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Steve Clemons on Obama's Approach to Libya

Steve Clemons argues that in addittion to being ineffectual militarily, a no-fly zone will change the narrative of the Libyan uprising and shift the focus from the decisions of the Libyan rebels to the actions of Western nations.

Ian Bremmer On the War Between States and Corporations

Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer discusses the political and economic impacts of the economic recession, as well as rising economic powers.

Charles Kupchan On How Nations Make Peace

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Charles Kupchan explains the value of engagement with our enemies and the hard work and years of effort needed to make peace.

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Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Jun 07 2011, 10:45PM

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Greetings readers. For the last couple of weeks, I've been a bit slower posting -- and I just wanted to express my deep thanks to all of you to allow me the space to make some shifts in the way my professional life is organized. I'm really looking forward to joining the Atlantic Media team and have had to shape some other relationships in positive directions because of this next phase.

I've also been thinking through a number of big questions -- President Obama's next steps in foreign policy, what is working and what isn't, how does the White House intermediate for the American public the uncertainties of the so-called Arab Spring? These are all things I've been thinking about -- and don't want to trivialize the seriousness of these questions with posts I haven't thought through.

So, I'm back -- and will have a lot up from this point forward. You'll be seeing some changes as we integrated the site into The Atlantic -- but I think it will be great.

More soon -- and THANK YOU,

Steve Clemons


Posted by John Waring, Jun 07, 11:47PM Steve, I hope this move allows you to write more, and at greater length. Thank you, John... read more
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China's Aircraft Carrier: A Long Way to Go

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Jun 07 2011, 1:22PM

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Aircraft Carrier

As far as overblown fears of the Chinese military are concerned, the impending launch of China's first aircraft carrier is just another sign of the Beijing's growing strength and assertiveness. In the past few years the task of modernizing the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been thrown into full gear with the development of more capable destroyers, bases, and defenses. But China's navy is still far from posing the type of threat than China hawks might believe-and its first aircraft carrier is no different.

As David Axe argues in an excellent piece in Wired's Danger Room, China's first carrier faces serious limitations at the tactical level. These include the fact that:


  1. China's first aircraft carrier, the Shi Lang, will enter the Pacific at a time when some 22 carriers are already operating in the region--none of which belong to a close ally of China.

  2. China's destroyers and submarines which make up a carrier battle group are inferior--both in quality and quantity--to their American counterparts.

  3. The Shi Lang's ability to interact with those submarines is constrained by its communications technology.

  4. While the Shi Lang may have a wing of fighter jets and submarine-hunting helicopters, "the PLAN has doesn't have radar-jamming jets, carrier-based airlifters or fixed-wing radar planes."

  5. The carrier's turbines, reportedly purchased from Ukraine, have plagued the Shi Lang's sister ship (the Russian Kuznetsov) with unreliable performance.

Even one of China's Rear Admiral's, Yin Zhuo, recently wrote that "this one vessel can conduct anti-ship warfare and provide regional deterrence and control; it carries aircraft and anti-submarine helicopters. It is therefore a platform with a lot of stuff, but nothing is really good."

The United States and other countries should not underestimate China, nor should we judge its intentions based on the development of one weapons platform. Attempts to analyze China's growing military should be based on a realistic perspective (as Mr. Axe offers), without the alarmist, fear-mongering that is all too common in our media and public discourse.

-- Jordan D'Amato


Posted by Don Bacon, Jun 07, 7:48PM So the implication is that a modern aircraft carrier (the U.S. has eleven of them) at a huge cost (the newest Ford Class costing f... read more
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Israel's Treatment of Gay Palestinian Asylum Seekers

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Jun 06 2011, 2:22PM

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Flickr/Photo: Andydr

This is a guest post by Caroline Esser, a research associate with the New America Foundation's Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program.

The newest way to sell Israel to Americans: LGBT rights. Search gay rights on the Anti-Defamation League's website and what do you find? A ready-to-print and available for order poster that reads, "Which of the Middle East nations protects the legal rights, safety & freedom of the LGBT communities? Only Israel." At the bottom of the poster, in smaller font, it states, "Israel is by far the most democratic state in the entire Middle East. It supports civil rights for all its citizens regardless of sexual orientation, gender, race, creed & religion. Dialogue begins when it's based on facts".

Likewise, scan The Jewish Federations of North America's site and you will find a series of press releases about its recent "LGBT Pride in Israel Mission." A novel way of persuading young activists to join the pro-Israel forces, the mission brought hundreds of members of North America's LGBT community to Israel. The trip was specifically designed to expose North Americans to the vibrant LGBT culture in the Jewish homeland and to help them "forge ties with [their] brethren in Israel".

Israel advocacy groups like the ADL and the Jewish Federations have latched on to LGBT rights in Israel as a means of combating negative press and demonstrating Israel's dedication to equal rights and democracy. It is a logical issue to showcase since, in many ways, Israel is far ahead of the United States in terms of LGBT rights. For instance, while the United States only repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" last December, Israel has allowed openly gay men and women to serve in the military since 1983 and it has not imposed any restrictions on their placement within the military since 1993. Israel is also one of the few countries around the world that has granted legal recognition to same-sex couples with regards to property tax benefits, inheritance taxes, and housing aid; recognized same-sex adoptive parents; and registered the marriages of same-sex couples who were married outside of Israel.

Unfortunately, the ADL's poster and the Federations' themed trip only reveal one side of the picture. If such groups were to include the occupied territories in their assessment of Israel's treatment of gays and lesbians, they would quickly realize that Israel's record is not as perfect as it seems. Sadly, when the ADL wrote in small print that Israel supports civil rights for "all its citizens" it meant exactly what it said--basic human rights are strictly for Israelis.

In their 2008 study, "Nowhere to Run: Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in Israel," Michael Kagan and Anat Ben-Dor describe in detail Israel's unsympathetic and unbending policy towards gay Palestinians. In stark contrast to the vibrant gay culture within Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians face intense discrimination and often brutal violence if they are discovered to be gay. Kagan and Ben-Dor tell of men who have been violently tortured by other men in their communities, the Palestinian authorities, and even their own families for their sexuality. Others have been subjected to harassment, accused of being Israeli collaborators, labeled as prostitutes, or murdered. In pursuit of protection and the ability to openly express their sexuality, there have been at least ten cases in which gay Palestinians have sought refuge in Israel. However, despite their desperation, Israel refuses to even review gay Palestinian applications for asylum (those who have successfully received asylum have had to submit their cases directly to the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva). Moreover, gay Palestinians who have illegally entered Israel have been arrested and promptly deported--returned to the very environments in which their lives were at risk and in which they will now face further danger as they are questioned not only for their sexuality but for their choice to spend time in Israel.

While Israel should be protecting gay Palestinians simply because of its commitment to human and civil rights, Kagan and Ben-Dor point out that Israel is also legally bound to do so under the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees that Israel ratified in 1951. (It should be noted that this Convention does not apply to those Palestinians who are refugees as a result of the 1948 or 1967 conflicts and who are receiving protection from UNRWA. However, there are many within and outside the Occupied Territories who are not registered with UNRWA and thus qualify for protection from the UNHCR). Any qualifying person who can prove he/she has a "well-founded fear of being persecuted" because of his/her membership in "a particular social group" has a right to protection in another country. Furthermore, the Convention explicitly forbids signatories from forcing refugees to return ("refouler") to the place where their lives were endangered. Thus, Israel is not only violating the Convention by refusing Palestinian applications but by failing to respect the principal of non-refoulment.

Kagan and Ben-Dor argue that Israel could easily avoid this discriminatory policy and democratic pitfall by addressing each request for asylum individually. If Israel carefully assessed the needs and intentions of the individual in question and then made a decision about granting asylum from there it could uphold its obligation to refugees as defined by the 1951 Convention and protect Israeli security--keeping any individuals with criminal histories or suspicious stories out. Anticipating Israeli objections to their policy recommendation, Kagan and Ben-Dor explain that "granting asylum to a Palestinian in Israel would set no precedent, and have no relevance, to the dispute over whether Palestinian refugees from 1948 have a right of return. The right to seek asylum invokes a separate body of law from the debate over refugee return; the Palestinians we discuss in this report are seeking international protection in Israel as a foreign country, not return or repatriation to ancestral homes" (26).

However, while Kagan and Ben-Dor are correct that, legally, gay asylum seekers have entirely different rights and protections than the Palestinian refugees displaced during the 1948 or 1967 conflicts, they overestimate Israel's willingness to separate the two issues. The simple and moral solution has not been adopted because of the greater context, the sentiment towards Palestinians that Kagan and Ben-Dor write off.

In essence, granting asylum would allow more Palestinians into the country and that is something Israel cannot swallow. Kagan and Ben-Dor are right, if Israel could screen each applicant separately, there would be very little risk associated with granting them asylum. However, the very remote chance that Israel's generosity could be taken advantage of and its security put in danger is enough to make Israel neglect its dedication to human rights altogether. Rather than take a small gamble on security (and alter the demographics ever so slightly), Israel prefers to clump all Palestinians under one label: 'Threatening.'

While it is not wrong to congratulate Israel on the accomplishments it has made, Israel's policy towards Palestinian gay asylum seekers reveals the startling artificiality of the Anti-Defamation League's poster and the Federations' themed trip. The harsh reality is--no matter how loudly one announces Israel's success--Israel is not living up to its international obligations. In many ways, its treatment of Palestinian gays undermines its achievements with regards to gay rights within the 1967 borders. Israel cannot be held up as the paradigm of human rights until the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are included in the picture.

-- Caroline Esser


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Jun 07, 11:22PM "In any case, you're making a fool of yourself, POA, by claiming that Steve pushes the gay issue to distract from the treatment of... read more
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Some News & New Grooves in DC

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Jun 03 2011, 6:42PM

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Today, I received alerts that three friends had taken new positions.

National Security Network Deputy Director Joel Rubin is no longer with the National Security Network, a great organization that is smartening Dems up on foreign policy. Rubin, now Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, will work with the very cool nuclear truth-teller Joseph Cirincione. Awesome move for Rubin whose smart spouse, Nilmini Rubin, works as head of international economic policy stuff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (for the Republicans). Yep, the Mary Matalin and James Carville of foreign policy.

Margaret Talev, White House Correspondent for McClatchy News, has now moved to Bloomberg to be -- White House Correspondent. I wonder if she gets a chair a bit closer to Jay Carney's podium. Congrats Margaret!

Then, Charles Dunne of the Middle East Institute has just become Head of Middle East North Africa affairs for Freedom House.

Lots of news moves in town. And then there is my news.

atlantic banner.jpg

A big new adventure for The Washington Note and me has arrived with the brilliant team at the Atlantic Media Group. I will be the new Washington editor-at-large of The Atlantic and editor-in-chief of Atlantic Live, the global events division of Atlantic Media.

I will continue as Senior Fellow and Founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, and The Washington Note will move into the family of blogs at The Atlantic and be integrated into the main site.

Very cool. Very excited. I think that like the New America Foundation, Atlantic Media is one of the most densely populated places on the planet of what owner David Bradley calls "extreme talent."

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Jun 07, 11:28AM Weiner's downfall: http://c... read more
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As Martial Law Ends in Bahrain, Will Anyone Notice?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Jun 01 2011, 1:54PM

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Photo/Flickr: malyousif

This is a guest post by Jonathan Guyer, a program associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and the official cartoonist of The Washington Note. He also is assistant editor for The Middle East Channel at FP. He blogs at Mideast by Midwest.

Bahrain has lifted its "State of National Safety," and Saudi and Emirati tanks have begun to exit the small Gulf kingdom. Yet tensions are higher than ever with the Bahraini authorities' ongoing crackdown on the democratic reform movement. The government's move to restore an air of stability is too little, too late.

Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa delivered a speech to journalists today in which he attempted to affirm his reformist credentials while avoiding the much-needed actions to back them up.

In his remarks, the monarch discussed the importance of free press, saying: "We confirm to all journalists... no one shall be harmed due to his peaceful, civilized expression of opinion in this state of law and intuitions." Yet as recently as last week, Bahraini authorities tortured a France 24 reporter. It doesn't appear that journalists are, as the King described them, "partners in the process of this country's development."

Meanwhile, NPR reports that women are the latest target of Bahrain's crackdown:

Bahraini human rights groups say hundreds of women have been detained in recent weeks. Most were released. Dozens are still being held. One female journalist reportedly was beaten so badly she can't walk.

It's time for the US to reassess its policies toward Bahrain, lest America remain complicit in such brutal oppression during an era of hope and change for Middle East. While the US relies upon on Bahrain for strategic cooperation (and real estate -- the US's naval regional naval headquarters is on Bahrain's shores), the tenability of that relationship is anything but guaranteed. In fact, a US human rights official was removed from his post at the embassy in Manama last week following repeated threats and slurs from pro-government newspapers and websites.

Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg met with the Bahraini Foreign Minister. I hope Steinberg wasn't shy in articulating just how little tolerance the US has for egregious violations of human rights - ranging from destroying Shiite mosques to targeting medical professionals. As might be expected, the Bahraini press hailed the meeting as an expression of strong bilateral relations.

Compare this to President Obama's Middle East address two weeks ago, in which he warned:

...[M]ass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain's citizens, and will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can't have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.

But with those opposition leaders in jail, along with myriad innocent civilians who have been targeted in an arbitrary sectarian campaign against Shia communities, what are the prospects for peaceful dialogue?

As I wrote last week on The Fresh Outlook:

Bahrain is one of those instances where US interests and values have not lined up. With the US' Fifth Fleet docked on Bahrain's shores - and over 2,200 Americans living off the base - the furthest Obama can go is wagging his finger.... If the Bahraini regime refuses to heed Washington's advice, will the Obama administration determine that Bahrain's authoritarian regime is simply the quid-pro-quo for keeping the Fifth Fleet in its cosy home?

As Obama said last week: "We have the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator," referring to the individual who sparked the Tunisian revolution and, in turn, the Arab Spring. However, if Washington chooses to ignore the dark side of its military presence in Bahrain - and continues both its implicit and overt support for the repressive Bahraini regime - then US values and interests will remain very much out of synch in the post-Tahrir Square Middle East.

Bahrain is the barometer for the Obama administration's approach to allies that engage in counter-revolutionary brutality. And the tragedy of what's happening to peaceful activists in Bahrain will be a stain on the US's reputation, no matter how much money is pledged to help Egypt or Tunisia in their transition to democracy.

-- Jonathan Guyer


Posted by Colin, Jun 07, 7:23PM I see that old war criminal Kissinger is onboard with the crackdown in Bahrain. And Hillary dutifully follows. Shame. <a href="ht... read more
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9/11 + 10: What Have We Learned?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, May 31 2011, 1:42AM

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This morning in Zurich, I am chairing the "Terrorism and Counterterrorism" panel of the International Security Forum 2011 which is organized in partnership with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Those on my panel include:

Paul Pillar; Visiting Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, US; Former Deputy Director, DCI Counterterrorist Center, Central Intelligence Agency, US

Jean-Louis Bruguière; Former High Representative European Union in the US for the fight against financing of terrorism as part of the "Terrorism Finance Tracking Programme / SWIFT"

Peter Neumann; Director, International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR), King's College, London, UK

This will be a good discussion I think, but as I ponder the decisions made after 9/11, I am drawn back to the famous "Rumsfeld Memo" which I think still stands as one of the most forthright and honest inquiries by a senior government official into our blindspots in confronting and dealing with terrorism.

I won't offer more of my own views at the moment as I have to rush off to get this panel going, but I did want to remind of Rumsfeld's interesting thinking in 2003:

donald_rumsfeld_350x450.jpg

October 16, 2003

TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere -- one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:

We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them -- nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.

USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban -- Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.

With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.

Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the US?

Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?

Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions.

Do we need a new organization?

How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?

Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.

Does CIA need a new finding?

Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?

What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday.

Thanks.

It's clear that the US has made progress in some of these accounts probed then by Rumsfeld -- but not in all, and I would argue, it is in the area of over-reaction and creating new enemies that the US is still trapped.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by DakotabornKansan, Jun 02, 11:07AM Vincent Iacopino, guardian.co.uk, writes, “The acts of torture that John Yoo and other Bush administration officials so proudly de... read more
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Can French Helicopters Save Libya?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, May 26 2011, 10:48AM

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It may come as a relief to President Obama that France has decided to increase the pace of operations in Libya by deploying attack helicopters. Britain, on the other hand, seems to still be on the fence.

The role of airpower in this conflict has been a critical one. While the aerial restrictions imposed on the Libyan Air Force have hampered, but in no way neutralized, Gaddafi's military capabilities, western airpower has proved to be the key variable in aiding the rebels. This is partly because NATO has refused to put boots on the ground and air strike operations are, in essence, the only option NATO has. It is also because the capabilities that western nations have brought to bear in Libya have primarily been fixed wing aircraft up to this point. France's decision to deploy an unspecified number of Tiger attack helicopters, and the potential for British Apaches to join them, changes the mixture of military assets the rebels have in their corner.

The Washington Institute on Near East Policy released an analytical piece that does a good job of highlighting the role of airpower in the 'conflict':

NATO strike operations have proven to be the great equalizer in the conflict. They saved Misratah from being retaken by the regime and are assisting the rebels in their efforts in the Nafusa Mountains.

NATO strike operations consist primarily of battlefield interdiction, strikes approximating close air support, counterlogistics missions, and counter-command-and-control sorties. According to NATO data, most of the strike effort is focused on western Libya, primarily around Tripoli, Misratah, Sirte, and Zintan. NATO officials assert that the strikes are reducing the regime's ability to employ, command, and sustain its combat forces. As of April 29, NATO claimed to have hit some 600 targets, damaging or destroying approximately 220 armored vehicles and 200 ammunition facilities. The effort, however, is dispersed, with NATO averaging only about sixty strike sorties a day, distributed across command and control, logistics, and forces targets, and in both the western and eastern theaters. While the present level of effort (at least) should ultimately break the regime forces, that process could be protracted, lasting weeks if not months.

Even with the deployment of attack helicopters, Obama is in a tight spot. He now needs congressional approval to continue to use military force in Libya. He also needs to decide whether he will continue to use the relatively few American assets deployed thus far--a decision which may be prolonging the fighting. Whatever Obama decides, the next few weeks will be critical in determining whether and how the United States will proceed in the Libyan 'conflict'.

-- Jordan D'Amato


Posted by questions, Jun 05, 3:11PM Amazing: "PALM COAST, FL - JUNE 2 : The Conservatory Golf Course development was supposed to be a very high end facility with lar... read more
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US-UK Relations Becoming Less Special (and that's good)

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, May 23 2011, 5:15PM

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For those of you following President Obama's trip to Ireland, the UK, France, and Poland, here is the opener of a piece I just wrote for the BBC on the need for US-UK Relations to get an update and reset.

The Raw Truth About the US-UK 'Special Relationship'

During the tough-fought Democratic presidential primary between then-senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, at a wry moment during a televised debate, Clinton called Obama "very likeable" and he responded with the sterile retort, "you're likeable enough".

One can easily imagine David Cameron, the Queen, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, Elton John and lots of British citizens waiting, on edge, for Mr Obama to offer the iconic words "special relationship", while knowing that no matter what the president utters, he really means the UK is just "special enough".

Mr Obama and his wife Michelle arrive for a state visit on Tuesday, and inevitably pundits will measure the trip's success along silly lines - on whether Mr Obama and Mr Cameron publicly call each other Barack and David, whether Mr Obama gets out on a cricket field, or better yet, whether they get sweaty playing basketball together.

But the truth about UK-US relations is that while there remains a unique and special character to the bond, it is not the "special relationship" it used to be.

The rest can be read here.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Candide, Jun 02, 4:49PM Cameron trying to look trendy, and failing miserably; silly posh fucker: <a href="http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/new... read more
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The Importance of Channeling Roosevelt

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, May 21 2011, 9:42AM

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TR 01.jpgTheodore Roosevelt's words on Presidents and the critical importance of avoiding 'yes men' and getting unvarnished counsel and critique:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.

He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

As President Obama thinks through the many challenges charging him and the country, all seemingly at the same time -- but with a particular focus on Afghanistan, it's important for Obama and his team to keep as the foundation of discussion the honest dynamic Roosevelt frames.

I think about this quote from Teddy Roosevelt whenever I sit in the White House/Roosevelt Room discussing with various other policy intellectuals and Members of the President's National Security Council team the fast currents of a shifting world and the power bets America needs to make.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen Grasso Andersen, Jun 05, 12:23PM Jonh Waring....Whewewww...the very ugly truth...time for all good progressives to flush the DNC and vote Green, en masse...it's th... read more
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Chester and the Next Generation

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, May 21 2011, 7:53AM

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(Chester the Turtle, lives in Chester River, Chestertown; photo credit: Andrew Oros; click image for larger version)

I love cities -- but love nature too, and this very big Maryland snapping turtle crawled up into my back yard recently, dug itself a big hole for the next generation of turtles in our river and creek, and went back off to the blissful muck created by living on the edge of tidal flow waters.

We may never see Chester again -- and yes, I know that this is a female turtle -- but her little ones will be hatching in 60-80 days and we'll be protecting them, making sure they all get out to the water safely.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, May 30, 7:00AM Fascinating generation changes: <a href="http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2011/05/bridging-the-mathematics... read more
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Talking Dick Cheney, Afghanistan War and Obama's Israel-Palestine Surprise with Rachel Maddow

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, May 20 2011, 6:21PM

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Above clip submitted for your enjoyment. Much going on -- tons of media stuff, but really enjoyed this discussion with the turbo-intelligent Rachel Maddow.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen, May 29, 11:30PM Robert Fisk on Obama's speech http://greatest-blog.com/i... read more
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Feist Rises at CNN; Bohrman Chief Innovation Guru Worldwide

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, May 17 2011, 10:31AM

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sam feist.jpg

That really, really, really cool digital, transparent wall that Wolf Blitzer and John King began using as their portal into American politics and the elections was devised and put together by then CNN DC Bureau Chief David Bohrman, who has just been named CNN SVP & Chief Innovation Officer Worldwide.

But the new Washington, DC Bureau Chief is political wunderkind Sam Feist, who is a genuinely nice guy and kind of comes off as the earnest Jimmy Olsen type from the old Superman shows.

But don't knock innocent looks. Feist, who is one of the best informed political directors (or former political directors given his new promotion) in network news, just took one of the really big perches in high end political media.

For more info on Feist and his career, click the extended line below -- but big congrats to both David Bohrman and Sam Feist for their cool moves.

-- Steve Clemons

Continue reading this article

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Mr.Murder, May 20, 7:23PM This is a starting point. The goalposts were moved so far to the right of those famed borders. Now there is some kind of place fr... read more
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Afghanistan War: What Richard Holbrooke Really Thought

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, May 17 2011, 3:44AM

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Nicholas Kristof's bombshell article yesterday probing into the notes, letters and thinking on Afghanistan by Richard Holbrooke has a number of good journalists, including Politico's Ben Smith, scrambling to reassess where one of the Democrat Party's foreign policy titans really stood on America's longest war.

Thanks to Kati Marton, the late Richard Holbrooke's wife, Kristof was given access to key files and notes of Holbrooke's in her possession -- and with these, Kristof has painted a compelling picture that Holbrooke strongly believed that the Afghanistan War needed to be ended through tough-minded negotiations and eventual reconciliation with the Taliban.

Just as important, Holbrooke felt that the Obama administration has over-militarized its tool kit for dealing with Afghanistan and winced when General David Petraeus referred to him as his "wingman." During the Bosnia War, the tables between the diplomatic team and the Pentagon were reversed -- with General Wesley Clark delivering the military moves that Holbrooke needed and directed.

Kati Marton has done a great service in showing Kristof these papers -- particularly now as decisions on the Afghanistan War are again under review. Kristof has now helped underline and put in exclamatory bold Richard Holbrooke's final words: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."

The revelations of Holbrooke's views were not a surprise to me -- in part because of numerous conversations I was privileged to have with both Holbrooke and Kati Marton in the past but also with key members of his SRAP (Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan) team.

Holbrooke and his people were officially supportive of (while in some cases privately opposed to) the President's plan to use a military surge to gut-punch the Taliban and hopefully maneuver them towards negotiations -- but ultimately a negotiated end state leaving Afghanistan better off than when this all started was the key goal in their mind. Many others in the Obama administration -- particularly on the Pentagon side of the equation -- have had a tough time keeping that goal in sight.

But Richard Holbrooke telegraphed his views on Afghanistan publicly at a historian conference featuring Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, himself, and others hosted by the State Department on the release of the updated Foreign Relations of the United States volumes on Southeast Asia -- with a focus on the Vietnam War. These volumes are considered the reconciled history of the US -- with secrets that had recently become declassified woven into public accounts of America's foreign policy.

At this meeting, I asked Holbrooke to compare his work in the early years of the Vietnam build-up in which he was also tasked with non-military roles in building up the economic and civil society institutions of Vietnam with what he was doing today in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke's entire commentary is here, but here follows our specific exchange on Afghanistan and Vietnam:

QUESTION [Steve Clemons]: Ambassador Holbrooke, thank you so much for your comments. I think the purpose of these foreign relations volumes is not only to set the record straight, but to give us a digest of issues so that - to help us in foreign policy decisions that we make later down the road. And you were on the field in - on the ground in Vietnam, as you said, looking at this through the portal of civilian - the civilian dimensions of the war, like your task today. And it would be interesting to know, both positively and negatively, what your experiences in doing that in Vietnam, how those have affected the way you've organized your teams work today in Afghanistan.

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE: I was wondering how long we could avoid that question. (Laughter.) And it has to be a friend who asks it, right? Steve, that's a - of course, I've thought about it a lot. And so let me start by making a very simple statement about then and now.

There are many structural similarities between the two situations, but there is a fundamental strategic difference. And there's a fundamental difference about how we got involved. In Afghanistan, we entered the war because we were attacked in the most serious attack on American soil in history, and the nation unanimously on a bipartisan basis, without any significant dissent, myself certainly included, felt that we had to go into Afghanistan because the people who were in charge of the country had sheltered Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and could not remain there. And whatever happened after that, the root cause of our entry into Afghanistan was instantaneous, Pearl Harbor- like and totally justified.

We slid into Vietnam accidentally. Little known fact, Eisenhower already had advisory troops there before Kennedy became President. Eisenhower had told the president-elect not only about Laos, in response to this gentleman's question, but also about the importance of Vietnam. It was Eisenhower who laid out the domino theory which became the dominant metaphor of the war and which turned out to be false. The dominoes didn't fall unless you count Cambodia and Laos, which were part of the strategic space.

And so we slid in a thousand soldiers under Eisenhower, at the time of President Kennedy's death, maybe 15,000, 16,000, at the time Lyndon Johnson left office, over 500,000, and then the drawdowns that Henry described. So we slid in.

Had people sat down and said, you know, we're going to go in there, we're going to end up with 500,000 troops, I cannot imagine any administration, any political system would have agreed to that intervention. But as Henry pointed out, that's the hand that they were dealt on January 20th, 1969. And so that is a - that is the fundamental difference.

But structurally there are obvious similarities. And leafing through these books here, they leap out at you. Many of the programs that are being followed, many of the basic doctrines are the same ones that we were trying to apply in Vietnam. And I believe in history. I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

So this is not Vietnam, but there's a lot to learn. And it's not an accident that David Petraeus, my counterpart for the first year-and-a-half of this Administration, until he went back to Kabul, had written his Ph.D. thesis at Princeton about this, about the war, and he and I have talked many times about it.

Richard Holbrooke believed that Vietnam was a massive mistake by the United States and didn't want to repeat the errors today that America made then. While he was right that the factors that animated US intervention in Vietnam differed greatly from what drove America's decision to invade Afghanistan, he suggests that there are many "structural similarities."

During Holbrooke's opening comments at this historian's conference, Holbrooke made very clear his rejection of America's Vietnam escapade:

I must conclude that our goals in Vietnam did not justify the immense costs of the war. Nor do I believe that success was denied to us because of domestic events and lack of patience on the part of the American public.

And then in commenting about Dean Rusk's private reservations about the Vietnam engagement, I saw and felt Holbrooke using this as a metaphor for his own reservations about Afghanistan while nonetheless serving President Obama and carrying out his policies:

And - but while Dean Rusk harbored deep internal doubts about the war, he felt an absolute obligation to support the troops and the President's policy. He believed deeply in the theory of American invincibility, something I would emphasize to a younger generation, was instilled in every one of us in high school in those days, in those far away days, when we were taught and endlessly reminded that America had never lost a war. All the strength of Dean Rusk's convictions - convictions we all still would like to be able to hold, of course - were inadequate to the fact that on the ground, as we slid deeper and deeper into the morass, and later as it spread to Cambodia.

And so we failed the first test. Our beloved nation sent into battle soldiers without a clear determination of what they could accomplish and they misjudged the stakes.

The trends in America's engagement in Afghanistan bothered Richard Holbrooke greatly -- and it's important, as the Kristof article ends, for the administration to take serious account of Holbrooke's concerns as the next steps on Afghanistan are weighed.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Chumanist, May 24, 12:18AM By all reasonable accounts,it seems a very comprehensive and lucid brief by Steve regarding Mr Holbrooke's vision of America's war... read more
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The Meaning of Strauss-Kahn

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, May 16 2011, 5:18AM

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn1.jpgThanks to then Embassy of France to the US Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs, and now recently returned Embassy Minister of Finance, Jean-Francois Boittin, I met Dominique Strauss-Kahn for a one-on-one meeting in 1998. Boittin, working single-handedly to correct my over-familiarity with Asia by a productive junket to Paris, said "You must experience Strauss-Kahn; there is no one else like him in France, and perhaps the world."

As France's Finance Minister, when I met him, Dominique Strauss-Kahn had emerged in the French Socialist party as its leading, sometimes reluctant, sometimes bullish globalist. Europe was hard-charging into deepening its internal arrangements, and Strauss-Kahn had helped engineer technically and politically his nation's forfeiture of the French franc and the embrace of the Euro.

But Strauss-Kahn was never a manic neoliberal nor what financier George Soros derisively calls a "market fundamentalist." Strauss-Kahn, even when we discussed his views of the global economy in 1998, was a storm of contradictions that nonetheless made sense.

He could see deeper global economic dependencies growing and simultaneously increasing the speed and scale of financial transactions but in contrast to the US ruling triumvirate of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan, Strauss-Kahn believed in healthy and robust regulation and monitoring. Strauss-Kahn has always been concerned about the human and national victims of an amoral global economic order.

In 1998, Strauss-Kahn said that there was much to admire in what was happening in the US with the boom in information technology and the inspirational aspects of what President Clinton was trying to sell as benign US-led globalization, but Strauss-Kahn feared that America was blind to the downsides of economic deepening around the world and needed to be careful of turning globalization into a religion.

In so many ways, Dominique Strauss-Kahn's thoughts were highly prescient about the instabilities being cooked into an evolving global economic system in which manic deregulation and the triumph of markets were going to bring serious challenges.

Strauss-Kahn has long been the living embodiment of an ideological hybrid between Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz, two antagonists profiled in journalist Michael Hirsh's Capital Offense: How Washington's Wise Men Turned America's Future Over to Wall Street. And this is what the highly regulated world of French socialist-capitalism needed, and also what the world needed and got when Strauss-Kahn became Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund.

Given the global financial crisis of 2009 and the many foreshocks of that crisis that have been brewing around the world in earlier years, the IMF -- if to survive -- needed someone who would be able to convince the new growing major economies like Brazil, China, Turkey, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and India that the IMF could partner with their aspirations and regional financial needs rather than be a rival to them. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, during his tenure at the IMF, has largely achieved this and helped steer the institution and the world through the rough currents of large scale financial deleveraging.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn IMF Kings College INET Steve Clemons.jpgAt the inaugural meeting of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, co-founded by George Soros, held at King's College in Cambridge, England where John Maynard Keynes used to reign, Dominique Strauss-Kahn spoke as one of the keynote speakers. As his remarks began, anti-IMF protesters had broken into the hall and hung a banner over the stage in front of two hundred or so surprised economic thinkers and writers. I was in the second row and snapped the picture at the side which I quickly fed to Arianna Huffington who in turn had it up as the lead on Huffington Post in about three minutes.

What followed was magnificent. Strauss-Kahn showed no fear at all of these protesters whom he engaged in discussion. He asked them to make clear their concerns -- to use his stage to articulate their core fears and demands and make this time that they had taken count. Unfortunately, the folks hanging the banner were not those most intellectually in tune with the protest and they ran off after he asked them to speak. I had communication with the protest leaders later and have no doubt that they would have done well in responding to Strauss-Kahn, but the key then is that he actually did think they should be heard and that the elite who had assembled in Keynes' former halls should not forget the voices of those worried about the impact of global economic policy making. It was a powerful moment, deftly managed by Strauss-Kahn.

Strauss-Kahn's latest IMF patient has been Greece, helping it to work through its debt nightmares. Virtually everyone gives the IMF Director high marks for his ability to keep in mind human faces when sorting through and dealing with the tough disciplines wrought by globalization.

I know nothing of Strauss-Kahn's rumored aggressiveness towards women and think that President Nicolas Sarkozy is right that he should be presumed innocent until the charges against him for sexual battery are sorted out. Nouriel Roubini has publicly speculated that it can't be discounted that this may be some sort of a set up. I won't speculate one way or another as I think at the time of this writing, none of us know the truth of what did or didn't happen.

What is clear is that Strauss-Kahn who is one of the few major economic gladiators in the world to defend the rights and privileges of people is human himself. We sometimes forget that.

If his political career is cut short by the revelations that he assaulted a woman in New York's Hotel Sofitel, that would be a true loss for France and the world in my view -- not necessarily because his faults should be overlooked. They shouldn't. But because his defining role in globalization -- the meaning of Strauss-Kahn -- is vital to a world that is still trying to sort out what form of capitalism it can live with.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by A Tango, May 24, 9:13PM This was reported on Financial Times, "Bric nations blow to Lagarde’s IMF candidacy." I think the title of the article says it al... read more
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Palestine Papers Source Outs Himself

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, May 14 2011, 9:14AM

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ziyad clot steve clemons.jpgZiyad Clot, a French lawyer who advised the Palestinian side in negotiatios with Israel during the Annapolis effort, has announced himself as the whistle-blower and source of the highly controversial "Palestine Papers."

He reports today at Al Jazeera why he did it. This shows that former lead negoatiater Saeb Erekat was wrong about the source of the papers when he accused Al Jazeera Transparency Project chief Clayton Swisher of being a CIA agent who orchestrated this. Erekat recently retracted the charges against Swisher, who is author and editor of a book release this week titled The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?.

A clip of Ziyad Clot's statement which should be read in full:

palestine papers.jpg

The "peace negotiations" were a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals. Far from enabling a negotiated fair end of the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process has deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population as well as its geographical fragmentation.

Far for preserving the land on which to build a State, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, proved to be instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions amongst Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the 7 million-Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months spent in Ramallah confirms in fact that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

After I resigned, I believed I had a duty to inform the public of the most alarming developments of the Israeli-Palestinian talks. These talks were unfair, misleading and became unsustainable.

Tragically, the Palestinians were left uninformed of the fate of their individual and collective rights in the negotiations and their divided political leaderships were not held accountable for their decisions or inaction.

This account reinforces for me why I believe that ultimately neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli political system can bear the stress of making constructive compromises leading to a two-state solution. Sitting both parties in the room and pushing them to work toward compromise is folly.

A structure of stakeholders that shoves the parties forward, with them reluctant but ultimately agreeing, is the only way I feel that a stable two-state producing equilibrium can be reached.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen Grasso Andersen, May 24, 6:46PM Since it was a UN Resolution which created Israel in Palestine's midst, it is the repsonsibility of the UN and its member nations,... read more
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Comments Back

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, May 14 2011, 9:07AM

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Comment restrictions have been removed. Please keep the tone of comments on this blog constructive. This is a blog dedicated to fair and civil debate and discussion and welcomes a wide array of views. Slanderous and/or ad hominem attacks on anyone will result in the re-imposition of restrictions and the barring of the commenter from the blog.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen Grasso Andersen, May 24, 5:46PM I'm grateful for the opportunity to engage in the discourse here at TWN..I learn a lot from Steve's posts ad his guests and from t... read more
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Thoughts on George Mitchell Resignation

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, May 14 2011, 6:14AM

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I have thought for some time now that the Obama administration's experiment with George Mitchell had failed.

Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell and his team made two key errors: they believed that the near term pluses of an ultimate deal between Palestinians and Israelis would outweigh the political benefits of intransigence by both respective governments -- and they felt that helping Palestinian moderates deliver resources to their people would help them achieve a legitimacy competitive against Hamas. They were wrong on both counts.

Mitchell's "too much too late" strategy of trying to prop up Mahmoud Abbas and to make him -- and moderates on general -- look like they were political winners and could deliver results to their people badly backfired. Mitchell engineered with both Abbas and Palestine Prime Minister Salam Fayyad the most pro-American, pro-Israel deal making government imaginable -- and yet Israel was able to shrug them off. Hamas sat on the sidelines of Mitchell's efforts, waiting for a knock on the door that never came, and watched Israel and Palestine peacemaking efforts collapse -- while Hamas' own legitimacy rose in the eyes of frustrated Palestinians.

One senior Defense official once said to me that Mitchell always talked in terms of forty year cycles -- and that this official wanted to know if we were still in year 1 of that cycle, or year 39. He said that when Mitchell plodded slowly along describing his strategy, this official wanted to "punch a pencil" through his own head.

Mitchell failed to inspire the Palestinians and Israelis to embrace their long term interests over short term political itches -- and he lost the faith and support of his colleagues inside the administration.

To some degree this was inevitable. Dennis Ross became the person in the administration that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preferred to communicate with, circumventing entirely George Mitchell and his team. When Obama failed to insist that only Mitchell be the lead and allowed a bifurcated operation, Netanyahu has been able to play one side off the other.

Mitchell has had almost no contact with Netanyahu over the speech that the Israeli Prime Minister will soon be giving in Washington -- and the next big Obama speech on political change in the Middle East/North Africa region will have none of Mitchell's DNA in it.

It's regrettable that Mitchell failed as he is an outstanding public servant who has served the country well in the past. I had high hopes for him when he came in -- and hoped he would soon understand that the Israel-Palestine divide was not like the Northern Ireland peace process because there was an urgency and global severity to the Israel-Palestine fault line that had a consequential weight geostrategically that Northern Ireland never did.

I admire Mitchell, but the administration -- if it is going to continue to give any focus to the Israel-Palestine issue -- needs to cease half-way efforts and needs to stop allowing Netanyahu to set the temperature and terms in the region.

Obama needs to lay out his own expectations of a political outcome and have the parties react to that -- not naively wait for them to come to terms with each other. They never will and their political institutions cannot bear the pressure of such an agreement. Stakeholders in the region must adopt the Obama parameters and become the seducers and enforcers of an ultimate deal.

That's what needs to happen. Many in the administration know it -- but the politicos in the Obama White House have been the most recalcitrant. It's a tough knot for them politically.

But until there is a deeper strategy, with broad stakeholder support in the region, and something that can withstand inevitable Congressional criticism -- the Israel-Palestine ulcer will continue to worsen and will eventually animate the frustrations of a new set of leaders throughout the Middle East.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, May 17, 4:52PM DeLong explains everything in a section on ressentiment in a paper from Oct. 2010: <a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/11... read more
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On the Town

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, May 13 2011, 9:55PM

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Steve Clemons and Alexander Hamilton.JPGMany thanks to Ambassador Lucky Roosevelt, Chairperson of Blair House Restoration Committee and the former and longest-serving Chief of Protocol for the United States, for inviting me to a terrific semi-annual Blair House "thank you reception" for donors.

The event featured Jill Biden and drew many of DC's elites, particularly from earlier generations. I loved it.

I'll be posting some pictures I took there in the coming days -- but I wanted to post this one today of an Alexander Hamilton bust and myself. I have tremendous admiration for what Hamilton achieved in his time. Jefferson's bust was just further down the shelf -- but I couldn't get that old jingle out of my head, "Washington reigned, Hamilton ruled, and Jefferson complained."

More tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, May 15, 12:21AM "....on this formerly lively, highly partisan, personal, vulgar and noisy bar - now transformed into a boring vegetarian non-smoki... read more
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Saluting Jim Lehrer: US National Treasure?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, May 12 2011, 1:43PM

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Jim Lehrer Steve Clemons.jpg

The one real news and public policy commentary show that Jon Stewart has never been able to credibly spoof is the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. That show whether in its current form or as McNeil/Lehrer News Hour -- or just as "The NewsHour" as it is now increasingly known is and has been one of the best on television -- for decades.

Jim Lehrer, of whom I am an enormous fan, announced to his team by email at 9:48 this morning that he is stepping down.

Here was his note:

From: Jim Lehrer

Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 9:48 AM

To: Everyone

Subject: PBSNH_JLannouncement_May2011FINAL (2).doc

Good morning. Here is the "official" press release [pdf here] about my future plans that is going out today. The words, as (hopefully) always, speak for themselves. I will also say something at the end of the program tonight.

All I would add now to you is basically two more words--thank you.

Thank you for what each of you has done to get us from December 2009 and before to this point in our professional lives together. We have created and nourished something that matters and that will last forever whether I am there--physically--every day or not.

Rest assured I will always be there. Always. Onward! Jim

This is the short and to the point, waste no words, firm but caring Jim Lehrer.

I have great respect for the entire team at PBS NewsHour and think that the show ought to be designated some sort of status as a US National Treasure -- along the lines that Japan has designated people and institutions as national treasures. Standards for serious journalism there will continue to set the standard in the business.

But I just wanted to note that I am one who will miss Lehrer's constant, sensible stewardship.

Let's hope he still does a presidential debate now and then.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, May 15, 5:48PM When Rather was castrated because of his honest presentation of Bush's service history, the handwriting on the wall could not have... read more
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Back Door, Please

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, May 10 2011, 9:45AM

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Buses

This is a guest post by Caroline Esser, a research associate with the New America Foundation's Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program.

On March 28 a mass email from Daniel Sokatch, the CEO of the New Israel Fund, arrived in my inbox celebrating the fact that "Israeli women will no longer be forced to the back of the bus." The email, which was referring to a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision which held that it is no longer legal for government-subsidized bus companies to require gender segregation, at first seemed to be a relic from the past, a historic document that miraculously found its way into 21st century inboxes. Buses where the women must enter through a separate door in the back and sit in the rear of the bus? This couldn't be real.

However, despite the difficulty of imagining separate lines of men and women forming on Connecticut Avenue as I await the 42 bus with other Dupont commuters, I soon learned that government-subsidized segregated buses are a quite real phenomenon in Israel and in many other countries around the world including Japan, Egypt, India, Taiwan, Brazil, Indonesia, Belarus, the Philippines, Dubai, and Mexico. Immediately, I wondered if civil rights groups in these other countries view gender segregation in the same light as the Israel Religious Action Center--the advocacy group that initiated the Supreme Court case against Israel's subsidization of segregated buses in 2007. Do feminists and human rights activists elsewhere consider gender segregated public transportation to be discriminatory against women? At least in Mexico, the answer is no, but they should.

The Institute of Mexico City Women (Inmujeres DF), a branch of the city's government, first put women-only buses into circulation in Mexico City in 2008. The buses were part of a broader government effort to advance the lives of women and protect their right to lives without violence. Unlike in Israel, where gender segregated buses were motivated by a rapidly growing community of ultra-Orthodox men who believe in separation of males and females in public spaces, Mexico City's women-only buses were motivated by women seeking protection from the all-too-frequent instances of sexual harassment on the city's packed buses. The buses are not seen as discrimination but rather as a means of liberation. The director of Inmujeres DF, Martha Lucia Micher Camarena, told the New York Times in February 2008 that the buses are "positive discrimination that responds to the demands of women. And it's also for men because it protects their daughters, sisters, and mothers."

There is no question that the intentions of the Mexico City government were good. Inmujeres DF recognized that women were not being respected as equals and it attempted to honor the real concerns of its female citizens. However, despite the benevolent intent of the government, women's rights groups should be equally outraged at the existence of women-only buses in Mexico as the advocacy groups were at the subsidization of gender segregated buses in Israel.

Yes, the women-only buses are optional and Inmujers DF has also organized a public education campaign to make it clear that inappropriate touching is illegal and has set up five service modules within the metro stations to give immediate attention to cases of abuse, but we need to think about the broader implications of these separate buses. The same New York Times article describes how the new patrons of the women-only buses were jeering at the men who were turned away from their bus. One such patron, Catalina Garduño, explained, "We don't get paid as much as they, yet we work just as hard...We are tired of their machismo. We don't feel sorry for them at all." This attitude is exactly why the separate buses are not a good solution but rather an easy way out. Government policies should not be empowering women to mimic the discriminatory, oppressive behavior (and jeers) of men. On the contrary, government policies should be changing gender expectations and creating an environment of mutual respect, regardless of gender. Maybe the daily rides of the women in Mexico City will be improved but the buses are certainly not "positive discrimination" as Micher Camarena argues. They are not helping women exercise their rights in conditions of equality, as is the mission of Inmujeres DF, but rather in conditions of inequality.

The well-intentioned campaign of Inmujeres DF could have had a much more positive impact had it been directed at the pre-existing, mixed-gender bus system. The general education campaign and service modules could have been accompanied by an increased police presence on the buses and even volunteer freedom riders like those mobilized by IRAC in Israel. The freedom riders and police would act as advocates for women passengers, intervening when they witnessed harassment and helping to gradually change the environment that fostered the harassment in the first place. Specially designed training programs for the bus drivers and policeman themselves might also have been necessary. Regardless, in the long run, the commuting experiences of women and the state of gender issues in the city as a whole would have been better improved without the creation of women-only buses.

Israel and Mexico City were right to take action and to address the concerns of their female citizens but a well-intentioned policy is not necessarily a good one. It is not just about the peacefulness or safety of women's daily commutes but rather the societal norms that those same women will face when they step off of the bus or onto the subway platform. A separate bus that allows women to avoid harassment but which does not foster equal treatment of men and women should not be celebrated. Gender issues must be brought to the forefront, not relegated to separate cars.

-- Caroline Esser


Posted by Davy, May 14, 9:20PM An interesting article, as someone above stated, but awfully patronising. As an Indian woman, I feel safer on public transport k... read more
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Pakistan Untethered Even More Dangerous

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, May 09 2011, 10:37PM

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For those following the evolving challenges in US-Pakistan post-bin Laden relationship, I share a slice of a thought in this clip with Jim Sciutto on ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer.

My basic point is that Pakistan is a nation we can't extract ourselves from without high costs. I suggest that "untethered", Pakistan could easily rank as the most dangerous nation in the entire world.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by bob h, May 14, 10:37AM The Pakistanis will fine tune the mixture of terrorist support and nuclear weapons control to keep us and our funding engaged. We... read more
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