"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right" - Oprah Winfrey, American media mogul, actress and producer - born 1954.
February 12th 2000 was the official date when I first arrived in San Francisco in what would turn out to be the first of two full relocations from Ireland to the United States in the decade that would follow. I was lucky enough to have been able to spend much of my middle to late '20's travelling the world with my career, but the move to the United States at the dawning of the new century was the first time I was actually planning on living in a new country, absorbing and adapting to a new culture, and attempting to accomplish what hundreds of thousands of my fellow Irish men and women had done in the centuries past. Much of the boom in the technology and software sector in the late 1990's, the industry in which I worked at the time, revolved around the confusion surrounding Y2K. Would information systems, computer programs, and the technhnological infrastructure supporting corporations and businesses of every size, shape and industry vertical, and perhaps even governments, continue functioning after 01/01/2000. Y2K turned out to be a red herring and by February of 2000 it was largely forgotten.
My first project in the United States involved a travel schedule that went something like this: Sunday - fly San Francisco to Memphis, take a connecting flight from Memphis to Nashville and then either hire a car or book a driver and travel across the border from Tennessee to Kentucky to a place called Bowling Green. Friday afternoon around lunch time I would retrace my steps back across 3,000 miles of open country to San Francisco. This was the schedule for nine months. Bowling Green has been, (and is likely only ever to be), famous for two things: a) it is the home of the Corvette car museum and b) at one time it has the largest number of restaurants per head of population in America. You can understand now when I tell you that the folks I was working with on the project looked at me kind of funny for the first couple of weeks whenever I opened my mouth. The natives of Bowling Green were somehow able to get five syllables into word that was only supposed to have three. To them, this fast talking Irishman was quite literally from another time and place.
One memorable trip in one of those car rides from Nashville, Tennessee to Bowling Green, Kentucky stands out. It was March or April of 2000 and the presidential primaries were being waged across the country. John McCain had just defeated George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary by 17 points and Bush was on the ropes. (This was just before Karl Rove stepped in and began circulating flyers in South Carolina (in advance of their primary) saying that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate child, that he was in favor of homosexuality and that his wife Cindy was a drug addict. Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of John McCain, but I had respect for him back in 2000, and any Republican that was running against Bush, any Bush, had my support. The conversation in the car between the can driver and I got around to Bill Clinton. Clinton was at the time trying to rehabilitate his name in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998, while simultaneously seeing out his second term as President. Once I mentioned Clinton's name to the driver in the middle of Kentucky redneck country, he became incensed, telling me that he would gladly shoot that son of a bitch Clinton with his shotgun if he had an opportunity. I tried to draw him out on what his issues were with Clinton and perhaps not surprisingly they ranged from abortion to gun control to so-called "morals" in the White House. This experience was my first introduction to someone who classified themselves as an evangelical Christian, the kind of voter that George W. Bush courted extensively in the 2000 election with Al Gore. The rest, as we know, is history.
As we close out this year of 2009 it is also worth considering that we are also turning the last page on the first decade of the 21st century. There is no doubt that in the decade of the '00's, one man has dominated the political and economic landscape of the world. George W. Bush, as we now know, was the archangel Gabriel in disguise. A man that ran on a plank of "compassionate conservatism" in 2000 turned out to be the worst American president in the history of that office, somehow achieving a level of incompetence worse than that of his predecessors Ulysses S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and his own daddy, George H.W. Bush. 'W' was an unqualified to be President as his "Skull and Bones", Nazi apologist, Savings and Loans defrauder, CIA hit man, and friend of the Bin Laden family, father was. The man 'W' stole the election from in 2000, Al Gore, went on to completely rehabilitate his career and racked up a Grammy, an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize in quick succession. Today, Gore is the pre-eminent worldwide authority on global warming and climate change, while 'W' has been ostracized to the back waters of Texas and obscurity.
Time magazine recently issued a special publication entitled "The '00's: Goodbye (At Last) to the Decade from Hell". Who could blame them for such a title after a decade that included such catastrophic and world changing events as 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Hurricane Katrina, Guantamano Bay, torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the dismantling of the United States constitution and the plunder of the US economy by a combination of investment banks, mortgage houses, finance companies and the insurance industry. The legacy of the Bush/Cheney years will, unfortunately, be with us for a generation or more.
On a positive note, the outstanding event for me in 2009 was the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The election of America's first black president marked a seminal moment in the history of democracy in the United States. Here is a brave and visionary leader who is committed to making ground breaking legislative changes for the betterment of Americans. There is no doubt that Obama's task is huge and he may well have underestimated the extent to which corporate America owns a large slice of the United States congress, however, I believe strongly that this president will preside over significant reform (and improvement) in areas such as climate change, regulatory control of the marketplace, foreign policy, immigration and civil rights and universal health care. Let us wish President Obama well as he undertakes these awesome endeavors.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
"Conservatism, New York’s 23rd and the lessons for the Republican Party in 2010"
"Over the past two decades American electoral politics has been transformed by the rise of a newly energized conservative movement. The result has been not only a radical shift in the program and politics of the Republican Party, but a decisive change in the nature of public discourse. Demagoguery is increasingly supplanting responsible dialogue, self-righteousness is replacing conscientiousness, and the victim is democracy" - John W. Dean III, former White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon 1970-1973
In 2006, George W. Bush was mid way through his second term as President and already looking like a lame duck chief executive. In November of that year, Bush, as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, suffered his first major defeat in his six years in office. The American people, disgusted by a combination of political corruption, unprecedented secrecy in government, the dismantling of the United States Constitution and not to mention the war in Iraq, swept the Democrats back into the majority in the United States congress. Two years later the Republicans were decimated at the polls, Democrats significantly increased their majority, and America elected its first black president. Along the way, the tone of the political discourse in the United States would drop to a new low. Republican candidates, bitter after losing the congressional majority they had held for 12 long years and staring likely defeat in the face in the 2008 presoidential election, decided to join forces with a combination of rabid right wing talk radio fanatics, cable TV show hosts, conservative authors and editorial writers, retired (and sometimes discredited) military commanders and lobbyists, political hacks and racists of every shape and size to attempt to once again hijack the national mood for change in America through fear, intimidation, orchestrated confrontation and outright lies.
When John Dean wrote his book "Conservatives without Conscience" in 2006 he accurately captured the radical shift that had taken place in the Republican Party over the period of the previosu 25 years and repercussions of what this meant, and still means today, to the American body politic. There was a time when the conservative movement and the Republican Party was essentially one and the same thing. The universally acknowledged founders of the modern conservative movement, people like William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater, were lifelong, and passionate Republicans. Buckley founded "The National Review", the bastion of conservative writing and thinking now for over forty years; Goldwater was a long time senator from Arizona and former Republican candidate for President (he lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson in 1964). While both men's brand of conservatism was defined by their belief in small government, strong military defense, states' rights, fiscal responsibility and the deregulation of the economic marketplace, they were also viewed as men with a conscience, open to rational debate and whose motives and actions were not driven merely by pure ideology or prejudice. The Republican Party, and therefore the conservative movement, has become hijacked to a new ideology in the last 25 years. It began with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980's and was laid bare in all its viciousness and hypocrisy during the co presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush ran on a plank of "compassionate conservatism" against Al Gore in 2000, but clearly his definition conservatism was radically different from that of Buckley, Goldwater or even Richard Nixon.
Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been engaged in a civil war. The more ideologically driven half of the party (those that believe for example that John McCain wasn't conservative enough to be its nominee in 2008) is represented by a motley crew of racists and morally and ideologically bankrupt individuals that includes Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter to name but a few. The influence that these individuals have within the broader Republican movement is steadily increasing, so much so that the existing party leadership and infrastructure may become irreparably damaged as it looks ahead to the midterm elections of 2010. The recent events surrounding a congressional election this month in upstate New York provides a fascinating window into the political infighting that is currently going on within the Republican Party. In a part of the country where the Democrats have long been politically dominant, New York's 23rd district has been one of the few safe Republican seats going back over a hundred years. Earlier this summer the Republican Party in New York (and backed by the Republican National Committee and party leaders in the House and Senate) endorsed Ms. Deded Scozzafava as its nominee for the open congressional seat this November. In a district where Republicans have held the seat since 1871, the result seemed a formality. The problem for some national Republican figures however was that Ms. Scozzafava was not conservative enough in her leanings.
Enter Doug Hoffman. Hoffman is a carpet bagger (meaning he is running for a seat in a district that he has never lived in) who entered the race in September, proudly boasting his supposed conservative credentials and running as a "conservative" and not as a "republican". His star rose quickly when he was endorsed by none other than Sarah Palin. What half term governor and now part time blogger Palin knows about the issues of New York's 23rd district is not clear to me, however she delivered an enormous snub to the Republican establishment in New York by rejecting the party's chosen nominee and instead endorsing an unknown candidate, Hoffman, on the grounds that she, Ms. Scozzafava, the party nominee, wasn't conservative enough. In the weeks following the endorsement, a clutch of prominent Republicans from the four corners of the country have followed suit and endorsed Hoffman. The pressure on Scozzafava was such that on October 31st, 3 days before the election, she withdrew her candidacy. This issue this debacle has created for the Republican Party is that the constituents that had planned to vote for Ms. Scozzafava (viewed as a moderate Republican) may well now vote for the Democratic candidate, rather than the conservative Hoffman. Such an eventuality could swing the seat to the Democrats for the first time in multiple generations, an outcome made even more potentially likely when Scozzfava turned around and endorsed the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, on November 1st! By the time you read this, the results will be in and we will know for sure. Be sure to do a Google on it.
This brand of red meat political conservatism that was played out in New York's 23rd district is a microcosm of the broader dilemma the Republican Party faces as it seeks to improve its image with the national electorate coming into a new election year. A recent country wide poll showed that only 20% of voters identify themselves as traditional Republicans. If the party is to increase this percentage and make gains in the 2010 midterm elections it knows it must broaden it's appeal to moderate Republicans (Republicans that abandoned the party in 2008), independents and even border line and conservative Democrats (like those Democrats who voted for Reagan in the 1980's). Should the party of Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan continue to give way to the influence of Cheney, Palin and Limbaugh, and should President Obama's legislative changes begin to improve the lives of everyday Americans in 2010, it is not inconceivable that the GOP will shrink to be an almost exclusively white, Southern and ideologically bankrupt party.
In 2006, George W. Bush was mid way through his second term as President and already looking like a lame duck chief executive. In November of that year, Bush, as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, suffered his first major defeat in his six years in office. The American people, disgusted by a combination of political corruption, unprecedented secrecy in government, the dismantling of the United States Constitution and not to mention the war in Iraq, swept the Democrats back into the majority in the United States congress. Two years later the Republicans were decimated at the polls, Democrats significantly increased their majority, and America elected its first black president. Along the way, the tone of the political discourse in the United States would drop to a new low. Republican candidates, bitter after losing the congressional majority they had held for 12 long years and staring likely defeat in the face in the 2008 presoidential election, decided to join forces with a combination of rabid right wing talk radio fanatics, cable TV show hosts, conservative authors and editorial writers, retired (and sometimes discredited) military commanders and lobbyists, political hacks and racists of every shape and size to attempt to once again hijack the national mood for change in America through fear, intimidation, orchestrated confrontation and outright lies.
When John Dean wrote his book "Conservatives without Conscience" in 2006 he accurately captured the radical shift that had taken place in the Republican Party over the period of the previosu 25 years and repercussions of what this meant, and still means today, to the American body politic. There was a time when the conservative movement and the Republican Party was essentially one and the same thing. The universally acknowledged founders of the modern conservative movement, people like William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater, were lifelong, and passionate Republicans. Buckley founded "The National Review", the bastion of conservative writing and thinking now for over forty years; Goldwater was a long time senator from Arizona and former Republican candidate for President (he lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson in 1964). While both men's brand of conservatism was defined by their belief in small government, strong military defense, states' rights, fiscal responsibility and the deregulation of the economic marketplace, they were also viewed as men with a conscience, open to rational debate and whose motives and actions were not driven merely by pure ideology or prejudice. The Republican Party, and therefore the conservative movement, has become hijacked to a new ideology in the last 25 years. It began with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980's and was laid bare in all its viciousness and hypocrisy during the co presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush ran on a plank of "compassionate conservatism" against Al Gore in 2000, but clearly his definition conservatism was radically different from that of Buckley, Goldwater or even Richard Nixon.
Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been engaged in a civil war. The more ideologically driven half of the party (those that believe for example that John McCain wasn't conservative enough to be its nominee in 2008) is represented by a motley crew of racists and morally and ideologically bankrupt individuals that includes Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter to name but a few. The influence that these individuals have within the broader Republican movement is steadily increasing, so much so that the existing party leadership and infrastructure may become irreparably damaged as it looks ahead to the midterm elections of 2010. The recent events surrounding a congressional election this month in upstate New York provides a fascinating window into the political infighting that is currently going on within the Republican Party. In a part of the country where the Democrats have long been politically dominant, New York's 23rd district has been one of the few safe Republican seats going back over a hundred years. Earlier this summer the Republican Party in New York (and backed by the Republican National Committee and party leaders in the House and Senate) endorsed Ms. Deded Scozzafava as its nominee for the open congressional seat this November. In a district where Republicans have held the seat since 1871, the result seemed a formality. The problem for some national Republican figures however was that Ms. Scozzafava was not conservative enough in her leanings.
Enter Doug Hoffman. Hoffman is a carpet bagger (meaning he is running for a seat in a district that he has never lived in) who entered the race in September, proudly boasting his supposed conservative credentials and running as a "conservative" and not as a "republican". His star rose quickly when he was endorsed by none other than Sarah Palin. What half term governor and now part time blogger Palin knows about the issues of New York's 23rd district is not clear to me, however she delivered an enormous snub to the Republican establishment in New York by rejecting the party's chosen nominee and instead endorsing an unknown candidate, Hoffman, on the grounds that she, Ms. Scozzafava, the party nominee, wasn't conservative enough. In the weeks following the endorsement, a clutch of prominent Republicans from the four corners of the country have followed suit and endorsed Hoffman. The pressure on Scozzafava was such that on October 31st, 3 days before the election, she withdrew her candidacy. This issue this debacle has created for the Republican Party is that the constituents that had planned to vote for Ms. Scozzafava (viewed as a moderate Republican) may well now vote for the Democratic candidate, rather than the conservative Hoffman. Such an eventuality could swing the seat to the Democrats for the first time in multiple generations, an outcome made even more potentially likely when Scozzfava turned around and endorsed the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, on November 1st! By the time you read this, the results will be in and we will know for sure. Be sure to do a Google on it.
This brand of red meat political conservatism that was played out in New York's 23rd district is a microcosm of the broader dilemma the Republican Party faces as it seeks to improve its image with the national electorate coming into a new election year. A recent country wide poll showed that only 20% of voters identify themselves as traditional Republicans. If the party is to increase this percentage and make gains in the 2010 midterm elections it knows it must broaden it's appeal to moderate Republicans (Republicans that abandoned the party in 2008), independents and even border line and conservative Democrats (like those Democrats who voted for Reagan in the 1980's). Should the party of Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan continue to give way to the influence of Cheney, Palin and Limbaugh, and should President Obama's legislative changes begin to improve the lives of everyday Americans in 2010, it is not inconceivable that the GOP will shrink to be an almost exclusively white, Southern and ideologically bankrupt party.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The "Af-Pak" Decision
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Around 330 BC, in his attempt to reach “the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea”, the Greek king, Alexander the Great, drove his armies across the vast plains of Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia and conquered the lands that today roughly correspond to Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Genghis Khan would experience fifteen hundred years later, Alexander’s armies found the rugged terrain and brutal climatic conditions of the Af-Pak region to be extremely inhospitable and morale shattering; so much so that as the great warrior drove his men relentlessly forward towards the borders of India, he was eventually forced to turn back by the near mutiny of his soldiers. Over the centuries, waves of conquerors have descended on these ancient lands, positioning the region at the crossroads of the historic trade routes between the great cities of Rome and Athens in the West and India and China in the east.
Eight years after the invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, President Obama is at a crossroads in determining the way forward for U.S. foreign policy in what is no longer being referred to as the war in Afghanistan, but rather the broader Af-Pak strategy. After vanquishing the Taliban back in October 2001, the general consensus is that the United States took its eye completely off the ball by focusing its international war on terror almost exclusively in Iraq. While the U.S. was preoccupied in Iraq, Osama bin Laden found refuge in the arms of his Taliban kin, the same mujahideen he fought alongside in the 1980’s against the Soviets, and who now control the mountain landscape that borders the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under the ineffective rule of Bush puppet, President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban in Afghanistan have reinvented themselves and are now back to pre 9/11 strength. Karzai’s inability, or unwillingness, to tame the resurgence of the Taliban and to stamp out the widespread corruption that exists within his administration has led to a perceptible cooling in relations with the United States. Accusations of extensive fraud in Afghanistan’s recent elections have contributed to President Obama’s insistence on revaluating the entire United States mission in that country.
The sovereign nation of Pakistan was formed in 1947 after the northwestern part of what was then British India was carved off from the rest of India to become an autonomous state in its own right, the home to millions of Indian Muslims. Many military and political strategists believe that Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan, is where the United States should be placing most of its military, economic and diplomatic efforts in any new regional strategy to be announced by the President. Even though Pakistan was a U.S. ally during the CIA funded war of the Afghani mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980’s, relations soured quickly thereafter when Pakistan refused to abandon its nuclear program, an issue that has now come front and central for the Obama administration. Former Pakistani president during the post 9/11 era of George Bush’s war on terror, Pervez Musharraf proved to be an ineffective and prickly ally, who like his counterpart Karzai in Afghanistan, was unable or unwilling to tame the rise of the Taliban within his own country. The fear now for the Obama administration, in addition to the resurgence of the Taliban, who are natural allies of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, is that Pakistan’s nuclear capability could fall into the hands of an insurgent force like the Taliban, the potential impact of which could be catastrophic.
Right now, the usual motley crew of foreign policy hawks are talking up America’s need to recommit itself to bringing stability to the region, taking the war on terror to its enemies and spreading so called democracy. This is the same mantra we heard in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan (in the 1980’s and in 2001) and Iraq, a mention just a few. The military, industrial, intelligence and political nexus that controls the Pentagon, CIA, Department of Defense, Wall Street and the Republican Party have controlled the foreign policy of the United States for half a century.
It is unreasonable to expect President Obama to be able to reverse this trend less than one year in to his first term. The President can however demonstrate leadership, vision, respect and responsibility by carefully re-evaluating U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and begin recalibrating its mission there. The President was recently awarded the Nobel Peace prize not just for what he has already achieved; both symbolically and through his actions, but also for the change towards peace he can engineer in the matter of U.S. foreign policy and the application of America’s military might. Let us wish him well as he takes on this awesome task.
Around 330 BC, in his attempt to reach “the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea”, the Greek king, Alexander the Great, drove his armies across the vast plains of Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia and conquered the lands that today roughly correspond to Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Genghis Khan would experience fifteen hundred years later, Alexander’s armies found the rugged terrain and brutal climatic conditions of the Af-Pak region to be extremely inhospitable and morale shattering; so much so that as the great warrior drove his men relentlessly forward towards the borders of India, he was eventually forced to turn back by the near mutiny of his soldiers. Over the centuries, waves of conquerors have descended on these ancient lands, positioning the region at the crossroads of the historic trade routes between the great cities of Rome and Athens in the West and India and China in the east.
Eight years after the invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, President Obama is at a crossroads in determining the way forward for U.S. foreign policy in what is no longer being referred to as the war in Afghanistan, but rather the broader Af-Pak strategy. After vanquishing the Taliban back in October 2001, the general consensus is that the United States took its eye completely off the ball by focusing its international war on terror almost exclusively in Iraq. While the U.S. was preoccupied in Iraq, Osama bin Laden found refuge in the arms of his Taliban kin, the same mujahideen he fought alongside in the 1980’s against the Soviets, and who now control the mountain landscape that borders the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under the ineffective rule of Bush puppet, President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban in Afghanistan have reinvented themselves and are now back to pre 9/11 strength. Karzai’s inability, or unwillingness, to tame the resurgence of the Taliban and to stamp out the widespread corruption that exists within his administration has led to a perceptible cooling in relations with the United States. Accusations of extensive fraud in Afghanistan’s recent elections have contributed to President Obama’s insistence on revaluating the entire United States mission in that country.
The sovereign nation of Pakistan was formed in 1947 after the northwestern part of what was then British India was carved off from the rest of India to become an autonomous state in its own right, the home to millions of Indian Muslims. Many military and political strategists believe that Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan, is where the United States should be placing most of its military, economic and diplomatic efforts in any new regional strategy to be announced by the President. Even though Pakistan was a U.S. ally during the CIA funded war of the Afghani mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980’s, relations soured quickly thereafter when Pakistan refused to abandon its nuclear program, an issue that has now come front and central for the Obama administration. Former Pakistani president during the post 9/11 era of George Bush’s war on terror, Pervez Musharraf proved to be an ineffective and prickly ally, who like his counterpart Karzai in Afghanistan, was unable or unwilling to tame the rise of the Taliban within his own country. The fear now for the Obama administration, in addition to the resurgence of the Taliban, who are natural allies of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, is that Pakistan’s nuclear capability could fall into the hands of an insurgent force like the Taliban, the potential impact of which could be catastrophic.
Right now, the usual motley crew of foreign policy hawks are talking up America’s need to recommit itself to bringing stability to the region, taking the war on terror to its enemies and spreading so called democracy. This is the same mantra we heard in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan (in the 1980’s and in 2001) and Iraq, a mention just a few. The military, industrial, intelligence and political nexus that controls the Pentagon, CIA, Department of Defense, Wall Street and the Republican Party have controlled the foreign policy of the United States for half a century.
It is unreasonable to expect President Obama to be able to reverse this trend less than one year in to his first term. The President can however demonstrate leadership, vision, respect and responsibility by carefully re-evaluating U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and begin recalibrating its mission there. The President was recently awarded the Nobel Peace prize not just for what he has already achieved; both symbolically and through his actions, but also for the change towards peace he can engineer in the matter of U.S. foreign policy and the application of America’s military might. Let us wish him well as he takes on this awesome task.
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