Avuncular American

America the Exceptional, Indispensable Nation, Or Just Musclebound?

Two unrelated but thought-provoking seminars in Brussels, plus a Presidential address from West Point later today, have put American foreign and security policy on my mind.  If the spin is accurate, we are told to expect the announcement tonight of an Afghanistan surge by the President from the US Military Academy.

Bob Herbert in the New York Times today ("A Tragic Mistake") calls escalation - to use a Vietnam-era term - in Afghanistan "the easier option"

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime.

Permanently Exceptional and Indispensable: Sounds like report card flattery

Is that true - that the United States has been in "permanent state of warfare?"  That was one of the premises behind Michael Moore's 2002 hit Bowling For Columbine, but for a less hysterical look at a "permanent state of exceptionalism" since the outset of the republic, let me talk about the very serious conference organized around the book launch of "Exceptionalisme américain et les droits de l'homme" (American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, edited by two young ULB law professors Ludovic Hennebel of the Magna Carta Institute and Arnaud Van Waeyenberge of the Perelman Centre).

Non-lawyer that I am, I was most interested in one of the assertions in the book/conference by Van Waeyenberge: that the European human rights concept of "human dignity" - curiously - is not a concept that is enshrined in the US Constitution, though I suppose the Bill of Rights goes some way towards rectifying the omission.  But even there, the enumerated rights don't really address human dignity.

Maybe that's why there is a discipline called Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), "Breaking the cycle of humiliation."  Remember how the general public in the US appeared to be less than horrified at the revelations of Bush/Cheney-approved torture?  Perhaps they have become inured to the routine hand and foot shackling of even non-violent suspects in the American judicial system, the fitting of slavery-evoking "spit guards" on young minority defendants, the chaining of women prisoners as they deliver babies... yes, "exceptionalism" can include lots of affronts to human dignity.

One shining example of taking exception to Bush/Cheney legal and moral exceptionalism was in the JAG corps, the military's judicial and prosecutorial cadre in the Judge Advocate General branches of each of the services.  If the US still claims adherence to the Geneva Conventions, it is in large part thanks to several senior military lawyers and judges, who put their careers on the line.

Venerable Realists, and Realistic Upstarts

Exceptionalism, and Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation" were also the subject of an IERI conference that I moderated on readings of three prominent American strategic thinkers: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel Huntington.  I was relieved that the analyst, Jacques Lippert of IERI, took issue with Huntington's "clashing civilizations," as his amalgam of Chinese/Islamic threats to the West always sounded like the lumping together of deadly enemies Iran and Iraq with outlying crazies in North Korea to form Bush's "Axis of Evil."

But lest the audience of European Union functionaries and diplomats get the impression that American strategic thought is caught in a Kissinger-Brzezinski time warp of the Seventies, I harped on about Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich and his take on realism as an antidote to the dark ages of neoconservatism. In "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War" (my review), Bacevich builds his argument against military adventurism, and against the bipartisan tendency to look to military solutions for thorny world problems.  A musclebound muscle man is like a one-note song.  Bacevich's most recent book, "The Limits of Power: American Exceptionalism," should be required night table reading for Obama Administration advisers.

Just as Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Albright incarnated the mid-20th century European exodus to the safety of the United States, so do some of today's brightest thinkers on international affairs - Fareed Zakaria and Parag Khanna - represent another, southern, diaspora of growing importance in 21st century USA.  Their books point to "the rise of the rest" or a dynamic, resource-rich "second world" that has come up out of the old Third World.  Neither would sign on to the "realpolitik" definitions of national power that narrowly focus on troop strength or missile range.  They would, however, see merit in the DIME construct that the US military likes to inculcate in its strategic thinkers, that Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic pillars constitute crucial elements of national power.  Not in isolation, but collectively.

Colin Powell, soldier and diplomat that he has been, knows a thing or two about the bases of national power, and was a keen believer in that phrase "all elements of national power."  His Powell Doctrine, which includes overwhelming force coupled with national purpose and an exit strategy, may be due for a revisit, as we learn in today's post from Diplopundit.

If so, it couldn't be more timely.

Swiss Steeples, Minarets, & the Color of Muslim Money

Muslim communities say the decision will spread deep concern and worry. The Swiss government and businesses are worried too - about whether this controversial but democratic ballot will provoke an international backlash.

Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera English, “Swiss brace for minaret backlash”

What excellent timing: the Swiss schedule their votation on banning minarets for the weekend of one of Islam's holiest - and most joyous - feasts, the Eid al-Kabir.  A real poke in the eye.

What if that backlash that Alan Fisher fears were to include a disinvestment or divestment wave among Muslim countries, selling off Swiss franc securities, withdrawing hidden billions (trillions?) from Swiss bank accounts? It’s not up to me to call for any such thing. After all, the hundreds of thousands of Muslim residents (and probably a certain number of Muslim Swiss citizens) have gotten along somehow with a minimum of minarets all these years - apparently there may be as few as four (4) in all of Switzerland! - while toiling away to help develop the Swiss economy.

But this has as much to do with minarets as the debate over the veil has to do with women’s fashion. The latter may have undercurrents of concern about women’s rights, whereas the Swiss “Oui/Ja” campaign has all to do with Islamophobia. Can't the Swiss just relax a bit and think of their new neighbors as something other than a threat? The great 1973 Italian comedy "Bread and Chocolate" with Nino Manfredi playing an immigrant in pristine Switzerland shows that a current of xenophobia has run in the land of Lindt for some time.  It was only a decade ago that Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss had to apologize for her country's treatment of Jews fleeing the Holocaust - belying the image of refugees struggling to reach safety in the Alps.

In matters of integration (or re-integration), the recent experience of a Swiss Family Robinson (actually Swiss Family Diplomatic is more like it) is instructive.  These friends of ours, a Suisse-Romand from Lausanne and his wife from Bern, returned a few years ago to their capital city after a quarter century roaming the world under the Swiss flag. Settling back into life in their native country, they were immediately taken aback by their neighbors’ attitude. Introducing oneself to the man next door - something our friends did naturally in Africa or Latin America - was greeted with suspicion and worse. “I have been waiting for years to tell you about that bothersome window…” was the way one neighbor helpfully greeted their knock on the door.

When the native Bern wife went to the local municipal office and spoke a rusty form of the local patois, her ignorance of the latest procedures was met with incredulous suspicion - how can you have reached your fifth decade of life and not know these rudimentary rules? The fact that she had spent the better part of the previous three decades helping her husband give Switzerland a good name in diplomatic circles around the world was lost on the local burghers. They just didn’t fit in.

If the above can happen to French-German-Italian speaking Christian native Swiss, then the minaret ban is probably the least of the worries for the poor Muslim Swiss. And they know that.  Ever notice how the Swiss flag itself is a cross, a bit reminiscent of the same thing that Crusaders used to wear?

The question is: do the “Yes” voters on the minaret ban know what they’ve done? Financial flows may begin to tell us in the very near future. And how about all those unofficial, storefront or storage locker mosques, without minarets? Will they make the Swiss feel more secure than a properly constituted, publicly visible mosque with a trained Imam? Who will be leading prayers in the underground mosques, and what will they be preaching?

India at one point had a Ministry of Disinvestment. How long will it be before we see Muslim finance ministers examine their Swiss holdings?

An earlier version of this post appeared in Blogactiv.eu.

Lessons In Gate-Crashing

While we let the US Secret Service and the White House Protocol office sort out the matter of Mr. and Mrs. Salahi, I'd like to reminisce about gate crashers and related species of uninvited guests I have known.  You get your share of them in a quarter century of diplomatic dinners and receptions.

There was the businessman, not unknown to me, who wasn't exactly a gate-crasher, but who insisted on determining the menu for a lunch for a visiting Washington worthy.  We (the cook and me) were very accommodating, but then the picky capitalist was a no show.  We ate his damn portion.

A minister of economy, who had been almost strip-searched (a possible exaggeration) in a provincial Midwest US airport which didn't know what a minister was ("oh, we get them all the time - Minister of the Reformed Church of Jesus Resurrected, Minister of the Temple of God the Redeemer - we strip them all"), anyway this minister was particularly sensitive at the hands of American-employed security guards.  After an incident in his own country where he was refused entry to a US Embassy Fourth of July reception, I made sure that I met him at the gate personally.

Picassiette, Paltrow, or the Great Pretenders?

You can never be too careful when it comes to filtering guests for the POTUS and FLOTUS, however, as last week's incident shows.  Were the guards at the front gate so bedazzled by the lady's red-and-gold sari that they just waved her and her husband through?  Hardly.  I suspect that somewhere along the line they got themselves an invitation card, perhaps under false pretenses - I guess the investigation will show.  I just hope that some White House functionary didn't confuse Mrs. Salahi for Gwyneth Paltrow and override the security guard.  But wait: the actress wasn't on the list, either.

There is a cottage industry in places like Paris, where French TV recently featured a pique-assiette, a guy who acts convincingly and dresses presentably, and who makes it his business to learn of cocktail parties (preferably those that serve lots of yummy dishes), and crashes them for a "living."  While I was always used to seeing "the usual suspects" who died for invitations to parties in the diplomatic world, Monsieur Pique-Assiette really took the cake, so to speak.

I do remember an inveterate party-goer in Alexandria, Egypt.  Perhaps party-goer is inaccurate; I'll just say that if you were driving to the Greek Consulate for the first time and had approximate directions, as soon as you saw this guy - a sort of homeless parking attendant, who would make sure your car wasn't vandalized while you went in for your ouzo - well, you knew you had reached your destination.  We were convinced that he was a mukhabarat (an Egyptian security service spook who kept his eyes on the dips).

Speaking of mukhabarat, my favorite story was not my own, but that of a senior British diplomat with long Middle East experience, who told me of his days in pre- or early-Saddam Iraq, when the government was already composed of military men with little appreciation for diplomatic niceties.  The British Embassy would send out invitations to individual Iraqis - ministers, generals, notables, the usual suspects - and then wait for the evening of the dinner party.  Where no one except the expats showed up.

This went on for some time, until some rising star of HM foreign service got this brain wave: what if we sent the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs blank invitations?  He had hit on something: 10 seats at the table = 10 Iraqi functionaries in them.  Just fill in the guest list after they show up and everyone is happy.

The key to protocolary success in 1960s Baghdad, however, is not something we want to emulate in the Washington of President Obama.  No uninvited guests, please.  There are already enough of the category of angry non-invited luminaries to make every slot count.

Low Tech Isn't No Tech: The Right To Dry

Or, "Les culottes à l'air: Airing the Unmentionables."

Cheapskate that I am, I am milking the Financial Times that they gave me on the airplane last weekend for all it's worth.  My favorite piece: "A woman's fight to air her dirty laundry," by Matthew Engel:

Carin Froehlich of Perkasie [PA] has been warned not to dry her laundry on a clothesline outside, following two complaints from neighbours.  “They said it made the place look like trailer trash.  They said they did not want to look at my unmentionables.”

I grew up a few miles away from Perkasie Pennsylvania, which was not known at the time as a hoity-toity high-rent town.  Like my mother, I'd say lots of 1950s and '60s Perkasie mommies dried their clean laundry in the breezy Bucks County air, and it was brought in smelling a whole lot fresher than today's stuff, hot out of the clothes dryer.  The combination of puritan disdain for public display of underwear is combined with a new snobbery which sweeps the untidiness of life behind the idiot buttons of modern machinery.

A wide screen TV in every room

Last weekend's conference in Boston was in a high-rise chain hotel, and my room was a standard-issue high energy use model: air conditioning only (windows do not open), down duvets to keep you warm (see AC, set at Arctic default), and wide screen HDTVs - I mean really wide, like 50 inches - in every one of their thousand plus rooms.

My point is this: my fellow Americans are hooked, in ways that they can't even begin to appreciate, on a high energy lifestyle, one that almost unquestioningly accepts new "musts" that are ever more gluttonous of CO₂ producing energy.

When hotels feel that they must offer ever bigger screens for the business traveler to watch 10 minutes of news, or when municipalities prohibit citizens from using wind energy to dry their laundry, it's simply an illustration of American gas guzzling that goes way beyond the size of SUV in your garage (I take that back; few Americans can park their cars in the garage, it being taken up by the overflow of junk from their MacMansions, or their ordinary suburban split levels).  Is there any hope for a Copenhagen conversion to a more reasonable lifestyle?

Engels of the FT (who brought his non-electric outdoor "Hills Hoist" clothes dryer to the States) mentions Project Laundry List, those of The Right To Dry.  Simply drying your clothes outside or on a rack (ours, pictured above, is the French model, called a "Tancarville," after the Seine bridge of similar shape) could save the United States some six percent of its electricity consumption.  Think of all the savings  to households, let alone the dent that would make in our Saudi oil import bill.  And the millions of carbon tons not spewed into the atmosphere.  Clothes would actually smell better too, and whites would remain white instead of turning clothes dryer gray.

Before Cheney made conservation a dirty word

Until the Boy Scouts of America dumped it for more esoteric disciplines, they used to have the "Conservation" Merit Badge.  That was before former VP Dick Cheney, leading the secret energy policy task force upon taking office in 2001, ridiculed the notion of conservation and pushed production - and consumption.

Cheney is gone, but his climate change denial is still with us: this week we learned that among Republicans, the percentage of those "who believe that climate change is happening is down sharply -- 76 to 54 percent," according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

I write this on "Black Friday," the new American feast day to the God of Consumption.  It's enough to make Smokey Bear - and this old Boy Scout - cry.

A Plethora of Feasts

To Muslims the world over, Eid Mubarak, or happy Eid al-Adha, AKA Eid al-Kabir.

If yesterday's Thanksgiving in the United States has been crassly, commercially re-branded as "Turkey Day," I don't think that Muslims have seen fit to call their biggest feast day "Sheep Day" or "The Day of the Lamb," but that's what they'll be eating in their hundreds of millions.  Here are some Moroccan recipes for today's feast.

Our first Eid al-Kabir in Tunis was memorable for the silence of the lambs - who had been bleating in our neighborhood for days, only to go silent, suddenly.  We could guess their fate - no pardoning of sacrificial lambs à la President Obama's gesture to a singular turkey on Thanksgiving eve.

But my fondest memory of the Eid is of the far off muezzin in the early morning hours, chanting in a soft, rhythmic way - guaranteed to put you in a good mood for the day, whatever your religion.

In places like Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves on Morocco's northern Mediterranean coast, minarets and muezzins compete with church steeples and bells for your aural attention, though the combination is not cacophony but harmony, a reminder that for centuries in Andalusian Spain, the three great monotheistic religions coexisted in relative peace.  Check the website of the Fundación Tres Culturas for a reminder that Jews, Muslims, and Christians can still cooperate culturally in this unique bridge across the Mediterranean world.

Eid greetings image from MoroccoBoard.com, an expatriate news service.

Deadbeat Donor Czar

Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found. Rich countries pledged $410 million a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise. The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.

BBC News, 25 November 2009

I’ve said it before: these international conferences where billions are pledged but little accounting is performed, are perfect cover for countries and leaders who are notorious for not putting their money where their mouths are. Unless the UN or the BBC tries to add up the pledges and match them with actual bank transfers, no one is keeping tabs on converting the high rhetoric into ready cash.

When I used to negotiate NATO"s budget on behalf of the US, there was a pro forma proviso that whatever I signed up for was dependent on Congressional appropriations.  But when heads of state or government pledge billions for whatever war-torn or tsunami-ravaged country, are they playing with Monopoly money?

So why not create not one, but two “Pledging Czars?” Ever since Russia gave up its czars and czarinas, it’s the US that has created generations of them: drug czars, war-on-terror czars, bailout czars. George W. Bush even had a “reading czar” (check out Wikipedia for a full list), though I don't think the czar helped his master.

The industrialized countries need to have one, but so that he or she does not fall under the sway of the deadbeat pledgers, let’s create another czarina from among the recipient nations. Checks and balances.

The BBC-UN report on shortfalls in climate change funding for developing nations is extremely timely, coming as it has weeks before Copenhagen. No point in pious pronouncements prior to Christmas if previous Christmas prezzies have gone undelivered.

A version of this post appeared in Blogactiv.eu.

Seeing Red, or Finding the Real Sarah Palin

Back in the US for a conference.

Since I can't pass a bookstore without poking my nose around, I looked for that OTHER Sarah Palin opus, the one which was not written by ghosts.  Going Rouge: An American Nightmare, edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, was not on bookshelves next to Going Rogue: An American Life.  Appropriately enough, Rouge was published by the same people who practice "Mischief and Mayhem" against the mainstream publishing world, and is a compilation of Palindromes by a bevy of top-notch writers.

In fact, in the Borders at Washington's Dulles Airport (where presumably there might be a market for a fact-checked book on Palin, the book Going Rouge was nowhere to be seen, though they had plenty of unsold Going Rogue copies.

Actually, anyone who is moved to spend $29.00 for a book ghost written for someone who disdains the written in favor of the "you betcha" spoken word probably is a true believer.  So too for the Going Rouge market.  True disbelievers in Ms. Palin's qualities as a potential leader of the Free World.

Suffering TransAtlantic jet lag, I zapped through multiple TV interviews with the ex-Alaska governor, ex-McCain running mate plugging her book.  As far as I can see, all she has done in the months since losing the election and quitting her job is hone her interviewee skills, and at least now can cite a book that (presumably) she has at least read, if not actually written.  Maybe she should read Going Rouge too.

I won't be buying either.

Our Forbidden Places: Journey Into Moroccans' Hearts

Nos lieux interdits

(2008, Morocco, poster - official site)

Documentary film maker and historian Leila Kilani has given us a unique look into contemporary Morocco, through her award-winning film on the country's Equity and Reconciliation Commission, better known as "l'Instance équité et réconciliation" or IER, set up to help heal the wounds of almost four decades of impunity.   Impunity to disappear, to torture, to execute anyone who was deemed an opponent.

The first remarkable thing about this film is that it happened at all.How many countries have given free rein to a group presided over by a former political prisoner, investigating human rights violations committed by the duly constituted government?

The contrast with neighboring Algeria couldn't be greater.  In 2005, Algerians voted for the Charter for National Peace and Reconciliation.  That the intervening years have yielded neither is in large part due to the Charter's denial of responsibility for human rights abuses by state security forces.

In Morocco, where several attempted military coups and opposition by unions and leftist parties were met with equally brutal repression, especially in the Seventies, the IER has operated under an open government admission of culpability.  However, unlike South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Morocco's IER was not empowered to question the torturers and those behind the dark years of repression.  Kilani's film, made with the full cooperation of the government and the IER, documents this conscious omission, but puts the whole process in the context of a national therapy session.

Her technique is deceptively simple: much like Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, to which Nos lieux interdits has been favorably compared (not to worry, it only lasts 108 minutes, unlike Lanzmann's 9-hour film-fleuve), Kilani simply turned the camera on as families and survivors tell their stories or talk with each other.  It is simple and effective.  As the son of one of the disappeared hears his father's contemporaries describe the conditions of his death, we see him flinch, and that split second on film shows Leila Kilani's sensitivity to her subject - and to the real people she films - better than any film reviewer can describe.

Michel Amarger, RFI film critic, told the audience that Kilani's selection of "little people" instead of representatives of victims' groups may have rattled the latter, but it certainly makes for better cinema.  In other, less sensitive hands, Nos lieux interdits might have been simply what Kilani had originally imagined: a filmed travelogue of desolation, cataloging Morocco's former black sites.

King Mohamed VI, speaking of the IER's work (their site has an English version), said that "the truth uncovered is only relative... and absolute truth is known only to God."   Most of the family members are content with even less: the son who bears up to hearing the conditions under which his father died really only wants to give him a decent Islamic burial.

Kilani's film was shown on the margins of Brussels' 4th annual Arab Film Festival, which partnered the showing with "Le P'tit Ciné," part of their documentary series "Travail de mémoire."  Leila Kilani has mastered her two chosen careers, history and film, and her subjects' memories, though painful, are no doubt cathartic.

Morocco has shown the way.  When do we get to see anything remotely similar in post-Bush USA? 

Un-American: Hunger Up, Health Down

A good friend has flagged a New York Times article by Jason DeParle, "Hunger in U.S. at a 14-Year High."

The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls “food insecurity” 14 years ago, the Department of Agriculture reported Monday.

49 million people... sounds awfully close to the 47 to 52 million people who lack health insurance.  Might there be some overlap in the hungry and unhealthy populations?  I bet there is.

And the reactions might be similar too.  DeParle writes that "lack of money forced members [of households] to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food."  Or eat fast - and cheap - food (clip art above thanks to AppleWorks).

But don't you think that the same 50 million people skip doctor's visits, forgo medicine, or consume junk remedies?  The same dynamic applies.  Just wait until - I fervently hope - the United States passes some manner of health care reform.  It will unearth millions of under-treated cases, and not just from among the undernourished.

If you doubt that, listen to the BBC World Service "Witness" podcast on the origins of the British National Health Service, the NHS.  People who had previously no or spotty access to doctors or hospitals started to show up in large numbers, sporting every sort of malady - treatable - known to man, and probably a few more medical mysteries to boot.

Republican Senators who belatedly fret about health care reform's impact on the deficit (after feeding that deficit when they spent away the Clinton budget surplus) and who say that recession-wracked America cannot "afford" wider health care should remember this: Britain adopted the NHS in the immediate post-war years, when the sun was not only setting on the Empire, but the country's coffers were emptied by war spending.  And yet they embarked on a major program that dwarfs the current proposals that are so controversial in the US.

I submit that Americans who think they know about the faults of the NHS know nothing about either health care in Britain or what it means to be sick without coverage in the US.  Whatever you hear about rationing, waiting lists, and "death panels" needs a serious fact check, like CNN did last night with Sarah Palin's new book.  The fact is, if you get sick in Britain, they won't refuse treatment because you don't have money.  That is the unalterable reality of "rationing" in the US, however.

"Food insecurity" might mean you forgo a meal, and you might thereby put another nail in your coffin.  Forgo an appendectomy because you have no insurance or disposable income might take you directly to that coffin.  Neither situation should be acceptable in 21st century America.

From Insecurity To Interdependence

"... from insecurity, to interdependence."

So ends the brief but eloquent "Declaration of Interdependence," written by Dr. David Suzuki and colleagues for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, scientists, political leaders, and pundits are feverishly trying to set the stage, respectively issuing dire warnings of climactic disaster, or "managing expectations," shorthand for lowering hopes for definitive action.  Exhibit One: this weekend's APEC Summit.

Like the United States' own "Founding Fathers" seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, Suzuki's declaration tries to distill self-evident truths into language that Everyman and Everywoman can grasp - "This We Know" ("we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life").  Or, looking at the glass half full, abusing, polluting, expropriating, and wasting the fundamental elements of life.

Thankfully, the eminent Canadian scientist labors from the optimistic premise of "a new politics of hope."  Remember, he wrote the Declaration of Interdependence in 1992, when even a President like George H.W. Bush could utter these words when signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change: " to sustain development, we must protect the environment; and to protect the environment, we must sustain development."

A decade after father Bush worried about leaving a legacy for his children, son George W. was castigated by environmental groups for not only ignoring Rio's 10th anniversary, but for actively siding with the polluters.  Bush Jr. is back in Texas, where his air conditioner is presumably turned down to an Arctic low, shutting out all evidence of rapidly rising temperatures.  Once in a bubble, always in a bubble.  Until it bursts.

Independence and Interdependence need not be mutually exclusive options.  When I see a country like Denmark, in the wake of the '70s oil crises, make a concerted effort toward energy independence through use of wind, solar, and other alternative resources, I see it as helping the rest of us.  One less EU country that has to face a cold sweat as Russia threatens another natural gas valve malfunction and plunges parts of Europe into a winter deep freeze.

And if countries as different as Nigeria and Vietnam can adopt sound agricultural practices that lead to greater food security, then the rest of the world also reaps the benefit.

The US Declaration of Independence referred to "the Laws of Nature" in its preamble, though we had to wait more than two centuries before Dr. David Suzuki enumerated how those same Laws militated for our global Interdependence.  The bubble that we live in, that little crust surrounded by a vulnerable atmosphere, is our shared environment.  If you live by zero sum arithmetic, then you might look at the drought-stricken starving East Africans and say "there but for the grace of God...".

But today's starving nomads are tomorrow's boat people refugees, or next year's terrorists.  Interdependence is not idealistic gibberish: at its very root is self-interest, where the self-interest is mutual.  John Dunne said it best:

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

If that was a self-evident truth in the 17th century, when most people never traveled beyond their village, how much truer is that in our interconnected world of today?

America Viewed: Our Own Private Beltways

Re-expatriated after my temporary repatriation, my lofty goal of testing the pulse of my countrymen was limited by my circles of friends and family.  In Washington, though I stayed "inside the Beltway," no one should get the impression that "la crise," as they call it here in the francophone world, has not touched the District of Columbia.  Meeting a university professor friend for lunch near a Metro stop, he pointed out the proliferation of "for rent" signs on storefronts, and said that landlords would like nothing more than to sell out to developers who apparently have never tired of putting up ever more condominiums.

The prof also said that his students are increasingly facing dim employment prospects as they approach the end of what for many are upwards of two decades of education.  Down in Florida and thanks to my gregarious host Dick, I met the likes of Gloria and Charlie, respectively 60-something barmaids and checkout ladies, who hold down multiple minimum-wage jobs, but who remain friendly and stoically persevering.  What else can they do?  Go out on the streets?

On the other side of Florida, I see that the people of MoveOn.org (photo) have organized a little protest for later today (for those who can make it, it's at the Unitarian church of Boca Raton at 12:00 PM).  I guess this answers my question as to why there hasn't been a massive pro-health care reform rally in Washington: the people of Move On and other activists and Democratic party strategists want to garner support locally, where they can put constituent pressure on Blue Dog Democrats, Know-Nothing Republicans, and other species of politician who live in a world where everything is fine as it is.

That ideal world may only exist within the confines of the Senators' own circle, where they and other Federal employees (and retirees, including yours truly) enjoy a kind of "public option" health insurance already.  It's employer subsidized, though we all do pay monthly premiums.

For those politicians whose wives develop breast cancer or whose husbands contract prostate cancer, there's no question of their being dropped from the rolls for the sin of having a pre-existing condition, that chilling term which strikes fear into the hearts of normal Americans.  And, once a Congressman, always a Congressman: even if Representative Smith (R - Podunk USA) fails in his re-election bid and gets sent back home, he (and his family) take their nice Federal health insurance system with them, as opposed to the Glorias and the Charlies of the world, who sometimes take on second and third jobs if they carry with them the precious entree into employer-provided health insurance.

Comparing notes with my sister, a nurse who trains trainers in the use of specialized hospital equipment and travels the length and breadth of the country, I learn of innovative health care practices, like performing "outpatient" surgery that goes way beyond removing that pesky mole on your face.  How about outpatient spinal surgery, where a disk operation that releases you back home after 23 hours or less is now commonplace?  I knew of the practice in the US - already dating back years - where childbirth (even cesarean sections) gets mothers and their newborns booted out after a day or so.  But spinal surgery?  What's next, outpatient brain surgery?  Apparently yes.

Now that I'm back in Europe, where health care, if not a human right, is viewed as a hard-won achievement of a civilized society, it will be a challenge to explain what Bob Herbert called the "frightening passivity" of Americans in the face of the health care sub prime unemployment crises.

Maybe Americans have their own private Beltways, where they can zip by neighborhoods blighted by "for sale" signs on the way to their favorite shopping center.  As long as they don't take the exit, they are spared the inconvenience of seeing the devastation in person.  But the United States is Too Big To Fail, that overused expression that justified handouts to the very capitalist institutions that decry helping hardscrabble individuals like Charlie or Gloria.  Their "pre-existing condition" is being born into the American working class.

But if that working class ceases to find work, the effects will be felt in the factories of China too.  Someone used the term "symbiotic" to describe the US-China relationship.  Maybe the Chinese should pull aside a couple of recalcitrant Senators and explain to them why they should want to vote to allow Americans to get health insurance, one sure way of helping the country get back on its feet.  It's in the Chinese interest.

Veterans Day: Easy On the Onion Rings

When you are on a US military installation, whether soldier or civilian, you're supposed to stop out of respect if you're walking outside when the bugler plays taps at the end of the day.

Yesterday, a day ahead of Veterans Day, as the November 11 Armistice Day ending World War I has been known in the United States for more than fifty years, President Obama observed that respect in the Fort Hood ceremony.  Dignified - the proper stance for a Veterans Day that is as delicate a moment as any in recent years.  For once, a President and his advisers are doing war planning that will strive to end our two ongoing wars/occupations, deliberating in a way that apparently was not done when President Bush - with typically undeliberative speed - got the US into those wars.

Dignity doesn't always come naturally to Americans wanting to profit from identification with patriotism.  "Free onion rings for men and women in uniform" promises a fast food outlet, its way of "investing" a few scraps in the war effort.  Well, I suppose that if you're a private or airman risking your life on what approaches minimum wage, anything that comes free is welcome.

But don't ask the fast food magnate to sacrifice his son or daughter to the defense of the realm - that's for people who eat onion rings in greasy spoons.

Travels Through the Green Heart of Florida

Back roads in central Florida are a nice alternative to risking life and limb on the Interstate.  You can drive almost as fast, but the two opposing lanes impose a certain discipline, and there's no comparison in traffic congestion.  After a family reunion on the margins of Disney World, I headed back to the Gulf coast through the orange groves of "Frostfree" and other colorfully-named places.  Passing over Troublesome Creek, I wasn't far from Soggy Bottom.  Had the Coen brothers (of O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame) been inspired or was this an echo of the 2000 hit comedy?  In any case, a road works sign informed me that "State Prisoners at Work" were up ahead, but I detected no chain gangs.

My genial host in Sarasota marveled at my wanting to drive through what he called "cracker country," but it's all part of my "cultural learnings," as Borat would say.  At least this rather pretty swath of the state has a real economy - though apparently based on a citrus monoculture - compared to the Florida coastline, where the part of the population not earning its living from tourism sells life's necessities (and a lot of dross too) to the other part that is dependent on the "snowbirds," that quaint expression describing the Northerners (American and Canadian) who migrate south for the winter.  There were even rolling hills and lakes that didn't appear to be glorified swamps.

As with other parts of rural - especially Southern - states, there are lots of churches, some part of larger denominations like the First Baptists, others of various pentecostal evangelical fundamental persuasions.  The percentage of "manufactured homes" (mobile homes to you and me) is very high, and the contrast with the faux-Spanish stuccoed condominiums and villas of urban Florida couldn't be more striking.

Borrowed CDs and NPR (for non-US readers, National Public Radio, the news, music, and culture network) provided aural diversion from the monotony of the orange groves, and no Deliverance moments were had, though I did see a few ramshackle dwellings with anti-social warnings about dogs.  Urban or rural, Florida abounds in gun shops, and American flags.  To the foreign visitor: the largest American flags fluttering in the breeze are not indicative of a government installation, but show you the way to a car dealership.  You can still buy a little plastic gizmo to attach a flag to your rear passenger window, though there are far fewer of these than after the post-9/11 patriotic fervor.

My rambles have gone on long enough.  Next: political learnings on things like the health care situation.

From Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Good Eats

My friend Dick, happily retired in Florida's Gulf coast, does provide the Good Eats (although you might have to cook some yourself), but the Christian part is definitely tongue in cheek.  He's one of the tidiest bachelors around, so the "Dirty Dick" part is there just for color, though it does sound properly rakish and piratical.   He was a Navy man before he became a diplomat and eventually my first boss in the Foreign Service.

Those days are past, and we spend much of our time applying our honed analytical skills - sorry, but Evaluation Report language always manages to creep in... trying to get our heads around the matter of the State of the United States.  It's a lifelong task.

We were blissfully enjoying a beer and Cheap Eeetz alongside the marina when a wide screen TV on the wall announced the mass killing at Fort Hood ("the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services") Texas.  When we read the caption naming the alleged shooter, we knew it boded ill for a whole host of reasons.  Yet another "senseless killing" as they say, the work of a possibly deranged individual.  A Lone Star Shooter.  But because the suspect has a name that resonates from here to the Middle East, and because his victims were soldiers in a place where they shouldn't have been under fire, he won't be "just another" mass murderer.

Nidal Malik Hasan's apparent infiltration of personal weapons onto the base has to cause concern for the hundreds of other military installations scattered across the country, and across the world.  "We will increase our security presence here in the coming days" said base commander Lieutenant General Robert Cone.  Well, of course they will, but the deed is done, and no amount of posting Humvees with 50 caliber machine guns trained at the gates will screen murderous intent in the minds of soldiers who might "go Postal."

Do you know how many private cars pass through the gates of just this one base - population 50,000 or so - daily?  Sure, they can double and triple check ID, pull some suspicious sergeants and potentially mad majors over and have them open up the trunk, but a determined killer will easily stow a few handguns and plenty of ammunition wherever he pleases.  It's what's in the mind, not what's under the hood.

Read today's Bob Herbert, himself a Vietnam era vet and consistent in his recognition of the extreme stress that upwards of a decade of wars has put on the US military.  Herbert reminds us that stress is not just a minor irritant in the context of repeated exposure to war zones.  There is not one iota of an excuse for this insane act's perpetrator, but Herbert reminds us that "we haven’t heard a lot about the scores of suicides at that same base — the highest of any U.S. military installation — since the invasion of Iraq in 2003."

This mass murder, like the many before it, unleashes the perennial battle over gun control, or rather the lack thereof, in the United States.  The same arguments for and against will be trotted out with numbing effect.  It's unfortunate that there are ultra-stressed out individuals, whether soldiers or civilians, but why oh why do we make it so easy for them to act out their impulses?  "Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People" read the NRA bumper stickers.  Perhaps, but a potential mass murderer armed with, say, a kitchen knife he just grabbed on impulse might be a tad less lethal than one armed with an automatic weapon and endless ammo clips.

But at Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Fine Foods, we don't indulge in pie-in-the-sky.  Just add Fort Hood to the list - Columbine, University of Texas, Virginia Tech - shake your head, and hit the remote control.  There are, apparently, other priorities.  To be continued...

In Washington, With All Its Denizens

Denizen-in-Chief, Barack Obama, is on the cover of maps sold to tourists.  I can't tell you what it means to pass by Pennsylvania Avenue and know that a good man, a smart man is in residence there.  That said, as I was contemplating the change since I last set foot in this city (circa November 2006) and looking at the American flag fluttering in the floodlights, I almost tripped over a rather fat rat, scurrying across the sidewalk.  Oh well, not everything has changed. 

The panhandlers are still here, though they don't seem any more numerous in these straitened times.  They've always been a feature of Washington, ever since Reagan-era closings of places like mental institutions simply put people out on the street who had nowhere else to go.

No, the rat was not a squirrel - I saw plenty of them in today's daylight.  The autumn colors were lovely as the plane swooped down to Dulles.  It's nice to be back, and next time I'll report on what the locals tell me.