American Paradoxes

When you take a step back and look at the big picture, it seems that the United States is frequently a land of paradoxes. Here are two of them.

• “The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.”

• “Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed with suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned.”

And, of course, these two paradoxes seemingly contradict each other while remaining accurate as well. The United States needs to get its fiscal act together if the country wants to remain a viable, economic superpower.

Cultural Nihilism

LONDON and JERUSALEM — The Daily Mail reports on efforts to change British drinking habits (and includes, of course, several tabloid-worthy pictures):

Such scenes are not uncommon, which is why Cardiff – one of the country’s worst cities for binge drinking – has just banned boozing on the streets.

The crackdown is aimed at late night revellers, targeting rowdy hen and stag parties and generally trying to make the streets safer after dark.

Police can use the new powers to confiscate alcohol or arrest anyone who defies them.

The ban has been a success in trials in small areas but will spread across the entire city in time for Christmas and the New Year.

Yesterday it was hailed as a big step towards ‘reclaiming the streets’ from drunken yobs.

Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott said: ‘Late night alcohol-fuelled crime and anti-social behaviour is a huge problem on the streets.

‘People deserve to have a night out without the fear of intimidation or facing violence as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.

‘This ban should help the law-abiding and responsible majority to reclaim the streets.’

When I lived in London in 2001 and worked as a bartender at the Zetland Arms, I observed that British people drink a lot — a lot more than your average American. But it was still within reasonable limits. Every night, the regulars — a friendly-but-sad bunch — would arrive after work and drink pint after pint while watching sports. Then they would leave for home late at night and return the next evening.

Later in the evening, the young people would arrive. Since pubs had to close at 12:30 a.m., they would drink a lot and then move to a club or hang out on the streets. (It is legal to drink outside in counties including Britain and Israel.) But I rarely saw any problems. The closest I ever got was when I took the drink out of the hand of a drunken Scotsman because I was angry and he refused to leave at closing time. Luckily, the manager came over and calmed him down. (One lesson of bartending in London: If you want to befriend a Scotsman, mention the film “Braveheart” in a positive way.)

But, sadly, it seems that things have become much worse:

…the proportion of women who binge-drink almost doubled between 1998 and 2006 and is now at 15% (men who binge-drink increased by 1% to 23%). However, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old men binge-drinking decreased by 9% since 2000. Researchers also found that whilst fewer children are drinking, those that do drink are drinking much more than they did in the past.

Violent crime by youths is also an increasing problem. If the reports are credible (I have not been to Britain since 2001), then English cities are dealing with mobs of drunken, violent youths every night.

If you want to see the future of a country, look at its young people. Great Britain, once known as the economic, cultural, and fashion capital of the world, seems to be crumbling. I first realized this when former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started giving speeches several years ago defending the very idea of the country itself.

The still-unanswered question facing Blair in the 1990s was: What does it mean to be “British” as opposed to “English,” “Welsh,” or “Scottish”? The United Kingdom is a political entity created through conquest that has rarely, if ever, had a collective sense of identity. Blair tried, unsuccessfully, to brand the country as “Cool Britannia.”

The British Empire collapsed after World War II, and the British people never quite recovered subconsciously as the United States, a former colony, became the new leader of the free world. Decades leader, the British people viewed Blair as George W. Bush’s lap dog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. (In geopolitical terms, Blair could do little else.) It was a confirmation of the global humiliation that the British people have been feeling after centuries of power and influence had disappeared.

In recent years, Scotland and Wales formed their regional parliaments and became more autonomous. The current prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a Scot and now deeply unpopular. It is indeed possible that Great Britain will cease to exist in the coming years. As the country devolves, it might also lose sovereignty to the European Union and the euro.

Cultural divisions and economic conditions are also tearing the country apart. Decades of mass immigration have caused many Brits to feel that their country is no longer “British.” The most-popular, national food is now seen as chicken tikka masala rather than fish ‘n’ chips. (One former coworker here in Israel moved here even though he is not a Jew because he said that his country no longer exists.) Radical Muslims in Britain condemn democracy, want to impose Shari’a law, and have plotted terrorist attacks. Anti-Semitism is skyrocketing (see here and here). Young men are becoming more apathetic and willing to live with their parents as well as on the dole.

The most significant example of the negative feelings held by Britons was the recent inclusion of Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, on the political, panel-discussion show “Question Time.” Both journalism and the free-market are perfect bellwethers of cultural trends. Companies, even media ones, must tailor their products, services, and marketing pitches to pre-existing trends in society. Journalists, who ideally have their fingers on the pulses of people, decide which views are relevant to a the discussion of a given topic. When the BBC, the standard-bearer of British journalism, decides that a person like Griffin is suited to a serious political discussion, that is a clear indicator of what a significant segment of society is feeling.

In the theory of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Great Britain may be nearing towards the end of the life-cycle of all nations and empires as a result of all of these trends and feelings. With all of these cultural, political, and social problems in the subconscious minds of young people, is it any wonder that they seem to have lost hope in the future? Without any optimism, they turn to alcohol and violence out of nihilistic despair.

One of my favorite 1970s-era bands is the Moody Blues, and I think their following pop-rock song from 2000 is an apt description of British malaise:

We’re on a runaway train, rolling down the track / And where it’s take us to, who knows where it’s at / But if we hold together, we can make it back / For an English sunset

And I’ve decided I can live with humility / And the sad decay / ‘Cause that’s the English way

We keep the faith alive in every thing we do / And at the end of the line, we still keep coming through / And though it’s sad and sorry, what else can we do / It’s an English sunset

And I’ve decided they can wait for the requiem / And take it day by day / ‘Cause that’s the English way

As someone who has loved British culture since he was a child, I write this post with extreme sadness. Still, I fear that the same attitudes are affecting behavior in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem. As Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz notes:

Anyone with more than passing knowledge of the atmosphere in central Jerusalem will be aware that the heart of our capital city is rapidly becoming a late night no-go zone.

Clusters of violent youth rule and roam the streets, armed with knives and with the beer and vodka bottles they’ve emptied, picking fights with unsuspecting victims.

Of course, the police are not solely to blame for the deepening climate of intimidation and violence. As [Public Security Minister Yitzhak] Aharonovitch and Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Dudi Cohen have frequently observed, ours is becoming an increasingly violent society, more and more kids are now carrying knives, and the response needs to be found, at least in part, in better parenting and better educational values.

I travel to Jerusalem several times a week, and I will likely be returning to live there soon. I was walking on the way to a pub with my girlfriend, a born-and-raised Jerusalemite, and we were speaking in English. A man on the street walked up and tried to convince us to come to his bar. (There are dozens of such people in the city center’s streets who try to get English-speaking tourists to visit their restaurant or bar.)

I waved him away and said, “We don’t need [your flier]” in Hebrew. His response? “Your accent sucks!” he yelled in English. I was about to walk over and return the favor when my girlfriend stopped me and said, “Do NOT talk like that here!” Unfortunately, people have been assaulted there for less.

As I have written in my Letters from Israel series, the Jewish state is rife with political, religious, and social divisions that many fear will tear the country apart. This has led to increased anti-social behavior and the possible destruction of the civil society that had developed since the refounding of Israel in 1948. Perhaps young Israelis have developed the same pessimism regarding the future that British youths now have.

As a result of the geographic isolation of the United States — it is separated from the world by two, gigantic oceans — the country is usually the last to receive cultural trends from Europe (as well as technological innovations from eastern Asia). Since young people there are increasing angry and frustrated over their economic and social conditions, I wonder whether the same anti-social behavior will occur in America soon.

Stratfor Updates

For policy wonks and international-relations enthusiasts, Stratfor Global Intelligence is a political dream-come-true. I usually agree with their analyses, but they are still insightful when I do not. (Stratfor is a group of hard-core realists who sometimes discount the role that irrational ideology plays in the international arena.)

Here are the group’s reports from the last several weeks (sometimes these links go to advertisements before the actual content):

• The United States and Ballistic Missile Defense in Eastern Europe
• Misreading the Iranian Situation
• The Western View of Russia
• Libya: A Hero’s Welcome
• Obama’s Foreign Policy: The End of the Beginning
• Confidential Informants: A Double-Edged Sword
• Iraq Endgame

Enjoy!

Rule of International Law

The White House is proposing global measures (update here) to prevent another economic catastrophe like the one the world is experiencing:

President Barack Obama said tougher financial regulations are needed worldwide to protect consumers, provide economic stability and prevent future crises.

With the leaders from the Group of 20 nations set to meet next week in Pittsburgh, Obama said in his weekly address on the radio and Internet that international cooperation has “stopped our economic freefall.”

“We know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago,” Obama said.

It is unclear whether Obama is proposing that all countries be encouraged to implement a similar set of financial regulations or whether some international authority be established since finance now operates in a globalized world. For the sake of argument, I will assume the latter.

In 1832, the state of Georgia ignored a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In response, President Andrew Jackson, who agreed with Georgia, is said to have remarked, “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” This comment epitomizes the difficulty of enforcing legal rulings generally and international law specifically.

As Wikipedia correctly notes, “the Supreme Court cannot directly enforce its rulings; instead, it relies on respect for the Constitution and for the law for adherence to its judgments.” The same is true for international law and global regulations. Here is a not-so-secret reality of international relations: All countries cite international law when it benefits them, and they ignore it when it does not. Here is just one example: President George W. Bush cited Iraq’s violation of U.N. resolutions as a justification for war, but the United States essentially ignores the International Court of Justice as well. Every country acts in a similar way.

Although global internationalists would never admit this publicly, the very idea of international law in the current global community is ludicrous. The rule of law — domestic or international — depends on three things: 1.) The consent of the governed; 2.) A respect for the rule of law; and 3.) The means to enforce legal rulings. The United Nations — and all international bodies, for that matter — is ignored as often as it is followed, and the organization has no independent ability to enforce its rulings other than countries taking it upon themselves, like the United States against Iraq, to do so as they see fit.

So, in light of Obama’s comments, I wonder how a global, regulatory environment in finance could work in such a legal context. In a globalized world in which countries have less and less power over their economic affairs and policies, there needs to be some international standardization and cooperation. But, realistically speaking, how can this occur?

Organizational Behavior

RISHON LEZION, Israel — In modern U.S. governments, there has always been tension between the Department of State and the Department of Defense. In political terms, one side wants to use words while the other wants to use bullets. In business terms, imagine the heads of marketing and sales each trying to curry favor with the CEO — and obtain larger budgets for themselves — even though, in theory, they should be working together. Historically, the Department of Defense has usually been more pro-Israel while the Department of State has been more Arabist. But more on that later.

In the recent Bush administration, the Donald Rumsfeld-led Department of Defense ran political circles around the Colin Powell-led Department of State — primarily because Vice President Cheney sided with Defense and essentially manipulated Powell into endorsing the ill-fated claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and intended to attack the United States with them. The Bush administration, for better or worse, supported Israel wholeheartedly and relegated Yasir Arafat to the sidelines of a bunker in Ramallah.

Now, it seems, the beaucratic tables may have turned. The Department of State is led by a strong, determined, and forceful Hillary Clinton while the Department of Defense is manned by William Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration. Clinton has been touring the world, but Gates has rarely appeared in the headlines. The White House now seems to view the Middle East more neutrally — or, if you believe as Israelis now do, the U.S. government has become more Arabist.

I wonder how much of this policy is a result of the change in organizational behavior within the Obama administration. Has the State Department, driven by a strong leader in charge of a vast bureacracy and encouraged by a White House that places more value on diplomacy than conflict, taken influence away from the Defense Department?

Peter Pan, Meet Harry Potter

The New York Times reports that the children who grew up reading the “Harry Potter” books are now graduating college and entering the workforce:

Indie rock bands have sprung up inspired by their obsession, with names like Harry and the Potters, the Half Bloods, and Voldie and the Wiz Kidz, playing songs inspired by Potter lore.

Last fall, teams from Princeton, Vassar, Boston University [my alma mater!] and a dozen other schools competed in the Quidditch World Cup, in which students play a real-life version of the soccer-like contact sport featured in the books and films. (They can’t fly, but still compete with brooms between their legs.)

The continuing pull of all things Potter is a testament to the franchise’s enduring sway. But it also seems like something else: the advent of Generation Y nostalgia.

Chronologically, I am sandwiched between Generations X and Y since I was born in 1980. As a result, I came to “Harry Potter” later than most people. I was living in London and interning for a magazine in the summer of 2001, and I decided to pick up the first book to see what all the fuss was about. I never looked back. (I discovered later that the American books had been changed slightly — “mum” became “mom” and “lorries” became “trucks.” I guess the publisher decided that children are too stupid to learn words from other countries.) I am excited that the latest film adaptation should be coming to Israel soon.

Still, the Times notes an interesting aspect behind Pottermania:

Even though nostalgia hits every generation, it seems awfully early for 28-year-olds to be looking back. One possible explanation, say authors who focus on generational identity, is the impact of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The political and economic climate of the late ’90s had been as soothing as a Backstreet Boys ballad: no wars, unemployment as low as 4 percent, a $120 billion federal surplus.

Neil Howe, an author of several books on what he calls the Millennials (another term for Gen Y), draws a parallel between this nostalgic wave and the one boomers embraced with the film “American Graffiti” in 1973. That movie depicted the recent past, the early ’60s, which seemed to have vanished forever.

“It’s instant nostalgia before a huge change in the nation’s mood,” Mr. Howe said. “ ‘American Graffiti’ was nostalgia for the boomers for a world before everything changed after J.F.K.’s assassination.

“Millennials see the world before Sept. 11 as a period of innocence. Our biggest worry was the Y2K bug. That all seems a world away now.”

I completely understand. An uncle of mine always told me that college would be the best years of my life, and I am afraid that he might have been correct. I entered college in 1998 — close to the height of the dot-com craze and the Nasdaq. The world looked to be my generation’s digital oyster.

And then, September 11 occurred four months before I graduated in January 2002. I entered the journalism world after the dot-com bubble had burst and newspapers were starting their downward trajectories. Along with everyone else my age, I was burdened by crushing debt from student loans and credit cards at a time when decent job prospects looked — and still look — incredibly remote. And then came the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the re-election of one of the worst presidents in modern times, the housing-bubble collapse, and the current financial meltdown.

I could use a nice game of Quidditch. “Harry Potter” was the last pop-culture sensation that I experienced before my college-student dreams and optimistic outlook were shattered.

Related: Why My Generation is Pissed Off

War and Rumors of War

End-Times believers in Christianity (and presumably Judaism and Islam as well) see the September 11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the instability in Pakistan and the Middle East as proof the world is becoming more violent in preparation for the Apocalypse.

Well, they would be wrong:

The 21st century could represent the end of war as we know it, writes political scientist John Mueller in a new paper for Political Science Quarterly. He notes that there have been no wars between developed nations since 1945, and that other international wars that fit the classic definition — the violent resolution of a dispute between two or more nations — have become exceedingly rare. (See here and here as well.)

The misconception that the world is becoming more violent, I must admit, is the fault of the media. Journalists, as well as the public in general, rarely understand how much power and influence they hold in society.

Here is an example. I have never been to Mongolia. I have never met any Mongolians. I do not personally know that the country exists. Anything and everything I know about Mongolia comes from the media. The media is responsible for everything I know and believe about the country — as well as countless other subjects.

As the media has become more sensationalistic (partly as a result of increased competition due to the Internet), a greater share of the daily news is focusing on crime, conflict, and other issues that make people more fearful of the world around them. Perception creates a person’s sense of reality.

However, just because the number of official wars is declines does not mean conflict as a whole will disappear. As the cited post states, war is defined as “the violent resolution of a dispute between two or more nations.” As I noted in prior posts here and here, the influence of nation-states is waning while, perhaps paradoxically, those of globalization and localization are increasing.

As a result, fewer countries are declaring war and lining troops opposite each other on a battlefield. Part of the reason is that the world’s economies are intertwined. Picture a supply chain of computer parts that stretches from idea-creation in Japan to production in Taiwan to assembly in China to sales in the United States. If any of these countries were to declare war on another, the supply chain would be affected — and the economies of everyone would suffer. Of course, this is only one example of the benefits of globalization.

But while fewer countries are waging war, extremist individuals and groups — from Osama bin Ladin to the Taliban — can easily instigate international conflict themselves. Thomas Friedman calls them “super-empowered individuals” who can harness the power of the Internet for destructive ends. While official war may be declining — there will not be an end to conflict in general. So we can continue to expect end-times extremists to point to these occurrences as proof that the Apocalypse is coming.

Right-Wing Extremism

Paul Krugman notes that predictions of increasing extremist activity were indeed accurate:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

In Salon, Joan Walsh looks at the issue as well:

The range of crazy ideas about Obama is broad and wide: He’s a secret Muslim, he’s going to take our guns, he’s even the anti-Christ! James von Brunn just happened to be a “birther,” one of the nuts who believe that Obama wasn’t born here, his birth certificate is fake, and he thus isn’t eligible to be president. I thought it was strange and maybe a little ominous last summer when suddenly Obama was labeled a “socialist” and a “Marxist”; Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are arguably more liberal than Obama; why did he get tagged with that sinister, subversive, alien ideology? It seemed linked to the fact that he’s just so … different from other politicians, so easy to marginalize and, frankly, demonize…

If there’s a through-line between any of these acts of terrorism and the right-wing rhetoric that abets it, of course, it’s the one linking Bill O’Reilly to Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Tiller. O’Reilly more than demonized Tiller; night after night he called him a baby killer, compared him to the Nazis, and suggested that he must be stopped. Roeder stopped him, all right. If I were O’Reilly I’d feel terrible for putting a private figure in my public sights night after night, simply for doing his lawful job. But O’Reilly has no conscience, so he’s proud of it.

While O’Reilly might have indirect blood on his hands, Fox News anchor Shephard Smith brought views back to reality when he said that the DHS report should be reviewed again. (See the above YouTube video.) In a related issue, Smith also spoke for millions of sane Americans when he poked fun at fellow anchor Glenn Beck.

Whenever a controversial politician gains power, those in the opposition become increasingly angry and bitter. But this tendency has reached new heights with the last two presidents. Liberals hated George W. Bush, and conservatives have nothing but disdain for Barack Obama. After Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, several people opposed to him became extremists including converts to Islam who joined the Taliban and U.S. citizens who started plotting terrorist attacks. Now, the Obama administration has stirred up similar feelings among conservatives, and so far we have seen one doctor murdered and one Holocaust memorial attacked.

But there is an important difference: The Bush administration manipulated intelligence to wage a war of choice in Iraq and bankrupted the federal government through reckless spending. The Obama administration can only deal with the consequences of Bush’s actions. Liberals who opposed Bush had legitimate points (even though the extremists were sadly misguided), but angry conservatives are merely looking for a target for their rage. Fox News is the perfect medium for these feelings, but it seems that at least once anchor may realize the damage the network is doing.

Torture and Iraq

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state, lays a bombshell:

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop. (emphasis added)

Read all of the article.

Geography is Destiny

Robert Kaplan, writing in Foreign Policy, writes that geography has always laid the foundations for conflict throughout the world in the past and present. The article is your assigned reading for today.

Torture

Stratfor Global Intelligence makes some astute points about the ongoing debate over the Bush administration’s use of torture:

Sept. 11 was terrifying for one main reason: We had little idea about al Qaeda’s capabilities. It was a very reasonable assumption that other al Qaeda cells were operating in the United States and that any day might bring follow-on attacks…

For the government, however, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuclear weapon, but not having any way of telling whether those scraps had any value…

This lack of intelligence led directly to the most extreme fears, which in turn led to extreme measures. Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States. A lack of knowledge forces people to think of worst-case scenarios…

Collecting intelligence rapidly became the highest national priority. Given the genuine and reasonable fears, no action in pursuit of intelligence was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. This led to the authorization of torture, among other things. Torture offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence, or at least — given the time lag on other means — it was something that had to be tried…

Discrete information was not needed, but situational awareness. The United States did not know what it needed to know, it did not know who was of value and who wasn’t, and it did not know how much time it had. Torture thus was not a precise solution to a specific problem: It became an intelligence-gathering technique. The nature of the problem the United States faced forced it into indiscriminate intelligence gathering. When you don’t know what you need to know, you cast a wide net. And when torture is included in the mix, it is cast wide as well.

Stratfor’s analyses are always insightful because they take an extremely realist approach to international relations. And contrary to many pundits, realism is inherently neither conservative nor liberal — the approach merely operates from the assumption that nation-states are usually rational actors that, first and foremost, look out for their practical interests. (Idealism, on the other hand, posits that countries can generally work together to advance philosophies like capitalism, world peace, democracy, or Islamism.)

In the media, the debate over torture — just like every other subject — has always been oversimplified by talking heads who regurgitate soundbites to garner ratings and score points for their political side. On the left, most liberals state that torture violates American ideas and makes the United States no better than countries like Iran and groups like the Taliban. On the right, most conservatives argue that torture prevents terrorist attacks.

Stratfor’s analysis correctly proves that both sides are partially incorrect. Despite what many conservatives believe, the U.S. government most certainly does not have people in custody who know when and where a nuclear bomb is going to explode. (Real life is not an episode of “24.”) Rather, the Bush administration took actions that may have been reasonable at the time because they had no other choice in light of the circumstances. The government needed to gain a lot of intelligence through any means necessary because they had absolutely none. An administration headed by Al Gore or Barack Obama would probably have done the same thing.

However, liberals are correct when they deplore terrorism as an inhumane practice that should never be celebrated when supposedly idealistic countries like the United States are forced to use it. I have yet to see a conservative express any regret for the use of torture even if no other choice existed. To me, torture is like abortion: it is an unfortunate, horrible practice that, unfortunately, must be used occasionally in the real world (which, as most mature people know, is not always a nice place).

Moreover, as Stratfor writes, the Bush administration likely went too far:

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda’s intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure…

The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator’s tool kit.

At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. But the routinization of the extraordinary is the built-in danger of bureaucracy, and what began as a response to unprecedented dangers became part of the process. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn’t.

The Bush administration did not want to move beyond the emergency because the U.S. government wanted the American people to live in fear. The Republicans scared enough soccer moms with terrorism — and gay marriage in conservative and battleground states — to ensure that President Bush would win what was projected to be a close election. In addition, a scared populace would allow the Bush administration to continue enacting questionable legislation like the Patriot Act. It is too early to tell, but the Obama administration may also be playing on fears of an economic meltdown to garner support for the bank bailouts (whether or not they will work).

Whenever the government, the media, or the corporate world tells you to be afraid, you should beware. They are trying to sell you something. In this instance, it was torture.

Iran and Obama

What might Iran think of President Obama? See here.

Conservative Fearmongering

Glenn Greenwald notes some outrageous statements made by right-wing pundits:

But now, only four weeks into the presidency of Barack Obama, they are back — angrier and more chest-beating than ever.  Actually, the mere threat of an Obama presidency was enough to revitalize them from their eight-year slumber, awaken them from their camouflaged, well-armed suburban caves.  The disturbingly ugly atmosphere that marked virtually every Sarah Palin rally had its roots in this cultural resentment, which is why her fear-mongering cultural warnings about Obama’s exotic, threatening otherness — he’s a Muslim-loving, Terrorist-embracing, Rev.-Wright-following Marxist:  who is the real Barack Obama? — resonated so stingingly with the rabid lynch mobs that cheered her on.

With Obama now actually in the Oval Office — and a financial crisis in full force that is generating the exact type of widespread, intense anxiety that typically inflames these cultural resentments — their mask is dropping, has dropped, and they’ve suddenly re-discovered their righteous “principles.”  The week-long CNBC Revolt of the Traders led by McCain voter Rick Santelli and the fledgling little Tea Party movement promoted by the Michelle Malkins of the world are obvious outgrowths of this 1990s mentality, now fortified by the most powerful fuel:  deep economic fear.  But as feisty and fire-breathing as those outbursts are, nothing can match — for pure, illustrative derangement — the discussion below from Glenn Beck’s new Fox show this week, in which he and an array of ex-military and CIA guests ponder (and plot and plan) “war games” for the coming Civil War against Obama-led tyranny.  It really has to be seen to be believed.

The test of whether a media outlet is fair is whether they treat politicians and policies from various parties equally. (Since media outlets are owned and run by humans, who are fallible, it is impossible to be objective.) Fox News routinely fails this test.

If liberals had made comments like Beck’s during the recent Bush presidency, Fox News would have raised hell and denounced everyone as traitors. But since it is conservatives using such rhetoric against President Obama, Fox News deems it to be acceptable. This is a tragic, disgusting farce. Watch the videos of Beck here.

Foreign Policy

Barack Obama might not be a significant change from George W. Bush. See here.

An Idiot or a Liar?

In an interview with ABC News, President Bush makes enough statements on Iraq to make me wonder whether he is a liar or merely oblivious to any facts that his underlings may have hid. Let’s deconstruct the interview:

Bush:One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take …

Raddatz: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

Bush:Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand.

I am just rendered speechless by this exchange.

Bush: Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat.

How, exactly, did Saddam Hussein pose a direct and urgent threat to the United States specifically?

Bush:And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand. And they’re becoming defeated and I think history will say, one, the world was better off without Saddam, two, along with the Iraqi troops we have denied al Qaeda a safe haven because a young democracy is beginning to grow, which will be an important sign for people in the Middle East.

Again, you are conflating two different things: Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They are two completely different actors on the world state, and moreover, they did not even like each other because Al-Qaeda is Islamist and Hussein was a secular, Arab dictator.

Iraq is more of a safe haven for al-Qaeda and their ilk because of the chaos that the United States caused in the country. Al-Qaeda was barely in Iraq — if at all — and they moved there in force after the United States invaded.

Of course, the world is “better off without Saddam Hussein.” But the world would be better off without many dictatorships and autocrats. What made Hussein so special and urgent?

Raddatz: Just let me go back because you brought this up. You said Saddam Hussein posed a threat in the post-9/11 world. They didn’t find weapons of mass destruction.

Bush: That’s true. Everybody thought they had them.

No, not Hans Blix. Bush should read this (emphasis added):

In an interview on Wednesday, Hans Blix, the leader of the team of inspectors in charge of checking for biological and chemical weapons and long-range missiles, acknowledged that there were some limitations to what his team could accomplish even if it was allowed to return.

Mr. Blix said his inspectors might not be able to detect mobile laboratories for producing biological weapons materials, or underground storehouses for weapons substances, if the inspectors did not have information about such sites from the last time they were in Iraq or have not seen traces of them in satellite surveillance photography.

Mr. Blix said he had no evidence at this time that Iraq had such mobile units or storage depots or had pressed ahead with a prohibited weapons program. But he said he could not draw conclusions without inspections.

He argued that the presence of the weapons inspectors in Iraq would have great value because it would make it difficult for Mr. Hussein to complete production and placement of such weapons.

Why did President Bush not let the inspectors back into Iraq to make an accurate determination?

Back to the original article.

Bush: Saddam Hussein was the sworn enemy of the United States. He had been enriched by oil revenues. He was a sponsor of terror.

The United States has many “sworn enemies.” So what? The only way that Iraq sponsored terror was when Hussein’s government would give money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This issue, of course, did not threaten the United States. So, President Bush, what terrorism did Hussein sponsor that posed a threat to the United States or world at large?

Bush: I have never claimed like some said that he — you know, oh, that he was directly involved with the attacks on 9/11, but he did support terrorists.

You and your administration may never have stated directly that Iraq was involved with 9/11, but you certainly conflated the two things enough times in speeches to make that point to a scared populace anyway.

Bush: And, uh, Saddam Hussein had the capability making weapons of mass destruction.

And I have the capability to rob a bank tomorrow because I could buy a ski mask and a gun (if I wanted). That does not mean I am going to do so.

Bush: …And finally we gave Hussein a peaceful way out. It was his choice. And when he refused to allow for inspections, when he refused to disclose or disarm, then a large coalition of troops took him out.

The Iraqi leader offered a way out peacefully:

Saddam Hussein offered to step down and go into exile one month before the invasion of Iraq, it was claimed last night.

Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for £500million ($1billion).

The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President’s Texas ranch.

But, no, President Bush — you wanted a war.

I stopped reading the interview here because I am so disgusted that I might throw my computer out the window.

If the Shoe Fits, Throw it

I’m sure that many Americans have wanted to do far worse to President Bush for everything he has done in the past seven years.

Fear Itself

PETACH TIKVA, Israel — Simon Jenkins, a British pundit, also misses the America of yore:

The attractive feature of the America in which I once lived was its bold self-confidence. To find the survivors of the Bush presidency still cowering in a mental bunker afraid of a bunch of Arabs — and with British ministers for company — strips western democracy of a leadership that should be both heroic and sensible. It is surely an un-American activity.

After living in Israel for almost a year now, I can contrast the American and Israeli approaches to the so-called War on Terror. The former’s response is irrational hysteria while the latter’s reaction is to take rational precautions and live one’s life without unwarranted fear.

Several Palestinian terrorists were caught last week while on their way to bomb the central bus station in Tel Aviv. Most Israelis I knew barely mentioned the event later that day — in fact, most were merely upset at the morning traffic jams that resulted from the increased security on the roads. An Israel friend only told me about the news in passing only after I had mentioned the traffic on the way to work. In fact, I cannot find any archived coverage of the event in The Jerusalem Post or Ha’aretz. The only website I can find with a report — which is linked above — is the extreme, right-wing site WorldNetDaily. To Israelis, this was not even news at all. Israelis, who have a fatalistic streak, have a saying: “Ehyeh beseder (it’ll be okay).” Whatever will happen, will happen. Why worry?

Now, if terrorists had been caught while attempting to bomb a major bus station in New York, I am sure that Mayor Bloomberg would declare martial law akin to what Bruce Willis did in the pre-9/11 film “The Seige” (which, by the way, is now eerie to watch). The U.S. government is not only overreacting in terms of major policy — see, for example, the Patriot Act — it even stretches down to ordinary Americans like myself.

A few years ago, I was returning to the United States from a vacation in Israel, and a Passport Control official in New York said, “You have been to a lot of foreign countries.” (My U.S. passport has visas from Egypt, England, India, and Israel.) I said that I travel frequently on vacation and with my M.B.A. program at college. “What do you do now?” he asked. I said that I worked as a journalist in Boston and that I was studying towards my M.B.A. “Where?” he asked. “Suffolk University,” I replied. After that, he returned my passport and let me go. Now, this was the response that a born-and-raised U.S. citizen received – I can only imagine the treatment that Passport Control gives tourists from the Middle East and southwestern Asia.

But this unwarranted fear even stretches down to ordinary Americans. How many people were — and are — convinced that President-elect Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who will side with “the terrorists”? (Or even the Antichrist!) How many Americans are suspicious of every Muslim they see on the street? How many people are still afraid to fly? A relative of mine in the suburbs in the Midwest once saw a small, gift-wrapped package on her doorstep when she arrived home from work. She was immediately suspicious and worried whether she should open it. After she did, it turned out to be a free sample of some beauty product that a local company was putting on doorsteps.

The primary reason for this fear has been the rhetoric from the U.S. government that is repeated by many pundits, usually conservative ones, in the media. As Jenkins notes, “virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaeda.” There is an old saying that ignorance leads to fear — and most Americans are ignorant of the nature of terrorism.

Although nearly all of today’s terrorists are fanatical Muslims, terrorism is not an Islamic threat. Although all of these terrorists receive indirect inspiration from a twisted version of their religion, most of their direct motivations are more realistic and localized. Osama bin Laden was upset that Saudi Arabia allowed the United States to use the country as a base of operations during the first Gulf War. The recent attacks in Mumbai seem to be result of the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and the alleged mistreatment of Muslims in India. Terrorism in Iraq — defined as attacks against civilians, not against the U.S. military — is essentially a civil war both between the Sunni and Shi’a sects of Islam as well as between political and tribal factions fighting for power. But why do terrorists use this method of warfare? Well, to be blunt, it is effective.

But the rhetoric from the U.S. government and American media outlets hides this fact. They have turned “the terrorists” into a single, giant, black monster with tentacles that can stretch everywhere — even into suburban America. But this gives way too much credit towards various, individual groups of ragtag zealots hiding in caves and basements thousands of miles away.

Americans, do not be afraid. Live your lives as through 9/11 never occurred. Ehyeh besder.

Torture Harms, Not Helps

This is your assigned reading for the day. Money quote: “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

The Rule of Law

RISHON LEZION, Israel — Thomas Friedman points out a positive development in Iraq:

Here’s a story you don’t see very often. Iraq’s highest court told the Iraqi Parliament last Monday that it had no right to strip one of its members of immunity so he could be prosecuted for an alleged crime: visiting Israel for a seminar on counterterrorism. The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.

That’s not all. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Umma al-Iraqiyya carried an open letter signed by 400 Iraqi intellectuals, both Kurdish and Arab, defending Alusi. That takes a lot of courage and a lot of press freedom. I can’t imagine any other Arab country today where independent judges would tell the government it could not prosecute a parliamentarian for visiting Israel — and intellectuals would openly defend him in the press.

One thing that critics of Israel forget is that this country is a nation of laws, just like the United States. All citizens — Jews, Muslims, Arabs, or Christians — are equal under the law, and that is what the founders of the country desired. Of course, Israeli citizens who are not Jews do face discrimination in their daily lives, but that is similar to that which black and Hispanic people face in America — it is not an official, government-endorsed system of second-class citizenship like apartheid in South Africa. Israel also has an independent judiciary — one Supreme Court justice is an Arab as well — that has frequently overruled Israel’s parliament on laws that would have allegedly discriminated against non-Jewish citizens.

There are many problems facing the Arab world, but one of the most significant is that most of the countries are ruled by authoritarian despots who are not checked by an independent judiciary and primarily have only their own interests in mind. It is impossible for a civil society and functioning economy to grow in this environment. It is heartening to see that these seeds are beginning to grow in Iraq.

2025

What will the world look like in seventeen years? See here for the U.S. Department of National Intelligence’s answer.

A Man of Honor

I have never lost my respect for Colin Powell, even after he was misled by the Bush administration into appearing before the United Nations to provide (false) evidence of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Here is why Powell is a man of honor and decency.

Letter From Israel: The Optimistic Future

Eighth in an ongoing series

RISHON LEZION, Israel – I was mugged twice in the nine years that I lived in Boston. After seeing the reactions of nearby Bostonians at the time and Israelis to whom I have told the stories now, I can understand why Israel is more secure than people realize.

—
Copley Square and East Boston

Boston is usually safe – as long as one is not alone in parts of the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods at night – because it is a college town. Roughly one-fourth of the city is comprised of people between the ages of 18 and 22. People walk around at night, even alone, and everyone normally feels safe.

While I was working at my first journalism job out of college in 2002 as a staff reporter for The Boston Courant, a weekly neighborhood newspaper, I was on my way to the Copley Square subway station to cover a Boston Public Health Commission meeting in the Fenway neighborhood. On the way, I stopped to have a cigarette before walking down the stairs to the station. (Yes, it was a bad habit. Kids, don’t ever start.)

Two young men walked up to me, and I can only describe them as stereotypical ghetto thugs. (I hate to describe them in this manner, but it is necessary to set the scene accurately.) One was a small-but-built guy who wore baggy clothes, and the other was a large, fat guy who needed to lean against a post next to me because he had obviously smoked too much marijuana.

The first guy stood right in front of my and stared into my eyes. “What do you have in your pockets?” he demanded in a rough, menacing voice. I froze, partly out of surprise and partly out of fear. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. “That’s all,” I said with a shrug. He grabbed it out of my hands, and the two thugs walked away. I was glad that I had intentionally not mentioned my wallet and mobile phone.

The thing I remember most about this experience is that it happened at rush hour. There were dozens of people within a few hundred feet, and no one said or did anything. After the two guys walked away, I looked around because people were looking in my direction. Everyone nearby lowered his head and turned away when we made eye contact.

Two years later, I found myself alone on the Fourth of July because I had just flown back from visiting my family in Illinois. My friends were out of town, so I went to a neighborhood pub in East Boston to celebrate. I was walking home when two men, seemingly out of the blue, grabbed me from behind, held me by the shoulders, and placed a knife across the front of my neck. I offered my wallet and cell phone, which they took and then ran away. As I stumbled home (my legs felt half-paralyzed out of shock), I saw that a small group of people were lounging on their front porch not very far away. They had done nothing to help. In addition, I was obviously shaken and possibly stumbling, but they did not even ask whether I was all right.

—
A Single Community

In several of my prior letters, I described the strong civil society that has developed in Israel as a result of Jewish tradition and tribal identification, along with the history of the communal farms named kibbutzim and the desire to unify in the face of numerous, perceived threats. I fully realized this while telling the two prior stories to my Israeli friends.

Israelis are shocked and horrified to hear that no one helped me while I was being mugged (or possibly something worse). They told me that, in Israel, if someone were being attacked on the street, every single
person nearby would run over to help – and most likely, to be blunt, kick the crap out of the bad guy. Everyone looks out for everyone else. (It also helps that nearly all Israelis have some degree of army training as a result of the mandatory military service after high school here. As I heard it put once somewhere, an Israeli has more courage in his finger than most people have in their entire bodies.)

In addition, violent crime is also extremely rare in Israel. In the eight months that I have lived here, I have yet to see a news report on a random mugging, murder, or rape. Despite what people in the West see on the news, Israel is extremely safe. Terrorism has been extremely rare for years, and more people die in traffic accidents each year than the number who have been killed in all wars and terrorist attacks combined. Most violence is either related to the Russian mafia, traffic accidents, or drunken brawls in bars. No one, for example, ever breaks into a random house and kills or rapes the person inside. Everyone walks around at night, even alone. On some level, everyone looks out for everyone. Statistically, Israel is safer than most major American cities – the chance of being killed in a suicide bombing might be one in ten thousand while the chance of being murdered in many parts of the United States might be one in five thousand.

In major American cities, a person can feel alone even though he lives among millions of people. This never happens in Israel. People are care about everyone (unless they work in customer service). It is hard to describe the level of open affection in interpersonal relations in Israel to someone who has never been here, but I will try.

People are warm and friendly to a degree that I have never seen anywhere else. During conversations, people touch and hug each other all the time. Everyone (even men) embraces and kisses on the cheek when they meet someone – sometimes even if it is for the first time. Just the other night, a good male friend of mine gave me a hug from behind and a kiss on the shoulder when he saw me sitting at a local pub. Whenever someone is eating at a restaurant or somewhere in public, nearly everyone who passes by – whether he is a friend or stranger – will tell him, “Behteyahvon!” This is the Hebrew phrase that roughly translates to “Bon appetite!”

At first these differences are uncomfortable to people who, like me, grew up in the United States, where people have larger amounts of private, personal space between each other and people, especially men, are less affectionate in public (or at all). But after one becomes used to the cultural differences, it becomes very heartwarming and endearing.

While I wrote about some discouraging trends in modern Israeli society in my prior letter, it is still true that people here are generally friendly and warm (most of the time). After all, Israelis tend to believe, to varying degrees, that they only have each other in the entire world.

The primary reason that I am optimistic about Israel’s future is that I have seen and understood the Israeli mindset. The close, civil society here brought Israel through threats of extermination in the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, as well as through two intifadas and sixty years of a turbulent existence. Israelis can get through anything – even the political, social, and religious differences described in my prior letters – because they know that they will always have each other.

Still, many of the specific problems I have mentioned seem to be improving, especially when one compares Israel today to decades ago.

—
Brighter than it Seems

– Israel is much more secure. Although Israeli and American conservatives always claim that Israel is constantly facing threats to its very existence, this is no longer true. If Israel had lost any of the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, the country would likely have been invaded and destroyed by the surrounding Arab countries. (Many Israelis began digging their own graves in 1967, and rabbis started reciting Psalms in the Israeli legislature.)

However, everything has changed with most of countries that border Israel. The Jewish state is at peace with Egypt and Jordan. Iraq is no longer a threat since the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. Saudi Arabia is pursuing a peace plan to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lebanon is occupied with its own internal battle with Hizbollah. Despite Syria’s connection to Iran, the country is having peace talks with Israel. Syria’s military alone is no match for the Jewish state.

Israel does face threats from Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. However, these terrorist groups do not threaten Israel’s existence. Rockets fired into southwestern and northern Israel do kill a few people and cause minor damage in those places, but they cannot destroy the country. Since Israel built the controversial separation barrier between Israel proper and the West Bank, the number of suicide bombings has fallen to practically zero. (Suicide bombings, although horrific, cannot destroy a country either.)

– Iran will not nuke Israel. The Jewish state would face an existential threat from Iranian nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic extremists in the country’s government. But Israel will never let that become a possibility. The Jewish state destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and (allegedly) Syria’s in 2007. Israel, with or without U.S. assistance, will do the same to Iran. This country does not — and cannot — take threats lightly.

– Everyone knows how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Except for Israeli and Palestinian extremists, nearly all people agree that a peace plan will have the following: an Israeli withdrawal from all or most of the West Bank, a division of Jerusalem, and a cessation of terrorist attacks. The problem is with implementation: Minor, ultra-Orthodox political parties in Israeli governing coalitions veto any of these withdrawals, and the Palestinians have been fighting a low-grade civil war amongst themselves between the Fatah and Hamas political parties.

However, the fact that the vast majority of Israelis now recognize what a peace plan must entail is a good start. As the conflict continues year after year, more and more Israelis and Palestinians will start to move towards the center. No one, no matter how much of an ideologue, wants to live in a pressure-cooker forever. In the end, practical reality usually trumps impractical idealism.

– Israeli society is becoming less fractured. As I wrote in a prior letter, there has been much social strife and division between Ashkenazi Jews (people with a European-Jewish culture), Mizrahi Jews (people with a Middle East-Jewish culture), and non-Jewish Israelis like Russians and Arabs. But this is slowly dissipating.

Israel is a small country, so everyone interacts with everyone all of the time. So people from these different communities frequently fall in love and have children. Now, for example, I have friends here who are half-Polish and half-Moroccan, half-Indian and half-American, and half-Iraqi and half-Romanian. The terms “Ashkenazi” and “Mizrahi” are increasingly obsolete.

When non-Jewish Russians moved to Israel following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s through a loophole in immigration law, they faced much discrimination. But their children, now in their teens and early twenties, are as Israeli as Jewish Israelis. The first language of these non-Jews is Hebrew, not Russian. Their personalities are very Israeli, not Russian. As a result, they are just as Israeli as secular, Israeli Jews, and they fit into society very easily.

Although it will always be difficult for Arab Israelis to feel at home in a Jewish state, I think they are slowly moving in that direction. For example, I once saw a group of Arabs sitting in a hospital while I was visiting a friend’s family member there. Surprisingly enough, they were speaking Hebrew amongst themselves. This can only be a good sign.

– The influence of the ultra-Orthodox might be decreasing. As I wrote in a prior letter, religion in Israel is extremely polarized. Everyone is either completely secular or wholly Orthodox, and even the Orthodox world is divided:

    • Modern Orthodox (also called National Orthodox in Israel) Jews live in the modern world while remaining completely observant. They are also the primary inspiration behind the settlement movement in the West Bank.
    • Charedi (also called Ultra-Orthodox) Jews live in isolated neighborhoods and block out the outside world while rejecting any modernization of Judaism. While they do not recognize the State of Israel, they still rely on government subsidies instead of working to pay for their children, and they control most of the official religious establishment. (I discussed them in my first letter.)
    • Hasidic Jews who are very mystical and believe that their founding rabbi is the Messiah, even though he happens to be dead.

The ultra-Orthodox movement has been very harmful to Israel. They receive little secular education, they do not serve in the military, they work very little, they have numerous children (sometimes ten or more), and they survive on taxpayer dollars (er, shekels). Their rabbis in government positions are increasingly discriminatory against all other forms of Judaism, even other types of Orthodox Judaism. In charedi neighborhoods, people will throw stones at you if you drive through there on Shabbat or do anything else that violates Orthodox Jewish law.

But the pendulum might be starting to swing in the other direction. Incoming Prime Minister Tzipi Livni might be able to form a governing coalition that does not, for once, include Shas, the most powerful ultra-Orthodox political party. The finance minister passed a budget over charedi objections this year that did not increase the amount of money ultra-Orthodox families receive each month to pay for their children. Moreover, the charedi communities are not self-sustaining. Many of them have relied on wealthy parents and grandparents, but those funds are disappearing as the older generation passes away and the money is spent. Once the ultra-Orthodox community starts to lose influence, then Israel can start to move towards the center religiously.

– The economy is gaining strength. Israel is largely a desert that is devoid of natural resources, so the country has had to rely mainly on one asset: Israeli brains. As a result, the country has become a worldwide leader in fields like high-tech and biotechnology that is on the same level as Silicon Valley and Bangalore, India. Israel is a country that is succeeding in a globalized world.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman once theorized, no two countries that have a McDonald’s have ever gone to war with each other.* The reasoning is that countries need to have a large middle class to have fast food establishments, and a place with a stable middle class wages war less often. (When people have more stuff, they are less willing to risk losing it through conflict. People are more willing to fight if they have nothing to lose.)

Well, Israel has many McDonald’s and Burger Kings. As a result of Israel’s growing economy, the country is generally becoming richer (although the gap between the rich and poor is also rising). Since the middle class is growing in Israel, it is likely that the public will generally be more willing to make necessary sacrifices for peace. This is also why it is important for the international community – and Israel – to help improve the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well. If there were many McDonald’s in Gaza, perhaps the Palestinians there would be less likely to support Hamas.

—
Signing Off, For Now

Well, this seems like an appropriate place to end my series, at least for now. I will be flying to the United States soon for a few weeks, and I’ll be back in Israel in November. It will be interesting to see what will happen over the next several months.

* The recent war between Russia and Georgia may be an exception.

Addendum: In response to this essay, a friend in Boston e-mailed me to say that the city is becoming more violent — people are now assulted in broad daylight in Downtown Crossing. This is very sad.

Prior letter: No Way Out (or, Stuck in the 1970s)

Bin Laden Might Be Winning

I found this CNN article from 2004, and it sent a chill down my spine:

The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group’s goal is to force America into bankruptcy…

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.”

“We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,” bin Laden said…

“All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations,” bin Laden said.

Now look at this: America’s national debt is now more than $10 trillion. (When proper accounting methods are applied, it is close to $60 trillion.) Is Bin Laden winning?

Questions for the Candidates

In the first part of an essay e-mailed to subscribers, Stratfor founder George Friedman poses ten questions that Barack Obama and John McCain should answer:

If the United States removes its forces from Iraq slowly as both of you advocate, where will the troops come from to deal with Afghanistan and protect allies in the former Soviet Union?

The Russians sent 120,000 troops to Afghanistan and failed to pacify the country. How many troops do you think are necessary?

Do you believe al Qaeda prime is still active and worth pursuing?

Do you believe the Iranians are capable of producing a deliverable nuclear weapon during your term in office?

How do you plan to persuade the Pakistani government to go after the Taliban, and what support can you provide them if they do?

Do you believe the United States should station troops in the Baltic states, in Ukraine and Georgia as well as in other friendly countries to protect them from Russia?

Do you feel that NATO remains a viable alliance, and are the Europeans carrying enough of the burden?

Do you believe that Mexico represents a national security issue for the United States?

Do you believe that China represents a strategic challenge to the United States?

Do you feel that there has been tension between the United States and Israel over the Georgia issue?

I wonder what they would say.

Obama’s Plan

Here is Barack Obama’s plan for Iraq. What do you think?