Author: opinionstogo

Back in the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter fired UN Ambassador Andy Young for talking to the Palestinians. Young acknowledged the transgression, took one for the team and let others more vigorously make the case. And that case was: If you aspire to something other than heated public rhetoric, impasse, and worst-case scenario, you can’t preclude talking directly to people. Calling it a matter of principle, policy, protocol, politics or just visceral dislike doesn’t change it.

Recall that we had to talk to the Soviets, for whom the gut feeling was closer to paranoia and loathing. But the USSR was our Cold War partner. A fellow hegemon. Our own self-interest, indeed, preservation, demanded a dialogue. So we talked, stayed out of a nuclear Armageddon and settled for proxy fights around the globe until the USSR imploded.

We didn’t deign to talk to Fidel Castro, however. He was certainly no peer, and it was as personal as it was political. And, besides, you would only elevate – read: reward – such a dictator by sharing a forum with him. Two generations later, there is still a counterproductive embargo and Cubans literally dying to get here.

The lessons have gone unheeded.

The culture-fractured, post-Cold War era has left us without a nation-state peer. But not without sovereign threats. Iran and North Korea come readily to mind.

But we still don’t talk directly to either one. With Tehran, it’s been personal since the hostage-taking of 1979; with Pyongyang, it’s been enigmatic and threatening since the Korean War.

There are incipient signs, however, that the post-Cold War cold shoulder could thaw. But it has taken an ill-advised “axis of evil” taunt, dynamics borne of a flawed Iraqi occupation, a neocon eclipse and the ascendance of Condoleezza Rice to secretary of state.

No longer is the Bush Administration talking in terms of “rewarding” bad behavior by agreeing to talk with Iran and North Korea. In fact, the president no longer seems to be packing rhetorical heat. Increasingly he’s been flashing the “diplomacy” card.

Through the tragedy and crucible that is Iraq, it appears the administration may have learned something. You have to be big enough – and smart enough – to talk to everybody that needs talking to.

We understand – indeed, expect – the U.S. to have contingency plans for all kinds of foreign scenarios. Think Persian Gulf, Hamas, Ahmadinejad, Musharaff, Karzai, Kim, Putin, Koizumi, Blair, Chirac, Chavez, Calderon, Castro. And lots more.

Then there’s the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba.

No, it’s not part of a contingency scenario but an actual in-place plan calling for an immediate $80 million in funding for Cuba’s opposition with the intent of greasing the skids for a Cuban turn to democracy. President Bush didn’t even hint at nuance on this one. “We are actively working for change in Cuba,” declared the president, “not simply waiting for change.”

Doubtless change will follow the eventual demise of the dictatorial, yanqui-scapegoating Castro. And, of course, it would be encouraging and reassuring to see a regime that is both friendly to the U.S. and to its own people.

But isn’t that, well, Cuba’s call?

A couple of years ago the Internal Revenue Service had to remind Americans that the U.S. tax code does not allow for racial reparations. Never has. But the IRS was still getting thousands of returns for billions of dollars in bogus reparation refunds.

Now there’s a more formal campaign – fueled in no small part by academics and attorneys – that seems poised to morph into more of a mainstream movement. Several reparations court cases are currently underway. A couple of Churches – Moravian and Episcopal – recently apologized for having owned slaves. The latter is even looking into the suitability of compensating black members.

So, here we go again.

This is not about justice so much as it is about getting a piece of the action. It is a concept older than slavery itself: something for nothing. The operative color here is green for those enslaved by old-fashioned opportunism. Specifically, cashing in an I.O.U. owed to somebody else.

Moreover, the reparations issue only reinforces a false and counterproductive premise. That is that black Americans can’t make it on their own in this country without playing the victim card for all it’s worth. That should be as patronizing as it is insulting.

And for those who like some irony with their reparations, there’s this historical note. According to the 1860 census, more than 6,000 blacks owned slaves, mostly Indians.

Any of those slave-owner descendents want to step forward and settle ancestral matters with certain native Americans before proceeding on with principled recompense for historical affronts? What’s more, anyone interested in pursuing those related to West African chiefs who sold their tribesmen to the European slave traders?

When New Orleans’ murder rate spiked last month, Mayor Ray Nagin requested the National Guard to help cope.

Now keep in mind that half the old population base was scattered after Katrina and only recently – but ominously – began to trickle back in. And also keep in mind that while New Orleans prefers geographically and culturally alluring appellations such as “Crescent City” and “The Big Easy,” it’s long been saddled with the (all too) well-earned “Murder Capital of the U.S.” moniker.

But calling out the National Guard because of murders in New Orleans? That’s like sending NATO peacekeepers into Afghanistan – but just until the country no longer needs pacification.

As for the “Big Queasy”: The day the Guard leaves is the day Mayor Nagin declares, in effect, that his city has been purged of disproportionate numbers of career criminals with high-risk lifestyles. You can take him at his word.

Since Sept. 11, there’s been no paucity of pundits – from the glib chattering class and political partisans to disgruntled insiders and wonkish academics — holding forth on what it all means and where we go from here. Arguably no author of a 10-year-old tome has been more quoted these days than Samuel P. Huntington. “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” ought to be required reading for anyone who cares about context beyond “evil doers” who “hate freedom” and, thus, us.

Five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and five years before Sept. 11, Huntington was assessing the new geo-political landscape – one less driven by ideology than cultural identity. Indeed, such identities, according to Huntington, were already disturbingly shaping the pattern of conflict in the post-Cold War world. His pragmatic perspective and somber assessments, not all of which have played well with all Americans, are insightful and controversial; his prescience sometimes uncanny. He’s sobering, blunt, at times politically incorrect and worth paying attention to.

Some of Huntington’s observations from his 1996 “Clash of Civilizations”:

* “The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures.”

* “The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.”

* “Democratization conflicts with Westernization, and democracy is inherently a parochializing not a cosmopolitanizing process. Politicians in non-Western societies do not win elections by demonstrating how Western they are. Electoral competition instead stimulates them to fashion what they believe will be the most popular appeals, and those are usually ethnic, nationalist and religious in character.”

* “Asians believe that East Asia will sustain its rapid economic development, will soon surpass the West in economic product, and hence will be increasingly powerful in world affairs compared to the West

Now that the (Anthony Kennedy-swing vote) Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo detainees must be treated according to international standards, here’s a post-Hamdan hypothetical. Would most Americans — no questions asked – settle for a Guantanamo standard of prisoner treatment if a family member were captured (or kidnapped) by the other side in the War on Terror?