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30 November 2006

Picking the Fight

No question. The Bush Administration picked the fight in Iraq. Its objective, despite claims of international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, democracy in the Broader Middle East, or humanitarianism, was really only to get rid of Saddam. The September 11 attack on the U.S. offered the perfect occasion for seeking that revenge. And elimination of Saddam offered the most efficacious use for America’s military might.

Decision-makers in the Administration didn’t bother to study the history or culture of Iraq before invading it. Intellectual laziness may be part of the explanation; arrogance of neo-conservative idealistic true-believers may be a larger part. In any case, once the original objective of the invasion was quickly achieved, lack of preparation for the aftermath embroiled the U.S. in a never-ending unraveling of the artificial Iraqi “nation.” Moreover, the U.S. created a specific history of humiliation and Quisling-like collaboration that will have to be mollified in the formation of a new political order.

Can the U.S. just pull out of Iraq now that it is generally recognized that its continued occupation of the territory does not contribute to the long-term peaceful well-being of its residents? That will probably be determined as much by political forces in the U.S. as by realities on the ground in Iraq. That is the privilege of the superpower, and the sad lot of occupants of a world under hegemonic domination.

27 November 2006

Make a Student—Enrich Society

The argument that Paul Tough makes in the November 26, 2006 New York Times Magazine in favor of charter schools and other methods of raising the academic performance of socially disadvantaged children appears to assume that the only self-evident reason for supporting them is to eliminate unfairness. There is a strong argument to be made, however, based on their value for the public at large.

There are at least two benefits that a society realizes when its youth are cultivated to become better students. The characteristics shown by Annette Lareau to be instilled by middle-class parents, which help their children learn, also make them less submissive. Thus, society enjoys the fruits of their minds and, at the same time, is subject to their critical judgment.

A population raised naturally is in jeopardy of falling under the influence of an evil dictator and leaves to chance its advancement by intellectual achievement.

Kicking the Can Down the Road
In his article in the November 27, 2006, New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes an Israeli Knesset member, Ephraim Sneh, on the real threat of a nuclear Iran for Israel. In the Sneh’s view, it is just as harmful to Israel that a menacing Ahmadinejad-led Iran be believed to have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon as to have it demonstrate possession of a deliverable bomb. Even the potential that Iran might eventually wield a nuclear weapon vitiates the Zionist dream. A safe and secure homeland for Jews around the world depends on their confidence in the existence of that refuge, regardless of whether they actually live there.

Destruction of Iran’s potential to obtain a nuclear bomb, however, only kicks the can down the road. Certainly if Iran is prevented from achieving life-shaping power over Israelis, someone else in the region will ultimately be able to fill that role. After all, it must have been the objective of Israel to eliminate once and for all an Islamic nuclear threat when its air force bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in the ‘80s.

The basic cause of Israel’s precarious relations with its neighbors is the illegitimacy of its creation out of Palestine in the eyes of the Islamic world. Until that issue is resolved to the satisfaction of the Islamic Palestinian people, at the immediate expense of the Jewish state (but ultimately realizing a viable Zionist dream), Israel will not escape condemnation to life under the threat of extinction.

Perhaps that is a state of existence that suits Israel, just as a nihilistic view of society may be most consistent with Islam. The two cultures deserve each other – if only they could be confined to their own closed system. Unfortunately, the rest of the world must live with them, and has not left them alone either--on the one hand, persecution and inquisition; on the other, Crusades and hydrocarbon addiction. Moreover, the rest of the world has as much to lose from their unending conflict as they do. It is hard to put a price on resolving such a fundamental problem.

18 November 2006

Multiculturalism vs. Open Minds

Is it possible to preserve room for many cultural backgrounds, maintaining an open mind to different philosophies, and still hold to principles that determine one’s choices in life? Does the former necessarily mean relativism, granting equal validity to any set of moral guidelines? Or is it possible truly to allow each individual or group of individuals to adopt a set of values that they determine to be the most utilitarian for them while holding firmly to one’s own set of principles.

If a person or society has a system of values that includes insistence on its universality, it is a prescription for tyranny and world conquest. This is the dark side of globalization; and what Harvey Mansfield seems to advocate in his OpEd piece in the November 16, 2006, Wall Street Journal. A Rawlsian framing of values, like that in the previous paragraph, can reach different conclusions in different cultures. Conceding this possibility does not require accepting different value systems if one chooses to reside in any particular cultural milieu.

Mansfield accuses Harvard’s faculty of positing cultural determinism, from which an educated mind cannot escape; it can only learn how best to argue in the culture’s defense. Isn’t it Mansfield, rather, who can be criticized for demanding the narrowing of Harvard minds to Western values and principles as a consequence of their voluntarily selecting that institution for learning and research?

07 November 2006

Google and Small Advertisers

The new Google enterprise to sell newspaper advertising online to SMEs is an inevitable recognition that small companies act more like individuals than like corporations. Their marketing decision-makers are part of the ATM generation – people who would rather stand in line at the electronic cash dispenser and deposit drop in a local bank branch than walk up to a vacant teller line. No one wants to deal with a human provider if he can obtain the same service from a machine over which has more control, even if that is only a delusion.

Likewise, those individual entrepreneurs don’t have the patience to deal with newspaper sales representatives. They are more comfortable going online in order to fill their advertising needs.

Google’s analysis of this trend also has apparently detected what may be a divide between the generation of business innovators and an important segment of their customers. The irony is that selling the archaic medium of print advertising, which best addresses that customer segment, requires the use of a much more with-it medium – the Internet.

03 November 2006

Willful Blindness in Iraq

In his “Talk of the Town” article in the October 30, 2006, New Yorker, George Packer was incorrect to characterize America’s failed policy in Iraq as a “defeat.” It is only a defeat if its goal was to demonstrate the ability of the U.S. heedlessly to intervene in the affairs of another nation.

The war has never been about acting in the interests of the Iraqi people. Therefore, that those interests have not been advanced is not a defeat. Serving America’s perceived security interests, and the interests of those whose business it is to protect that security, was the real goal. Impatience with having to sell the second half of that goal to the American public has landed the Bush Administration in a pickle.

The administration does not want to admit that it made a mistake thinking it could disguise its real motivations for attacking Iraq with arguments about WMD, democracy in the Greater Middle East, or freedom for oppressed segments of the Iraqi population. Willful blindness to that mistake is not defeatist although in the end, vis-à-vis the Iraqis, it is certainly heartless. The real issue is whether persistence in that mistake demonstrates determination or just stupidity. And so, it is indeed self-defeating.

01 November 2006

Globalization’s Assymetry

The equation of globalization places Western industrialized economies on one side. They sell brands and technology to emerging markets and import inexpensive foreign-made manufactured products. Emerging market countries buy high-priced services and engineered goods with labor-intensive exports. Neither side is happy.

Each society is divided into social strata that have political power out of proportion with their economic significance. The political power of the lower middle class in the West comes from its numerical superiority in societies that make electoral dominance king. The political power of social elites in LDCs comes from the organization of those societies as oligarchies. Therefore, economic strength in the global system is attributable on each side of the equation to the segments of the populace with the least political power.

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