Nation-Building

American foreign policy in the Middle East claims to seek the spread of democracy among the Arab and/or Islamic nations found there. They are currently ruled by autocratic, unresponsive governments, who restrict the freedom of the citizens, giving rise to resentment, frustration, and eventually political violence and intolerant "Islamo-fascism". I think we all agree that many of the governments in question are autocratic, unaccountable and unresponsive, and that this creates enormous problems for the people they govern. Is Western democracy the solution? What do the people of the region actually want, and do they get a voice in choosing?   What we in the West call "democracy" is the product of almost 1,000 years of effort to make the state accountable to the people governed. That history has gone hand in hand with other political, social, and economic changes. Our understanding of what "the state" itself is has changed from a more or less tribally base...

Essential op-ed in the Washington Post by Egyptian democray activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Absolutely essential. teaser: The pattern here is clear, and it is Islamic. And among the few secular public figures who made it into the top 10 are Palestinian Marwan Barghouti (31 percent) and Egypt's Ayman Nour (29 percent), both of whom are prisoners of conscience in Israeli and Egyptian jails, respectively. Don't miss this related story in NPR: Israel Seizes Hamas Ministers and Lawmakers (June 29th) Also, Abu Aardvark has been blogging for years about "liberal" Islamists . The key here is that not all islamists are our enemy. The best case of this is Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.  

Charles Bird posts a litany of demands of the Administration, naming himself a mamber of the "Dissatisfieds", conservatives who supported George Bush but feel that the war is on track to failure rather than victory if there is not change. I feel his pain here, because though he and I disagreed on which candidate in 2004 was going to get the Job Done, we did agree on what a Done Job should look like. That said, I doubt his critique is going to gain much traction. Here's why: Donald Rumsfeld fired, to be replaced with someone who can put together a workable and executable plan for helping deliver a free, peaceful, democratic non-theocracy in Iraq. Who? Names, please. The only person I can think of is John Abizaid, but is that even remotely going to happen? Morelikely is a cosmetic change of leadership at Dod if anything, which will simply reinformce existing policy. The thing to change is not Rumsfeld, but the President and Vice President's attitude towards the threat. ...

Chuck Todd at the National Journal talks about Edwards 2008. He points out that the new primary schedule actually favors Edwards over Clinton: In many ways, this Democratic calendar reminds me of the NCAA basketball tournament which, while exciting, rarely crowns the country's best team as its champ, just the hottest. Think of this primary calendar schedule as a "draw" and then match up the candidates best positioned to run the table in those states. Suddenly, you come up with another front-runner with Clinton: and his name isn't Mark Warner or Evan Bayh or John Kerry. It's John Edwards. Organizationally, Edwards is in the best shape of anyone in Iowa. His close ties to the hotel labor workers give him an interesting leg up in Nevada. South Carolina is a primary he's already won once. About the only state where Edwards is weak is New Hampshire. And, frankly, if he wins Iowa and Nevada, New Hampshire support will gravitate to him. He's planted plenty of sup...

The concensus is that the Lebanon-Israeli conflict was a complete debacle. At the outset of the conflict, I mourned that Hizbollah was winning, again. It's worth reading Greg Djerjian for the definitive post-"cease fire" analysis in terms of what strategic advantage Israel has lost. Abu Aardvark has some observations about what the Arab press is saying . And Charles Malik has a morose look at the political scene in Lebanon. Still, despite all the ways in which Israel came out the worse for its efforts, I can point to a few positives. 1. Some argue that the "myth of Israeli invincibility" with respect to conventional arms is now shaken. I argue otherwise: Israel showed that it could destroy Lebanon. Don't imagine for a moment that the message was not received in Damascus. As Razib pointed out, political rulers in Arab countries are not bred for suicidal impulses . And of course the elephant in the room is Israel's nuclear weapons, which everyone knows ...

A friend of mine from church recently sent me an article by Bill McKibben entitled "The Christian Paradox" that was published in Harpers last summer. After reading the article, I realized that I have read many similar articles over the past couple of years. The gist of the article is that while most Americans claim to be Christians, they don't appear to be following Christ's commands, particularly as it relates to caring for the poor. This premise is central to the Religious Left's critique of our culture, as often expressed by people such as Jim Wallis or Ron Sider. Of course many on the Religious Right counter that laissez-faire capitalism is the only way to provide for the poor. Both groups are wrong and I am going to take this opportunity to show why. The Religious Left's Case on Poverty Bill McKibben gets to the heart of the issue by asking this question: "What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable ...

The Houston Chron has a short piece about Gore's Current.TV project, noting that it is making a profit, and more importantly: But the media landscape has shifted in the past year as video-sharing sites like YouTube.com revealed an audience for viewer-created entertainment. Current has since led the industry in the commercialization of that concept, with its viewers creating ads for its leading advertisers. Half of Toyota and Sony's commercials on Current are made by the people watching them, giving advertisers a window into the mind-set of the coveted younger demographic. Why is this newsworthy, you ask?   Remember that Current.TV initially only went to 17 million homes; It's now in 30 million homes. Further growth is inevitable, and significant considering that YouTube's entire registered user base is only 6 million. And all the hype about the media center aside, people still watch more TV than they do videos on the internet. The article addresses this point directly, ...