Afghanistan is a wholly different sort of war.  There is not now, nor has there ever really been, an Afghan state to speak of.  The tribal coalitions function in a swirling mass of shifting alignments and temporary unions while different factions fight for control of opium money.  The Taliban never really controlled Afghanistan - they lived in Kabul, collected revenue from local farmers, which they kept in a box, and used to buy old soviet weaponry.  They ruled only through the approval of local warlords who controlled most of the country, which limited any real power they might have possessed.  More like an anarchistic feudalism.

If fact, I have very real doubts as to whether or not the group we are fighting today in Afghanistan can rightly be called the Taliban, or if they are simply a collection of semi-organized, neo-feudal and islamic interests that will go back to killing each other as soon as we leave.  Needless to say, pretending that we are working against an enemy with much of a centralized command structure or even a set of rational unifying principals is probably unhelpful (though I will grant that there is increasing evidence that they may be developing both of these as the conflict continues).
Regardelss, lumping all concerned under the name “Taliban” is useful only in newspapers, and doesn’t make it true.  Even assuming that they are the same group who once claimed to rule,  those who advocate withdrawal or draw down want to suggest that the Taliban has learned its lesson; that they would never allow a group like al Qaeda to re-establish itself in Afghanistan.  However, even if the Taliban was able to stabilize the country, and even if they didn’t share al Qaeda’s political and social agenda, would certainly be unable to keep them out or under control.  However, we cannot pretend that 8 years of exile to the wild borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan have helped the remnants of the Taliban learn to respect the power of the Americans and the importance of good government.  Moreover, one cannot simply hand the reigns of leadership over to anyone, and expect everything to be suddenly fine.  Afghanistan is better understood as a sea of anarchy with islands of enforced calm.

No, we should be looking at other examples of conquest to understand how best to deal with Afghanistan.  I use the word conquest deliberately of course.  Nation states are created - typically through conflict or at least in that context.  Any monopoly on law, order, and the use of force is earned, not granted by US or UN fiat.  Our objective in Afghanistan must be to establish a monopoly on political power so that it can be relinquished to the Afghan people in a timely and orderly fashion.  This means co-opting local leaders, eliminating resistance, and setting up the institutions of centralized government.  The example to be examined is the one set by the British in India when they successfully established a centralized government over a number of minor kingdoms and unified the territory under a small and lightweight colonial administration.
The catch of course, is that he process will likely take decades, and America will have to be willing to cede power once the Afghans are ready to take it.  At least one generation of Afghan children will need to grow up under relative stability before any sort of democratic civil society can be created, and the international community will need to pour in billions of aid and assistance.  The US, as the leader of this coalition and de-facto leader of the UN, needs to take charge and stop trying to pass the buck if the Afghans are to have a future.
Nation building is not a quick and easy processes.  The institutions that make for stable government evolve over many years, and cannot simply be imposed.  No person is born with an innate love or desire for democracy, but they can learn to have one, once they see the benefits.  Democracy must be actively desired.  It is not a passive creed.  For the Americans, we must decide if our great nation, with all of its power and wealth, can actually make the world a better place, help others to gain the benefits of freedom as we know them, and stand for something other that the simple glorification of our own names.  It is up to our leaders to act responsibly and help the public understand that.

Of course, I’m not the only one who views this as a “too little, too late” offering.  In the past year, two independent reports - one in the EU, and another in the United States - have suggested tat the damage to the atmosphere is now so great, the the coming decade promises to be something of a reckoning.  Worse, they also suggested that even if we were able to magically eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the level of buildup already in the atmosphere is so great that our dangerous downhill slide would be set to continue into the foreseeable future.

None of this should not serve as an excuse for people to do nothing.  We have a very serious responsibility to get to work on the creation of alternative energy sources, shifting habits as to reduce emissions and waste, and a duty to our children to ensure that the planet remain livable for a little while.  These things can be done, but we must accept that the future isn’t looking too bright just yet.  We will have to suffer through a continuing shift in climactic patterns that will continue to affect every facet of our existence, and need to start making allowances for that as well.

So the bill doesn’t go nearly far enough.  I can only hope that the effect of the various incentives and punishments within it will serve to accelerate the legislation’s effect.  Perhaps, once the initial push has been made, we will find that the process moves faster than the bill requires.  After all, the Obama administration recently allowed states to set their own emissions benchmarks if the national requirements were seen as to low for them.  If individual states decide to start beating the federal quota, it could be that this becomes the sort of low-pressure magic bullet needed to rebuild America’s dirty and outdated infrastructure.

Unfortunately, what bothers me the most about the recent US bill is not that it is less ambitious that what the world’s climate scientists would like.  It is the continuing pattern of willful ignorance on the part of our political establishment to address the problem seriously.  Instead of planning for the contingencies that climate change will bring and pushing for deep and meaningful reversal of pollution trends, they have offered up the minimum that could be called action.  All of this comes on the coattails of eight years that were completely lost in terms of social, scientific, and environmental public policy.  Today the problem is twice as serious as it was in 2000, and we are still far behind the curve when it comes to dealing with it.

Our lawmakers refuse to understand the problem.  On both side of the aisle, they are relying on that most devastating of all Reganesque political instincts - their guts.  When you rely on your gut instead of your head, you make stupid decisions.  Gut decisions are what inform drunk drivers that they did not, in fact, have one too many.  Our lawmakers should be basing important judgements on facts - not what they think might be right.  The should be reading books and journals - not imitating John Wayne.  This hyperreal politics of the intestines is getting us deeper and deeper into trouble.  It produced Iran-Contra, the Iraq War, Creationism in classrooms, Vietnam, the collapse of the great North American fisheries, and a veritable legion of major tragedies that could have been easily averted by someone looking at the facts on  the ground.  Unless we really start demanding Reason from our leaders, we are going to, as Al Gore so elegantly pointed out, boil ourselves in a beaker.

No one would never dare suggest that there is anything fair and free about the election that just took place in Iran.  The better candidate may have been cheated, but let there be no illusions in your mind - Mr. Moussavi was chosen by Iran’s ruling council as an acceptably safe opposition candidate.  He would not have changed, nor had the ability to change anything in Iran’s theocratic dictatorship.  It is no small shock then, that such a blatant piece of electoral fraud within this political pantomime unleashed nothing short of an overflowing well of revolutionary spirit.

In Iranian politics, everything is fixed by the ruling council of Mullahs.  They discussed the election, the candidates, the potential turnout, the opinion polls that all dictatorships periodically run, and took a gamble.  However they didn’t plan the protests that have swept the country.  They didn’t plan on Mr. Moussavi taking to the streets and encouraging his supporters to organize against the government.  No, in an political climate like Iran’s, what we are looking at is a power struggle - two distinct factions are fighting over control of the country.

Many thinkers in foreign policy are debating what the response of the United States should be.  While one might be temped to say that Obama has been somewhat timid on this issue,  the bitter history between Iran and the United States leaves the bigger question of what CAN the United States do?  In 1953, out of a combination of misguided neo-imperialism and anti-communism, American agents with the CIA helped to overthrow the corrupt, but popularly elected Mossadeq government in Iran.  This was the moment that defined the future of relations between the two countries.  Through this act, the Americans helped to bring to life such virulent, fundamentalist, and nationalistic feelings, that when the 1979 revolution broke out, one could argue that it was not domestic at all.  Instead, it was a revolution against America and the world we were trying to create vis a vis the Soviets.  It was anger over stolen freedoms.  It was the wounded pride of a great people.

Because of the importance of this event, the government of Iran identifies itself in part through its staunch opposition to the west.  If the United States were to offer official support to the revolutionary faction, the established powers in the Iranian military and civil society would suddenly be given a powerful impetus to resist the formation of a new government.  It would only serve to strengthen the crackdown.  Because of the poisoned well of Iran and America’s shared history, we can offer nothing to these young patriots that wouldn’t hurt them in the end by empowering reactionaries within Iran.  This is why I believe Obama has been so tight lipped about these  incredible events.

The government that the US so thoughtlessly brought down in 1953 was one of the first indigenous democratic regimes in the Middle East.  It may have been imperfect, but a terrible injustice was done when the American government colluded in its downfall.    However, it shows us that there is a spirit of freedom alive in the souls of the Iranian people.  Once again, the people of Iran are taking to the street.  And once again, the beauty of the Iranian movement of 2009 is that it is wholly indigenous.  This moment belongs to the Iranian people.
Know that we’re with you in spirit.

            Consider this an apology for having not written anything in so long.  Following the election I have been feeling something like Beckett’s Estragon.  However, the recent explosion of violence in the Middle East should serve as a reminder to us all that the task confronting the incoming Obama administration is a daunting one.  I realize that this is a rather obvious statement to make, but I point it out because I, like many people, have felt as though I am living in at state of political limbo.  Waiting for Obama has trumped my attention as much as the election drama that preceded it.  Never mind that I have been kinda busy.

            Regardless of all these distractions, I would like to talk a little about the latest confrontation in the Middle East, and about modern warfare in general, and more specifically about civilian deaths.  Civilians die in wars – whether or not they asked to be involved.  This has been true since the beginning of time, and as long as men have committed themselves to the act of killing.  Modern warfare is different though, because of two relatively recent phenomena.  The first of these is obvious: the tremendous destructive potential of modern weaponry.  The second involves the increasing concentration of populations into cities.

            When Napoleon launched his assault on Europe which so horrified men of his age, the principal actions that affected civilians were assaults upon fortress cities and the scavenging of foodstuffs in the areas that the armies marched through.  While these effects were tragic, the damage to the populations were surprisingly negligible when one considers the scale of the conflict.  Here was a war that engulfed every European empire and raged across the whole of the continent.  Armies met one another in massive set piece battles involving hundreds of thousands of men on both sides, and the death rates were catastrophic; death rates of soldiers that is.

            Civilian deaths during the Napoleonic War are difficult to estimate, and the data is far more reliable for the soldiers.  The best guess seems to be right around a million people killed throughout the continent and in the various overseas colonies.  Compare that number to the estimated 2.5 million military dead and you start to understand that in Napoleon’s day, war was fought by soldiers locked in an effort to kill each other for the honor and aims of their leadership.  Today the leaders remain, but the targets have changed.

The trend begins its slide in WW1:  9.7 million military deaths vs. 6.8 million civilian.  It is WWII wherein the density of cities and the military power to attack them finally shows us the beginnings of a new trend: 25 million military casualties vs. 41.7 million civilians.

When we move into the era of brush wars – beginning with US actions in Korea, its seems that the operational decision was that the wars of the future will ultimately be against people, and not their states.  This was true on both sides of the conflict, but nothing illustrates this operational change more than the waging of unrestrained aerial warfare against population centers in order to not just undo the industrial base, but to cripple food production, medical services, and potential reinforcements.  This was total mechanized warfare waged entirely against civilian centers; the latest way of attacking supply lines.  In Korea, this tactic was so effective, that reliable numbers for civilian deaths don’t seem to actually exist, but the number of US deaths was right around 36,500. 

These wildly unbalanced statistics only get more extreme as the century plodded onwards.  In Vietnam, most research suggest that while 58,000 US troops dies, some 4 million Vietnamese civilians were killed.  During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Soviet losses stand at about 14,000 with an estimated 1.1 million Afghan civilians killed.  In Iraq, a military force of some 150,000 has lost about 4,200 men and overseen some 95,000 civilian dead – a figure with doesn’t include injuries (which might be worse in some ways).  In light of the death ratio, Iraq has been one of the worst wars for an invading army in modern history.

None of this is new information.  While war is inefficient and wasteful, it remains an important element of statecraft and a means by which a nation’s leadership pursues its political objectives.  However, modern warfare simply doesn’t work.  It ultimately amounts to the mass slaughter of civilians, and increasingly disproportionate responses by countries capable of projecting their might.  This is turn helps to even further blur line between regular and so-called irregular fighting.

What is needed is a titanic shift in the way that warfare is conducted:  A new Blitzkrieg model; a way to leverage military resources without the massive and needless slaughter of civilian populations.  It’s a hard road and it requires making some sacrifices – first and foremost the relative ease with those who are capable of deciding to go to war. 

Until September 11^th, the United States did not believe that irregular fighters were capable of projecting their might to our shores – despite the repeated experiences of countries around the world.  We could confidently fight them with ease at home and assume that they wouldn’t come here.  We have since learned that this is not the case, and that there is no military solution to this question – at least not one that is acceptable for any civilized person with even the slightest sense of human decency.  So when Israel moves a massive retaliatory force against the Gaza strip, no matter how justified its cause may be; the thousands of people, who are simply trying to live their lives, are still dead.  Neither they, nor us can win the fight against extremism this way.  They will not love you for killing their families and children – nor will they forget as quickly as you the broken houses and ruined playgrounds.  Wars will be better when all sides really understand what is at stake.

Barack Obama has won the election.  I want to say that again, not because you need to be told, but because I genuinely feel good about saying it: Barack Obama has won the election.  This is a matter of great pride for me.  Never in my life have I been able to take such a deep interest and even pride in the words and deeds of a candidate for public office.  I found myself genuinely inspired by his ideas and his mannerisms because something in him made me want to believe that transformation was possible.  Obama’s appeal was intellectual to be sure, but I cannot pretend that much of what he did for me was emotional.  He managed, in a way no politician I’ve ever known in my lifetime has done, to connect the rational solutions that the country needed to the emotional energy of the pulpit.

Mr. Obama possesses that rarest of qualities that enables him to stay calm and to fairly and firmly give problems their deserved level severity.  Because of the crises he faces, it is in light of this quality that I heave a sigh of relief, but with a sense of trepidation on the eve of his victory.  The challenges that now face Obama are so daunting, that I find it difficult to believe that the political physics of our epoch will enable him to really accomplish what he should and must.  However, he is a man who has shown his ability to stay calm and focused regardless of the storms around him.  He has shown that he has that special character to face down problems without flinching, and to stay consistent and calm in the face of them.  We have made, in my opinion, not only the correct choice, but the only one really left to us.  John McCain simply could not have shouldered such a burden with the same grace and elegance.

            In other words, I am happy with this election.  My own political identity was forged during the campaign of Al Gore, a man for whom I still have considerable respect.  He too, I believed to be a transformational figure in our politics, who thought that government had a job to do, and that his job was to help it to do that job.  His mistake was in proving unable to communicate that vision to the people.  As a result, the election went to to the forces that believe government should be locked into a vice that serves a little use to most people as possible.  Mr. Obama has succeeded where Mr. Gore could not.  He has managed to make the technical problems of government tangible things to the people, and has in some sense, redefined how many Americans envision the duty of the big machine we name “government.”

            Ultimately, Mr. Obama represents a revolution in our politics.  He may be; and I can only hope this proves true, be representative of a new progressive era.  An era of thinkers and politicians who do not think only of party, but of progress and results.  I want Obama to usher in an era in which our politicians understand government to be an incredibly powerful tool, and that the role of politicians should be to strengthen and improve, not weaken and belittle that apparatus.  Only a change in the tone of leadership can do that.  This goes to the core of what Mr. Obama represents.  Do I expect miracles?  Do I expect everything to get better?  No.  I expect that people will change their thinking – the one thing that a successful revolution must do, and the one thing that most fail to accomplish.

            I have high hopes for our small revolution though.  We have chosen this.  Finally, at long last, we have chosen to make a change.  This election has none of the close calls of the previous.  Nor has it been seemingly stolen by political machines that have tried to undermine the system for their own gain.  It was not close.  This election is the first in eight years that we actually can say, positively, reliably, that we own.  Since I reached the age of consent and earned the right to vote, both of the presidential elections I voted in gave victory by a razor’s edge, and only with considerable controversy.  This is the first time that I have seen a president in power who actually possesses the blessing of the majority of the people.  We have also seen a return to centrism and progressivism – what might be coined the notion of a valueless government – that lost idea that government’s business isn’t your business, but should instead enable you to do and act and to thrive.

            Already, the repercussions of this election can be seen.  By way of evidence, allow me to share an anecdote:

            I live in South Korea, and I work in a small office building in a part of the city called Gangnam-gu, know mostly for businessmen and plastic surgery clinics.  In my building, an old Korean woman works, cleaning the floors and bathrooms.  Most of my coworkers ignore her, but I blame that on a carefully cultivated social hierarchy here that insists that it is only proper to disregard her.  As an outsider, and I think, because I am an American, I have made it my business to try and practice my Korean with her that we might share something of our experiences here together.  Today, she came past my desk, wielding her mop, and scrubbing away in her yellow gloves.  There, she paused next to me, wiped the sweat from her brow, and looked across at me.

            In Korean she says to me, “Who is winning the election?”

            I reply, in my poor Korean, “It’s finished.  Obama has won the election.”

            She smiles at me so broadly that it makes my heart rise into my throat, sighs with relief, and says, “that’s wonderful.”

It is wonderful.  America, you have done the right thing today.

It is a truism in any sort of contest that when thing looks their darkest, the losing side will tend towards uncontrolled lashing out and more and more desperate plays in order to attempt to unbalance their opponent.  It is indeed a rare thing when anyone, after fighting so hard, can stand to lose with dignity.  Such a thing could be viewed as tantamount to surrender.

            This is certainly true in the realm of politics.  After nearly two years of ongoing campaigning – some of the fiercest and most bitter campaigning I’ve ever seen – polls show that the Obama campaign is increasingly likely to take this election by a margin not seen in the last eight years.  As a direct result, the McCain campaign has responded by swinging wildly with any talking point they can manage to get into their sights in hopes of winning with a culture war-style character assassination by terrifying people into complicity with some of the most disastrous policy ideas I’ve ever seen.

            The renewed attention on Mr. William Ayers, whose silence during these past weeks has been admirable, is the latest in a slew of renewed attacks which the Obama campaign rightly points out, have nothing to do with the actual challenges facing the country as we prepare to enter the second decade of this century.  Additionally Obama has been accused of being a terrorist, a Muslim, a socialist, and a communist all in the past week by both the McCain campaign and their shocking unapologetic allies in certain media outlets that need not be named.

The Ayers link isn’t as troubling for those of us on the progressive side of the political rainbow as it is for the people on the right.  Those of us who know anything about community activism understand that sometimes men like Ayers are likely to grow up, level off, and become involved in trying to improve their communities.  Where the silence has been deafening is not that Obama was working in shared circles with Mr. Ayers, but what they were actually working on.

So what did the unrepentant terrorist and the communist Muslim senator do in Chicago?  Did they discuss the manufacture of pipe bombs and the routes favored by motorcades?  Not really.  They were both involved in grassroots programs designed to reform and improve local schools.  They had a shared interest in combating poverty and other philanthropic organizations.  You see, as a young man, Ayers turned to terrorism and protest out of a desire for justice to be given to the underprivileged and disenfranchised.  How you feel about these acts is up to you, but the point is that both he and Obama acted from a shared desire for a better, fairer future.  The difference is that Obama never turned to violence and understood as a young man what Ayers was unable to realize until much later in life – that there are many ways to make the world a better place and that violence is the least of these.  In this fashion, I think that the Ayers controversy can be laid to rest by simply stating that Obama showed more maturity than Mr. Ayers as a young man.

Of course, McCain doesn’t want to lay this to rest any more than he is interested in addressing the problems that have inspired men like Obama to act.  His is a dying breed; the last remnants of a reactionary legacy that is falling to the side.  For all of his bluster, the calm, self-satisfied stillness of the Obama campaign is a testament to the failures of McCain’s political generation.  All Obama needs to do is shrug, and point to the crumbling edifice of American capitalism and prestige and ask Americans if that is the legacy they wish to sharpen and pass on to their children.  The old right is as bankrupt as the socialists and communists they still fear are lurking in under their beds.  It is time for them all to step aside with some dignity.

            While it hardly needs to be pointed out by me, I am not a fan of the American right wing and find most of their ideas – if not counterproductive, dangerous.  Whether is be their insistence on the viability of trickle-down economics, their unbalanced obsession with national security even at the risk of personal and political freedom, or their unwavering commitment to a homogenized society based on the teachings of a 2000 year old millenarian death cult.

            In light of the recent economic crisis, many Americans are at least starting to lend credence to the idea that showing limitless compassion to the super wealthy while punishing the poor is not a sure promise of prosperity for all.  It has also revealed other weaknesses in the conservative worldview that bear some degree of consideration.  Today I am speaking specifically of energy policy.

            Conservatives have embraced the notion that in order to secure a stable energy future, drive down fuel prices, and increase domestic economic security is to promote domestic drilling.  By opening up more of our own untapped reserves, it is believed that we can significantly offset the demand for foreign oil and dramatically drive prices down.  After all, economic theory holds that if you increase the supply of a thing, you can reduce the price of that thing.  Of course, this also assumes a large number of suppliers and processors who are all in competition with one another – none of which is really true when talking about the oil industry.  It is a highly centralized industry that understands that their success depends on close cooperation with one another.

            However, as the economy slides further and further down, we have seen a dramatic drop in the price of oil.  In fact, today it is down to $88 a barrel – the lowest price in some time, down about $60 from its most recent peak.  In response, gasoline prices also declined.  By six cents.  Not exactly what one might expect. In fact, the last time oil prices were at $88, gasoline was at $3.20 a gallon.  Today – after all the political pressure placed on producers to lower prices, the national average remains at $3.68.  You’ll note the absence of a matching curve.

This development highlights exactly what is wrong with this sort of economic thinking.  It is assumed that if you cut the cost paid by oil producers and refiners, or for that matter, any sort of producer, they will pass these saving on to their customers either in lower prices, more jobs, or better benefits.  In fact, they will pass these benefits onto stockholders in order to increase the value of their own investment and little if any of this newfound profitability will actually trickle down to the general populace.

I think this explains why economic trends of the past 20-30 years have shown incredible macro-economic growth despite a stagnation and general decline of microeconomic prosperity (shrinking wages).  Gas is a study of the wider economy in miniature.  The corporate and investment based sectors of our economy have done very well while the sections of the economy that have traditionally served the middle class have been comparably sluggish.  Nevertheless, these commanding heights can easily impact jobs stability and local banks which is what we are starting to see now.

By making the profitability of our largest industries the numbers that matter and continuing to count of their benevolence towards the larger society, the conservative party has managed to play a critical role in the destabilization of most of Americas citizen body.  When we consider what makes for a successful and prosperous society, we should consider whether we are getting benefits to as many as possible or only ensuring the guaranteed prosperity of the few?