Category: National

I’ve yet to see the movie “Invincible,” the story of Vince Papale who went from a bartender to a Philadelphia Eagle in the ’70s. I think it’s a rental. But a journalist friend/ buddy from Philly, who covered the Eagles back in the day, did e-mail this brief critique:

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If you’re looking for an intriguing Democratic dark horse for the 2008 presidential sweep stakes, look beyond Evan Bayh, Russ Feingold or Al Gore. Try Bill Richardson, New Mexico’s governor. His resume includes stints as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and U.S. Secretary of Energy. He was also elected seven times to Congress.

Richardson was born in California, raised in Mexico City and speaks fluent Spanish.

Since becoming governor in 2002, he has earned a reputation as a fiscal conservative who embraces tax cutting, including capital gains. The result: New Mexico now has a half-billion-dollar surplus and has seen revenues soar by 27 per cent this year.

He has sound advice that Democrats ignore at their own peril. “We have to be the party of growth and the American dream,” he advises. “Not the party of redistribution.”

Last month Peter Galbraith, the former ambassador to Croatia, said out loud what many insiders only say in private: the U.S. may have to resign itself to the partitioning of Iraq into (pro-West) Kurdish, (Iran-dominated) Shiite and (wild card) Sunni states. With embedded enmities based on religious and tribal affiliations as well as Saddam Hussein patronage, it may be the only viable alternative to an even bloodier civil war.

“You can’t have a national unity government when there is no nation, no unity and no government,” said Galbraith.

There’s certainly no dearth of partition models and reminders that historic strife and ethnic cleansing can’t be federalized in sovereign whitewash. Cypress and Yugoslavia come readily to mind.

The tragedy in Iraq, of course, would be that 3,000 Americans died – and many more were maimed – for an end-game strategy that looked like a loser as soon as the looting began.

A retro trend that looks longingly back to the 1950s for a more secure, innocent time is again making the rounds. Countering that are those who point to an era too easily identified with Communist witch hunts, a Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Some context.

Retrospection reinforces a rule of thumb. It’s better to oppose a secular ideology than a religion. A set of earthly tenets or Koranic cherry-pickings? Generals and uniformed soldiers representing a nation state or clerics and martyrs on a jihadi junket from Allah? ICBMs that stay in their silos or heat-seeking epistles that rally zealots to suicidal carnage?

Geo-political conflicts aren’t always zero-sum games. But a civilizational war necessarily is.

The U.S. and the Soviets were ultimately deterred by MAD – the unthinkable prospect of Mutual Assured Destruction. We were eyeball to eyeball with a super power peer. But we were both playing by the same rules – with the ultimate stakes equally acknowledged and respected.

Those were the days.

A lot has been made of lessons that can be drawn from that thwarted plot to bring down U.S.-bound planes with liquid bombs. To be sure, it should remind us of the value of profiling – including behavior — especially now that Norman Mineta has finally stepped down as Transportation Secretary and removed himself as a cabinet-level obstacle to common sense.

But the London experience also underscores an even more important security factor. The initial tip came from within the British-Pakistani community. Suspicious behavior was reported to authorities, which set in motion surveillance by M15, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. In collaboration with Pakistan and the U.S., the Brits arrested and filed criminal charges against 11 suspects and foiled what could have been a horrendous mass murder on the order of 9/11.

In the battle of wits with terrorists, the defense necessarily plays catch-up. And the offense only has to win infrequently, if that. Intelligence is the first line of pre-emption. And it starts, frankly, in the place where Islamaniacs are incubated.

But it takes a lot more than anti-terrorism sermons or op-ed letters that condemn jihadi barbarity, as welcome as those obviously are. Even more important is the singling out of would-be Muslim menaces by those in a position to notice the salient signs of martyrdom-in-the-making.

It’s not so much ratting out your own as it is a show of solidarity with the innocent, who ultimately come in all races, nationalities and faiths.

Whatever happened to Karen Hughes, the erstwhile media maven/power nanny to President Bush? With considerable fanfare, she was announced last year as the new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Her charge: Burnish the U.S. image abroad, especially in the Middle East.

A year and a half removed and nothing much is going right in the Middle East. We still don’t talk to those most responsible, and America’s controversial role in Iraq has helped fuel a jihadi pep rally with a worrisome, worldwide ripple effect. And arguably all of the moral high ground generated by 9/11 has been eroded.

But imagine the PR hit if we didn’t have a Secretary of Spin?

Increasingly and regrettably the United States and Israel share an irony that would be a cruel joke were it not so tragic. In the eyes of much of the world each has lost the moral high ground.

The worldwide images of Lebanese bodies – including the children at Qana – have amounted to a moral indictment of Israeli tactics.

You can certainly argue the Israeli response to Hezbollah has been disproportionate. But the Israelis are not targeting civilians. Hezbollah uses human shields and targets civilians. Those are flat-out war crimes.

Thanks to Abu Ghraib, charges of G.I. rapes and murders and collaterally-killed innocents, the U.S. has created a jihadi pep rally in Iraq and a flailing hegemon image.

No, we don’t behead and videotape. And, no, we don’t traffic in car-bombings and mass executions. No matter. Nobody loves an occupier – however noble its rationale might have been for occupying in the first place.

We can argue the skewed reality of misperception and an agenda-driven, cherry-picking international media. And it should be more than manifest that Jews and Americans aren’t the enemies of free people.

But still. The victim of the Holocaust and the victim of 9/11 seen by much of the world as mired in a moral sinkhole?

Who would have imagined?

It was one of those proposals that had political “win-win” written all over it.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms had called for a 90-day waiver on the gas tax – 7 cents per gallon – charged by the county. Who’s against pump-price relief in the age of rapidly ratcheting gas prices? And if it doesn’t happen, well, you can only look good trying.

Turns out there are some legal and legislative hurdles that preclude immediate action. It also means the county would be out more than $30 million in revenue annually.

Maybe even more to the point, however, a waived local-option gas tax would send yet another counterproductive, post-1973 Energy Crisis message. To wit: We should be able to ad hoc our way through another energy squeeze borne of finite oil supplies, politically unstable sources and – to thicken the plot – the ever-increasing demand resulting from India and China’s commitments to globalization and industrialization.

Recall that more than a quarter century ago President Jimmy Carter tried to rally Americans to the need – indeed, patriotic duty – of conserving energy. He called it the “moral equivalent of war.” Partisan politicians and an ad hominem-enamored media roundly ridiculed the phrase and caustically converted it into the feckless acronym: “MEOW.”

And the Manhattan Project of energy, of course, never happened. Neither did an effective equating of energy saving with logic, patriotism, economic self-interest or national security.

What did happen is that we borrowed more time – at usurious rates.

Time, as it turns out, to tinker with wind mills, ponder drilling where it previously had been off-limits, build a few butt-ugly hybrid vehicles, downsize a Hummer model and subsidize the likes of (ethanol-producing) Archer Daniels Midland. But no post-MEOW politician wanted to be the one to dare ask the citizenry to take one for Team America. That quaint concept went out with victory gardens, ration cards and the “Greatest Generation.”

But now, more than ever, we need that societal, common-good compass. The one that reminds us that Americans’ birthright is democracy — not the “good life” absent any sacrifice. Frankly, a hike in gas taxes, to encourage conservation, actually makes more sense than a waiver — but is tantamount to political suicide for any advocate.

America was forged out of a crucible where freedom had to be fought for and died for. Now this country is in – and make no mistake about it – a civilizational war. Why would we think we can possibly win it without some sacrifice from all our stakeholders? Anyone for asking “what you can do for your country”?

There’s the pragmatic – and oft times cynical – political endorsement game. And then there’s what happened last week in Waterbury, Conn.

Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, the third-term lawmaker who was almost vice president. Now his primary hopes are in serious jeopardy against (heretofore) little known Ned Lamont. So serious is the scenario that Lieberman says he will run as an independent if he loses on Aug. 8. Support for the war in Iraq is what has put Lieberman in political harm’s way. But being labeled a “Fox News Democrat” and being smooched by the president have further fueled the furor and backlash.

Clinton proved popular as a hustings helper and told an overflow crowd to look past the differences on Iraq and remember that Lieberman has been a loyal Democrat on issues ranging from organized labor to the environment. His praise was lavish.

Afterward, he put those principles – and that praise — into an appropriate political context. Should Lieberman lose and then run as an independent, Clinton acknowledged, he would back Lamont.

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.