Fans of workday procrastination everywhere should celebrate the return of Foreign Policy‘s Democrats vs. Dictators March Madness brackets. Go ahead, make your picks. We’ll wait. The deadline for submissions is [...]
Democracy and Society
I'm sorry, but the apology controversy is a sorry-**sed sorry affair (latest coverage here and here). If this is going to be taken seriously as campaign issue, it needs to be looked at from both directions. The Republicans shouldn't get a free pass to put the president on the defensive. We need to hear more about how this Americans-do-no-wrong thing works. We've heard plenty of President Obama's opponents' shock and dismay. The Republicans have been scathing about the current commander in chief, cocksure they'd do a better job. Well okay, we have two cases here: the careless destruction of sacred texts and friendly fire that claimed the lives of two dozen troops who were on our side. What would the would-be commanders in chief say to the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan? As far as I can tell, it's along the lines of "forget you."
It’s been years since the Catholic Church has been a relevant player in American politics. Suddenly, its views on contraception and other issues are something that people care about.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that two of the remaining four GOP primary candidates are Catholics. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) is a long-time member of the Church, while Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) is a recent convert (read: dabbles in Catholicism).
It is worth noting that Rick Santorum has lost the Catholic vote in many of the states he has contested this year. Which raises interesting questions…
How much do Catholic voters, a key constituency in the November election, listen to their religious leaders? If so… who should they vote for?
Thankfully, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops produces a great deal of literature on the matter that basically no one reads. But we did.
We have noted the social teachings of the Church can be broken down in to several main parts. Over the next few days we will look at the Bishops’ recommendations and see how they might fit into the presidential landscape.
The first category:
Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
“In a world characterized by growing prosperity for some and pervasive poverty for others, Catholic teaching proclaims that a basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.”
Pretty straightforward: our economic policies should be arranged for the benefit of the least well off. Sounds quite progressive.
At least one of the GOP candidates is “not concerned about the very poor”––but really, who are we kidding?
In a campaign season where discussions about the poor often ends in accusations of “Class warfare” it seems the story of the Last Judgement is last on most candidates reading list.
So how would you score this teaching from the Bishops? Republican or Democrat?
Joel Wing recently conducted an interview with Douglas Ollivant – a retired Army officer who served as Chief of Plans for the Multi-National Division Baghdad both before and during "the Surge." Through the course of the question and answer session, Ollivant provides a detailed, thoughtful and remarkably balanced accounting of "the Surge." He seeks to correct the “new orthodoxy” – or mythmaking – surrounding the putative success of the Surge, while also providing credit where do. Ollivant's thesis is captured in this response:
My fundamental point is that we may want to consider the possibility that the actions of several million Baghdadis were more important than those of 30,000 troops or even one very talented general.
He goes on to note that the winding down of the civil war in Iraq had much more to do with decisions by Iraq's warring factions than with the change in US posture – from the stand-down of the Sadrists and the emergence of the Awakening movement, to demographic changes resulting from past sectarian cleansing in Baghdad.
That said, he does credit the Surge with conveying a sense of certainty with respect to US policy to Baghdad (which was valuable in informing certain decisions to be made by the Maliki administration), as well as enhanced security and a more efficient targeting of the extremist fringes. However, Ollivant considers these to be the “supporting characters” to the lead role played by Iraqis – a conclusion which was previously espoused by me on this site.
Ollivant also discusses the crucial role Iraqi sovereignty and agency played in setting the stage for the withdrawal of US forces (again, echoing sentiments appearing on this site):
I don’t think it is quite accurate to say that deadline was “set” by the Bush Administration, but rather that is was “negotiated by” the Bush Administration. Again, the Iraqis had a vote here, and made it very clear that they wanted a clear end date when U.S. troops would leave the country after the expiration of the United National mandate…I think we got about as good as we could get in the 2008 SOFA, and even that was a near thing.
Finally, I think it is important to note that while we call this agreement the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, the Iraqis call it something like the “Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq on the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq.” I would highlight the words “withdrawal” and “temporary.” From the Iraqi perspective, this agreement was always about our withdrawal, and our presence over the last three years was simply a temporary accommodation to allow us to do that in an orderly manner. [emphasis added]
I do have one quibble with Ollivant, however, and it concerns something mentioned in the following excerpt:
While there are some disadvantages to the withdrawal of U.S. troops, I think that it is, overall, a good thing. First, I think it has gone a long way towards restoring U.S. credibility in the region. There are still Iraqis who don’t believe we have really left, that the U.S. was there to get Iraqi oil. As the truth sinks in that we really did leave, in accordance with an agreement that we signed with the Iraqi government, I think that will help repair the narrative as to why we went to Iraq in the first place. This is not to say that I endorse the invasion of Iraq, but rather that we did not go there with the intention of stealing oil or setting up long term bases.
I do not mean to argue, with certainty, that the US invaded Iraq for the sole purpose of obtaining access to Iraq's vast oil reserves, or for the purpose of establishing a robust military basing network in such a strategically vital region. However, there were myriad objectives, desired outcomes and possible benefits that motivated the various policymakers, and it is at least possible that some viewed such bases and the proximity to an increasingly scarce and invaluable resource as potential positive results of the invasion.
Furthermore, I would be wary of pointing to our exit from Iraq as definitive evidence of our ultimate intentions. As Ollivant is wont to point out quite correctly, the Iraqi people – and the democratic political apparatus established in Iraq – were the driving forces of our departure, regardless of what we might have wanted to occur.
After all, it is no secret that our military leaders were pushing for a prolonged presence in Iraq, it's just that they were stymied by political realities. Likewise, the original Bush administration plan was to govern Iraq via a Viceroy for several years before gradually easing into some form of domestic representative rule for the Iraqi people. It was only in response to mounting pressure from Iraq's religious leaders (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in particular) that the Bush team was forced to accelerate the democratic transition.
At the risk of stating a tautology, simply because a given conflict ends with a certain status quo does not mean that the various participants had intended that status quo as the end-game. Ultimately, the Iraqis had a vote.
Many were surprised that Islamists came to power in Egypt after the uprisings last year. After all, the revolution was more or less billed in the U.S. media as the [...]
Democracy and Society
This guest post by Johanna Mendelson Forman, a senior associate with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It was re-posted from CSIS's blog.
It started as a rumor. President Michel Martelly was going to sack his Prime Minister, Garry Conille, after four months on the job. Then a special UN Security Council visit to Haiti led by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice conveyed a strong message of support for Conille and tried to tamp down bickering among parliamentarians and the president. Still, Conille tendered his resignation on February 24, raising the possibility of a new political crisis.
“REMEMBER”, writes Timothy Noah, “in this primary race today’s high-concept gag is tomorrow’s headline!” Accordingly, he suggests Rick Santorum, hot off a handful of Super Tuesday victories, for Mitt Romney’s running-mate. Mr Noah’s motives are, as he puts it, “impure”; if Mr Santorum were on the Republican ticket, women and independents would shy away. But some of the other veep prospects that you hear suggested have similarly controversial views on social issues—Marco Rubio, for example, was a sponsor of the so-called Blunt amendment—and Mr Santorum, has, at least, proven that he can get votes in a variety of states. Dave Weigel, not specifying whether his motives are mischievous or not, agrees that Mr Santorum should be considered the front-runner for the vice-presidential nod: there’s not too much bad blood between him and Mr Romney, and Mr Santorum is already getting some media vetting as a result of being in the primary.
Well, why not? In the post-Palin context, the first rule of picking a running-mate is “don’t pick someone like Sarah Palin.” And while Mr Santorum does seem like a bit of a Palin figure in that he might put off independents, who are crucial in a general election, as Mr Weigel points out, he is much more of a known quantity than Mrs Palin, who was then the little-known first-term governor of Alaska. I would add that there are two key differences between Mrs Palin and Mr Santorum. The first is that Mr Santorum, unlike Mrs Palin, is not in a position where he might be picked as running-mate for a person of a dignified age. The most sobering thing about any given vice-president is his or her statistical proximity to the presidency. Say what you will about Mr Romney, but he seems healthy, doesn’t he?
The other big difference is that Mr Santorum is currently running against Mr Romney, and has become the latter’s biggest impediment to actually wrapping up the nomination. Math effectively precludes the possibility that Mr Santorum can win the nomination at this point, and Mr Romney will almost certainly be the nominee, but there’s nothing to stop the former from chipping along. I don’t expect that Mr Santorum would be an asset to Mr Romney in the general election: the evangelicals who vote in the Republican primary are going to vote for the Republican ticket, and the groups that balk at Mr Santorum (moderates, women, small-government types, non-interventionists) might be dissuaded. But if you’re of the opinion that the long primary is hurting Mr Romney, and thereby hurting the Republicans’ chances to win the White House, ending the race should be a top priority—and tempting Mr Santorum onto the ticket would be one way to do that.
(Photo credit: AFP)
Last night I became the 57,733,541 person to go to YouTube and watch Kony 2012, a video for a campaign launched to stop Joseph Kony, leader of the criminal group [...]
Democracy and Society
european-commission-advert-attack-video The video above was recently released by the EU on social media in an attempt to conquer their youth’s support for the region’s enlargement. Is it a coincidence that [...]
Democracy and Society