Puzzle pieces

The good news, such as it is, is that there's a kind of clarity starting to come through (about Iraq if not the wider US foreign policy myopia). I like how this Newsweek commentary , while consistent with a lot of stuff I read and hear, manages to find the common thread between the two.

Healthy

as I was leaving Central Market a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that anyone reading this blog might think that I live on lean pockets and diet vanilla Pepsi's.

So in the interest of setting the record straight, here are the 33 items I've bought at the grocery store in the past couple weeks:

Berry water
Orange water
Coca-Cola zero
Pibb zero
Lean pockets meatball sub
Lean pockets ham and cheese
Lean pockets and egg and cheese

... okay, so I guess that's where you might get that idea. But wait, there's more!

Organic 1% milk
Instant oatmeal (yeah, well I'm lazy)
Viogner
Strawberries
Baby carrots
Apples
Tomatoes (rosso bruno)
Green peppers
Red plums
Broccoli
Bananas
Cherries
Ezekiel 4:9 organic biblical cereal (with a name like that you have to try it)
Unsalted pretzels
Miso soup
Blueberries
Baby carrots (gotta love 'em)
Apples
Tomato
Organic black plums
Black Russian bread
Mixed greens
Pineapple (whole)
More berry water
More orange water

So you see, it's actually pretty good, I just don't talk about the rest of it.

I'll let you know how the Ezekiel cereal is.

--- ---

Didn't get a chance to talk much about the whole Middle East thing while in Alabama. T was busy, and KP and I got waylaid discussing domestic politics at home. Oh well. It was good to see people, and the conversation was enjoyable.

Next time, I'll remember to bring the red.

Talking about talking

Every day at lunch, when I head off on my walk to Subway, I make a strangely deliberate choice about what topic my mind will gnaw on for the next 24 hours. At some times, my soundtrack is the latest downloaded album or some project I'm working on. Sometimes it's the Kojo Nnamdi show's Tech Tuesday. Or maybe it's the news of the day.

For the past week it's been the news of the day. And the news of the day, of course, has been Israel and Lebanon.

...

You know, I see what Katherine means about writing style versus reading style. I write much more formally than I speak. And when I'm doing these dictated blogs I've been trying to dictate the sort of things that I would normally type. And man, that's a pain in the and. Almost as much of a pain in the half as having to program profanity into this software.

So. Where was I? Ah yes. Pain in the ass.

That's better.

I guess there's a lesson in all of this about how tools and technology help dictate the form of art (or communication or media... call it what you will). But that's not this blog.

I want to write something about Israel and Lebanon. I have the sense of what it will be, just like I had a sense of what the immigration blog would be. But in a way the immigration one would be easy because, though I'm not sure I can articulate it, and I'm not sure what decisions I would make if I were in position to do so, I do feel like I've got my facts straight and I see pretty clearly the tension between the competing goods that is almost always at the heart of really difficult issues. Like I said in one of the blogs from a couple weeks ago, the difficulties are technical ones not moral ones.

Israel-Lebanon is more cloudy to me. All the normal platitudes apply... there's plenty of blame to go around, we need a compromise, etc..

...

Aside: another --- much less serious --- thing I've been thinking about is Tone. Specifically, I read two kinds of things every day: serious news and comparatively light hearted blog banter. Maybe it comes from years of writing at work, but when I write I usually write like I'm putting together a position paper for management. Or maybe a serious news analysis for an editorial page. The lighthearted blog banter doesn't flow from my fingers. But in some way, I'd like to have more of that here.

...

What made me think about that is that while on one level my mind is doing this analysis of Israel foreign-policy, on another level I'm thinking "how in the hell do all these people have such strong conviction about what should be done in the Middle East? It reminds me of the mid-level managers in a Dilbert corporation to excommunicate all the devilish details from the slamdunk PowerPoint so that they can maintain a clarity of vision unencumbered by that inconvenient thing that the rest of us call 'reality'."

And hence the whole Tone thing... you talk about the problem, or do you talk about the way people talk about the problem?

I'm hoping that in some Jackson Pollock sort of way this gradually starts to make sense.

So the thing that is striking to me... (okay here's this writing versus speaking thing again: while I'm thinking about what is striking to me, I'm also examining why the oversimplification... wrong word but there isn't a word for the right word... of the Israeli-Lebanese situation is important enough to me to become the de facto subject of the blog... and realizing why, the speaking me considers that detour fair game... but for now will demur)... the thing that is striking me is how those with expertise in this subject portray a fiendishly complex game of Pick-Up Sticks where everyone acts rationally in the pursuit of their own interests, the politicians but even more so the talking heads (and here's a clue: the public) boil it down to a bumper sticker.

Full disclosure: I've said in the past that if you can't put it on a bumper sticker, you don't really understand the problem. And you know what, I don't really understand the problem. But for everyone who thinks they do, I'm at a total loss as to how they got there.

Anyone see the connection between the immigration comments above and this? I did give a clue...

Making public comments about something that you don't fully understand, where you don't feel knowledgeable enough to pass moral judgment on those involved, doing so in an environment where most people seem to have passed moral judgment within 24 hours... well, that makes me nervous.

So rather than talking about the problem, I talk about talking about the problem.

Barring any unexpected responsibilities from work this week, I think I'm headed to Alabama. Sounds like Katherine might be coming. I'm sure my parents will have opinion about this. Tyson too. And then there's the two 8-hour drives.

I hope everyone has their talking caps on. I'll bring the drinks.

I look forward, nervously, to moving towards clarity.

Arctic Monkeys

In case you didn't know. The lead singer has a Jake Gyllenhaal thing going on, don't ya think?



and one for Charles



and the famous one

the Iran one

I promise something lighter soon...

============================

I keep wanting to write a blog about immigration... I mean a thoughtful blog at least. That's the thing about the Middle East; it has a habit of not staying quiet when you want it to.

So this one's about Iran.

If you Google Iran, you'll probably see a lot of stories about their nuclear program. That's the wrong story. Now, I'm not exactly sure what the right story is, but I am willing to give it a try. Here goes.

First of all, I've never been to Iran. I don't know that much about it. Annette told me that young women in Iran go nightclubbing with Western men in full burkas. The women I mean. So this is just what I hear.

I hear Israel invaded Lebanon today. Well maybe yesterday. You may have heard that too. I also hear that Iraq is getting worse. I mean, like worse worse. Coincidence?

Well, no. Israel is pissed that three of its soldiers have been captured. Lots more were killed, but as we all have seen, captives make better television than dead bodies.

Let's review the Israeli geography. Israel is bordered by Jordan on the east, Egypt on the south, the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and Lebanon on the north. There are three areas of contested land, one bordering each of these countries. The border with Egypt has the Gaza Strip. If I recall correctly, Israel has pretty much gotten out of there (or at least gotten their troops out of there). The border to the east with Jordan is the West Bank. Much much bigger area. Very contentious. The border to the north with Lebanon has the Golan Heights.

OK. Israel took the West Bank (like the others) after a war back in, oh I don't know, the 50s or 60s. Israel is kind of overcrowded, so once they had the land it was like this big new subdivision. I assume that land had been Jordan's, at least looking at the map. It sure as heck wasn't Israel's though. Everybody has known all along that Israel has to give most if not all of that land back if it wants to live in peace with its neighbors. Not to mention the fact that most of the people living there are Palestinian, not Jewish, so there's this whole growing political bloc that the Israeli government realizes it needs to re-district out of Israel. Most Israelis seem willing to give most of the land back, but they'd like to get something for it. You might think that the promise of peace would be good enough, but given that Israel had been attacked by its Arab neighbors not long after its Jewish people had been attacked by their European governments, it is understandably paranoid. After all, once given up, land is harder to take back than a promise.

For the past few decades, Israel has alternated between a "let's hit back harder than them" and a "let's make a deal with them" strategy. Hitting back hard had the benefit of changing facts on the ground in Israel's favor, but resulted in international isolation, and ultimately did little to advance the cause of peace. Call it a tough negotiating stance for an eventual peace. On the other hand, making a deal was contingent upon a willingness of those fighting Israel to stop fighting. Let's divide those fighters into three groups. One group demands the total destruction of Israel (more on them later). Another group would be willing to stop fighting if Israel gives everything back --- lands, prisoners, etc.. The remaining group just wants peace. The problem with making a deal was that Israel didn't want to give everything back, so any deal would be contingent on the third group controlling the first two. Even if Israel were willing to give everything back, it's not clear whether that first group could be controlled... and this of course has been Israel's excuse. The failure of Yasser Arafat to sign off on the deal President Clinton negotiated with Yitzhak Rabin reinforced the view that the Palestinians (and their backers) were, as Israeli conservatives had been, more interested in changing facts on the ground through force than in making a deal.

Israelis, believing that the Palestinians could neither be reasoned with nor beaten into submission, supported a third approach championed by Ariel Sharon, who had to start a new political party to enact it. The new approach can be thought of as an unnegotiated settlement. Recognizing they would not get a promise of peace, and recognizing they had to give most of the land back, they decided to build a wall with most of the land on the other side of it. The wall thereby replaced a promise with something more tangible.

What about the Palestinians? International efforts to broker a peace had resulted in significant inflows of money to the Palestinian Authority. With guaranteed money, a righteous political/military banner to wrap around themselves, and little actual dependence on the people they represented, the Palestinian Authority was increasingly corrupt. Hamas, a military/social/religious Palestinian organization, was by contrast effective at delivering services to the people. The Israeli "go it alone" approach to peace further diminished the stature of the existing government. Under Western pressure to democratize, elections for leadership of the Palestinian Authority resulted in Hamas rising to power. The problem of course is that Hamas, when they're not feeding the poor, likes to blow things up in Israel.

Iran? I'm getting to that, hold your horses.

Now, the previous Palestinian leadership (Fatah) had been funded by all those countries around the world that wanted peace in the Middle East. Where does Hamas get its money? Syria. Funding Hamas allows Syria to both burnish its image in the Muslim world by helping take care of the poor in Palestine, while exerting military pressure on Israel without having to actually go to war. In fact, it seems that the kidnapping by Hamas of an Israeli soldier a week or two ago was not carried out by the "local" Hamas militants (who after all are part of the government now), but rather by a Syrian-sponsored Hamas faction.

You see, peace between Israel and the Palestinians isn't necessarily in Syria's interest. Remember that one.

Iran? Yeah yeah I'm getting there.

So Hamas in Israel comes into power and starts getting all moderate, talking about peace. So Syrian Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier, and asks for Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange. Israel will do the exchange, they have in the past, but in order to discourage future kidnappings and make the exchange palatable with the Israeli public, they have to blow a hell of a lot of stuff up first. The net effect? A deterioration of the peace process.

Meanwhile to the north of Israel, Hezbollah (oh thank God that's in the voice-recognition dictionary) sits in the south of Lebanon and shoots rockets over the border. Fortunately for all involved, the rockets don't go very farand there's not much worth hitting in northern Israel. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is a religious/military/social organization that is part of the Lebanese government. Like Fatah, the Lebanese government is generally pro-Western (as these things go). Also like Fatah, they are quite corrupt. I get the sense that the previous Syrian puppet government was also a corrupt, but when Syria assassinated the anti-Syrian opposition leader, they got kicked out. Anyway, again you have a relatively pro-Western corrupt government talking peace and a hard-working externally-funded militant Islamic group vying for power.

Where Hamas is an increasingly but by no means completely detached arm of Syria, Hezbollah is a highly integrated arm of the Iran (see, I told you we get here!). Iran sees Syria use Hamas to kidnap an Israeli soldier and upset the peace process (or to be fair, upset the status quo). So what do they do? Hezbollah kidnaps 2 Israeli soldiers!

When Hamas did its kidnapping, Israel buzzed jets over the home of Syrian President Bashir Asad, and blew up bridges at the southern end of the Gaza Strip effectively sealing off the border with the Egypt (to trap the kidnappers and the soldier in the Israeli controlled territory).

Unlike Syria, Iran has a proper army. Israel isn't going to buzz the palace of the Iranian President (whose name almost certainly is not in the voice-recognition dictionary, but sounds a lot like "Mach mood I. Modena shot"). And unlike Hamas, the Hezbollah party in power in Lebanon really is of the "wipe Israel off the face of the map" persuasion. So when Hezbollah kidnaps an Israeli soldier, Israel goes after Hezbollah. Which is to say, Israel goes after Lebanon.

Today this took the form of Israel blockading Lebanon in the Mediterranean Sea, bombing all the runways at the Beirut airport, and blowing up the highway to Damascus, Syria. Oh I left something out: amidst all this, Hezbollah found some bigger rockets and landed one in the Israeli city of Haifa. Now, the Lebanese government (including the Hezbollah politicians) say they aren't responsible for the kidnappings or the rockets, but lacking better targets Israel isn't splitting hairs.

This overreaction by Israel is calculated. Israel is already despised by most of the world (outside the United States), while Lebanon is kind of popular. Furthermore, they are very dependent on tourism and sure as heck can't afford a war. So Israel's calculation is that the political classes in Lebanon, while always happy to see Israel punished, will form a backlash against Hezbollah for going off on their own and trying to start a war with Israel.

Why is all this important? Well, just as Syria is motivated to undermine the peace process in Israel to maintain their influence in the Hamas organization and more generally in the region, Iran also has its reasons for wanting to see the conflict continue.

I always wondered why, if people want to live in peace (as I believe most people do), why it is that the conflict in the Middle East has continued decade after decade. I've also wondered why the conflict in Iraq has worsened year after year.

Today I listened to the best single discussion of the situation in the Middle East, especially in Iraq. What became clear, to me at least, is that the Middle East is a region with many countries vying for power. The removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq left a vacuum that each neighbor has sought to fill through financing and other support of allied factions on the ground. Just as in Israel, as long as Iraq's neighbors find it in their interest for the conflict to continue, there is little that we will be able to do to resolve it.

Look at this from the perspective of Iran. Iran hasn't historically gotten along with its neighbors. It spent 10 years at war with Iraq. Then the US waltzes in and destroys Iran's political rivals to the west and east (Iraq, the Taliban). Furthermore, the US announces that it intends to eliminate the existing power structure in Iraq (leaving a vacuum) and replace it with a political model that it expects to eventually lead to the overthrow of neighboring governments. And then the US stakes its credibility on the outcome.

So say you are Iran. You don't like the US. You don't like Israel. You'd like to have nuclear weapons (that would shut the Israelis up). All you have to do is funnel some weapons and money across the border into Iraq and wait. The US will have to stay to maintain order. That will make them unpopular, undermine the legitimacy of the government, not to mention giving you a rare opportunity to take a shot at them. If you get bored, you can start trouble in Israel, further isolating the US. Eventually the US will come to realize that their only way out is to either admit defeat or to ask you to stop making trouble. It's not like they can afford to start another war with you. They could try to bully you, but all that would do is make all those moderate reformists who have been criticizing you look unpatriotic. And when they come asking, you can tell them there will be a cost. That cost? Allowing them to have a nuclear program.

I mean, come on. In retrospect it's like we walked in, put a bull's-eye on our back, and asked nobody to take a shot. I suppose the logic was, complete collapse of Iraq is in nobody's interest, so everyone will work together to stabilize it. What that logic fails to recognize is that, by going it alone, the United States put itself in a position where it cannot really afford to call the region's bluff. Iran doesn't want Iraq to trigger a regional war. But it can afford to live with a civil war there, and United States cannot. So we need their help. And they know it.

So our options are:

1) Hope that the majority of Iraqis (especially Sunnis) can be persuaded that the government is legitimate, thereby channeling their dissent into the political process. This is our current approach.

2) Concede that the current government will not be viewed as legitimate, and thus treat the situation as a civil war. Abandon pretenses of pure democracy and pressure existing political factions to arrive at a compromise. This may or may not be consistent with the existing democratic institutions that have been put in place. To be blunt, this may mean turning our back on the government we set up.

3) Concede that the current government will not be viewed as legitimate so long as its neighbors consider its existence to be counter to their interests. Engage in diplomacy/bargaining with the very regimes that we once sought to undermine, seeking their support for the current government or an acceptable version thereof. This may mean sacrificing other interests in the region, such as allowing Iran's nuclear program, reducing our influence in Iraq, or in some way diminishing our support for Israel.

4) Concede that the situation in Iraq is effectively a civil war, and that the costs of buying off its neighbors outweigh the human costs and the costs to US prestige of allowing (as one caller compared to forest fires) "this thing to burn itself out." This would almost certainly further damage the United States' standing in the world (imagine "the US is willing to sacrifice the Iraqi people to defend Israeli policies"), and may lead to broader conflicts.

Sobering stuff. But I'm coming around to the view that while the chances for a peaceful, stable Iraq still exist, they may not be fully in our control. They may in fact be more in the control of countries we have labeled our enemies. How we square that circle, that's the kind of thing we need in our political debate.

test #2

the previous post wasn't actually dictated into Blogger itself. I dictated it into a word processor, then manually cut and pasted it into here.

This one is a test to see if I can dictate directly into Blogger. And then to see if I can do the post without the keyboard.

You see, that's the problem with both Macintosh computers and the Firefox browser. They may be supercool (I love that supercool actually dictates as one word... kick asked... what, don't they have profanity in their dictionary?... I guess I do have some work to do...), where was I? Oh yeah, supercool but not as widely supported as Windows and Internet Explorer. In fact, the Dragon software doesn't even run on Apple. So I may have to do this dictation in Internet Explorer...

(or I can say "tab" about 50 times to move around the interface)

now let's see if I can post this...

Dictation

You know, it's not the actual dictation of words that is the tricky part of dictation with voice recognition software. In fact, I haven't had to correct anything up to this point, and this is being dictated using a fresh install of Dragon naturally speaking software.

What is tricky is trying to remember all the commands to make corrections.

I guess I have to dig out the instruction manual. Oh well...

The good news is, I seem to remember a few of the commands. The bad news is, I seem to be toggling the Num Lock every 15 seconds.

Excuses

When I'm at work, I try not to type too much. When I'm at home (with voice software), I'm sick of sitting in front of a computer.

My laptop had voice software, too, but it died. I don't want to buy another laptop just to dictate.

Those are my excuses. I'm still looking for my answers.

Tiny

Tiny Cat Pants is fun. Thanks KP.

I love the baby name generator in today's blog. This is seriously cool. I may even have to add it to my sidebar links.

Slide rule

So I've reinstalled my voice recognition software at home. I had it on the old computer but didn't move it over when I reinstalled. However, blogs that require thought end up with 4 hours solid typing (or writing, which amounts to the same) which I can't do more than once a month. Hopefully the voice stuff will be better.

Anyway, that's by way of explaining a short post. I'd like to do the Supreme Court one next, but that's probably longer than Iraq. So we'll go with dynamic paper.

---

I first used a slide rule in high school. It seemed terribly old fashioned, especially next to the cool new graphing calculators. It was also imprecise in that you had to line things up. You'd never be able to write 6 significant digits off that thing.

There is a value in seeing a logarithmic scale, though. It's akin to seeing the Lorenz ("butterfly") oscillator in motion. If all you ever see is the formula, the lookup table, the calculator, then you usually don't get the ideas that are behind them.

We live in an increasingly changing world. Computers are everywhere. Stores are open 24/7, as are financial markets. Mail doesn't just come at 2pm Monday to Saturday. The $2000 Encyclopedia Brittanica is replaced by the free and ever-changing Wikipedia.

We've moved from a world where the "relevant" data is no longer static. Newspaper circulation is down, but use of always-updated news web sites is up. Feed technology (like the icon at the of the address bar) and blogs keep us informed of a changing world.

You probably already know all of this.

My question is, what is the role of paper? I think books still have a role for fiction, as there are few external realities that act to undermine the legitimacy of a story. (Social mores may drive contextual changes over time, but at intervals not incompatible with published editions... e.g. new introductions, updated epilogues, etc.).

Non-fiction though... I wonder. Paper is portable, has high resolution, requires no power or internet connection, and can be written on.

What I've been thinking about is "books" that are internet databases. Updateable by the public or approved members. Rendered into the font size or style of your choice, margins and page sizes of your choice. You choose the content you want, filter it as desired (maybe only public comments that have been highly rated get included), apply a template, and get it printed at your local bookstore (which includes a Kinko's next to the Starbucks).

Perhaps you can print at home. Or at least download the current version, customized to your taste, to your PDA etc. Maybe there is no printer in your town, or you want to print on the back of paper you already have. If the reference book is disposable, maybe inks can be made much cheaper, as they only need to last a year or two. Like a newspaper.

I imagine a world where people collaborate on the Internet to build content of value, not a book in a traditional sense, but shared knowledge. Then others can come and take what they need from it, in the form that is useful to them.

What's that got to do with a slide rule? Let's say the book I want to print is one on the federal budget. I want to read the chapter that discusses balancing the budget. And I want to be able to adjust tax rates and see what the impact is on receipts and the deficit. And I want to see what the impact will be on someone with my income.

If I want to do this on my computer, I grab some little handles and slide them and the picture updates. The program can do the math just like that graphing calculator. But what about my book? How can I experiment with tax rates while sitting on a chair reading by the pool? I could go to a massive appendix that looks like the tax tables in your 1040-EZ, but that's not good enough.

The problem is, with the world becoming interactive and customized, we have the technology to make books customized but not interactive. (I'm still thinking non-fiction here.) My recipe book says "serves 8", but what if I want to serve 5? Can I leave the calculator behind?

How do you make a book do math?

the Iraq one

The United States Constitution is the oldest functioning constitution in the world. It is the founding document of the oldest functioning democracy in the world. It and the nation it helps define have been throughout history an inspiration to peoples around the world.

I come neither to praise nor to bury the US and its government, but rather to ask some tough questions. Tough for me to answer anyway.

As I previously blogged, the US Constitution is built on principles of protecting the weak from the abuse of power of the strong. The power of the executive itself is separated from the power of legislation, which itself is divided between the funding power of the masses (House taxation) and the policy power of the states (Senate advise and consent). Power thus distributed is harder to abuse. Further, protections against abuse of power are enforceable by an independent judiciary.

The people of the United States grow up believing this is right and good; that people must be protected from abuse of power by intrusive government. Even debates about the role of government in areas like abortion are framed in terms of protecting the the weak (poor women, helpless babies) from the powerful (state intervention, murder).

Leaving abortion aside (tempting though the digression is), here's where it starts to get problematic: We born in the USA are lucky. Our laws and the general cultural respect for those laws means that the abused can turn to the government for protection - from racism, sexism, ageism, violence, etc. But what about those living outside the USA? The journalist in China who is arrested for writing about a toxic spill? A dissident in Zimbabwe imprisoned for questioning policies that are starving the nation? Businessmen in Russia locked away for not supporting the government? Anyone criticizing the King of Morroco or the dictator of Turkmenistan? The women in Afghanistan who were terrorized for not wearing headscarves? The 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda who were slaughtered? The people of Banda Aceh, devastated by the tsunami, denied aid due to the rebels in their midst?

I could obviously go on and on.

The question is, as people blessed by a system that uses the power of the government to protect the weak from abuse by the strong, what do we as a country owe to the abused around the world?

Notice what this question is not. It is not, "what do we do for the hungry of the world?" It is not, "what do we do for the poor of the world." While not simple questions (sending food to the hungry can destroy the markets for local farmers, fostering dependency on food aid), those complexities are technical, not moral. I'm interested in the moral complexity of achieving good Ends in situations with few if any good Means.

Firstly: most governments do not consider foreign policy to be an instrument of moral /ethical action. Foreign policy is politics on a larger stage, and like politics and sausage-making, it is generally ugly to watch. It is self-interested horse-trading.

The United States itself was generally isolationist up until the end of the second world war. After the first world war, (Democratic) president Woodrow Wilson suggested that maybe countries should sit down in a League of Nations to work out problems. The US public didn't support him though and the idea died. Only after a second war a couple decades later did the US come around to the idea that maybe to avoid future similar wars we needed to get involved in the rest of the world.

And here is the crux of the issue. What does it mean to be involved in the rest of the world? What should the rules be for the use of US power (diplomatic, economic, military) internationally?

I'm frustrated that few people, politicians or otherwise, seem able to articulate a foreign policy philosophy that acknowledges the inevitable tradeoffs in the world. They seem eager to point out the costs associated with the choices of their opponents, but no more.

Here are some policy options, the way our representatives *should* be explaining them.


Option #1. The USA is going to leave the rest of the world alone. We're bringing all our troops home. We're not even selling weapons to other countries. We'll still have lots of weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and if anyone attacks us we'll kill them. But if we mind our own business, few if any people will want to fight with us.

Of course, we'll have to live with the fact that China may take over Taiwan and restrict its freedoms, Russia's internal repression and hegemony over former Soviet republics will increase. Without our support, the pro-Western dictatorships in the middle east will fall to the militant Islamist movements (a la Iran) they have been funding, and at some point Iran then Syria will get nuclear weapons (probably from North Korea or Pakistan), increasing the likelihood of a war with Israel (started by terrorist group not directly attributable to any government). Meanwhile, genocides in future Bosnias and Sudans will be met with empty statements of outrage and dismay by governments (including ours) while people die. Political dissidents in repressive countries will rot in jail with no peep from us. Iraqs can invade Kuwaits, Indonesians can kill East Timorese, military juntas can overthrow Haitian governments. Talibans can blow up Buddha statues. Just leave us out of it.

If you want the dangerous people of the world to not want to harm you, then stop trying to coerce them to act differently.

Option 2. Actually I have about 15 more options, and I can't type that many. So let's go another direction...

I think we want our cake and want to eat it too. We want to go to the rest of the world, explain why something is the right, moral thing to do, and have the rest of the world say "well done, here's a check and some troops, let's go do some good."

And I think that never happens. Foreign policy is quid pro quo. Take the current conflict in the Darfur region of the Sudan. It's halfway to being another Rwanda. We've sat by for years watching the janjaweed militias slaughtering civilians. But the government is backing the militias, so they don't want the United Nations to come in. The United Nations doesn't want to be playing the role of the US in Iraq, so they say they want an invitation. The Sudan instead accepted African Union troops, ill equipped to stop anything. The UN says it will come in if asked by the African Union, knowing the African Union is composed of mostly dictators who don't want to set a precedent of allowing international intervention against a dictator.

So we sit by and watch as thousands of people die each month, as women living under siege wander out into the desert and are raped and have to return, day after day, to get food to survive.

My point is, in the world we live in, most countries consider that tragic, but say we live in a tragic world. One European diplomat said (off record) that the only reason anyone is talking about it is that the US is making a fuss about it, and that the US foreign policy is very naive and idealistic. The news analysis that followed that comment discussed the role of evangelical religion in US foreign policy. I was reminded of the role of the church in the abolitionist movement. There wasn't a lot of sympathy in the religious community for the economic need for slavery. It wasn't about practicality, it was about ideals.

Before the Iraq invasion, I agonized about the moral implications of the war. I still come back to the hard questions I could not answer then, and cannot answer now:

1) Are we morally obliged to intervene in some way when we observe "bad things" happening around us, assuming we have the ability to effectively intervene?

2) To what extent if any does the presence of a socially-constructed boundary (relationship, family, nation) that does not include us lessen any moral responsibility to take effective action? (Acknowledging that being on the other side of such a boundary often limits the effectiveness of such action.)

3) What moral value if any does ineffective action carry?

4) In the absence of economic and/or military pressure, can diplomatic pressure exist and if so can it be effective?

5) If moral obligations exist to take effective action where possible, and if economic or military pressure is a prerequisite for effective action, what are the moral implications of economic and military pressure? To the point, does the fact that the impact of military pressure (i.e. dropping a bomb) can be more precisely controlled than the impact of economic pressure (i.e. sanctions starving babies) mean that in some cases military pressure is the more moral course?

Monday-morning quarterbacking is easy. A lot of Democrats opposed the first Iraq war, but because we "won" it must have meant it was a good idea and those Democrats were wrong. Now we're in a war that we are in danger of "losing" and thus it was a bad idea.

I'm not saying it was a good idea. I'm saying that the moral question of what action is right or wrong has little to do with success. If the invasion had included 300,000 more troops, and the Iraqi army had not been disbanded, if order had been maintained and a political settlement reached early that did not disenfranchise the Sunnis, if the weapons everyone thought were there (including the French and perhaps Hussien himself) were there, we might be sitting here today with a functioning democracy, a burnished US reputation with few soldiers on the ground in Iraq, etc. The fact that this did not happen is a testament to the incompetence of the administration, but says nothing to me about the moral content of the action.

It may be that, ethically speaking, we are not our brothers' keepers. It may be that we keep our families but not those of strangers. It may be that it is enough to acknowledge the injustice of the world as we watch it. Maybe simply acknowledging it can change it. Maybe if action is required, indirect starvation is less morally culpable than accidental shooting. Perhaps there are ways to impoverish the leaders without starving the masses. And maybe no military action that results in the harm, of a single innocent person can ever be the most effective solution to a problem.

Maybe the world is that simple. Sad, perhaps, but simple.

I suspect not. I look at our country. There are bad people out there. Parents who abuse their children. Criminals who steal and murder. And we avoid reenacting the wild west by investing the government with a (relative) monopoly on the use of force, because force is necessary to maintain order and safety.

There is no world government. Thus there is no global monopoly on the use of force. The United Nations is by far the best we have, but it may not be good enough. Power is apportioned based on the results of a war over 60 years ago. Countries vote based on realpolitik and not based on what's in the best interest of the world. This makes sense, as most people care about their families, then their towns, regions, and maybe their countries. That's about where it stops. There is little domestic constituency for sacrificing national interest for international benefit.

So what is my conclusion? I don't know. I guess I'd say let's not mix up the question of when it is right/smart to go to war, with what to do about the war we are now in. Trying to summarize/process/condense as I go, I'd say to those that opposed the war (and I consider myself partially in that category), was it wrong because the UN Security Council didn't approve (illegitimate), and/or wrong because it was poorly planned (incompetent), and/or wrong because it was preemptive? My objections, such as they were, were mainly on the last point, but even that was tricky. I don't think that is a moral/ethical objection, but rather a practical one. Preemptive action is dangerous in many ways, not least because you may guess wrong (as we did). So the bar should be much higher.

If preemptive military action was my main practical objection, my main moral quandry were the ones above, especially the question of the sanctions. I still have no doubt that Hussein wanted weapons (as many many leaders do), and that without sanctions he would have had them. So the options as I saw them were (a) let him have them, (b) let him starve his people, or (c) remove him from power and then let his people eat.

I realize that we let lots of other bad guys have weapons, and we let lots of people starve or worse. That doesn't change the moral question for me that will still exist next time a foreign government is doing something we find objectionable. Do we say "we can't really stop them" (as most European and other countries do), do we starve their people, or do we blow things up?

There are no good options. And yet choices must still be made. Clinton tried to build nations. He succeeded in Bosnia. He failed in Somalia. Bush mocked him, then ended up trying himself in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps he was right the first time? Bush has most often been compared to Wilson, an idealist who didn't understand world politics. Wilson was a Democrat. Hillary Clinton supports the war. Kerry did then he didn't. Kennedy got us into Vietnam, and Nixon promised to get us out.

Maybe my point is that foreign policy is not a Democrat/Republican thing. It's a question of the relative appropriateness and effectiveness of morality and self-interest in dealing with other nations. And I would love to hear our leaders of both parties talk about that question honestly, rather than trying to score points at each others' expense.

Then there is still the little matter of what to do with the mess that the current administration has gotten us into.

I'm pretty disappointed in most Democrats' current approach to foreign policy. The Republicans are already paying a political price for their foreign policy, so they are forced to defend it and point out the trade-offs. And to be sure they are fear-mongering all they can.

The only Democrat I've heard articulate a coherent foreign policy is, interestingly, President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbignew Bryzinski. He said, in short, we should tell the Iraqi government to tell us to leave, then do it. The current government would fall, and the Ayatollahs there would take over, and yeah the women would all be back to wearing head scarves and we wouldn't have a Western-style democracy there, but in the long run they're gonna do what they're gonna do, and anybody that has anything to do with us will be viewed as a puppet government so we are wasting our time.

I don't know that I agree with him. But he acknowledges the trade-offs, and says what he is willing to sacrifice. Many of the current crop of Democrats seems to be saying, effectively, if we were in charge we'd bring the troops home and let the government collapse and that's okay because it wouldn't be our fault it would be Bush's fault. I think that makes Democrats look irresponsible in the public's eye.

Let's review the public mind:

1. If we have won, let's bring 'em home


2. If we have lost, let's bring 'em home


3. If we are winning, things should be getting better on the ground


4. If we are losing, let's change strategy

The Democrats are alternately arguing #2 and #4. Politically they are afraid to say we've already lost, since (a) that looks defeatist and (b) if it proves wrong it will look even worse. So they argue #4, but then don't propose any real changes to the strategy. This of course sounds like Johnson and Nixon with Vietnam, that is, wanting to leave but not wanting to lose. The public knows the Republicans want to fight to win, except those few that have very clearly said they want to leave. The public doesn't know if the Democrats think Iraq is still worth fighting for.

Hell, I don't know if Iraq is worth fighting for, but I expect my representative to have formed an opinion on the matter. At this stage, if I were a Democratic candidate, I'd be saying that Bush is clearly going to do what he wants to do, and we need divided government to ask the tough questions necessary to force needed changes to the policy. Then give Bush 2 years (since he'll take them anyway) to turn it around. By the 2008 election it should be clear if our presence is helping. And then we'll have an executive election about the conduct of the war.

That's the tip of my iceberg, anyway. What's yours?

No answers