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.

After years of profligacy, frugal America is back. You can see it in the new figures on how Americans are paying down their credit cards. You can see it in the way that Democrats such as Rep. David Obey (D-WI) refuse to add to the deficit to pay for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. You can definitely see it in the way that the health care debate in Congress is boiling down to a fight over what the measure will cost in the near term to the Federal budget.

At every level, from family to corporation to government, budget watching is back in America, with clear implications for America’s role in the world. Shortly before his trip to East Asia, President Obama sent his budget director, Peter Orszag, to tell the media that his focus next year will be on deficit reduction.  Which raises questions:  Will the foreign aid money be on hand in next year’s federal budget to fund the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar bill for Pakistan?  Congress and the President signed the measure last month, but the money hasn’t been appropriated yet.  Will the State Department, the Defense Department and Congress agree on how much money should be given to State and Defense for ‘cross cutting’ political-military projects?  Already there are reports that the two departments are fighting over funding because they see Congress getting stingier next year.

The Dollar's Decline

Even CIA Director Leon Panetta, himself former budget director to President Clinton, has been sensitive to the popular mood.  Speaking to a gathering in San Francisco last month, he said that while the CIA “gets everything it asks for” from Congress, the Agency would be trying hard to use its large share of the intelligence budget more effectively.  Today, as the Space Shuttle Atlantis     quietly orbits the Earth, the Shuttle program is nearing its end with really no prospect of NASA getting funds to plan for the return to manned Moon exploration that George W. Bush announced before he left office.  A war or two will do that.

Experienced politicians like Obey and Panetta understand.  When the U.S. economy is growing and jobs are being added to the work force, Americans are not inclined to micro-manage the federal budget process.  Today, however, while the economy has returned to growth, unemployment remains chronic and high.  Here in California, official unemployment is 12.2 per cent, and there are worrisome cuts in government services and steep hikes in tuition fees at public universities.  The combination of reduced tax income and increased safety net spending has led to deficits and/or cuts at every level of government.

No Kidding

The public is in a rebellious mood.  It knows that Wall Street secured billions in bail out funds earlier this year, then granted itself bonuses.  Unable to take action against the financial services industry itself, Americans showed their ire at the ballot box earlier this month.  As Frank Rich put it, referring to the corpulent new governor of New Jersey, “If there’s one general lesson to be gleaned from [Republican Chris] Christie’s victory over [Democratic Governor] Jon Corzine in New Jersey, it’s surely that in today’s zeitgeist it’s less of a stigma to be fat than a former Goldman Sachs fat cat.”

The problem for President Barack Obama now, as he prepares to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, is to restore greater peace and confidence at home.  Impatience at home with the pace and impact of Obama’s legislative agenda led to and was aggravated by critical images and reports of his trip to China.  America feels that spending on guns should purchase security, if not respect, but the result is different if you’re making those purchases with borrowed funds.

It has been painfully obvious since the advent of the current age of terrorism that the  loathsome tactics of terrorists do not correspond to the kinds of behavior the Geneva Conventions were written to regulate.  International law envisions nation states and their uniformed armies.  But what about when the perpetrators of violence across international boundaries are not states, or even uniformed movements?  How does a state under such attack protect itself and its citizens?

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, was the latest of many officials to struggle with the question of how to treat captured foreign combatants who commit acts of war but belong to no state.

As he put it, ”the 9/11 attacks were both an act of war and a violation of our federal criminal law, and they could have been prosecuted in either federal courts or military commissions.”

But Holder decided (and President Barack Obama defended this decision) to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed under federal criminal law in a civilian court.  He did not fully explain why, except to say that he concluded the chances of a fully successful prosecution were better in a civilian court.

It is a controversial decision, on many levels.  Opposition Republicans argue that to try him in a civilian court treats him as a criminal rather than a combatant waging war against the United States.

But Mohammed, or KSM as he has been known for years, was not captured on a battlefield, but in Pakistan.  He was captured by Pakistani agents, not by American soldiers.  He had been indicted by an American civilian court already in 1996 for his role in the Manila air plot and may have conspired in many other failed or successful terrorist attacks.  Most of the victims 9/11 were civilians.

Some claim that the procedures of a civilian trial will risk revealing classified information.  KSM – so the thinking goes — if he chooses to reject legal counsel and represent himself, may be entitled to see evidence that would not be disclosed in a military trial.  A civilian trial may take much longer – consider the process of jury selection, for example – than would a military tribunal.

These arguments have considerable weight, but nothing outweighs the importance of seeing justice done properly.  There is something reassuring in having the full force and transparency of the U.S. criminal justice system applied to this most heinous of terrorist attacks/crimes.  After the repeated water boarding of KSM and years of detention at Guantanamo, there will finally be an opportunity to apply to this case unambiguous traditions of jurisprudence that have been fashioned over centuries, rather than procedures defined in moments of national stress.

U2 and Bon Jovi, Hillary Clinton and Lech Walesa, Placido Domingo, Mikhail Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger.  They were all on hand in Berlin today to mark the 2oth Anniversary of the rupture of the Berlin Wall.  Of all the shattering events in German history that took place on November 9th — the execution of Robert Blum in 1848, the birth of the Weimar Republic in 1918, Hitler’s attempted putsch in 1923, the founding of the Nazi SS in 1925, the horrific “Kristallnacht” in 1938 — only the surprise dissolution of the rigid East German communist police system exactly twenty years ago today inspires rejoicing.  It is as though all the others are dismissed to some dark historical recess, while we bask in the shiny example of peaceful liberation.

Those who have witnessed history, especially this history, known that there was no predetermined course to the Revolution of 1989.  The very announcement that transit between East and West Berlin would be freely permitted was a kind of accident.  But once the announcement was made, corresponding as it did to the will of an overwhelming majority, there was nothing left to stop the free flow of people across the internal German border.  Communism didn’t relent — it had simply walked away.  Americans endlessly quote Ronald Reagan from 1987:  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Gorby didn’t need to.  He just abandoned it, like a decrepit Trabant left at the side of the road.

Hillary Clinton gave a polite and heartfelt speech, overlooked by Germans about as much as Angela Merkel’s much more heartfelt speech before the US Congress was ignored by Americans last week.  Too bad.  We have moved on to a new historical period, as Clinton’s predecessor Madeline Albright said today — the period of 9/11 and its specter of terrorism launched from the Middle East.  Like the Germans and November 9th, will we have some day a better event to mark September 11th, with hopeful omens instead of hate?

After months of debate, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed health care legislation.  Although not a foreign policy issue, the vote is consequential for the Obama Administration, the United States and ultimately the U.S. role in the world.

The legislation is not yet law.  The U.S. Senate has yet to vote on the matter, and that vote will be close.  But most observers now expect passage, perhaps by the end of the year.  It will be a significant political victory for President Obama, who made health care reform a major priority during his election campaign last year.

Seen from abroad, it is easy to overlook or misunderstand the significance of this hard-fought party-line vote.  No issue apart from the economy has received more attention in American political life in recent months.  And while the debate has hardened many views on both sides, it has also occasioned a reexamination of the way that the American health care system is organized.

It is an expensive system, a large part of the U.S. economy, and differs greatly from health care systems in most other developed countries.  It is neither a nationalized system, where the government owns hospitals and pays doctors, nor a single-payer system, where a government program pays most health care costs.  Except for the elderly and the very poor, there has been no national health program in the United States.

If the bill passed by the House is also passed by the Senate, that now will change.  Most Americans will still have private insurance for most health care expenses, but the government will play a much bigger role in setting the rules by which private insurance companies pay for or reimburse most health care costs.

There will be rights and responsibilities.  Nearly every American citizen will have to have health insurance and if they are poor the government will help pay for it.  By the same token, no one who is sick will be refused a health insurance policy.   The government will probably end up marketing some sort of “public option” for those dissatisfied with the range of choices that private insurers provide on their own.

Until fairly recently, most Americans got health insurance through their workplace.  Health insurance was one of the benefits that most employers paid for to entice workers to come work for them.  But, with the recession now in the United States, almost one in five American workers is either unemployed or works only part-time.  These workers will now get a break, since the government will step in to make sure that health insurance is available to them.

One hopes that the cost of health insurance to business goes down — or at least comes under control.  It was that cost, after all, that was considered one of the big disadvantages to American business in competing with companies based in countries whose governments pay all health care costs.

Last week could not have been an easy one for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Traveling to Pakistan, she arrived just as the Taliban began a fresh wave of bombings.  When she headed for Israel, Netanyahu made plain that his government would not stop settlement expansion in the West Bank.  As the week ended and Clinton was on her way to Morocco, Hamid Karzai’s opponent in the contest to become President of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, abruptly withdrew from the runoff election, citing the corrupt electoral system in that country.

When things go sour in a far off region, it’s easier to avoid comment when you’re at home and don’t have a traveling press corps in tow, with press conferences and on-the-record, town hall-type events occupying a significant part of your schedule.  Clinton did not have the luxury of avoiding comment, so she put on her game face.

In Islamabad, she did her best to overcome the skepticism of journalists, students and women’s groups that repeatedly questioned U.S. motives.

Well into one long, set-piece discussion, she seemed to express frustration with the government of Pakistan:

“It is our information that the leadership of al-Qaida is in Pakistan. We don’t know where, and we are very committed to pursuing them because of their attack on us, but I also believe that the Government of Pakistan is as well. It’s a question of priorities. They are going after their most direct enemy right now, the Pakistan Taliban and some of its elements…I think it is absolutely clear, and I am convinced, that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of al-Qaida. And it’s very personal for me because of what happened on 9/11. I was a senator from New York and spent a lot of my time during my eight years in the Senate working both to help the people who were affected and to try and prevent another attack…So when we have an arrest like we did some weeks ago of a man named Zazi and we find out that he was trained in an al-Qaida camp – not a Taliban camp, an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan – we feel like we have to go to the Government of Pakistan and say, “Somewhere these people have to be hidden [sic] out. We don’t know where.” And I have no information that they know where, but this is a big government. It’s got – a government on many levels, there are local governments and national governments just like there is in any country. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan, must know where these people are. And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world.

In short, the U.S. Secretary of State seemed to be suggesting that the Government of Pakistan, if it only put its mind to it, would recognize its own interest and produce the information needed for the U.S. to locate and destroy the al-Qaida leadership.

The next day, responding to a mangled question about this, Clinton’s view changed:

QUESTION: Yesterday, you stated that Usama bin Ladin and Pakistani leadership or Pakistanis know where they are – Pakistani officials. I just want to – there is a need of clarification. Is it (inaudible) from Pakistani Government or Pakistani agencies? What will you say?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, what I said was that I don’t know if anyone knows, but we in the United States would very much like to see the end of the al-Qaida leadership. And our best information is that they are somewhere in Pakistan. And we think that it’s in Pakistan’s interest as well as our own that we try to capture or kill the leadership of al-Qaida, because we think that would be a very severe blow to terrorists everywhere. And my point is let’s work together to get that done.

At another point, she remarked how good the U.S.-Pakistani military relationship is:

I think the military-to-military relationship in – between the United States and Pakistan is at a new level of trust and confidence. The relationship between Admiral Mullen and General Kiyani is a close, personal one, not just a professional one. And I think that the military knows that we support them in their struggle against terrorism. We have provided, by far, the most equipment and most support that they have received from anyone. But we do have a system of accountability that we expect when we give people military assistance, and I think your military understands that very well.

So, in essence, no problem.  Our military relations are great, the Pakistani military understands our priorities, and they know we support them.  It seems so reasonable until you look for results.

In Jerusalem, Secretary Clinton saw another half-full glass:  “What [Prime Minister Netanyahu] has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described – no new starts, for example – is unprecedented in the context of the prior two negotiations. It’s also the fact that for 40 years, [U.S.] presidents of both parties have questioned the legitimacy of settlements.”

So, after 40 years of U.S. objections to Israeli West Bank settlement expansion, during which time the settlements have been continuously expanded and Palestinian lands repeatedly seized in contravention of Israeli law, Israel offers to not begin new settlements, just expand existing ones.  A distinction without a difference?

Finally, on Afghanistan, with Abdullah dropping out, Secretary Clinton remained unfazed.  “There have been other situations in our own country as well as around the world where, in a runoff election, one of the parties decides, for whatever reason, that they are not going to go on,” she said.  “I do not think that that in any way affects the legitimacy. And I would just add that when President Karzai accepted the second round without knowing what the consequences and outcome would be, that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward, and Dr. Abdullah’s decision does not in any way take away from that.”

Yes, technically, Ms. Clinton was right.  There of course have been candidates in U.S. elections who have dropped out before the actual vote.  For example, in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where the Republican candidate has just dropped out in advance of tomorrow’s election after being ganged up on by outsiders like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck.

Secretary Clinton may have spoken more than she wanted or needed to last week.  But something about this doesn’t feel like legitimacy.  Not in Afghanistan, where the U.N. figures that one-third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent.  Not in Pakistan, where the military seems more in control than any elected government.  And not in the West Bank, where legitimacy is undermined by efforts to change facts on the ground.  By bestowing legitimacy in these cases we obscure legitimacy of a more important kind — the kind that is actually earned.