Month: January 2009

by Patrick Appel
The Hudson Institute’s Jaime Daremblum explores the impact of plunging oil prices on Venezuela and concludes that Hugo Chavez is weakened but still dangerous:

The bad news for Venezuelans is that their president wasted an unprecedented opportunity during the oil boom and their economy is now in shambles. The good news for U.S. policymakers and democratic officials in Latin America is that Chávez will now have less ability to foment political strife abroad and undermine regional democracies. His stature has been diminished, and his popularity at home has fallen. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, the massive decline in oil prices could mean “real trouble” for Chávez.

by Patrick Appel

Marc Lynch is worried by the rumors that Hillary Clinton will tap longtime friend and Democratic mega-donor Judith Hale as her undersecretary for public diplomacy:

…the position of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs should go to someone with experience in and a vision for public diplomacy, and who will be in a position to effectively integrate public diplomacy concerns into the policy-making process.  Appointing someone with no experience in public diplomacy but with a resume which "involves selling a message" has already been tried: the first post-9/11 Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers, whose tenure lasted only 17 months (October 2001-March 2003), focused on "branding" America through television advertising showing happy Muslim-Americans, and is generally considered to be an utter failure.

by Chris Bodenner
"Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States.  It was a complete surprise, completely unexpected.  And just like the United States prevailed in that, we’ll prevail in this," – patriot Rod Blagojevich, still suffering from the amnesia caused by that dastardly deed.

by Chris Bodenner
The WWF’s got nothing on these guys:

by Patrick Appel
Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe. Amy Sullivan notices that Obama didn’t repeal the Mexico City Policy, the "ban on federal money to NGOs that provide abortions abroad." Repealing the ban was one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as president and reinstating the ban was one of Bush’s. Sullivan speculates:

Everyone knows he still plans on repealing the ban. But it was an interesting and important decision not to make that move on such a politically-charged day. Clinton entered the White House having tempered the skepticism of many pro-life voters with his insistence that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." His decision to make repealing the Mexico City ban one of his very first acts in office led many to wonder if the slogan was just that–a slogan. I suspect that when Obama does issue the executive order regarding the Mexico City policy, it will be followed by concrete action to support abortion reduction.

I don’t know about that.

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

The US Army Command and General Staff College is only one of dozens of American military-educational institutions that enroll students from Muslim countries.  For Brownback to claim that Leavenworth is where "these relationships are built with foreign officers, particularly in the Islamic world"  — as if that happens at Leavenworth alone — could charitably be described as disingenuous, though "stupid" is probably a more accurate term.

In my Signal Officer Basic Course at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, we had 10 foreign students in my class alone — and there were easily a half-dozen classes in residence at any one time — including one from Jordan, one from Saudi Arabia, and one from Egypt.

Foreign students regularly enroll at the National Defense University — and from the region, dozens at the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at NDU — at advanced technical schools (every branch in the Army — infantry, armor, aviation, etc. has its own school), at the Army War College, and at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Being a former Army guy, I can’t even speak to the dozens of military-educational facilities offered by the other services, though I have personal knowledge of Muslim-world officers at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and at the Joint Special Operations University at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

In other words, officers from Muslim-world countries are scattered throughout the US military-educational system.  CGSC does not "relations" make.

by Chris Bodenner
First he writes this, then we find this.

(Hat tip: Buzzfeed)

by Chris Bodenner
One of the Army veterans I know in Leavenworth says he’s opposed to the detainee transfer, in part, because the mere presence of foreign enemies conjures up bad memories from his tour in Iraq.  Working there as an MP, he dealt with many dangerous prisoners, and just wants to leave the whole experience behind him. For him, Leavenworth is a place of solace.

by Patrick Appel
Robert Darnton studies the settlement allowing Google to digitize thousands and thousands of books:

No one can predict what will happen. We can only read the terms of the settlement and guess about the future. If Google makes available, at a reasonable price, the combined holdings of all the major US libraries, who would not applaud? Would we not prefer a world in which this immense corpus of digitized books is accessible, even at a high price, to one in which it did not exist?

Perhaps, but the settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company.

Apart from Wikipedia, Google already controls the means of access to information online for most Americans, whether they want to find out about people, goods, places, or almost anything. In addition to the original "Big Google," we have Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Labs, Google Finance, Google Arts, Google Food, Google Sports, Google Health, Google Checkout, Google Alerts, and many more Google enterprises on the way. Now Google Book Search promises to create the largest library and the largest book business that have ever existed.

Whether or not I have understood the settlement correctly, its terms are locked together so tightly that they cannot be pried apart. At this point, neither Google, nor the authors, nor the publishers, nor the district court is likely to modify the settlement substantially. Yet this is also a tipping point in the development of what we call the information society. If we get the balance wrong at this moment, private interests may outweigh the public good for the foreseeable future, and the Enlightenment dream may be as elusive as ever.

by Chris Bodenner
He’s worried that Muslim countries might pull their students out of CGSC, the officer college on Ft. Leavenworth (where, incidentally, my father taught for six years):

“We’ve already heard from students from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that they will leave, or be pulled by their governments, if the detainees from Guantanamo are moved there,” Brownback said. “It’s where these relationships are built with foreign officers, particularly in the Islamic world. This really hurts us.”

Of the more than 1,000 officers who cycle through CGSC every year, only about 50 of them are foreign, and only a fraction of them come from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  While any disruption to CGSC’s curriculum is unfortunate, a few-person boycott would pale in comparison to the issue of our detainee policy and how the rest of the world sees it.

But first of all, why exactly would these countries refuse to let their students come?  Brownback never says.  Local leaders, who first invoked the excuse, also don’t elaborate (at least as far I’ve read).  Is it because foreign students would object to our detainee policy?  But wouldn’t it be completely different at that point, by virtue of closing Guantanamo and giving detainees a fair hearing?  And if that is the case, why aren’t they protesting now?  If, on the other hand, those foreign students are concerned about personal safety, then that seems legitimate (though odd that it’s only those countries and not others).

Unless someone can explain to me how important these alleged boycotts are, Brownback should stick to his security concerns, which are plenty serious on their own.  His expertise on the detainee issue is crucial to the ongoing debate and the safety of Leavenworth, so I feel like these sort of minor reasons are distracting.