Category: National

Now it’s Colin Powell’s turn at the Donald Rumsfeld piñata. He joins at least six other former generals in criticizing Rumsfeld and the flawed plans and rationales for the Iraqi war.

That obviously ratchets up the pressure a few more notches on the Secretary of Defense to step down. It also obviously won’t matter.

What might have mattered were active-duty generals speaking out when it could have made a difference. But they played by the rules and the honorable “good soldier” tradition – taking one for the team and not the country, as it turned out. They eventually channeled their gut criticism into second guessing and scapegoating for their memoirs and cable television’s chattering classes.

Better late than never. Barely.

There’s PR and then there’s PR.

The Wal-Marting of America has brought the retail behemoth its share of criticism – from unions to small, locally owned businesses. In its defense, the company has gone on the offensive. Its critics have cried “PR” gambit.But Wal-Mart has done more than issue press releases pointing out that it supports local charities and wouldn’t be nearly so successful if it weren’t responding to the marketplace by saving shoppers money.

Over the next two years, Wal-Mart will build more than 50 stores in some of the most challenging urban areas in the country. Areas where the crime and unemployment rates remain daunting. Areas dotted with contaminated sites and vacant buildings. Areas where the private sector has good, bottom-line reasons to stay away.

At least 10 of the stores will anchor “Wal-Mart Jobs and Opportunity Zones” that will help local businesses with free advertising, seminars and grants to local chambers of commerce. Wal-Mart estimates that between 15,000 and 25,000 jobs will be generated.

Sure, it’s PR. But it’s more than spin. It’s spend.

Even if Afghani apostate Abdur Rahman lives happily ever after in Italy, his case underscores a disturbing, but hardly novel, point. To what degree is the word “democracy” even applicable in our cross-cultural, Middle East mission?

And is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice going to intervene every time there’s Shariah shock — such as capital punishment for opting out of Islam — that flies in the face of civilizational norms? Realistically, what is the best we can hope for? That Americans have died for Taliban Lite?

Is this part of what Colin Powell was alluding to when he warned of the “Pottery Barn” principle of “you break it, you own it”?

While it’s politically incorrect to imply that “those” people aren’t ready for or receptive to democracy as we think we know it, the question of meaningful self-government still needs posing — even if it invites the wrath of those on the ethno-centrism watch.

Put it this way. We in America have no delusions about perfecting democracy for ourselves. Maybe we never recovered from Tammany Hall. Or perhaps Florida’s role in the 2000 election is all too illustrative.

And most elections, when you think about it, are variations on a student-council theme. Popularity-driven celebrity, looks and sound bites, slickly-packaged pandering, well-heeled supporters and plenty of vicarious-living worker bees can carry the day.

When more than half of registered voters (and that’s quite the qualification no matter how easy we make it) actually vote, it’s typically cause for self-congratulation. If newspapers didn’t make recommendations and endorsements, most voters would be totally clueless about local candidates, especially judges. The candidate-campaign process – from fund-raising to negative advertising – deters most of the best and brightest from running. National and local polls remind us that “civics education” is now an oxymoron. Anybody recall “hanging chads?”

We send Jimmy Carter forward and lecture the world at our own peril. We overlay democracy in our own vainglory.

But we are, to be sure, the world’s foremost democracy with a largely literate electorate in a free-press culture — not a Third World, post-colonial, feudal state.

What we should want for others in the Middle East is what anybody anywhere really wants. Stability. A guarantee that tomorrow won’t bring chaos. No one lives life in the democratic abstract.

Electing someone in the context of zero-sum tribalism and sectarianism is of problematic value no matter how many inked digits are waved in front of cameras. And such photo-ops are arguably a lot less important than delivering electricity, potable water, sewage control and freedom from assassination, chronic terror and infrastructure sabotage.

Couching our legitimate geopolitical priorities in the utopian rhetoric of democracy fools nobody but the na

Iran’s apocalyptic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, takes no rhetorical prisoners with his belligerent declamations. Threatening to wipe a whole country, Israel, from the face of the earth is only Exhibit A. He’s also the personification of menacing brinkmanship with his nuclear nose-thumbing to the United Nations, common cause with Shiite insurgents in Iraq and threats about playing Iran’s OPEC oil card.

And, yet, there is a governor on his actions, no matter how confrontational and odious his orations. He’s the president of a sovereign country — albeit an “axis of evil” one — not the leader of a terrorist organization. As such, he and the Islamic Republic of Iran have a return address.

We don’t really know much about rookie Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill, except that he’s bright, charismatic and the darling of Democrats assigned to the savior watch.

But some of his comments, as excerpted from the book, “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People,” are as sage as they are refreshing. Obama, who’s hardly shy about his Christianity, said this: “I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth or that my faith is automatically transferable to others. I’m a big believer in tolerance

Thanks, Austria. For nothing.

At a time when the West has been trying to make the case that freedom of expression is so precious that it supercedes the right not to be offended, Austria convicts a controversial historian for the “crime” of denying the Holocaust. British author David Irving was recently sentenced to three years in prison for his bizarre, revisionist writings.

However revolting Irving’s writing – absent violent incitement – it’s a hypocritical stance to have over-reacted as the Austrians did. Being the birth country of Adolph Hitler is not reason sufficient for a law that applies to “whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.”

The Austrians should be called on it by all those (justifiably) critical of outrageous Muslim overreaction to those notorious Danish cartoons – as well as Muslim efforts to censor a French production of a Voltaire play satirizing the Prophet Mohammad (and all forms of religious frenzy).

You either unequivocally believe in free speech – or you don’t. The Holocaust doesn’t get you a pass. But it does get you a hypocrite’s censure.

It’s now official.

The Secretary of Homeland Security stands 18th in the line of 18 would-be presidential successors. As the last position added to the Cabinet, SHS queues up behind everybody else. Specifically, right behind Jim Nicholson (at #17) the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs.

Perhaps, however, this wasn’t the time for seniority to have been determinative, unless, of course, the case can be made that the person responsible for homeland security is decidedly less important than, say, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (Alaska’s Ted Stevens at #3). That the Secretary of Labor (Elaine Chao at #11), for example, is ahead of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Michael Leavitt at #12) isn’t significant. But the nation’s top domestic security official – in an era when national security will be at the forefront of the war on terrorism for the foreseeable future – is arguably much more than last hired. The SHS is the point person in the defense of the homeland – not a high-level functionary. An ill-fated hire at, say, Interior (Gale Ann Norton at #8) is correctible. The wrong person at Homeland Security could be catastrophic.

As it’s turning out, maybe Michael Chertoff deserves to be behind, say, Mike Johanns (at #9), the Secretary of Agriculture or Margaret Spellings (at #16), the Secretary of Education. But that would be a function of imprudent Administration hiring – not an appropriate symbol – and valuation — of a national priority that pragmatically equates to survival of the country as we know it.

Upgrade anyone?

A recent visit to Philadelphia yielded some insight as to how the United Arab Emirates’ flap is playing in one of the six major (container-heavy) ports most impacted by the prospect of Dubai Ports World operation. Not unexpectedly, the political grandstanding had rippled from the statehouse in Harrisburg down to the City Council level.

The Council voted unanimously for a resolution that hammered the UAE for having been “an operational and financial base” for some of the 9/11 hijackers. That was a Philly no-brainer.

The follow-up question for Council, however, was less nuanced but far trickier. Might even be a lesson here for other such governmental bodies during these high-anxiety, geo-politics-goes-local times.

A Philadelphia Inquirer reporter had an unmarked map of the Middle East and asked the 16 council members to find the UAE. Fifteen didn’t. Most couldn’t come close, but all had a ready retort, usually self-deprecating on geography but (ostensibly) self-serving on politics.

Not atypical was Councilman Jack Kelly who noted that wherever the UAE was, it wasn’t on the Delaware River or even in the United States. “I don’t care if it’s in England, if it’s Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Italy,” he declared. Presumably with a straight face.

Let’s see if we have this right.

From Gaza to Indonesia, Muslim robes have been in a menacing knot over caricatures of Mohammad. A Danish newspaper – and then a French one and other Europeans in solidarity — ran some Prophet cartoons, one of which showed Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a burning fuse.

Perhaps the point was what some wild and crazy Islamists won’t do in the name of religion. And what anti-Crusader fate may await “infidels,” which is pretty much everybody else.

But any visual image of Mohammad, let alone a satiric one, is forbidden. Such blasphemous “partnering” is, according to Koranic interpretation, the one truly unforgivable sin. Freedom of expression, we are smugly reminded, is some na

It had seemed that Jimmy Carter’s niche was secure. He was an unsuccessful, micro-managing president who became one of our most accomplished former presidents. From Habitat For Humanity home construction to international bridge building.

Granted, he did occasionally wander off the reservation overseas and didn’t always endear himself to the Clinton Administration. But then he became a cheap-shot scold when it came to the George W. Bush Administration.

That impertinent quality was most recently on display at the nationally televised funeral service for Coretta Scott King.

Sure, the Bush Administration has earned criticism regarding all matters Iraqi, but the funeral was an inappropriate forum for it. Therefore, The Rev. Joseph Lowery was out of place with his “weapons of mass destruction” broadside at President Bush. Then Bill Clinton couldn’t help but exploit the occasion for a thinly veiled message to the black community to support his wife in her presumptive presidential run.

But Carter trumped everyone in turning a national tribute into a political pulpit. With President Bush sitting right behind him, he pandered to his predominantly black audience at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church with Hurricane Katrina racial references that could have been delivered by Kanye West. His “secret government wiretaps” remark was an obvious double entendre – aimed more at President Bush than J. Edgar Hoover.

The crowd didn’t seem to mind, but that was beside the point. The former president was speaking to the nation – and, in effect, for the nation — as he helped honor a life well lived. His politically partisan comments came off as snide and classless.

Mrs. King deserved better than to have her eulogy become a platform for political sniping. So did President Bush.

As former Atlanta Mayor and UN Ambassador Andrew Young observed, the Kings – for all their courage and conviction – were always “gracious.” Neither would have approved of political potshots at such an occasion, noted Young, who marched with the Kings in the non-violence vanguard of the civil rights movement.

Amen.