Category: National

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is, once again, proposing the reinstitution of a military draft. It’s once again embedded in the context of Iraq and the supposition that the ill-advised invasion of that country might not have occurred had “members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way.”

That’s problematic.

What isn’t is Rangel’s rationale that the all-volunteer military disproportionately places the burden of war on minorities and lower-income families. Of course it does. These are precisely the ones most likely not to have better-than-military prospects coming out of high school.

But the current Iraq mess obscures a bigger point – bigger even than military needs that now necessitate ever-eroding standards for recruits.

A draft would make everyone, regardless of demographic caste, a stake-holder. It would address a glaring, growing anomaly in this country: We don’t ask something of everyone who benefits by living here.

Sacrifice is an abstraction to most Americans — except for today’s military and their families — or yesterday’s Greatest Generation, including erstwhile “Rosie the Riveters” and everyone who toughed out home-front rationing.

But, no, a draft wouldn’t mean military service for everyone eligible. Just service. The details, of course, could get devilish, but the premise is that national service – from guarding seaports to working in a domestic Peace Corps to battling an enemy militarily – would be everyone’s obligation. Regardless of socio-economic status and pedigree.

Meanwhile, part of our birthright continues to include under-taxed gasoline and new model Hummers during a civilizational war fought more for oil access than desert democratizations.

President George Bush’s answer to the question of whether the experience in Vietnam offered lessons for Iraq is worth contemplating for what he didn’t say.

He didn’t draw any parallels between Gulf of Tonkin subterfuge and cherry-picked intelligence on Iraq as reasons worth going to war for. Neither did he cite the untenable position of trying to defeat a motivated, guerilla enemy on their own turf, whether it utilized jungle warfare and native booby traps or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), mass kidnappings and video-taped executions. You can’t bomb your way to victory against movements, zealots and death-wish jihadis who only have to play offense.

What the president did say was that, “We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile.”

And, indeed, it did take a while for Vietnam, a Third World rice paddy state, to become a member of the World Trade Organization and the fastest-growing Asian economy after China. But it didn’t start happening until after we had left.

For too long Americans were insulated by two oceans and spoiled by the good fortune of the rest of the world coming to us after World War II. As a result, Americans have never made foreign languages and world geography a priority. By-the-numbers diversity celebrations and affirmative action quotas don’t count in a global economy.

But there are some positive signs afoot:

*A survey by the Modern Language Association showed a 92.3 per cent increase in the number of students studying Arabic at American universities. Granted it’s less than 20,000, but Arabic is the second fastest growing language on U.S. campuses – after American Sign Language.

Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world, and America’s strategy in avoiding – or winning – a civilizational war is assuredly undermined by communication defaults.

*Most Florida state universities offer degrees in Spanish, French, and German – plus Russian and East European studies. But billions of dollars, for example, are annually at stake in Florida’s trade with Asia as well as Brazil.

To address that global reality, state university system Chancellor Mark Rosenberg and his staff are designing the Virtual Languages Institute, which would teach students online – and go beyond the more traditionally taught Romance languages. Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, as well as Portuguese, would be distance-learning priorities. It would also push for more study abroad. The VLI still needs the Board of Governors to sign off and the Legislature to sign the checks.

*A Hillsborough County school now offers middle school students a chance to take a class in Mandarin, the most widely spoken language in the world. Ferrell Middle Magnet School is a designated language exploration magnet school. It offers Spanish and Mandarin as its foreign language options – and its language lab affords students the opportunity to experience Japanese, Hindi and Portuguese.

Next year Williams, Greco and Jennings middle schools – underwritten by a three-year federal grant — will also teach Mandarin. The Hillsborough County School District hopes eventually to teach Mandarin at elementary and high schools.

Speculation remains rife about what exactly has been ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro. Those purporting to know are adamant in their claims that Castro is suffering from colon cancer.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque backed off an earlier assertion that Castro would be back on the job by December – or would even be up to attending a delayed celebration of his 80th birthday next month.

Here we go again.

At a time when the U.S. can ill afford to look any more unilateralist and belligerent to much of the world, up comes another United Nations vote on Cuba.

This week Cuba presents its 14th annual resolution to the U.N. General Assembly against the 44-year-old economic embargo imposed upon it by the United States. Complete with a damages ($86 billion) claim.

Of course, the U.N. is flawed. On a good day. Rogue states can sit on the Security Council. Oil-For-Food turns into graft-for-all. Etc. But it’s the only such world forum we have, and we’ve never needed allies — or just non-adversaries — and favorable worldwide public opinion more than now. It’s integral to our national security goals.

But an embargo that had Cold War merit in 1962 has real world counter-productivity in 2006. It’s not just unfair to Cubans and American business, but it makes it easier for others to self-servingly portray America as the hegemon from hell – and not the country attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Last year the vote to lift the embargo was 182 to 4 with one abstention. Voting with the US: Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Micronesia abstained.

Don’t look for any significant change — unless this is the year we lose Palau.

As anniversaries go, it won’t draw any commemorations or memorials. It’s no 12/7/41 or 9/11/01. But 1/29/02 certainly grows in infamy and fallout.

That was the day President George W. Bush, enamored of a coinage by speech writers David Frum and Michael Gerson, spoke of an “axis of evil” that the U.S. – and the world – had to confront.

By incongruously compartmentalizing Iran and North Korea with Iraq – and then invading Iraq the next year before it could further advance its “WMD” arsenal – the president had sent some careless, simplistic signals.

The State of the Union use of “evil” was counterproductive. The word smacked of moral high ground and the theological. “Evil” is, by definition, nothing you make a deal with. Geo-politically, “evil” either implodes like a corrosive, irrelevant empire, or it’s so inherently dangerous that it has to be killed off.

The message received – even if not sent – was a reminder that nobody invades a country with nuclear weapons.

Whatever chance remained for rational leverage — in dealing with either Iran or North Korea — was undermined. North Korea, under its narcissistically cagey, oddball, power-hungry leader Kim Jong Il, has now officially crashed the nuclear power party. Does anyone realistically expect Iran, featuring the apocalyptically wily Mahmoud Amadinejad, to hold out for an invitation?

Call it the impetus of evil-labeling.

Back in the day, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon did the Jack Paar “Tonight Show” as presidential candidates. The latter even played some piano. And Bill Clinton flaunted his sax appeal on Arsenio Hall. Just a few months back, Al Gore warmed to the occasion with Jay Leno. Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have all hit the circuit.

It’s part of running for high profile and high office and reaching all pockets of the American electorate. Especially if the exposure is free. It’s also a reminder of the parallels between politics and show business and America’s popular-culture penchant for politicians as celebrities.

But there was something profoundly disquieting about seeing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last week on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. (But not as viscerally disturbing as seeing Danny Glover bear-hugging Hugo Chavez in Harlem.) Having a book (“In The Line Of Fire: A Memoir”) to hawk didn’t seem reason enough. Happens all the time; next up: Noam Chomsky.

The U.S. is in a civilizational war with Islamic jihadists. It’s an end game that won’t be resolved with a geo-political treaty. Someone’s way of life will end. It’s not a given that it won’t ultimately be the U.S. and the West. It’s that serious.

Having Musharraf exchange winks and nods and jihadi jokes with a faux news comedian is not what I was looking for from an ally who has to deliver. It would be like having Nguyen Van Thieu or Prince Norodom Sihanouk dropping in on Soupy Sales during the Vietnam War.

While Iraq is the recruiting poster, the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier is the nerve center of terrorism against the U.S. Here is where Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zarahiri and Mullah Omar still lurk. And Pakistan, which once claimed the Taliban as a client, is the key.

Musharraf is walking a very thin line. He is not popular with the Pakistani street, which is to say that assassination is a daily possibility. Domestic politics prompted him to proscribe U.S. and NATO troops from hunting for bin Laden and the others. He has pulled Pakistani troops from border provinces that house Afghanistan-raiding, Taliban insurgents. Whatever the reasons, including self-preservation, he’s still not doing enough.

Not a good time to wallow in a low-brow smugfest with Jon Stewart. It doesn’t underscore resolve.

Musharraf is “with us” because the rubble of the Stone Age was seemingly the alternative. Regardless, he and his country are critically important in the war against al-Qaeda and Islamaniacs. Arguably, it can’t be won without a major contribution from Pakistan.

It would be more reassuring if the man presiding over a Muslim country with nuclear arms that is a critically important ally against America-hating jihadists acted more like the president of Pakistan and less like a media-pandering American politician.

Maybe I’m just hopelessly old school. But what’s wrong with a head of state on the front line against terrorism taking a pass on a comedy spot and limiting his interviews to serious journalists?

Did the generous book plug mean that much?

As anyone who has flown recently knows, the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints continue to be a crapshoot. The rules are necessarily subject to whatever the Mohammed Attas, Ramsey Yusefs and Richard Reids can concoct.

Only last week we were still in the better-safe-than-sorry throes of the moisturizer moratorium and the near-complete ban on carry-on liquids and gels of all sorts. Now it’s the era of the zip-lock baggie and the secure latte. Common sense and softer passenger traffic proved a holy alliance.

For now.

But back to the recent past. Going through security recently at Philadelphia International Airport, I was encouraged in that perverse, post-9/11 kind of way that I was flagged. For packing Neosporin. I had forgotten it was there. It probably predated the old, rarely-used briefcase it was in.

Regardless, good catch. Score one for the TSA. If these are today’s rules, enforce them.

And yet an accompanying backpack contained three thin, clear plastic vials of bubble mix – left over from a family wedding and reception the previous day. Sure, it was dumb to be packing bubbles in 2006; at least Neosporin made pharmaceutical sense. But more to the point, the bubbles went undetected.

Worse yet, they looked, well, downright suspicious outside their ceremonial context. It’s probably a good thing they weren’t Sam Rashid’s vile bubbles. Anyhow, strike up the contraband and take one back from the TSA.

Whatever the prevailing rules and degree of hassle, 50-50 is not the kind of odds you want in airport security.

Another teachable moment squandered; another round of irony and hypocrisy displayed.

Granted, if you’re the Pope, you think thrice about saying anything about Islam that could conceivably make matters worse. Which can be confining and which basically precludes criticism — especially if it references, say, VIOLENCE. Even if it’s in the context of a Medieval quote.

For those who cherry pick the Koran, it’s hardly a quantum leap to be selective in what they take from a long lecture by that former academic theologian, Joseph Alois Ratzinger. The Pope’s greater messages were the dangers of secularism in the Christian West, the need to know God better and a call for religious dialogue.

But Benedict XVI is known to be a hardliner and no fan of fanaticism, notably the kind that uses religion to justify terrorism. He doesn’t always pull his rhetorical punches.

Not exactly inching out on a theological limb, the Pope noted that “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.” Oops. For good measure, he also decried holy wars and forced conversions, which have been pretty much discredited for more than a millennium.

But the zinger was bringing that Byzantine quote machine, Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, into the discourse. In a 14th century dialogue with a Persian scholar, MIIP seemed to be playing the devil’s advocate, if you will. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new,” he is said to have said, “and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Oops. Big Time.

We all know what can happen as a result of an offending Danish cartoon, Dutch film or Indian best seller. So the fanaticism hit the fan again.

The predictable overreaction – street protests, burning Benedict effigies, some church fire bombings, the murder of a nun — was quick, thanks to the internet and major Arab television networks. Among the ironic, hypocritical retorts, this one by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. “

According to the U.S Census Bureau, property tax collections are up 35 per cent from 2002 to 2006. Tax cut proposals are being considered in at least 15 states. Here in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush has created the Property Tax Reform Committee to search for long-term solutions to soaring property tax costs. A series of public hearings are being held around the state. Tampa will host one Nov. 17.

One sure target will be tax assessors’ offices. In fact, the American Homeowners Association estimates that 60 per cent of homes are over-assessed. The reasons can often be a function of understaffing and consequent over-reliance on software or assessors eyeballing properties from the sidewalk or their car.

The October issue of Money magazine provides a handy checklist. Make sure the “basics” – from number of baths to size of the lot — are right, advises Money . Also, be on the lookout for “anything that could knock down the value of your home and your tax burden.” Examples include: “a sloped lot; a crack in your home’s foundation, easement, even a shared driveway or an old roof.”

Even architecture is a factor. The only contemporary home, for example, in a neighborhood of, say, colonials or bungalows, may result in that home’s value being lower than the tax rolls indicate.