What happened to the shouts of “Drill, Baby, Drill,” that were made so popular by Sarah Palin during the campaign of 2008?  Ever since the start of the massive oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the proponents of aggressive new oil drilling off the American coast have been rather muted.  There were a few batty conspiracy theorists who suggested that Obama must have somehow caused the spill, since it helped strengthen the Administration’s strategy of favoring alternative energy.  And there were a even a few, exemplified by Fox News commentators yesterday, who tried to compare this enormous spill (releasing more than 200,000 gallons of crude a day into waters off the Louisiana and Alabama coasts) to the “natural” seepage of oil through the Earth’s crust.  I’m not kidding.

It’s understandable that those responsible for the spill (mainly British Petroleum, or BP — slogan, “Beyond Petroleum”) would emphasize that they are honest, hard-working people who rarely cause this kind of accident.  There are thousands of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, they say, working perfectly.  The problem, however, is that only one accident need occur to destroy the environment and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention the habitat of animal species along the coast.  Yesterday, the Coast Guard commander on the scene noted that BP was responsible “by law” for the aftermath of the spill, but what good does that do if they cannot stop the leak or clean up the thousands of tons of oil that have already been dispersed over thousands of square miles of sea and land?

Yesterday, with its usual dramatic flair, Fox News polled its viewers:  “You Decide: Who Will Pay for Oil Disaster in Gulf of Mexico?”  Isn’t the answer obvious?  The cost will be passed along to the consumer — either directly or indirectly, while we continue to subsidize a policy of cheap oil that only serves to increase our dependency on a product that endangers our security and damages our environment.

Yet, there is a kind of justice to passing along the cost to all of us since we have all voted — at the ballot box and the gas pump — for the kind of energy policy that ensures this sort of accident will occur sooner or later.  A letter writer to the Washington Post put it even better.  Her published comment is reprinted below:

The search to blame someone for the terrible and sad ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has begun. British Petroleum, which leased the drilling rig that sank and caused the spill; Transocean, which owned it; and Cameron, the maker of parts of the drilling system, were mentioned in a May 1 front-page article ["Pressure grows for action by BP"]. But really, anyone who uses oil shares some blame. I think we all knew that a serious oil spill was likely or at least possible.

What we don’t know is how to prevent such a spill, how to stop using oil. We’ve been living on the hope that the accidents would be small and wouldn’t affect us, so that we could go on without changing the way we live and work.

The only way to prevent the destruction of ecosystems is to make major changes in how we live and persuade others to do the same. Is there any chance we will do that? If not, we are all to blame for the destruction that results.

Rebecca Lafave, Washington

I couldn’t have said it better.  Less “Drill, Baby Drill,” more “Think, Baby, Think.”

America’s two-party democracy often resembles two political behemoths locked in a fairly vicious and unscrupulous street fight.  Nevertheless, despite the recent party-line votes in Congress on health care, and gutter-level partisan polemics, there are a few Washington politicians now willing to reach “across the aisle” to work with their opponents.

This nascent trend is good news for Barack Obama — but the reasons for it bear watching.

First, Obama scored a long, hard-fought victory with the passage of health care reform legislation and, although the American public is still deeply divided on its benefits, a political victory brings with it a certain amount of political momentum and respect on Capitol Hill.  Republicans tried hard to block passage and failed.  Some of them have decided, however reluctantly, that they need to try something different.

Second, while opinion was divided over heath care, there is broad public consensus that something must be done to properly regulate financial services markets, Obama’s next priority.  Charles Grassley, Republican Senator from Iowa, and Richard Shelby, Republican from Alabama, are cooperating with Christopher Dodd and other Democrats to fashion this legislation.  Republicans know that if they appear to oppose all efforts to rein in Wall Street excesses, they will lose support among the vast majority of Americans upset over the practices of the big investment houses.

Even on energy and climate change, where there is nothing close to bipartisan consensus, a Republican Senator, South

Miss Non Accountability

Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, was at least until this past weekend, working intently with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman on compromise legislation.

Most importantly, however, there is dawning among Republicans an understanding that simply being a “Party of No,” a phrase first used by party stalwarts to affirm their refusal to accept Obama’s legislative agenda, might not suffice to capture enough independent voters to regain control of Congress in mid-term elections this fall.

The American public is in fact, in an insecure and confrontational mood, skeptical of efforts by both parties and particularly skeptical of incumbents. The Tea Party movement — an inchoate series of leaderless public protests against entrenched power — reflects the unpopularity of both Democrats and Republicans — especially those who are long time denizens of Capitol Hill.

Public approval of Congress is at an all time low, just below 20 per cent.  Public approval of Obama is more than twice as high, not great, but compared to Congress’ rankings, fairly acceptable.  John McCain, up for reelection this year, could be defeated by a member of his own party in Arizona.  Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats and defending his seat this fall in Nevada, could also be defeated.  The Senate seats that Barack Obama and Joe Biden gave up when they became President and Vice President could easily go to Republican unknowns in the elections in November.

Sarah Palin, no political wallflower, understood that in period of high unemployment and insecurity, it was better not to be in government than to face the scrutiny that incumbents are now subject to.  That is why she resigned as governor of Alaska shortly after the McCain-Palin ticket lost the 2008 presidential elections.  She can tour the country, autographing books and giving paid speeches, collect millions as a paid television commentator for Fox News, the cable news mouthpiece for the Republican Party, while avoiding the pitfalls of incumbency.

As she told a conference of Republican activists in New Orleans early this month, “[Are we] the party of no?  Nah.  We’re the party of ‘Hell, No!’”  This was just a day after the former head of Congressional Republicans, Newt Gingrich, called for Republicans to adopt a more proactive program — to become a “party of yes.”

The struggle within the Republican Party is over how to take advantage of the nativist insecurities of the Tea Party protesters, without turning off moderates and independents who expect results from their elected officials.  Those out of office can follow Palin and opportunistically deride the Obama “radical socialist agenda,” but Republicans on Capitol Hill may actually have to vote for legislation that Obama signs his name to.

For these Republicans, as well as Democrats, the challenge is to turn incumbency into an advantage; the more that Congress achieves, necessarily through compromise, the more there is a record to run on.  This will require a more reasoned and reasonable level of discourse, ready to explain and defend compromise.  A “party of what the hell?”  Nah.  A party of “Hell, Maybe.”

This succinct quote from 1990, by then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III, described the stakes for America in the First Gulf War.  Baker was talking about American jobs, of course, and the risk to them from Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Kuwaiti oil fields.  Today, America is preoccupied by the jobs outlook once again, but without reference to foreign conflict zones.

The conflict zone is, in a sense, at home.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its jobs report for March, and commentators, pundits and analysts are debating its meaning.  More than 162,000 jobs, some of them temporary, were added to the American economy last month.  Good news, but a very small number compared to the 15 million Americans officially out of work, nearly ten per cent of the work force, and smaller still when compared to the additional 17 per cent of American workers who are considered underemployed.

No recession here

There are plenty of other countries suffering high unemployment (in the EU the rate is also about 10 per cent overall), but for the United States this economic landscape is a kind of terra incognita.  We have a consumer-driven economy, but consumers lack credit and confidence.  We are still adjusting to the fact that millions of Americans own homes with mortgages that cost more than the homes’ current value.  Small businesses, the source of most new employment, can’t afford to hire because they don’t have the collateral that banks are now demanding after the financial meltdown of 2008.  Government stimulus helps, bolstering clean energy technologies and helping local governments avoid further layoffs of policemen and teachers, but it also adds to the burgeoning federal debt.

What is to be done?

President Obama, in his weekly media address, tried to put the latest jobs numbers in some sort of context:

All of us know how important work is.  Not just for the paycheck but for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you can provide for your family.  As Americans and as human beings, we seek not only the security but the sense of dignity and community that work confers.  That’s why it was heartening to learn that last month for the first time in two years, the economy created a substantial number of jobs, instead of losing them.  We’ve begun to reverse the devastating slide, but we have a long way to go to reverse the damage from this recession and this will continue to be my focus every single day…”

Obama realizes that large segments of the American public are fearful and angry,

Jobs, Jobs…Steve Jobs

and looking for someone to blame.  He realizes too that the frustration will increase as stock markets recover and the economic statistics register GDP growth, but without a significant decrease in unemployment.  Meanwhile, more people enter the labor force, or try to.  Laura Tyson, who was chairperson of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, said on Friday that the U.S. has a  “mountain” to climb to overcome the 8.4 million jobs lost since December, 2007.  The unemployment rate may drop down to 9 per cent, but don’t look for much more progress soon, she said.

Back to ex-Secretary Baker, who spoke recently at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club.  Baker faulted Obama for not giving job creation a higher priority in his first year in office and worried aloud about the escalating federal debt.  That the U.S. needs to do more about both is crystal clear, though less clear is exactly what should be done.  It can be argued that dealing with health care cost inflation was justifiably a top economic priority for Obama since, as a piece by Atul Gawande in the latest New Yorker puts it, “nearly all the gains that [American] wage earners have made over the last three decades have gone to paying for health care.”  No wonder Americans feel threatened.

Perhaps the only jobs that Americans express confidence in lately is the genius behind Apple Computers — Steve Jobs.  His new IPad made its debut yesterday and consumers forgot all the bleak employment, debt and financial statistics.  They flocked to buy the lightweight, beautiful new tablet computer that is the latest product of America’s most admired company and the country’s most talented CEO.  The ingenuity and risk-taking of Apple Computers, on the one hand, and the ethical decision-making by Google, on the other, illustrate the best that the American economy has to offer, and are the most hopeful signs that we can emerge from this recession intact.

America’s divisive health care debate may have seemed to the world public a dense, domestic squabble, but now that Congress has finally passed the reforms, the law’s impact is being seen in the country’s behavior on many levels.

Politics.  The Obama Administration gained a victory it sorely needed after a bitter, exhausting political struggle that relegated many urgent issues — financial market oversight, job creation, energy, immigration, and others — to secondary status while health care bills were being fought over.  The animosity caused by the health care debate now makes it hard (if not impossible) to reach bipartisan approaches to these problems.  Although nationwide Congressional elections are not until November, the campaign has, in effect, already begun, and many incumbents’ fate will be determined by how their voters feel about the new health care law.  It will be hard to get members of Congress to focus on other issues, since they will preparing for what essentially will be a national referendum on their health care vote.

Society. Over the last decade or so, American society has become more polarized at the same time it has become more diverse.  Civil discourse has become — well, less civil.  It is no longer unusual to see calls to intimidation, especially via the airwaves and via the Internet.  Last Saturday, Members of Congress walking from their offices to the House of Representatives to cast their votes were spat upon and subjected to crude insults by protesters.  Local Democratic Party offices were vandalized in a few locations.  (Eric Cantor, a Republican congressional leader, also claims someone shot at his office in Virginia.)  This reprehensible behavior reflects not so much divisions on health care (the new law is less “socialist” than the programs in nearly every other industrial democracy) than an unwillingness to reason and compromise.

Markets, Budgets and Finance.  America’s health care debate was about responsibility, but mainly it was about money.  Health care amounts to about 16 per cent of the U.S. economy;  insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical research and equipment firms and hospital conglomerates are among the nation’s largest economic entities.  The Obama Administration claims that the new law will save the government money in the long run; Republicans claim that it will greatly add to the federal deficit.  The Democrats are betting that competition among insurance companies will restrain growth in the cost of premiums.  Republicans argue that those who pay for their own insurance will end up paying more.  My read is that health care will improve, and many more low-income Americans will lead healthier lives as a result.  The issue, however, for most Americans will remain, “am I paying too much?”  And most will think the answer is yes — until they get sick.

International Policy.  There’s no direct relationship, of course, but a big victory at home always strengthens a President’s ability to get things done elsewhere.  The health care debate forced Obama to delay a trip to Indonesia, but opened the possibility of a meeting with Netanyahu in Washington.  The meeting with the Israeli leader was a tough one, as it had to be considering the sharpening differences between the two governments, but it was certainly easier for Obama to face a foreign policy challenge after having faced down political opposition at home.

Obama has spent and gained political capital in the last week, and he seems to have come out well ahead.  He is doing the right thing — even if the right doesn’t recognize it.

Among the Obama Administration’s current travails is the contention by many foreign policy observers that the Obama foreign policy is not much different from that of George W. Bush.  Last week in New Orleans, at the convention of the International Studies Association, this argument was advanced — at least for the sake of argument — at a luncheon sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.

What’s interesting about this talking point is that it persists so long after a resurgent Republican Party has decided to sharpen polemics with the Obama Administration across the board — to include foreign policy.  A few months ago, when Obama was scoring points on the international scene, ex-Bush Administration spokesmen minimized the substantive differences between Bush and Obama;  now that Obama has had some political defeats at home, more Republicans are siding with Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney, who fashioned Bush’s policies on terrorism and

Minus the Smirk

torture and who has been alleging for months that Obama’s policies have made the U.S. “less safe.”  This tacking to the right by most Republicans has left Colin Powell, the Bush Secretary of State who was outmaneuvered by Cheney on security issues during the Bush years, as practically the only well-known Republican who defends Obama’s national security policies as consistent with his predecessor’s.  Powell had to plead last weekend for a moderate course on issues such as how and where to try accused terrorists.

“Is Obama Bush without the smirk?” asked Dan Caldwell, Pepperdine University political science professor, at the CFR gathering.  He told me afterward that he thought most of the academics at the luncheon would answer that question in the affirmative, although he personally would not.

There have been so many differences in foreign policy tone and substance between Bush and Obama that it would be difficult to recount them all at once:  Guantanamo, torture, transparency, engagement, climate change, missile defense — all these shorthand headings refer back to changes to substance as well as tone.  At the CFR lunch,  James Lindsay faulted “breathless [media] reporting” for raising unrealistic expectations about what Obama would do once in office, and said that his administration lacked an overall strategy to adapt to a changing world.

There are merits to this critique, but it appears to me that, after only a little more than a year in office, the Obama Administration is being faulted for a lack of dramatic results in domestic and foreign policy when any reasonable observer would have to expect change in increments.  This doesn’t mean that policy hasn’t changed in subtle and profound ways.  It means simply that change will take time.  As for the smirk, it’s still around, in the person of Dick Cheney.

In 1968, an astute adviser to Richard Nixon saw a hand-made placard at a campaign rally.  “Bring Us Together Again,” the simple message read.  The Nixon campaign quickly appropriated the message and its yearning for united, conciliatory leadership.  “Bring Us Together” — the “Again” was dropped — made it into Nixon’s election night speech.  A politician not known for conciliation, Nixon declared that his “great objective” would be “to bring the American people together.”  That never happened on Nixon’s watch, and the 37th President eventually came to stand for illegality and divisiveness.

Again?

Today, America seems deeply divided — again.  The intervening years have seen both Republican and Democratic Presidents appeal for national unity and then contend with (and sometimes foster) sharp divisions in the national body politic.  The only exception I can think of in the last half-century of American politics was during part of the Reagan Administration, when Reagan and Tip O’Neill, then Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, managed to differ on political solutions for the country without disrespecting one another.  Perhaps, as elderly Irish-Americans, they shared enough cultural DNA to overcome personal mistrust and discuss their disagreements with civility and even humor.

Whatever it was, that quality is absent now.  Goaded on by rabble-rousing broadcasters, politicians of all persuasions are acting less like statesmen and more like schoolyard name-callers.  Lately the scurrilous rhetoric has mainly been on the right, as various falsehoods against Barack Obama that came out of the 2008 campaign were turned into talking points for the nascent “Tea Party” movement that is challenging both Democrats and moderate Republicans.  Yet the public incivility existed earlier as well, as when books with titles such as “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” by now-Senator Al Franken (D-MN), were quick to demonize politicians and broadcasters on the right.

A Future Senator in 2003

A closer reading of the public mood reveals deep concerns about America’s economy and future well-being, but little innate disposition to fight ideological wars.  After all, nearly a third of the American electorate belongs to no political party, so the job of most aspiring politicians is to win over independents without alienating the “base” of whichever party a candidate happens to belong to.  In tough economic times, these independent voters will often vote against the party in power, since independents are impatient and not bound by any ideological commitments.  This partly explains what happened in the Massachusetts vote that elected Republican Scott Brown to the Senate.  As an after-election Washington Post poll showed, voters want Brown to work with the Democratic majority in the Senate — not simply fight to stymie it.

There is a brief glimmer of hope that Republicans in Congress realize that most of the public — including the independents whose votes they need — want them to play the role of a constructive opposition.  The remarkable broadcast meeting on Friday of all the Republican members of the House of Representatives with President Obama showed that it is possible to debate without demonizing your opponent or closing your mind to ideas from “across the aisle.”

Members of Congress often forget that when they first ran for office they probably had to appeal to independent voters.  Only afterward, upon entering Congress, did they join Democratic or Republican party caucuses, lobby for committee memberships on the basis of their loyalty and influence among members of their own party, and take positions on the basis of party politics.

Grown-up Sentiments

This partisan structure is precisely what earns Congress as an institution such low marks with the American public.  Members of Congress who want to retain their seats need to relearn the lesson of their first elections:  the people send you to Washington to achieve results and, regardless of your party or its status, you will pay a price with voters if you don’t make an honest effort to do so.

A week ago, following the Massachusetts vote, many commentaries surfaced describing it as the worst week of the Obama presidency;  now, this week, with high marks for the State of the Union speech, a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida, and a brilliant defense of his policies in front of House Republicans, the pundits have him back in the saddle.  These evaluations, like popular expectations and political rhetoric, should be tamped down a bit, while we see if Washington can bring itself — and us — together again.

Yesterday, one day after the nation celebrated its newest national holiday — the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. — the citizens of its most Democratic state, Massachusetts, elected a Republican to succeed the late Ted Kennedy as Senator.  This seat had been held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years, and by his brother, John, an added ten years prior to that.

Hyperbole aside, this was a stunningly dramatic shift for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  It also reduced the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate to 59, just below the 60 vote minimum required to pass legislation over Republican procedural objections.  Further, it marked the third time that President Barack Obama in recent months had tried and failed to bolster the flagging campaigns of Democrats running in special elections.  In just 48 hours, the nation went from celebrating Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech to wondering whether the first African-American president, Barack Obama, could salvage his political agenda.

For Obama’s supporters (and I count myself one of them), it’s like going from a dream to a nightmare.

Fortunately, a nightmare is no more reality than a dream is.  And the reality is this:  After Scott Brown’s victory, Democrats will have to work harder and more cohesively to get the White House’s agenda passed by Congress.  A large part of that work must be with the American voting public, which has been largely overlooked in recent months by Democratic members of Congress as they bargained with each other over what would go into health care legislation.  The public saw only that the resulting compromises were extraordinarily messy and non-transparent.

The American public is frustrated by a number of chronic and complicated problems — including the economy, health care, and terrorism.  The frustration over these issues is understandable, but it has lead the public to search for simple solutions, and the party out of power has been only too happy to oblige.  The Republican response to “Yes We Can” is a simple “Just Say No,” this time meaning a wish for the Obama Presidency to fail.

Most presidents lose popularity in their first year in office, as the euphoria of victory ebbs and reality sets in.  Obama needs now to summon all his oratorical skills and powers of political persuasion to rescue his dream and forge a broader alliance for change.  He may well have to do this on his own, since the members of Congress do not appear to be up to the challenge.  Republicans for their part may wish to re-think their negative strategy.  There is too much at stake for Americans to approve of stalemate.  More than the loss of a dream, it would be the start of a nightmare turned reality.

By now, we’ve heard the story ad nauseam.  A prominent banker comes to the U.S. Embassy, says “I’m worried about my son.  He’s been acting strange lately.  I think he may want to become a terrorist.”  Before you can say Osama bin Laden, the young Nigerian is off to Yemen studying how to put explosives in his underwear.  The Embassy sends a message to Washington, but no one cancels his visa.  A month later he’s on a plane bound for Detroit wearing explosive underwear that luckily doesn’t explode.

Ridiculous, but not laughable

America has been living off this story ever since Christmas Day.  Why didn’t the intelligence community “connect the dots?”  Why didn’t President Obama make a statement sooner?  What should be done about Yemen and all the Yemenis left at Guantanamo?  What new security measures should be taken at airports?  Should the would-be suicide bomber be tried in court or in a military tribunal?

All these questions come naturally (and frantically) to mind but they are not the most essential one:  How does one prevent the creation of suicide bombers or change the hearts of those who have fallen under the influence of terrorists?  The father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab did not know the answer.  Neither, apparently, does anyone else.

America’s massive intelligence and security apparatus can tell us that the 23-year-old Nigerian met in Yemen with Anwar al-Awlaki, the same US-born and educated cleric who corresponded via e-mail with US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the second-generation Palestinian-American who went on a deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, just two months ago.  Investigators have also established that al-Awlaki was present in the United States some ten years ago, preaching at the same mosque near Washington DC that Hasan later attended, and that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers met with al-Awlaki in the United States.

It would be comforting (but wrong) to believe that if only we could “connect” all the “dots,” improve airline security, and somehow collect and quarantine these “combatants” to places like Guantanamo, we could resolve the problem of Islamicist terror.  Confoundingly, two of the prominent actors in America’s encounter with radical Islam –al-Awlaki and Malik Hasan — emerged from American society.  It is plainly not enough to secure borders and revoke visas.

America and the world must connect a far more complex series of dots to remove jihadism as a motivation.  Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post suggests that we need “another kind of anti-terrorism strategy,” based on ideas and arguments, not weapons.   That is clearly part of it.  We need to pay attention to the sources of discontent, and those who manipulate it, as well as the flood of data that results from trying to track those already under its influence.  We are now more than a decade into this era of radicalization of a tiny minority of Muslims, disposed toward finding meaning in martyrdom.  In our own interest, we need for them to find purpose in life, not death.

A decade ago, we greeted a new millennium worried about Y2K — an unfounded fear of a worldwide communications meltdown from computer chips that couldn’t count beyond 1999.  Instead, the decade gave us a host of other challenges, some horrific, some hopeful.  For your consideration, here’s my  list of the top 10 decadal developments for America and the World.  I invite your comments and impressions.

1.  9/11 and Global Terror. Fueled by religious fundamentalism and grievance, the “Naughts” will be known as the decade when terror became a global phenomenon and changed the way states think about international security.  From Manhattan to Bali, from Madrid to Moscow, small groups of determined, suicidal true believers struck civilians and infrastructure, killing thousands and

The Awful Start

setting the stage for a decade of conflict in Southwest Asia.  A loose network with a few thousand members, al-Qaeda, became a household word around the world, and the beneficiary of incessant media attention.  The United States and other nation states thwarted many terrorist attacks, but they also mistakenly applied conventional and costly military approaches that widened the cultural rift between the West and the Islamic world.

2.  The Rise of Asia, the Slippage of Russia. The world’s two most populous states, one a capitalist-communist partocracy and the other a caste-laden democracy, finally assumed roles on the world stage commensurate with their size.  The economies of China and India grew at a tremendous rate.  By the end of the decade, China was the world’s largest polluter and had an emerging middle class that in population terms was nearly the size of the United States.  India, meanwhile, became a center of world outsourcing and home to the world’s largest steel company.  As Pakistan and North Korea conspired to join the ranks of nuclear states, Iran attempted to gain the same status.  Significantly, the first Eurasian nuclear power, Russia, became a proof that nuclear assets alone could not compensate for demographic decline and widespread corruption.  The world’s largest producer of natural gas, Russia attracted only one half the foreign direct investment that China did.  China’s economy ended the decade growing at 8 per cent per year, while Russia’s shrank at the same rate.  And it had yet to join the World Trade Organization.

3.  Global Economic Crisis. It was the decade of shaky finances and near meltdown in the advanced industrialized world.  By the end of 2008, most of the industrialized world had entered a steep recession, complicated by the fact that the largest economies — U.S., Europe, China, Japan — were profoundly interconnected and interdependent.  What began as a collapse in America’s mortgage markets led to failure of some of the world’s largest brokerages and investment banks, requiring large scale intervention by central banks, governments and the IMF.  One of America’s most prominent investment managers, a chairman of a top stock exchange, went to prison for conducting massive fraud.

4.  Hand-held Technology and the “Flat” World. The decade belonged to Google, Apple, BlackBerry and Internet-based social media.  Music and other digital media were suddenly available to anyone with access to the Internet and, by the end of the 2000’s, the devices to access digital media were carried in the palm of one’s hand.  Books, too, became digital media, downloaded and carried on “tablets” such as Kindle.  The ability of cell phones to record photos, audio and video clips led to surprising results:  “off the record” statements by politicians and scenes of political protests went “viral” and could be seen and heard instantaneously around the world.  As standard telephony was overcome by VoIP, providers such as Skype made it possible for business to be conducted — and outsourced — around the world.

5.  From Bush to Barack — America Changes. For only the second time in U.S. history, the son of a U.S. president was himself elected President — thanks to an unprecedented decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the narrowest election since the 19th Century.  George W. Bush, a “compassionate conservative,” planned a presidency of government restraint until faced with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leading quickly to an American-led invasion of Iraq and a long, costly and inconclusive war.  Bush was succeeded by Barack Obama, the first African-American to reach the presidency, and an opponent of most of Bush’s policies.  The world applauds and Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

6.  The World Warms to Global Warming. After a series of years with temperatures worldwide among the highest ever recorded, global warming is acknowledged by nearly all the world’s leaders as a real threat.  Failed U.S. presidential candidate Al Gore wins a Nobel Prize for his work to publicize this “Inconvenient Truth.”

Not a Movie

7.  Disasters and Pandemics. The worst natural disaster of modern times, the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, killed some 230,000 along the perimeter of the Indian Ocean.  The worst natural disaster in the history of the United States, Hurricane Katrina, struck the Gulf of Mexico the following year and helped undo the administration of George W. Bush.  Two flu pandemics — avian flu (2001-2005) and swine flu (2009) caused far fewer deaths, but led to near panic in far flung parts of the world.

8.  The Nation-State as a Failed Enterprise. Despite the durability of the nation-state as a framework for organizing societies, it became clear during this decade that some states were not up to the challenge.  Somalia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Yemen were among the jurisdictions most often referred to as belonging to a new category — “failed states.”

9.  Reality Ever More Virtual. Sophisticated duplications of reality for educational, military or entertainment purposes became a remarkable novelty.  Computer games, already a multi-billion dollar industry, grew in complexity and realism.  Drone aircraft were “piloted” over Afghanistan and Pakistan by military officers sitting at computer screens half a world away.  On the Internet, “Second Life” created an alternative reality in which alter-egos represented anonymous real persons from anyplace in the world.  Animated feature films became more complex and artistically creative, capped at the end of the decade by the most expensive film ever made, “Avatar.”

10.  Sexual Evolution. Slipping under the radar of our social consciousness, sexual mores moved toward greater tolerance in the United States and many industrialized democracies.  By the end of the decade, eight states on three continents, and seven U.S. states, had legalized gay marriage and many others recognize gay civil unions.  The disclosure in United States, Ireland and elsewhere of sexual misconduct by members of the Roman Catholic clergy led to public apologies by Pope Benedict XVI and large payouts to those abused.  Other religious communities, such as the Anglican Communion, split over the issues of gay marriage and married clergy.

This year closed out what Time magazine called the “Decade from Hell,” a decade punctuated by terrorism and its consequences. The Obama Administration, whose achievements and vicissitudes this blog chronicles, struggled in its first year to move America beyond the context of the “War on Terror,” but was only partly successful.

He'll Get Used to It

Its most consequential move in foreign policy was in fact a legacy of 9/11: to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan and commit to an expensive investment in military and civilian aid in Southwest Asia that will last through most of Obama’s presidential mandate. Still, as he moved from the “poetry” of campaigning to the “prose” of governing, President Obama did effect change and conducted, as the Economist put it, a “whirlwind year” in foreign and domestic affairs. He changed the tone in which America spoke to the world (most notably in his Cairo speech), while at home overseeing an extraordinary effort to lift the world’s largest economy from its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. At home and abroad, we are still at the very beginning of the Obama era, one full of risk and promise.

Person of the Year

Barack Hussein Obama, 44^th President of the United States.

Most Unexpected Event

Domestic opposition in Iran to the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It underlined the volatile nature of Iran’s politics and complicated the U.S.’ efforts to engage Iran on nuclear and security issues.

What to Watch for in 2010

• Further deterioration in Iran and Pakistan – big potential headaches for America and the world;

• Economic or political crisis in disparate, populous near-failed states (Mexico, Ukraine, Nigeria)

• South African World Cup – potentially a great step forward for Africa’s image

• American-Cuban rapprochement

• Alternative Energy in China

Earlier this year, Forbes magazine proclaimed him the first athlete to have passed the $1 billion mark in total earnings, but the vast majority of this money came from commercial endorsements. Now, virtually all the advertisers that used Tiger Woods’ image to sell their products have decided that he is no longer the kind of person they want their customers to identify with. More precisely, they have calculated that their customers have already abandoned Tiger Woods, so they will too.

Just Putting Around

Plenty of sports legends and politicians have disappointed their followers by their performance “off the field.”  Babe Ruth, Magic Johnson, JFK, Bill Clinton — the list includes many whose athletic or political achievements later became obscured because of popular disapproval of how these stars behaved in private.

It starts with expectations.  Unlike most Europeans, for example, Americans are intent on knowing and judging the private lives of their sports and political heroes.  And when it turns out that extraordinary feats on the athletic field or in the political arena are matched by extraordinary performance …well, elsewhere, it can be problematic.  Even the Italians or the French, who snicker at Americans’ rejection of a Gary Hart or an Elliot Spitzer, draw the line when their own leaders’ private affairs lack decorum.

Moreover, we expect that sports figures and politicians will abide by certain rules.  If they set records in games and elections that are strictly governed by rules, rules ought to govern their private lives as well.  Whether it’s Mark Sanford or John Edwards, Tiger Woods or Michael Vick, lapses in private behavior will keep you off the professional field where you gained your fame.  When your reputation suffers, sponsors and political allies disappear.

We need heroes in the public arena.  They serve as role models for youth and adults.  When Accenture cut its deal with Tiger Woods six years ago, they urged businesses to “Go on.  Be a Tiger.”  As their press release put it:

Tiger Woods’ strength, mastery, discipline and relentless focus on winning are universally recognized qualities that mirror the characteristics of a high-performance business, making him the ideal representative for our market positioning,” said Joe W. Forehand, Accenture chairman and CEO. “A high-performance business is one that optimizes its resources to achieve its objectives and consistently outperforms competitors. Tiger is the best at his game, and we want our clients to be the best at theirs.”

A few days ago, it was a different story:  “After careful consideration and analysis, [Accenture] has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising.”  The $26 billion global consulting firm will look for another hero whose image it can endorse.  All the airport billboards around the world are coming down.

Before the Public Knew

Tiger still has incredible potential as an athlete.  He was just named the top athlete of the past decade — deservedly so — and can still look forward to many more years of peak athletic performance.  But he no longer has the aura of hero.  Yesterday the New York Times in a front page story linked him to a Canadian doctor accused of providing other athletes with HGH — human growth hormone.  The second-ranked athlete in the poll — Lance Armstrong — has also faced scrutiny over his own medical treatment.

We dare not place our athletes and political leaders on too high a pedestal — they are, after all, human.  But athletes and politicians must know that if they sell an image of perfection they will pay a high price once their image confronts reality.

As President Obama speaks in Oslo, and the Senate fights over health care, Congressional hearings on the President’s new Afghanistan policy continue with a sense of inevitability. There is no serious opposition on Capitol Hill to the White House’s decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This even though America’s military leaders warn that the start date of July 2011 for withdrawal will not mean a quick disengagement. Next year, General Stanley McChrystal said on Wednesday, will be a difficult one on the ground in Afghanistan.

Yet there were other options for a new U.S. strategy. Dr. John Arquilla, a noted expert on modern warfare, advocates reducing U.S. force levels rather than increasing them, making a more concerted effort to negotiate with moderate Taliban forces, and halting drone attacks on Pakistan territory. In some respects his ideas resemble the views attributed to Vice President Biden and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry during the lengthy policy debate in recent months. Both were reportedly against increasing U.S. troop levels but have now dropped their objections.

“We know from Vietnam that you can add and add and add and still end up losing,” Arquilla said today in an interview. “The idea that war is by the numbers is very troubling to me and it’s an artifact of thinking from an earlier era. This comes as no surprise given that the President’s National Security Adviser is a retired general of a most conventional line of thought, General James Jones, who is associated with the whole concept of ’shock and awe’ bombing. So it doesn’t surprise me that the President came down on the side of believing that simply adding numbers would make things better. Strategy is far more important than the simple issue of numbers.”

Arquilla, as a resident scholar at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, is tasked with giving advice to the Pentagon on counterterrorism. He advised the Obama campaign on security issues, but is not happy with the outcome. “My role is to say things that are hard to hear, and often they are hard to hear for a long time. But eventually they prevail,” he said. “Frankly right now I feel a tremendous frustration with the Obama Administration, which was full of ideas about the change we need in national security affairs [but] I have seen precious little action on any of them since the President has come into office.”

He adds: “The Congressional hearings are our last opportunity before we cut the checks to pay for this strategy for defeat. We have an obligation to the American people to hold a vigorous, spirited but civil debate about the merits of this strategy. I don’t see it happening and I’m very troubled by it.”

Arquilla, who received his PhD from Stanford, views America’s struggle with Al Qaeda as the first “nations vs. networks” conflict, for which standard counterinsurgency approaches are insufficient. “I think the terrible irony here is that somehow we can train the Afghans to do so much better. We’ve been there eight years and look at the situation we’re in.”

Particularly unwise, given Afghanistan’s history and the fraud on behalf of Karzai’s reelection, is America’s support for the Karzai government.

“It is shameful that we would look the other way at this debasing of the very values that are so essential to why we fight,” he said. “Also, there is no history in Afghanistan of democratic central governance from Kabul.”

By now, it appears clear that the policy debate has reached an unfortunate end: “Everyone has agreed that more troops will be better, everyone has agreed that we will begin some process of withdrawal eighteen months from now, and everyone has agreed that we’re going to put more pressure on Pakistan — and all of these things are wrong-headed.”

The complete interview can be heard here.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW:
[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/rnolan/John_Arquilla3.mp3]

The New York Times and the Washington Post performed an important public service today by publishing separate, detailed accounts of how Barack Obama reached his decision on Afghanistan.  Also today, the two top writers for these papers — the Times’ Tom Friedman and the Post’s Bob Woodward — appeared together on Meet the Press to give their analysis of what happened and what lies ahead.

What stands out is the thoroughness of the debate within the Administration leading up to the decision to “surge” 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan but also, more importantly, the lack of optimism that this strategy will result in any conclusive, decisive change.

The reasons for the lack of optimism are easy to see.  An insurgency that is diffuse and dispersed, a government that is disorganized and corrupt, a population that is poor, largely illiterate and hard to protect.  And that’s just Afghanistan.  Pakistan is even more complicated and discouraging.  Then there’s what the White House calls its “core goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and eventually [emphasis added] defeat al Qaeda and to prevent their return to either Afghanistan or Pakistan.”  How are we to know when we have achieved this goal?  Defense Secretary Gates said today that the U.S. for “years” has had no good intelligence on where the leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is.  How can you defeat an enemy you cannot find?

There is more than a little frustration on the part of the United States, NATO and the small number of predominantly Muslim countries that are engaged in this effort.  Friedman seemed almost exasperated in talking about the failure of Muslim moderates to energetically oppose the kind of terrorism exemplified by the suicide bomber who blew himself up on Friday in the middle of a mosque in Rawalpindi.  “If they (moderate Afghans) think we want it more than they do, we’re dead because they will let us want it more than they do and they will hold our coat from now until the next five or 15 years.”

The U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army, emerges as the source of much of the “ground truth” on Southwest Asia because they have lived and worked with a part of the Afghan population.  Many of Army’s finest have demonstrated not only battlefield bravery but a deep insight and compassion for the day-to-day challenges faced by civilians living in the midst of uncivil war.  Look at the way Greg Mortenson, the inspirational builder of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, describes the U.S. military in his new book, “Stones into Schools.”  According to one report:

Since April, Mortenson has facilitated more than 35 meetings in Afghanistan between local shura, or tribal leaders, and U.S. military commanders, including Gens. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command.  In those meetings, he says, more than 200 shura from dozens of provinces in Afghanistan conveyed that they want less military might and more brainpower from Americans in their push to rebuild after years of conflict. “They want us to know that it’s not just about fighting the Taliban but also about relationship-building with Afghan civilians and helping the Afghanis build schools and the infrastructure that they want and need.”

The United States, for reasons of national security, is trying urgently to defeat an insurgency in a region that is far away and vastly different from America.  It must convince a civilian population that it is on their side and at the same time push a local civilian government to take responsibility.  It has to find elusive terrorists without causing innocent loss of life.  Assuming that Obama has no choice but to try to do this, it is important that he learn quickly whether he stands any chance of success.

In the President’s speech tonight there will be commitments — promises if you will.  A commitment to send some 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan.  A commitment to use those troops to protect Afghan population centers while training Afghan soldiers and policemen.  And a commitment to recall American forces home as soon as local government can provide for its own security, or even sooner, if plans don’t work out.

The problem with all of these promises is that they skirt the issue.  The issue for President Obama is what needs to be done to protect the United States and the American people.  We have been told that the threat comes from Al Qaeda.  Since Al Qaeda’s leadership is located at least partly outside of Afghanistan proper, the Karzai government’s struggle against various Afghan Taliban forces may not address the issue of what Al Qaeda is able to do elsewhere.  What is the relationship of Afghanistan’s security to America’s own security?  Unless President Obama can convincingly demonstrate this connection, all the promises he makes tonight at West Point will have little value and will, in fact, raise more questions.

Besides the cost in dollars and lives, apart from the corrupt practices of Karzai government, the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is an intrusion into a society and culture vastly different from our own.

Consider just a few facts about Afghanistan, most of them courtesy of the United Nations:

42 per cent of the population lives on less than USD 1 per day.

More than 2,100 non-combatants lost their lives in conflict in Afghanistan last year.

Afghanistan still produces over 90 percent of the world’s opium, the raw ingredient of heroin. Afghanistan’s drug trade is believed to inject some USD 3 billion a year into the Afghan economy and the proceeds help fund the Taliban.

More than 8.5 million people are chronically vulnerable to malnutrition and illness, more than half of Afghan people live below the poverty line.

Conservative customs, poverty, lack of educational facilities and a strong culture of gender discrimination have deprived over five million school-age children (over 60 percent of them girls) of an education.

Of the five million people currently living in Kabul, at least three million are residing in illegal and unplanned houses.

We are sending an army, at a cost of roughly $1m per soldier, to a country vastly different from our own, with enormous social, political and ethnic divisions, where decades of foreign involvement have failed to substantially improve the lives of people.

Not much promise in that.

Here we are, in the season of good cheer and gift giving, and all the talk seems to be of punishment.  What sanctions does Iran deserve for disobeying international rules on nuclear enrichment?  Will civilian prosecutors in New York succeed in getting the death penalty in next year’s trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?  Should Germany try and punish an infirm old Ukrainian who was once a guard at a Nazi death camp?

The list of proposed punishments extends down to the level of bizarre yet disconcerting behavior in America’s media spotlight.  Should the couple who “crashed” Obama’s first state dinner be brought to justice — or just banned from “reality” TV?  What about the peculiar efforts to bring fugitive filmmaker (and convicted sex offender) Roman Polanski to a jail cell?

Careful Now

Crime and mischief observe no holidays — that’s clear.  But why are we so preoccupied with meting out justice at this particular point in time?  My own theory is that we are conscious as seldom before of the amount of injustice that goes unpunished, and so we concentrate on bringing justice to bear in the cases where a perpetrator seems obvious.

But such motives often lead to simplified exculpatory conclusions.  Sure, it’s of course good that Karadzic is on trial in The Hague and that Kaing Guek Euv is on trial in Phnom Penh and KSM will be on trial in Manhattan.  But what about Mladic or Osama bin Laden?  When we find Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in Iraq it’s easy to forget that we left OBL hiding in a cave at Tora Bora.  Which is precisely what happened.

The telling consequences come much later when societies look back and try to make amends.  What does it say that Germany feels impelled to bring Demjanjuk to trial when the Israeli Supreme Court overturned a verdict delivered by an Israeli court?

Iran has its common criminals, but why should it execute far more per capita of its own people than any other country?  Totalitarian governments exist on fear and then, a generation or more later, their nations try to purge themselves of the evil they countenanced by holding a few as examples of what should not have been allowed.  This is both too much and far, far too little.