Category: National

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?

Imagine, New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin requested the National Guard to deal with a spike in the city’s murder rate. And this despite half a population base having been scattered–and only recently beginning to trickle back in. Keep in mind that while New Orleans prefers culturally alluring appelations such as “Cresent City” and “The Big Easy”, it’s long been saddled with the well-earned “Murder Capital of the U.S.” moniker.

Calling in the National Guard because of murders? The day the Guard–in good conscience–leaves is the day the city disingenuously declares itself, in effect, purged of a disproportionate number of career criminals with high-risk lifestyles.

Chances are, the New York Times won’t be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for reporting on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists. This is one of those Constitutionally opaque areas where reasonable people can agree that a free press is indispensable to a meaningful democracy, that prior restraint is philosophically anathema, that the Fourth Amendment is seriously sacred stuff, that we all think we know what the Founding Fathers would say and that the people’s right to know is sacrosanct — but not quite absolute. You don’t, say, aid or abet the enemy. You don’t give away troop movements. That sort of thing.

The Nixon Administration didn’t want the Pentagon Papers to go public, because it was politically embarrassing and demoralizing. How the U.S. dominoed itself into Vietnam in the first place would further fuel the anti-war furor. But that was not a compelling enough reason to proscribe publication by the New York Times. I still have my copy.

And ironically there was the Times’ acquiescence to President John F. Kennedy’s entreaty to not blow the cover of CIA-funded rebels prepping to invade Cuba. To his dying day, Kennedy regretted being so persuasive. The unco-opted Bay of Pigs plans became, of course, a tragic fiasco and precursor to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

To publish or not to publish is ultimately a soul-searching, ethically-wrenching “hard call,” as acknowledged by Times’ executive editor Bill Keller. It better be – even for the ostensibly apolitical and the would-be omniscient. An unelected media that buys ink by the barrel is a requisite check on government power – but it’s not a leak-reliant trump card in time of national peril.

And context means everything.

Consider the paranoid, adversarial Nixon Administration. Or the newly-elected, young, Eastern establishment, New Frontier Kennedy Administration. Or Fortress Bush – hardly a citadel of veracity from countdown to Iraq to Katrina aftermath to Valerie Plame’s CIA outing.

And speaking of context. The United States is a country at war. Not a police action or a conflict or a Cold War proxy fight. Recall that Ho Chi Minh never threatened to attack America.

This is a civilizational war. The kind you must win. Ask Israel. The kind you err on the side of protecting lives – and ways of life — for.

Bill Keller might not get that. Neither might Jon Stewart. But they’re being protected too.

Later this week, Norman Mineta, the longest-serving transportation secretary, will step down from the Bush cabinet. Under Mineta, 74, the Transportation Security Administration was created.

It was Mineta’s call to ground all domestic U.S. flights after the 9/11 attacks. It’s now part of his legacy. It was also his decision to prohibit profiling at America’s airports. Those random searches of wheel chair-bound grandmothers from Dubuque: That’s also part of his legacy.

I’ll admit up front that I’m no expert when it comes to the game of soccer. But in a frenzy of raw chauvinism, I hop on the World Cup bandwagon every four years and root for the ultimate home team. At least in America, it’s still a refreshingly safe, hooligan-free outlet for jingoism. Kick some grass for a good cause; then soccer succor until the next quadrennial gathering.

The World Cup is the most-watched event in the world. It is geographically disparate and culturally unique. Where else would you ever see such exotic pairings as Ukraine vs. Saudi Arabia, Ivory Coast vs. Serbia-Montenegro or Togo vs. anybody? There are also quaint post-colonial match-ups such as Portugal and Angola.

Having said all that, however, I was really steamed watching that USA-Italy game. Granted, the combination of bad refereeing and poor grounding in the rules (on my part) is an unholy alliance, but our guys, quite arguably, got hosed. Had to play half the game with only nine players, and no team in the history of the World Cup has ever even scored a single goal with only nine players. But it wasn’t just me that was choleric over the calls. The American commentators agreed with the American coach that it was awful officiating too.

And then some careless mistakes, an energy deficit and a controversial penalty kick in the disappointing loss to Ghana. Too little, too late, too slow, too bad.

Party on, Accra. Enjoy your national holiday.

The foul mood only led, to use a football term, to piling on.

I mean, do all those variations on a melodramatic dive really require stretcher bearers? If nothing else, it should be a liability issue to promptly send a player back into a game that he has just been removed from via stretcher.

And how about an accurate, contemporaneous clock? Why does this sport, unique among all, settle for an approximation of how much time is left? What’s with the arbitrary adding on of a couple of (“stoppage”) minutes at the end? Why can’t the clock just, well, stop when somebody fakes an injury; the soccer ball caroms up and over the Fly Emirates or Adidas flasher boards; a substitution is made; or the referee runs out of red cards?

Why do I put myself through it?

Probably because it’s just a game in a world at increasing geo-political odds and civilizational peril. Likely because it’s an opportunity to wax nationalistic over something that doesn’t involve foreign policy, pre-emptive strategies or enemies – just opponents.

The World Health Organization, which began a global immunization drive against polio in 1988, failed to meet its target of global eradication by the end of last year. One reason: Nigeria, where the disease is making an insidious comeback.

Seems that the mostly Muslim north has been ordering an immunization boycott since 2003. Authorities claim the vaccine is part of a U.S.-led plot to render Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.

Perhaps Bono, between playing concerts and playing off the West’s colonial guilt, could add another African cause (in addition to holding the corrupt accountable): Educate the stupid.