On the heels of the controversy about this week’s perhaps terror alerts in Europe, I reflected on a recent experience with the very real costs of what you might call the terrorist-hysteria complex.
Two weeks ago, I was in Afghanistan on a U.S. government-sponsored mission to observe the Parliamentary elections on Saturday, September 18th. The day before, I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse and watched a dangerous drama unfold just outside. Our security guards strung a black curtain along our balcony rail to block prying eyes. Through two of the panels, I watched as a member of the Afghan National Police crouched behind a wall of olive-green sandbags about a hundred feet away and aimed his automatic rifle at a curve in the road to the right.
We were in Panjshir, a valley about two and a half hours north of Kabul. At that moment, a mullah up the road was leading a protest at an elementary school in response to the burning of a Koran by by two men in Tennessee named Bob Old and Danny Allen. (This was different from Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who canceled his burning.)
You probably never heard about the Tennessee story. When you watch the video, it’s mind-blowing that these two characters somehow animated events oceans away. But seven thousand miles away, amped up both by a local hair-trigger media and Afghan opportunists looking to stir up trouble, Bob Old and Danny Allen — names we will almost certainly never hear again — created real danger and real expense.
On the mission with me were two security professionals from the UK and the U.S., two Afghan security men, a translator, and my partner, all funded by a U.S. aid agency and U.S. taxpayer dollars. We were supposed to be out in the field, interviewing government officials, asking probing questions about the quality of the election, the depth of the rule of law. I should have been helping to determine whether the billions of dollars and gallons of blood our warfighters have poured into Afghanistan is worth it.
But we instead spent the day stuck in our guest house, pawns in the mad world of stunt-driven politics. There was a striking parallel between the stunts back in America and the Taliban’s efforts in Afghanistan. Both were aimed at controlling the actions of millions through discrete acts of violence. Both take advantage of the nexus of blogs, a 24-hour news cycle, and political opportunism. And both have real consequences not only on our perception of reality, but on policy.
This post is the first in a series about the Progressive Military
It has now been nine years since the 9/11 attacks, and since that day the average American has heard an awful lot about the military. We are fighting extremism worldwide and still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet many progressives remain uncomfortable with the military, often assuming that it is a conservative organization because political conservatives are so eager to identify themselves with our troops.
This is a series about how the military is a more progressive organization than many people give it credit for. It will help progressives better appreciate the many ways that the U.S. Military operates and accomplishes progressive goals. It is also aimed at conservatives who implicitly trust the military and might see issues like climate change, healthcare, economic opportunity and energy policy as vital issues.
The military is a more progressive organization than many give it credit for and it is my hope in this series of articles to do just that.
Despite the daily attention to military issues, it is striking to me how little those who never served in the military know about it. After I was already in the Army a few years, my father, who retired after 23 years of military service, met a friend of mine. He told him that I was at Fort Lewis and went up to Seattle on weekends. He was surprised and asked, ‘you mean they let them out?’
Since 1975 only around one percent of the population has worn the uniform. Many have family members or friends who served, but this only gives them a bit more than the basic knowledge the majority of Americans have. For most, opinions and attitudes toward the military are developed by the news media, TV shows, and movies. Many of our elected leaders, despite their claims to the contrary, have little more knowledge than the general population and surprisingly few of them have served themselves though they make very important decisions involving the military every day. Though others have claimed it falsely, there are only fourIraq warveteransin Congress.
This, however, doesn’t seem to keep them from claiming to speak for the military. The debate about the Iraq ‘surge’ and the debate about the future of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2008 election prompted many on the right to claim ‘you can’t support the troops without supporting the war.’ I served in Iraq and Kuwait during these debates. I didn’t support the war in Iraq, but I fought as hard as I could in it every day, receiving a Purple Heart in a suicide bombing. I served with others who did support it and did the same. Servicemembers do their duty no matter their personal opinion. Anyone claiming to presume that they know what servicemembers believe doesn’t understand the concept of duty.
And yet, the recent debate on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ centered on conservatives claiming troops don’t want to worry about sharing their ‘foxhole’ with a homosexual. Our troops haven’t dug ‘foxholes’ in quite a while. This comment exhibits an opinion based on the stereotypical swaggering, macho draftee of Hollywood films. The truth is our all-volunteer military today is made of service members that see themselves as military professionals. They have an opinion about the matter, but once the decision has been made they accept it and won’t be distracted, especially in combat, by such trivial matters as the sexual orientation of their squadmate. This professionalism was previously exhibited when the military desegregated, despite opposition. Sixty years later, troops of all colors and genders serve well beside one another.
A closer look at the policies and culture of the U.S. military today shows that it is more progressive than many traditionally think. There are many lessons progressives can draw on from today’s military, and conservatives’ trust of the military on national security issues should translate to trust on other issues.
The military healthcare system shows that government can do big healthcare well and efficiently; it leads the way on addressing energy independence, efficiency, and the repercussions of climate change; despite its size and controversies, it has shown real commitment to providing economic opportunity; and it has an culture of innovation and learning, among other examples. It is my hope in this series of articles to point out where the military is exhibiting progressive thinking and what lessons we can draw from the military.
Next week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will sit down with his Chinese counterpart, General Liang Guanglie, in Hanoi. Relations between China and the US – at least militarily – have been frosty recently after the US inked an arms deal with Taiwan. This meeting would suggest that no matter how upset either side becomes, each realizes that their long-term interests are better served by dialogue, not confrontation.
The talks take place as China is attempting to consolidate a sphere of influence over the South and East China Seas. It’s likely that China views these areas as part of an “anti-access/area denial” strategy. Beijing realizes that its military couldn’t prevail in a conflict against the United States, but by controlling these strategic bodies of water, it could deny American access to them in the event of conflict over Taiwan.
The good news is that your buddies at PPI are all over it. We’ve teamed up with Mike Chase, a professor at the Naval War College and fellow at the Truman National Security project, to produce a policy memo on China’s anti-access/area denial strategy.
He seeks to answer the following questions:
How and why did China’s approach shift in this new direction?
What are the most potent anti-access and area denial capabilities in Beijing’s arsenal?
And what are the implications for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region?
He concludes:
Beijing responded by increasing its defense budget, deploying conventional ballistic missiles across from Taiwan and working on a variety of capabilities intended to target American aircraft carriers. In short, Beijing embraced technologies designed to limit America’s access to critical battlefield areas.
[…]
An AA/AD strategy has limits. Though AA/AD raises the barrier on a decision to use force, once a decision to use force is made, China could not count on prevailing quickly or at low cost.
Then, he offers the following recommendations for US policymakers:
Developing new military capabilities like long-range carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicles and new operational concepts like “Air Sea Battle”—an emerging concept that the military is studying to sustain power-projection in AA/AD environments.
Ongoing diplomatic attention to decreasing tensions within the U.S.-Sino relationship over the Taiwan and South China Sea issues.
Increased attention to the global commons of cyber and space. America must continue to develop defensive and offensive capabilities to ensure network continuity in case of an information offensive, and practice operating without the full range of cyber and space assets.
Sensitivity to China’s sensitivities. Perhaps most important, attempts to strengthen deterrence must be carefully calibrated so that they will not inadvertently fuel China’s worst fears about U.S. intentions, which would only risk further exacerbating the mutual strategic suspicion that is already threatening to make one of the most important bilateral in the world a rocky one.
France, 15 of September, 2010. The Pension Reform passes in the National Assembly after months of struggle. The obstruction instigated by the left parties leads to one of these cinema-like scenes when the right-oriented President of the Lower House (Bernard Accoyer) decides to suspend the debates, prompting call for his resignation by the Socialists – when not accusing the current government of fascism and a putsch.
The issue of reforming the pension system is in itself a subject of concern for all aging western democracies. France has an almost completely repartition-based system where working citizens contribute a percentage of their wages to the retirement pensions of the previous worker-generation. No need to explain that with the population pyramid, every developed country is facing nowadays, fewer young workers will have to pay for a “papy-boom” generation that is living longer and longer.
But what is also at issue here is the behavior of the opposition party, this vital nerve of every democracy, which faces the “to oppose or to propose” dilemma: How to make needed concessions without having them considered as surrender of principles?
After years of failed attempt at reforms, the French government has proposed extending the retirement contribution years and postponing the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018. Even if the Socialists officially accept lengthening the retirement contribution years, they fight against the loss of the symbolic legal age at which you can chose to quit work. The extreme left wing, for its part, is simply denying the reality of the age pyramid: They definitely want to “freeze the counters” up to 40 years of contribution, arguing that people deserve to experience healthy retirement years and that their departure would leave more work to the next generation.
The Socialist opposition clearly decided to apply the “opposing for opposing” strategy, which not only works against their interest, but also prevents any possibility of constructive democratic debates leading to a meaningful compromise.
Such an attitude makes the opposition seem unconstructive and static. At best, it only strengthens the extremes which seem to give voters a clearer choice – even if often extravagant. In the long haul, it weakens democracy not to have opposition parties willing and able to be serious partners in debate and deliberation.
Moreover, crying wolf at every proposition from the party in power turns the opposition into background noise citizens no longer bother to pay attention to. Consequently, it gives the governing party a freer hand in proposing and implementing policies — an opportunity the current French Government did not miss when passing bills against minorities without facing any reaction worthy of being called opposition.
Ultimately, it is up to the voters to reject opposition merely for the sake of opposition, and the extremism it builds. This is not always easy. Strong opposition can provide the appeal of moral clarity and righteous indignation. But it leads nowhere productive. Hard choices are ahead, but they only get harder when opposition parties take on a reflexive opposition stance and make compromise impossible.
When the US State Department issued a terror alert for European travel this week, it raised the inevitable questions: Should I travel to Europe? Where should I avoid? Is this thing really serious?
To make sense of this alert, a history lesson is in order.
This history lesson takes us back to Christmas, 1988 in Frankfurt, West Germany. Back in the days before the classified interwebs, information didn’t flow particularly quickly between US government entities. Photocopying and physical circulation were standard practices. So, when something big came up, specific information might not be widely distributed. Government workers weren’t exactly Tweeting it to one another on SIPRnet (the SECRET-level USG computer network). It’s hard to believe, but back in the day, everyone didn’t know everything about each other all the time.
In the days before the holiday, the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt received vague threat information about a potential terrorist attack targeting American citizens. The information didn’t state much, other than that the strike would emanate from Germany or possibly London. The Regional Security Officer posted the threat information on a public bulletin board in the consulate, and many American government workers changed their Christmas travel plans.
As you’ve probably figured out by now, the travel warning turned out to be credible – the Lockerbie bombing of December 21, 1988 killed 190 American citizens, 270 total, traveling from London to JFK airport. The flight had originated in Frankfurt, where the bomb was originally smuggled aboard.
While it was of course good that certain American government employees had avoided the catastrophe, a policy problem arose. In short, there was a double standard in place: Americans (and their families) who happened to work for the government in Frankfurt as everything from intelligence officers to economic advisors to custodians avoided the tragedy due only to their preferential position. Americans elsewhere in Europe, whether in government or not, weren’t warned.
The resulting “No Double Standard” policy emerged. Generally, it says that when the U.S. government receives what it deems credible threat information, it has a duty to alert all Americans, not just those who work for the government. The State Department alert issued about travel to Europe over the weekend fulfills the “No Double Standard” requirement.
So, does this mean that the current intelligence is as specific as that which preceded the Lockerbie bombing? No. However, it does mean that the government has credible, but possibly vague, information about a possible attack.
What does “credible” mean, then? Media reports indicate that the information was gleaned from an individual detained in Pakistan. Based on his access to information, officials have assessed that his reporting likely contains a grain of truth – that a group of operatives is interested in conducting a Mumbai-style attack in Europe.
However, they do not know when, where, or – quite critically – how developed the plot is or whether the alleged plotters have the operational capability to pull something off. Authorities just believe their source is telling the truth.
Issuing the alert also puts potential plotters on their heels – European security services’ guard is raised and targets will be harder to access, which might just dissuade an attack in the first place.
Bottom line is that U.S. and European governments have vague but credible information about a discussion of a terrorist plot. Whether the alleged plotters are serious and capable of executing it is likely yet to be determined. Issuing the alert is a legal requirement designed to raise awareness among the public at large, not necessarily an indication that a terrorist attack is certain to occur.
In late July, I was sitting in a Seattle restaurant with my uncle and his wife. Our conversation ebbed and flowed among the many problems our country faces –recidivism, poverty, Afghanistan, economic uncertainty – you name it, and I assure you it came up. Since I do the whole “progressive national security thing” for a living, we invariably circled back to those themes.
Though an oversimplification by any stretch, it’s probably safe to say my uncle and his wife classify themselves as “west coast liberals,” or a bit further left on than yours truly at least on military issues. They had, however, spent time in Italy in 2008 teaching English to military officers, and enjoyed the experience.
“You know,” Uncle Bill said, “The only other experience I’ve had with the military was when I was 17. I marched in to see your grandfather and told him that he had to sign these papers so I could join up and go to Vietnam. Of course, he didn’t even bother to drop his paper and said ‘no’. But it’s probably one of the most patriotic things I’ve done in my life.”
The American public’s lack of familiarity with the military, something we subsequently brought up, continues to be a huge problem. Because military recruiting is confined to a few areas of the country – notably poorer areas of the South and Midwest – most of the country has little “skin in the game” when it comes to major foreign policy decisions involving military deployments.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates feels just about the same. He spoke about the issue yesterday at Duke University:
“With each passing decade, fewer and fewer Americans know someone with military experience in their family or social circle…. There is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally and geographically have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend.”
For rational economic reasons, our forces are concentrated in several areas throughout the country – southern Virginia, San Diego, North Carolina, and Texas are amongst the largest – and DoD remains the bedrock of many of those communities.
While that may not change, the next Secretary of Defense should make it a priority to expand the recruiting base. This is a big argument that needs much more fleshing out, but it’s worth beginning to discuss now: Our military should draw from a more even cross-section of American society to inject a more diverse set of ideas into military culture and policy, which will further benefit the country by engaging those diverse recruits’ families and friends in pressing foreign and military policy debates. How many officers have Ivy League educations these days, anyway?
Ordinarily, U.S. presidents don’t make headlines by extolling liberty and democracy before an international audience. But when President Obama did just that yesterday at the United Nations, it signaled a welcome shift from his previous reticence on these themes.
Here’s the key passage:
Yet experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty; that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply, democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens. And I believe that truth will only grow stronger in a world where the borders between nations are blurred.
For sure, in his 2009 Cairo speech and elsewhere, the President has argued that individual freedom and democracy are universal aspirations. But in general, the administration’s voice has often seemed muted when it comes to standing up for liberal values.
Critics, for example, have cited Obama’s apparent downgrading of human rights in relations with China; U.S. eagerness to “reset” relations with Russia even as that country slides back into authoritarianism; and, the White House’s failure to offer full-throated support to Iran’s “green” movement which arose in protest over a rigged 2009 election.
The administration’s ambivalence about America’s responsibility to abet the spread of liberal democracy is no mystery. It’s a reaction to George W. Bush’s ill-conceived “freedom agenda”, which seemed to conflate U. S. democracy promotion with the use of force in Iraq and threats of “regime change” in hostile countries like Iran and North Korea. Bush’s unmodulated, even messianic, rhetoric about supporting democratic revolutions everywhere rattled America’s foes but also unnerved our friends as well.
President Obama has devoted his first two years to reassuring the world that America is returning to its tradition of cooperative internationalism, and he’s largely succeeded. The U.S. “brand” has been refurbished and America’s global approval ratings have risen.
But in rectifying its predecessor’s mistakes, this administration sometimes leaned too far in the opposition direction. At times it seemed to embrace foreign policy “realism”, which emphasizes material interests and geopolitics and downplays the role of political values and structures in shaping countries’ international conduct. In a telling omission, the administration has organized its foreign policy around the “three Ds” – diplomacy, development and defense – conspicuously excluding a fourth D for democracy.
But realism is antithetical to liberalism, which is why it has been most often associated with Republicans like Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft. From Woodrow Wilson’s day on, Democrats have argued that America can best advance its interests and ideals by throwing her weight on the side of individual rights, economic freedom and democracy. Their guiding philosophy is not realism but liberal internationalism, which holds that a freer world is a safer, more prosperous world.
Obama seemed to reaffirm that outlook yesterday. At the same time, the President continued to be clear that his administration’s approach to supporting democracy would be nothing like Bush’s. Picking up a theme introduced in recent speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he promised greater U.S. support for embattled civil society organizations in authoritarian countries.
Finally, Obama stressed that promoting democracy is not something America should do unilaterally, but in concert with new democracies as well as old allies. That was a pointed challenge to countries like South Africa and some Latin American countries, who have been reluctant to speak out against human rights abuses and tyrannical rule in their own neighborhoods.
In all, it was an important speech that realigned U.S. foreign policy with core values that have defined it at its best, and led to its greatest triumphs.
Sure, everyone knows that this election season’s foil is the economy, stupid. Much like 2008, no issue will dominate voters’ minds more than the relative emptiness of their pocketbooks. But that quiet scraping you hear in the distance, my friends, is the sound of national security trying to claw its way into this year’s election. Thanks to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars”, it just might get a chip in the game.
Woodward’s book, previewed by articles today in the Washington Post (Woodward’s employer) and New York Times, apparently focuses on the administration’s decision-making process throughout the three-month Afghanistan strategy review that took place in late 2009. The full volume isn’t due out until next week, but suffice it to say that the papers have gravitated to the more salacious details:
— ZING! Petraeus thinks Alexrod’s a spin doctor!
— BAM! Obama doesn’t listen to his generals!
— DOINK! Karzai is manic depressive and pops pills!
… or something.
With an election just weeks away, this is chum in shark-infested conservative waters.
But POW! After digging past the juicy headlines, it’s evident that there’s a deeper message here, too: The progressive base, feeling like an abandoned date on prom-night over Obama’s Afghanistan decision and hardly motivated to support Democrats this fall, might just be heartened to learn of the president’s refusal to write the generals a blank check.
And if that means jazzing up more progressive election volunteers until election day, it might explain why the White House would grant Woodward such extensive access in the first place. I mean, they didn’t let him sit down with the president to make them look bad.
I have a friend who canceled plans last year to play recreational football because, “it’s Wednesday, and I usually get home early on Wednesdays and like to have dinner ready for my wife when she gets home from work.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” a second friend lamented, “I wish I could email that sentence to the You of 2006 and see what he has to say about your cojones.”
Such is John McCain on “don’t ask don’t tell.” Here’s an interview with him in 2006 saying that “the day the leadership of the military comes to me and says, we oughta change the policy, then I think we oughta seriously consider changing it.” Where are his cojones?
As I highlighted yesterday, the military brass has answered McCain’s call. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and retired General Colin Powell have all signaled a willingness to change the policy. Back in March of this year, General Petraeus echoed McCain’s 2006 language almost verbatim, saying ““I believe the time has come to consider a change to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”
So you’d think that when the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, America’s most respected retired flag officer and its most respected battlefield commander all endorse a change to DADT, McCain would be good to his word.
Instead, McCain is moving the goal posts. For McCain, all of a sudden it’s not good enough that the military leadership has let its views be known, because he now claims that by voting on the measure, the Senate would be “ignoring the troops”. This is a reference to an ongoing survey of active duty troops on their views on DADT, which McCain is working to discredit anyway, just in case it doesn’t say what he wants it to (and frankly, who knows what he wants it to say at this point.)
To be clear, the Pentagon should absolutely solicit the views of active duty personnel as a critical factor in this debate. However, it is neither the only nor most important input. Results of any survey must be weighed against historical averages, adjusted for bias and put in perspective.
Might the social norms of macho military culture influence soldiers to indicate false discomfort about serving with homosexuals? Should the opinion of an 18 year old private matter as much as a battle-tested Four-Star general with 40 years of military experience? Keep in mind that the military’s rigid command structure regularly demands that its leaders make choices in the best interests of the country. And those leaders have clearly spoken.
John McCain’s consistent inconsistencies (ha!) have been well documented by my friend Max Bergmann. It’s curious why McCain, ex-maverick and having successfully beaten back a Tea Party challenge in his recent Arizona primary, continues down this orthodox conservative path. Let’s hope John McCain remembers the “him” of 2006. Or even better, the McCain of 2000.
A few events over the last few weeks continue to highlight the importance of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy the Obama administration is on the verge of repealing – that is, provided members of his Senate caucus don’t flip out before Tuesday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee is set to vote on the measure in the defense authorization bill and move it to a full Senate vote. The swing votes in committee may be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Rs-ME), who have said they’re unsure how they’ll vote.
DADT was always meant as a transitional policy from the Clinton era, born out of a fight the 42nd president picked (and essentially lost) with the military brass. It’s time to move our military into the 21st century — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has endorsed its end, as has Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. So has Colin Powell.
I worked for the Pentagon for about five years, and I know and worked with homosexual members of the armed forces. Their orientation never affected their ability to serve, or their subordinates’ ability to respect them. Countries including Britain, Denmark, and Israel have all realized that being gay and being in the military is a simply a non-issue.
Last week, Jonathan Hopkins, an Army captain honorably discharged this August for being gay, had this to say in the NYT following his forced separation from the military services:
In my case, after the military learned from others that I was gay, I served for 14 more months during investigations and administrative actions to discharge me. Everyone knew, so, essentially, I lived for more than a year in a post-D.A.D.T. work environment.
…
Amid all of that, the unit continued to function and I continued to be respected for the work I did. Many, from both companies I commanded, approached me to say that they didn’t care if I was gay — they thought I was one of the best commanders they’d ever had. And unbeknownst to me, many had guessed I was probably gay all along. Most didn’t care about my sexuality. I was accepted by most of them, as was my boyfriend, and I had never been happier in the military. Nothing collapsed, no one stopped talking to me, the Earth spun on its axis, and the unit prepared to fight another day.
John Nagl, president of the bipartisan CNAS, commented on Hopkins, his former charge, in Defense News:
Jonathan is the third combat veteran I personally know who has left the Army under the terms of DADT. Collectively, they represent almost a decade of combat experience, a big handful of Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars, service as aide-de-camps to general officers and as platoon leaders and company commanders in combat, and the investment of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. They have offered blood, sweat, and tears in defense of a nation that discriminates against them for no good reason.
This policy must end.
The cause has even received the attention of Lady Gaga, heretofore known as the spokeswoman of our times, who called for an end DADT at a rally in Collins’ Maine. She’s the most followed person on Twitter, and if she can motivate a few fans to show up, Tweet, and call the Senator, it might just make a difference
The House has already voted to repeal this highly discriminatory policy, and the Senate hangs in the balance. If the issue is left to the next Congress, there’s no telling if a more conservative Senate would ever get around to it, which is why tomorrow’s vote is crucial. With the rise of the Tea Party and general rightward slant of the conservative movement today, it’s little wonder that Senator Collins is gun-shy about reiterating her support of a DADT repeal. One hopes she musters the courage to do what’s right.
On the first leg of his journey, Schwarzenegger cut a deal with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to loan California funds for the rail project. (The exact amount was not revealed.) In return, the governor dangled the prospect that California would choose Japanese trainsets and a Japanese operator to run the railroad.
With this understanding in hand, the ex-actor marched to Beijing and struck what may be a better deal with the Chinese Rail Ministry. The agency announced that it could offer California a “complete package,” including financing, to build the high-speed railway. “What other nations don’t have, we have,” bragged a ministry spokesman. “What they have, we have better.”
Then it was off to Korea, where the governor rodeon Korea’s fastest train, the KTX, with Hyundai executives and met with President Lee Myung-bak. Afterwards, he offered the assessment that Korea and California would “be a terrific partnership” and asked his hosts to be sure to bid on the California project.
Schwarzenegger is on to an old idea. In the 19th century, European governments, as well as private investors, helped finance America’s railroads. Competition was often ferocious between the different syndicates, which kept overall costs down while enriching the Wall Street middlemen who set up the investment tranches.
Schwarzenegger’s strategy of letting experienced rail operators propose financial deals to California in return for potential entry into its market comes in sharp contrast to the approach in Washington.
Ever since it proposed a high-speed rail program in April 2009, the Obama administration has kept foreign rail builders at arm’s length and peddled the notion that American manufacturers can upscale their expertise and produce their own state-of-the-art train systems.
So far, no domestic company has even remotely stepped up to this task. Pullman-Standard, the last U.S. manufacturer to build rail passenger cars, exited the business 25 years ago. General Electric makes world-class locomotives, but these are freight locomotives unsuited for speeds above 90 mph.
Schwarzenegger realizes that having invested tens of billions of dollars in their high-speed-rail industry, governments in Asia and Europe are ready to fight for a chunk of his state’s $40-billion project. Jobs and manufacturing opportunities in California will flow naturally from the demands of the new service – as long as it gets started.
Right now, nobody in Washington seems to know how to pay for high-speed rail. A paralysis is taking shape as the federal debt grows, with no long-range funding set up. Maybe the “governator’s” shrewd negotiations with Asian officials this week will bring some fresh ideas to policymakers.
Two good essays in the last few days reflect on America’s overreaction to terrorism. Ted Koppel, who in addition to having amazing hair, is one of this country’s most under-appreciated journalists. He writes:
Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, “black sites,” extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it — more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting — for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence — is one of our few growth industries. …
If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.”
Fareed Zakaria, whose hair is less awesome but still pretty good, brings up the same issue:
This campaign to spread a sense of imminent danger has fueled a climate of fear and anger. It has created suspicions about U.S. Muslims — who are more assimilated than in any other country in the world. Ironically, this is precisely the intent of terrorism. Bin Laden knew he could never weaken America directly, even if he blew up a dozen buildings or ships. But he could provoke an overreaction by which America weakened itself.
Both are spot on and quickly shift the question to how to avoid overreacting. Since much of the overreaction is born from political posturing (witness Pete Hoekstra’s bizarre comments in the wake of the Christmas Day attempt), it’s going to be tough. How is any leader supposed to dismiss a charge that he’s not doing enough to keep the country safe?
Part of the solution is understanding the terrorist threat, and how successful our defensive measures will realistically be. Zakaria’s column again hits the mark: “[We] are not 100 percent safe, nor will we ever be. Open societies and modern technology combine to create a permanent danger.”
And while it is possible to contain the threat, permanently eliminating it is a long term project that must address terrorism’s root causes. Beginning that national dialogue is a key to promote this understanding, which in turn, will calibrate more measured responses to terrorism.
I remember the feeling I had when first visiting Pearl Harbor, and again years later when flying into Manhattan just after September 11, 2001. There’s an eerie quietness about the ships buried underwater, and I still see the faces of people I met in the World Trade Center.
We were warned about those attacks. We may not have known the exact details, but in retrospect, we could have done more – much more – to prevent them. Today, we face a similar threat in cyberspace.
While we don’t know the exact details, we know something is coming, and the devastation could be far more deadly.
A cyber attack – by terrorists or a state – could look like sudden power outages, scrambled data in financial systems, air traffic accidents, water contamination, and mass media propaganda about all of the above. All of this can be done on computers from halfway across the globe. We’ve already seen examples of it – tests, so to speak – in other countries and within smaller networks. In 2008, Russian hackers took down Georgian government websites in an effort to throw off the administration during turf conflicts. Hundreds of Lithuanian servers went down earlier in the year in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack also by Russian hackers flexing their muscles in protest of the law banning public display of Soviet era artifacts. According to U.S. government sources, other countries have seen attacks on their power grids.
The nightmare scenario could involve air strikes with no warning systems enabled, missiles arriving from unknown origins. Dirty bombs could get through port security as logic bombs crush the remaining networks. Meanwhile, with financial systems crippled and damaged infrastructure, panic would ensue and local governments would be ill-equipped to deal with so many simultaneous problems. We could find ourselves with multiple major cities suffering from Katrina-like aftermaths – massive numbers of homeless, injured, without power or resources, while looters take to the streets.
Though no terrorist organization is yet known to have this capacity, most experts say we have less than five years before the first major cyber attack on U.S. soil. In a recent meeting with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand , she told a group of bloggers she thought five years would be a generous timeline. We know hacker cells operating in Russia and China already have the skills and the tools necessary, as do some in the Middle East. Terrorists may be next.
Over the past year, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have begun to take the issue more seriously, appointing a new White House Cyber Security Advisor and establishing the U.S. Cyber Command. While this marks a dramatic improvement, it is far from enough. We know logic bombs have already been placed into critical networks but what we don’t know is: when will they explode? And who put them there?
Fortunately, some members of Congress are working to address the situation. Both S. 1438, Fostering a Global Response to Cyber Attacks Act (Gillibrand) and S. 3193, International Cyberspace and Cybersecurity Coordination Act of 2010 (Kerry) address the international coordination necessary to seek and obstruct attackers. This is an important step in both preventing attacks and bringing the perpetrators to justice, although another more aggressive strategy of pre-emptive reactions to attacker stands on shaky legal ground.
We also must ready our military Cyber Command. Captain Daryl Hancock of the U.S. Fleet CYBERCOM (U.S. Navy 10th Fleet) spoke about their progress at the International Conference on Cyber Security recently, emphasizing they will be operational on schedule for next month. Still, we need more resources to manage future threats. H.R. 4061, The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2010 (Lipinsky) and S. 773, The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (Rockefeller & Snowe), attempt to address this, but training thousands of people to act as first responders to cyber attacks that could come in a variety of forms takes time and resources.
Since the Internet resides on a network of nodes owned and operated by a wide range of entities, our security rests in the hands of many people. Developing a nationwide attitude of awareness and preparation will reduce the likelihood that a large-scale cyber attack will have lasting consequences like the disasters of the past. We have the opportunity now to reduce the possible destruction that could result from these attacks. It’s in our hands, and in the hands of those who represent us.
This Saturday is the 9th anniversary of 9/11. Normally, I’d try to commemorate that horrible, epochal day as best as I can here at home. But this Saturday, I’ll instead be stepping off a plane in Dubai, along with several dozen other Americans, on the way to Kabul for a USAID-sponsored mission to monitor elections for the wolesi jirga, Afghanistan’s lower house of Parliament. Friends and family, equally freaked out by the prospect of me, a lawyer, heading into a war zone, keep asking me how I feel about this mission.
Bittersweet, I tell them. I have too many friends who have served–are serving–in Afghanistan to be either blithe about the mission’s dangers or self-congratulatory about the ultimate significance of election-monitoring. Arthur, a Marine who served in heavy combat in the south two years ago. William, an Army captain on his third tour, working on intelligence in the east. Drew, a soldier who suffered devastating injuries in an IED attack, only to volunteer for a second tour. All helping to get this fledgling democracy out of the nest.
But there’s enthusiasm, as well, for elections and national security have always been mingled for me. On September 11, 2001, I was a student at the University of Virginia School of Law. After classes were canceled, we watched from a lecture room, horrified, as the towers burned. I was an impressionable “1L” law student, reading through classic texts like Oliver Wendell Holmes’ The Common Law. It was terribly clear to me that Al Qaeda was attacking precisely what we were studying–a system that elevated laws above theology, process over power.
Two months later, I traveled to Alexandria, Virginia, to serve as a member of the “election protection” team for the gubernatorial campaign of Mark Warner. I think we all felt, in some small way, that by ensuring that our local election system functioned freely and fairly, we were at least shoring up the mortar between the blocks that mightier men had laid.
In 2000, the nation witnessed gross incompetence, malfeasance, and corruption in Florida’s election system, from the “butterfly ballot” design to illegitimate purging of the voter rolls. National Democratic lawyers vowed never again, and “election protection” programs were born. Along with New Jersey, Virginia had the nation’s only off-year elections the next year, and so hundreds of lawyers and law students were trained in electoral law and farmed out to precincts across Virginia, to help voters and election officials ensure that elections ran smoothly and fairly.
In the Warner campaign’s election day “boiler room,” I handled a regional desk, fielding calls about complaints and helping our staff and volunteers resolve them. The victories were small but certain. A police cruiser was sitting outside an urban precinct in Henrico County, potentially intimidating voters; we called the sheriff’s office and had the car moved. A voter was improperly turned away for lacking ID in a rural county; we got them to go back and cast a provisional ballot.
Ever since then, when Election Day comes around, I always find myself working on election protection in Virginia. In 2004, I coordinated the Kerry campaign’s statewide program in Virginia, helping to recruit and train over 800 lawyers statewide, and resolving hundreds of incidents. In 2008, interest surged, and thousands of lawyers and law students volunteered in Virginia. This year, I’m again on the Democratic Party of Virginia’s election protection steering committee.
Ever since that awful autumn in 2001, election protection has become inextricably entwined in my mind with the broader goal of ensuring our nation’s security. Years after the 2001 experience, I found myself writing a book arguing that we could not promote democracy abroad unless we understood the essential importance of constitutionalism–the culture of civic republican values we all shoulder.
These goals are today lighting our nation’s path through the wilds of Afghanistan. It’s curious that democracy would be the central front in the war on terror. But it is. We are not after only security in Afghanistan. We are not only decapitating Al Qaeda. We partner with plenty of authoritarian regimes around the world that militate against terrorists. In Afghanistan, we have wanted more. We have wanted democracy, and we have plowed blood and treasure into building it.
The key question in Afghanistan is how the last eight years can prove a solid foundation for building democracy. As a lawyer, I frequently counsel clients on the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy originally was a military term, the notion of using crippling force to deliver commanding victories. But in civilian contexts, strategy often requires a more nuanced and holistic iteration.
Such is the case with civil society and democracy in Afghanistan. Political scientists often describe the “consolidation” of immature democracies into mature ones. Today Afghanistan faces life-threatening expansions of the same questions we encounter in our election protection programs. This year in Afghanistan, almost a thousand precincts out of the 6,500 originally announced have already been closed due to security concerns. And compared with the 2009 parliamentary elections, many precincts will be less democratic. Nangahar, for instance, in the east, will have 128 fewer precincts open. Kandahar will have 32 fewer.
Candidates and their workers are being openly attacked, intimidated, and harassed. Three candidates have been killed by the Taliban. In the west, several workers for one candidate were kidnapped. In recent days, the Taliban has told candidates in Parwan province that they will cut off the fingers of anyone who votes for them. Women candidates are openly threatened.
Yet there are signs of progress. When you look at the photos of candidates available at this USAID website, all of whom have “electoral signs” for the illiterate to vote by, you cannot help but be moved by their bravery, their ordinariness, the hope in their eyes. The famously violent Helmand Province will have 22 more precincts open than last year. Hundreds of female candidates are running for office. In the cities and the rural provinces, candidates are openly campaigning with cell-phone messages, posters, and paid media.
Constitutionalism–a civic culture where ordinary citizens commit to their role in strengthening democracy and the rule of law–is one of America’s proudest gifts to the world. Thomas Jefferson once asserted that America’s republicanism was to be found “Not in the constitution, but merely in the spirit of the people.” The spirit of Afghanistan’s people for their democracy appears to be at a tipping-point: bright, but flickering, like a candle in wind.
The strategic question is how to help them tend their own flame. In a country where three quarters of the citizens are illiterate; where lines of authority usually run through tribes to an elder; where the geography and topography are severely carved up by mountains and valleys, and where both corruption and courage are cultural mores, can Afghans themselves consolidate a constitutional democracy?
The answer, I believe, is yes. But the more important question is how. These are practical questions, not ideological ones, and they’re what we should all be looking to help answer as we observe these elections. After so many years, it’s facts we need, not rhetoric, in service of strategy, not just tactics. Like Henrico County in Virginia, Afghanis must continue to turn the metaphorical police cruisers away from their precincts. As we are still learning, even in the United States, elections must always be protected.
On September 11, 2001, I had just arrived in Bucharest for dissertation research. I was conducting an interview when the planes hit. As I ran around the city, trying to find a television with news in English to learn what was happening, a Turkish worker noticed my Jewish visage, stopped me in the street, and told me that the Jews had done it. The conspiracy theory only gained ground. A week later, as I walked to Bucharest’s old synagogue for Rosh Hashana services, I was harassed for the terrorist attack multiple times by passers-by.
Again it is Rosh Hashana, and again, September 11 looms – this time, with the backdrop of Koran-burning and anger at plans for a mosque. As we step into a new year, I wonder what, if anything, has been learned. Prejudice against Muslims has grown in America. We even have our own bin Laden – a Florida pastor who has decided that God wants him to burn the holy book of the Islamic “infidels.”
Did I just say that – comparing a pastor ekeing out a living selling furniture on e-bay, to the mastermind terrorist? Yes. The pastor knows that his act will bring about the deaths of scores, if not hundreds or thousands, in sectarian violence from Afghanistan to Africa. The ripple effects will be felt in violence against Christian missionaries who have lived among the Afghan people for decades. It will be seen in violence against Christian communities living along the violent belt that marks the split between Christian and Muslim Africa. And it will be felt by the innocent Muslims who are caught in the inevitable backlash.
Twenty years ago, this would not have happened. A pastor leading a flock of fifty could indeed have decided to burn Korans – but no one would have known, outside, perhaps, of his townspeople. The internet’s ability to super-empower individuals, to spread YouTube videos to millions instantaneously, to fan the flames of a 24 hour news cycle hungry for controversy, has allowed a single man with the tiniest of pulpits to receive direct messages from the President of the United States and the General in charge of a distant theater of war. It is the same phenomenon that allowed Osama bin Laden to gain an international following while camped in Sudan, Afghanistan, and the borderlands of Pakistan.
The new media reality is not something we yet know how to handle. How can a country be responsible for every action of every person within its borders – when a single ideologue can catch fire and affect the deepest fibers of our foreign policy? How can our leaders communicate when the same words are heard in radically different ways by voters at home and listeners abroad – and yet both listen to the same speeches?
But at least we, as a foreign policy community, are talking about what to do in this new media reality. There are other cultural shifts we are not acknowledging. One of the most significant is that we are living through another period of worldwide religious revival. Across all major religions, numbers are growing, and intensity of belief is deepening. The anomie and confusion of modern life pushes some to slow food and organic gardening, others to deepen their faith and intensify their search for a higher order. The effects of this spiritual revival are being felt in country after country, from America to Turkey. This deepening of faith causes fights within religions as much as between them. Ironically, if there is a clash of civilizations, Jones, the Florida pastor, and bin Laden would actually have more in common than the moderates within both Islam and Christianity.
But there is a crucial difference. Christian pastors from around the world have denounced Jones, loudly. He has received personal calls from the heads of other Christian groups—as well as the head of the former church he founded in Germany — asking him not to desecrate the Koran. Our countries’ political leaders have spoken against his actions in the most public of fora – and so have those within his faith. There are terrific Muslim organizations that also condemn violence within their religion. They need to be helped by those within their faith. They need to be joined by politicians and others within Islam, who are the only ones with standing to effectively speak against the violence in their own ranks. The difference in tone and denunciation between Jones and bin Laden is striking – and disturbing, nine years after 9/11.
As a Jew, I have my own tribe, my own faith and beliefs. But as a Jew with a particularly Jewish-looking mug, I know enough to be worried by increasing religiosity that is married to increasing intolerance. The internet is super-empowering the world’s most intolerant leaders, and as the current religious revival continues, this trend is only going to get worse. It is going to continue to be a particular problem in Islam, until moderates feel strongly enough to speak out just as unequivocally and publicly as Christians are condemning Jones. It’s time we, as a foreign policy community, look this reality in the eye, and address it directly.
Tomorrow we pause to remember, as we have for nine September mornings, the lives and memories of those lost on September 11th, 2001. It is hard to believe that the attacks of that autumn day are now approaching a decade in our past. It just does not seem that long ago. And yet, even with the passage of time, the legacy and the impact of the attacks on our national psyche and our national politics have not become much clearer.
If you visit Ground Zero today you see a bustling site of activity with skyscrapers rising, a transportation hub growing, and the National 9/11 Memorial taking shape with deep, cascading pools visible and trees now in the ground. The portion of the Pentagon damaged in the attacks has been rebuilt, the entire building has been refurbished in the ensuing years, and the memorial park at the site of the impact is one of the most peaceful places in a monument-filled Washington, D.C. The Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania is being constructed as a national memorial under the care of the National Park Service and will be dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the attacks next year. These are the physical scars healing ever-so-slowly.
But some of the wounds remain raw, as evidenced by the raging battle over the Islamic community center in lower Manhattan and the proposed “Koran-burning” by a Florida pastor. We have seen a marked increase in the anti-Islamic rhetoric in our national discourse. A recent Time/CNN poll showed that 61 percent of Americans are opposed to the Park 51 Islamic center near Ground Zero. The same poll showed that one in three Americans think Muslims should be banned from running for President and that one in four mistakenly believe that President Obama—a Christian—is a Muslim (I’m still unclear on what the problem is even if he was a Muslim). Newt Gingrich, a potential Republican presidential candidate, went on Fox News and—breathtakingly—equated Muslims to Nazis.
To our detriment, the politicization of Ground Zero and the demonization of the broader Muslim-American community are seemingly creeping into the mainstream. When General Petraeus, the American/NATO commander of forces in Afghanistan, has to pull his focus from the field of battle to ask a Florida preacher not to endanger American troops already risking their lives in combat, I would hope it would be enough for us to take a collective step back from the slippery slope of demagoguery.
September 11th is the day to take this collective step back from the edge. It is not a day for partisanship and division. It is a day of remembrance, of collective mourning and most importantly, a day of national unity when every American, regardless of religious faith and ethnicity, stops to rekindle the better angels of their soul. The physical scars of the 9/11 attacks have mostly healed. But we need to do a much better job— both as a nation and as individuals—of healing our emotions as well. The nearly 3,000 men and women who lost their lives nine years ago that morning deserve nothing less.
With his own state government deep in the red, Schwarzenegger needs cash to build a $40-billion high-speed railroad between San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. Instead of resigning himself to critics’ attacks that now is not the moment to spend money on rail, the governor went abroad to strengthen California’s ties with overseas train builders and bankers. At a time when folks in Washington are scratching their heads over how to pay for high-speed rail, the Governor’s trip offers an instructive way forward.
