economy – and America’s relative economic weakness – than by his handling of security issues.

In recent focus groups, we hear voters express concerns that mounting debts are diminishing America’s influence and ceding control to our foreign creditors, especially China. The new survey shows how dramatically those feelings undermine confidence in the country’s standing. By a huge 64 to 32 percent margin, likely voters now say that in the face of such economic trends, the US is losing the economic race to China and no longer “remains the strongest and most influential country.” Notably, GOP voters are most likely to believe that the U.S. is no longer the world’s strongest and most influential country – raising the possibility that Republicans have become the “New Declinists” in conversations about America’s global standing [Democracy Corps–Third Way, 2010].

Republicans like Ellis have every right to be Declinists: their anti-governing philosophy is responsible for the decade of economic stagnation that places our superpower status in peril.

Want to boost America's standing in the world? Crank up the economy... and crank up that stimulus!

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By the way, if you really want to know what the rest of the world thinks of us, ask the rest of the world. The Pew Global Attitudes Project does that. Of 21 countries surveyed in both 2008 and 2009, 18 of them showed more folks with a favorable opinion of the U.S.A. after President Obama took office. From 2008 to 2009, we lost 3 points in Pakistan, 2 in Russia, and 1 in Poland. Our standing is also higher among 11 of 19 countries compared with our post 9/11 rating in 2002.

Our global neighbors also express more confidence in President Obama than they ever did in his predecessor. The only country expressing less confidence in President Obama than it did in President Bush is Israel.

Other nations also have more faith in our anti-terrorism efforts under President Obama. 22 out of 25 nations surveyed expressed greater approval of our anti-terrorism efforts in 2009 than they did in 2007.

And even with our economy in the tank, the United States is still the only country that gets majority votes from any country as the world's leading economic power.

---------------------------
Update 2010.04.19: And after a full year of President Obama, amidst ongoing economic troubles and increased hostilities in Afghanistan, the world loves us even more. For Bob Ellis, whose worldview depends on excluding and demonizing everyone else, that's sad news. For the rest of us, America marches on!

Cause for Thanks: Spock Replaces Riley in White House

Dithering? No, John, that's called thinking.

Dr. Newquist hit a similar theme at the beginning of the month. Now Ned Hodgman reads Joel Achenbach's Washington Post assessment of President Barack Obama's Spock-like decision-making and leadership and offers this Thanksgiving thought:

The world is too complicated a place for even the best fact-based analysis to work every time. But logical, reasoned inquiry and decision-making are part of a process that can build on itself, like scientific inquiry. And when “mistakes are made,” it’s easier to find out where and why.

So let’s be thankful our present president favors his brain over other parts of his anatomy in making decisions. This makes him different from at least a couple of his predecessors [Ned Hodgman, "A Healthy Serving of Facts: Obama's Rigorous Approach to Decision-Making," Understanding Government, 2009.11.25].

There's no turkey in that thinking. Stay cool, stay Vulcan, Mr. President.

Honor Your Vets, Save the Planet, Pass ACESA

Don't think Veterans Day should be political? Ask a soldier who risked her life in Iraq due to our political choices. LeighAnn Dunn, USD grad student and South Dakota National Guard member, applies the Bush "first-strike" doctrine as justification for passing climate change legislation:

This “first strike” standard also obligates our nation to another standard, which is to take extraordinary steps to prevent wars our leaders can see developing in the future. One threat we clearly see and can prevent is further damage from climate change. The U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, the State Department and the National Intelligence Council see this threat and are all incorporating man-made climate change as a security threat into their long-term planning. Here are some climate change scenarios our nation’s top military minds are looking at:

Climate change dries up water and creates famine. Nations panic. Wars erupt. American troops get deployed.

Climate change makes sea levels rise, creating tens of millions of refugees. Refugee camps are ripe recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations.

Climate change fuels radical storms to occur more frequently. This stretches military resources from their primary mission: defending America against our enemies [LeighAnn Dunn, "Nation at the Crossroads This Veterans Day," letter to the editor, USD Volante, 2009.11.11].

When treehuggers and GI Jane agree, it's time to act. Support the troops: enact climate change legislation.

GOP House Candidate Advocates Friendship with Iran

Why can't the other Republicans give us conversation-starters like this: GOP House candidate Thad Wasson rejects the neocon-Dick-Cheney snarl and advocates lifting sanctions on Iran and (gasp!) cooperating:

America is getting blamed for all the woes in Iran when the Mullahs can't even keep the natural gas flowing. Lets not lose this Nation to our 'friends' Russia and China. If we offer expertise on natural gas exploration and agricultural commodities, we can win over the 66 million Iranians [Thad Wasson, "Time for a Misdirection Play on Iran," campaign blog, 2009.11.08].

More flies with honey...

This isn't one of us progressive wienies talking; this is an ex-Marine who's spent some time around guns and tanks. I can't wait to see Wasson bring ideas like this to a room full of Republicans and a live debate with Chris Nelson and R. Blake Curd.

John Warner: Clean-Energy Legislation Is National Security Issue

Add John Warner to Bob Ellis's axis of evil enviro-whackos conspiring to destroy America. The former Senator from Virginia is another veteran (and another Republican!) supporting Congressional action on climate change and clean energy. Warner has been traveling the country discussing evidence from the military that climate change is a threat to national security. He explains his personal campaign to Jill Lawrence of Politics Daily thus:

People think climate change is solely an environmental campaign. And I . . . consider myself strongly in support of the environmental goals of this country. But a lot of people look with a different view on that. This says, "Hey, wait a minute, irrespective of your feeling about environmental concerns, here's a practical effect. Your sons or daughters or next door neighbor might be sent out on a military mission" [John Warner, quoted by Jill Lawrence, Q&A, Politics Daily, 2009.09.04].

Go ahead, stick your head in the sand on climate change. But do you want to stick your sons' and daughters' boots in the sand?

Warner makes the case that climate change has already imposed great costs on us, from spreading bark beetles and devastating forests in Idaho to tipping political instability to chaos in Somalia and Darfur.

Studies show that drought, famine, floods and other consequences of global warming will be worst in regions that already are relatively unstable politically and/or economically. The potential impact includes toppled governments, terrorist breeding grounds, island nations immersed in rising seas, threats to U.S. military installations in coastal areas, and more military and humanitarian demands on the U.S. military -- in many instances the only institution with the resources to make a difference [Jill Lawrence, "National Security Concerns Could Power Energy Bill to Senate Passage," Politics Daily, 2009.09.04].

Clean energy isn't just a green issue. It's a red-white-and-blue issue. Claims that ACESA and other enivronmental efforts show contempt for America are simply absurd. In supporting clean-energy legislation, Senator Warner is doing the same thing as when he signed up for the U.S. Navy in January 1945, and when he volunteered for active duty in the Marines in Korea in 1950: defending the country he loves.

Operation Free: Vets Support Climate Change Legislation -- Watertown, Sioux Falls Events Thursday

I suppose Bob Ellis will call these patriots evil liars, too....

It's easy for opponents of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) to portray supporters as whiners and environmental Kool-Aid drinkers who want to harm America. No faster way to prove your point by calling your opponents wimps... right?

Try that with the folks in Operation Free. Go ahead, look 'em the eye and say that.

Operation Free is a group of veterans and national security experts who support ACESA because it will make America safer and keep our troops out of harm's way. These aren't starry-eyed hippies; these are starry-shouldered generals like Wes Clark telling us that climate change and dependence on foreign energy will mean more natural disasters drawing U.S. military interventions, as well as more overseas adventures to secure foreign oil like the Gulf Wars. And hey, that's not just me shouting "No Blood for Oil!" That's soldiers who've given blood for oil, like Rick Hegdahl, a vet with South Dakota roots:

Another vet on the tour, Rick Hegdahl, said he got involved because of what he learned while serving in the Navy in Kuwait just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hegdahl commanded a patrol boat that would keep watch on giant oil tankers waiting to fill up.

"It really dawned on me that the primary reason we were there was to control the shipping lanes for oil," he said. "I said, 'Something's wrong. Something's really wrong'" [Matt Hagengruber, "Veterans on Tour Will Warn of Warming Climate," Billings Gazette, 2009.10.12].

...and Chuck Tyler:

“I don’t want oil period,” said Chuck Tyler, a 10 year Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom. “As a threat multiplier, it doesn’t even have to come from overseas. If you put it in your car, if you burn it, it contributes to carbon disruption…it’s something that we don’t want to deal with and it’s something that 1.4 million people in uniform don’t want to have to deal with” [Rocky Kistner, "American Power Tour South Rolls into St. Louis," Operation Free, 2009.10.14].

Two busloads of veterans are touring the U.S. right now to promote support for action on climate change and energy independence. One busload of patriots will make two stops in South Dakota tomorrow, Thursday, October 15:

• Downtown Watertown, Goss Opera House, 100 E. Kemp Ave., 13:00 CDT (that's 1 p.m. for us civilians): public roundtable discussion
  
• Sioux Falls VFW, 3601 S. Minnesota Ave: Press conference at 16:00 (4 p.m.), public roundtable discussion at 18:00 (6 p.m.). And hey, this one's at the VFW, so you can buy supper there, too! (Maybe even buy supper for a vet.)

I'm not saying that you should support ACESA or any other clean-energy legislation just because big men who've carried guns and wave the flag and tell you to. But these soldiers have been to war. They have risked their lives in response to natural disasters and America's dependence on oil. The veterans of Operation Free have America's best interests at heart... and they are telling us we need a clean energy policy now.

Catch the vets' bus in Watertown and Sioux Falls. Shake these soldiers' hands, listen to what they have to say.

Obama Duly Wary on Iran: Ahmadinejad and Mousavi Not Too Different

Before we get all excited about expressing our forceful support for democratic uprisings in Iran (and believe me, I want to), let's remind ourselves why this fight between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is more complicated than a nice Hollywood good-vs.-evil script. As Mr. Woodring appropriately reminds us, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the main opposition candidate around whom Tehran's street protesters are rallying, is connected with terrorist attacks on American soldiers. He was Iran's prime minister in the 1980s, when Iran orchestrated the terror campaign that included the 1983 Beirut bombing that killed 241 American soldiers and 58 French soldiers.

Former CIA Middle East field officer Bob Baer explains Mousavi's politics:

"When Mousavi was Prime Minister, he oversaw an office that ran operatives abroad, from Lebanon to Kuwait to Iraq," Baer continued.

"This was the heyday of [Ayatollah] Khomeini's theocratic vision, when Iran thought it really could export its revolution across the Middle East, providing money and arms to anyone who claimed he could upend the old order."

Baer added: "Mousavi was not only swept up into this delusion but also actively pursued it" [Jeff Stein, "Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut," CQPolitics, 2009.06.22].

President Obama recognizes that there is not much difference on policy between the current regime and Mousavi. As ABC's Jake Tapper notes, Iran's nuclear program was restarted under Mousavi in 1987. He doesn't recognize Israel, and his response to a question about Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial feels slippery at best.

Supporting democracy is good, but we must also look at the practical results of that democracy. Hamas won the 2006 elections in Palestine, and we felt a little egg on our faces for having pushed for elections that produced results inimical to our interests. Sometimes I can't help wondering if some conservatives are pushing for a "more forceful" response from our president to the Iranian turmoil just so they can blame Obama for whichever pro-nuclear, anti-Israel candidate is in charge of Iran.

Bush:China::Obama:Iran? No One Said Foreign Policy Was Easy...

Twenty years ago when the Chinese Communist government slaughtered thousands of its own youth in Tiananmen Square, I wanted President George H.W. Bush to drop some serious hammer on China. Kick out their ambassador, cut off trade, maybe even stand a battleship or two off the coast.

What did Bush Sr. do?

First, the president and his administration rushed to perpetuate, in a new era, the notion that China's geopolitical importance should outweigh American concerns about political repression in the PRC. The perceptions of China's overriding significance had, of course, been based on the Soviet threat to the United States, and now this threaet was disappearing. Did that mean America would now condemn China's Leninst regime in the same fashion as the Soviet Union or the Communisat governments of Easertn Europ? The Bush administration's answer was no: Despite the end of the Cold War, China remained of great strategic importance to the United States....

The second element in Bush's response to the upheavals of 1989 was the policy of "engagement." Although Bush had announced in public a freeze on high-level contacts between American and Chinese officials, he secretly sent Scowcroft to Beijing for talks with Deng Xiaoping in July 1989 and again five months later. After the visits were criticized, Bush explained that he didn't want to isolate China. He wanted, instead, a "comprehensive policy of engagement" with China. The choice of words was surprising, because the Reagan administration had only a few years earlier used the term constructive engagement to describe its policy of dealing with South Africa's apartheid government [James Mann, The China Fantasy, Viking: 2007, pp. 79–80].

I was disappointed with the Bush policy.

I was 17.

Today President Barack Obama faces the question of how to respond to internal political upheaval in Iran. As Ken Blanchard points out in an exaggeratedly titled "Defense" of the president, Obama faces a no-win situation. If he plays it too aggressively, he becomes a foil for Ahmadinejad and the loyal ayatollahs, who can claim the protestors are just tools of the scheming Great Satan. If he plays it cool, he gives Republicans the opportunity to trot out the old meme of feminizing Obama, portraying him as "timid" and "passive."

Timid and passive? What do you want, air strikes?

Senator McCain suggests we need a tougher, more Cold-War-like response to the Iranian government's oppression of its people. But for political oppression no worse than that perpetrated by our good friend and loan shark China, here's where Iran stands currently in U.S. foreign policy:

• U.S. purchases of only $104 million in Iranian goods (a laughable 0.005% sliver of our $2.1 trillion in imports in 2008; 0.03% of the $337 billion we buy from China; a tenth of the purchases we make from authoritarian Belarus; about the same as we buy each year from the thugs in Zimbabwe)
• economic sanctions extended by President Obama this March
• no official diplomatic ties since 1979
• flanking of the country by 168,000 American ground troops (138,000 in Iraq; 30,000 in Afghanistan) and a half-dozen U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf

I'd say the United States is in about as aggressive a posture toward Iran as it can be right now without ordering our Baghdad garrison to redeploy to Kabul... in an overland march. We're certainly already playing harder ball with Iran than we did with China in 1989 or even in 2001, when China forced down one of our surveillance planes, ransacked it for sensitive equipment, and held 24 of our military personnel captive. Bush Junior responded to the latter crisis with the following language: "I am troubled by the lack of a timely Chinese response to our request..."—a passive voice sentence with the timid word request.

Conservative columnist George Will expressed on ABC's latest This Week the frustrating but sensible reality of President Obama's response to Iran:

The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced [George Will, quoted by Ben Armbruster, "Will calls right-wing attacks on Obama’s Iran response ‘foolish criticism.’", ThinkProgress.org, 2009.06.21]

U.S. News's John Aloysius Farrell reminds us of long-standing Iranian suspicion of American meddling, notes the absence of U.S. flags or mock-ups of the Statue of Liberty amid the green banners of Tehran's street protests, and calls criticism of Obama's current tack "self-indulgent and silly." And Henry Kissinger says Obama is doing the right thing.

My sentimental and dramatic heart still craves grand gestures and sweeping victories. Foreign policy, alas, has always been more complicated than that. But even if you think we can and should do more to show our solidarity with the young people demanding honest democracy in the streets of Tehran, you face a hard question: what should we do? We already isolate Iran. We are one misunderstanding at an Iraqi border post away from bullets flying.

To suggest that the President is being "timid" and "passive" is clear domestic political gamesmanship. it also ignore the political and historical realities of how you actually run foreign policy.

Obama's New Financial Regulations: Good Foreign Policy?

President Obama announced sweeping reforms of the U.S. financial system yesterday. As you would expect, some Republicans are grumbling about overregulation (indeed, we all remember how FDR's financial regulations led to 70 years of... oh, wait, pretty decent economic growth without another depression). At least analyst is able to take the opposite view, that Obama's proposed regulations don't go far enough to make banking boring and safe for the institutions that are too big to fail.

Whatever the potency of the president's proposal, he's at least moving in the right direction. More responsible oversight of lending and investing will not only stabilize the economy (lower peaks, but shallower valleys) but also help our image abroad. Consider: many of our partners in the global economy blame the United States for causing the recession. China can certainly make the argument: we crash our economy with subprime loans, then have to tighten our belts and and buy less stuff, leaving China with exports they can't sell and workers they can't keep busy.

Our bull-in-the-china-shop routine in financial affairs during the last ten years may have done as much damage to international trust of the United States as our foreign-policy buckarooism. The calls we're hearing from Russia and China to create a new global currency to end dependence on the dollar (and the euro and yen) aren't just political gamesmanship to undermine the United States; they're also a reflection of a lack of faith in the U.S. financial system. It may just be rhetoric, but to have major players even talking about ditching the dollar is not good for us.

The rest of the world is moving away from deregulation and risky business; so should we. Financial regulations may give the red-criers more reasons to shout "European socialism!" at the President (and the electorate), but in this case, acting a bit more like Europe will help assure the world that we are fixing what we broke and reducing the chances that we'll break the economy again.

Waterboarding Is Torture: Shut Up and Watch

Hat tip to SD Humanist:

Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller said waterboarding wasn't torture. He agreed to have a U.S. Marine waterboard him live on air to prove it. Six seconds in, he changed his mind.



Waterboarding is torture.

Obama: Bad Day in London? Too Busy to Notice!

Does this look like a man having a bad day?

[AP Photo by Alistair Grant, outside 10 Downing Street, London, 2009.04.01]

I was about to chide the peripatetic Professor Blanchard for his overly wishful poo-poo headline, "Obama's No Good Very Bad Day in London." A fair reading of the article finds the professor's grapes a little less sour than the headline suggests. Alongside phraseological gems like "noxious numbskullery" and "economic krapola" (with a k? is that the Marxist spelling?), Dr. Blanchard bemoans the supposed shakedown world leaders are giving our President as they demand confessions of blame and global financial regulations. Dr. Blanchard disappoints his conservative readership by assigning no blame to Obama for this rough reception, saying "Presidents McCain, or Clinton, or Huckabee or Kucinich would have been in the same situation."

But was the American President's day in London really so "No Good Very Bad"? A reading of the NYTimes article Dr. Blanchard links seems to say President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel aren't being so hard on Obama as on America's "poorly regulated free-market capitalism" that helped cause this mess. That's not a bad day for Obama; that's just a pretty accurate diagnosis of the problem.

And somehow, I don't think President Obama felt himself to be having a really bad day. He was just too busy. In one day, he...

1. announced new arms talks with the Russia,
   
2. scheduled a July summit in Russia with President Medvedev,
3. discussed arms, human rights, and those nutty North Koreans with Chinese President Hu,
4. held a lengthy discussion and a news conference with UK PM Brown,
5. had tea with the Queen and gave her an iPod,

...and still was smiling and holding hands with his wife throughout the day. We should all love our jobs as much as our President seems to relish his.

America to Iran: Happy New Year -- Let's Talk

Iranians celebrate the new year as Nowruz, the beginning of spring. It seems a better time to celebrate new hope, new beginnings, and new resolutions to make ourselves and the world better.

President Obama sends his Nowruz respects to Iran and the world by saying (I paraphrase) hey, global neighbor, let's talk:



Among the highlights (funny—the White House thought this was a key line, too):

The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right, but it comes with real reponsibilities. And that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy. It is your demonstrated ability to build and create [President Barack Obama, Nowruz address, 2009.03.20].

Happy Spring and, as the President said, Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak!

Obama Means It: America Does Not Torture

The Change We Need is really just a return to the laws and principles we should've upheld in the war on terrorism in the first place. Quote of the day:

(a) Common Article 3 Standards as a Minimum Baseline. Consistent with the requirements of the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A, section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. 2000dd, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, and other laws regulating the treatment and interrogation of individuals detained in any armed conflict, such persons shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person (including murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture), nor to outrages upon personal dignity (including humiliating and degrading treatment), whenever such individuals are in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States ["Executive Order: Ensuring Lawful Interrogations," WhiteHouse.gov, 2009.01.22]

And in his own words:

We believe that the Army Field Manual reflects the best judgment of our military, that we can abide by a rule that says we don’t torture, but that we can still effectively obtain the intelligence that we need.

This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s hard.

...the message that we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a matter that is consistent with our values and our ideals. And all of the individuals who are standing behind me, as well as, I think, the American people, understand that we are not, as I said in the inauguration, going to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals.

We think that it is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and the moral high ground to be able to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that you see emanating from terrorist organizations around the world.

We intend to win this fight. We’re going to win it on our terms.

[President Barack Obama, "CQ Transcript: President Obama Orders Closing of Detention Facility at Guantanamo," CQPolitics.com, 2009.01.22]

Fly those flags a little higher, friends. Contrary to the confused machismo of certain Jack Bauer fans, The moral high ground is not for sissies, and it's not an obstacle to defeating terrorism. The moral high ground is where we win that war.

Gaza, Golf, and the President-Elect: Playing the Right Games

Dr. Blanchard and others seem to wish President-Elect Obama would quit golfing and take over as spokesman for American foreign policy.

Quick question: if the President-Elect were staking a more public position on U.S. Middle East policy, especially if that included sending signals differing from those coming from the current administration, would not the conservative commentariat go ape over the President-Elect's crass presumption?

Some games you just can't win. Middle East peace might be one such game; satisfying those who call Obama "The One" is definitely another.

Tax Our Gas, Buck a Gallon, Now!

I like saving a billion dollars a day on gas as much as the next guy, but if just two months of cheaper gas have us Americans dropping hybrids and buying more SUVs, we need a kick in the pants... or the pocketbook. It's time to bring gas back to $3 a gallon. The South Dakota Legislature could do it, but it would be better coming from Barack Obama. How? Say the magic words:

Gas tax.

I could tell you why, but Thomas Friedman can tell you better. This is no hippie cry to destroy Detroit and put everyone on bicycles; Friedman offers a hardnosed geopolitical argument that would make Kissinger and Brzezinski proud:

A gas tax reduces gasoline demand and keeps dollars in America, dries up funding for terrorists and reduces the clout of Iran and Russia at a time when Obama will be looking for greater leverage against petro-dictatorships. It reduces our current account deficit, which strengthens the dollar. It reduces U.S. carbon emissions driving climate change, which means more global respect for America. And it increases the incentives for U.S. innovation on clean cars and clean-tech [Thomas Friedman, "Win, Win, Win, Win, Win," New York Times, 2008.12.28].

Of course, if you think driving your Hummer with pride is more important than standing up to Iran and Russia... well, that's the sort of vanity that destroys empires.

Man up, America: gas tax and Smart cars are the path to a second American century.

America Promotes Democracy by Electing Obama

I have found it ironic that some critics and Rush Limbaugh-wannabes have mockingly called Obama the "Messiah," when America itself has from its inception often acted with a messianic sense of divine calling to save the world. The GOP spoke as much about "American exceptionalism" as anyone else this fall. Almost all of us see America as something special, as a nation with a unique potential to do good in the world.

That view usually leads our global neighbors to roll their eyes and mutter "Hypocrites" in various accents. America isn't the savior of democracy, they scorn from behind their baguettes. But the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the Presidency of the United States is already causing some of our European skeptics to wonder if maybe America can talk the talk and walk the walk of democracy:

Many French say that American exceptionalism must now be considered through other lenses. The neoconservative impulse in Washington in recent years, described by retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich in his new book, "Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism," is associated with an evangelical passion to spread democracy, to "remake" the world, by force if necessary. But after Nov. 4, the New World example is taking on the meaning of President Lincoln's "last, best hope of earth," or Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a country that evokes universal values by example at home [Robert Marquand, "For Europe, Obama Revives Positive Image of America's Unique Identity," Christian Science Monitor, 2008.11.17].

From the same article, more remarkable words from our friends (really!) in France:

"The Americans were choosing not just a president, but an identity," says [French writer Dominique] Moisi. "And that forces us to choose as well. Now we have to define ourselves without resort to anti-Americanism. That's something new."

"The decline of representative democracy is not irreversible," adds Zaki Laidi, a French intellectual writing in Le Monde.

Hm. Not even in office yet, and already promoting democracy, equality, and pro-American sentiment around the world. And he didn't have to order a single soldier into battle to do it. Good work, Mr. Obama... and good work, America.

Palin Stylist: $22,800. Foreign Policy Advisor: $12,500.

Obama victory in November: priceless.

Here's one more reason the McCain campaign is losing: it has spent more on Sarah Palin's appearance than on getting good foreign policy advice. KELO points to this AP report that says the McCain campaign paid Amy Strozzi, Palin's traveling stylist, $22,800 for a few weeks work. During the same reporting period (at last as I understand it from the AP report), the McCain campaign paid its foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, $12,500. (And let's not get started on the clothing bill....)

Now heck, for that money, I'll take either job. But is making Sarah Palin look good really twice as hard or twice as important as knowing how to deal with the Russians?

Style over substance, indeed.

South Dakota Guard 147th Activated for Iraq Again

KJAM reports that the 147^th Field Artillery and 147^th Forward Support Company have been activated for another year in Iraq and Afghanistan. 460-plus soldiers from Sisseton, Aberdeen, Webster, Watertown, Salem, Sioux Falls, and Yankton will deploy, some for the fourth time in seven years, to Iraq and Afghanistan next April.

I know our National Guard men and and women signed on to do a job, they're proud to do it, and they do it well. But did anyone in the Guard really sign on for four deployments in seven years? Is there really no way to deploy the 1.4 million active duty personnel of the regular armed forces that would keep our Guards closer to home?

Just what is the proper role of the National Guard? How much should we expect of our part-time soldiers and their families? Readers with military experience, I defer to your wisdom on this one. Relying so heavily on the National Guard to fight Osama et al. seems like a bad idea... but those of you who have been there—and are going there again—the comments are open for your perspective.

Bailout Shows Whacked Priorities: Write in Bono for President!

Talk about having your priorities straight:

It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable treatable disease and hunger.

—Bono, addressing the Clinton Global Initiative summit, New York City, 2008.09.24

Not happy with McCain or Obama? Write in Bono for President!