Kemstone's Journal

The chairman of the Republican National Committee was recently caught on tape giving possible talking points to republican candidates for this Fall’s mid-term elections:

If you had trouble hearing, this is what he said:

Keep in mind, again, our federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not, this is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. It was one of those, one of those areas of the total [horde?] of foreign policy…that we would be a background sort of shaping the changes that were necessary in afghanistan as opposed to directly engaging troops. But it was the president who tried to be cute by…flipping the script deomonizing iraq while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways that we can engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops…

Of course the neoconservatives and the rest of the establishment Republican Party immediately blasted him for these comments and demanded his resignation. Michael Steele, who is now infamous for making stupid political gaffes that spark calls for his resignation, isn’t going to do so now. But it’s being reported that because this particular gaffe represents the polar opposite of the Republican Party’s stance on Afghanistan–namely that if anything Obama should be escalating the war even more than he is–that while he may not resign, Steele will essentially be irrelevant for the rest of his time as RNC Chairman.

If only the GOP’s strategy were as simple as it seems–just look at whatever Obama’s position is on anything and advocate for the opposite. That’s what they did on health care and financial reform, and what they’re planning to do on energy and immigration legislation. Michael Steele might have assumed that this would be the strategy for Afghanistan as well–since Obama wants to escalate it, the GOP should now oppose it. Call it “Obama’s war”. Tie it around his neck like a stone and let it drag him down, just like Iraq dragged Bush down.

The irony is, this would be a winning strategy. If republicans actually listened to Michael Steele and repeated his talking points, “Don’t get into a land war in Afghanistan” is a message I think would resonate across the political spectrum. If the republicans suddenly became the anti-war party standing opposed to the democrats’ inistence on continuing to wage this hopeless and costly battle, they’d completely dominate the mid-term elections and pick up seats all over the place.

It’s all a matter of whether their raging right-wing base could let its hatred of government spending overcome its love of war. The Tea Party hates spending and they keep crying about the deficit, but they insist we keep fighting in Afghanistan. Well, give them a choice between the Republican plan of not spending money at home or in Afghanistan and the Democratic plan of spending money all over the place (though still not enough at home) I’ll wager those people will ultimately choose their wallets over their smart-bombs.

Hell, if the Republican Party suddenly decided to campaign on ending the war, I might even consider supporting them.

I’ll finish up my blogging today with a brief thought on Afghanistan and whether the war will be a major factor this year’s mid-term elections.

In short, the answer is no. And that’s really a shame, because considering how much money we’re spending there in the midst of this recession in spite of the hopelessness of success, it really should be at the forefront of current political discourse.

The war got some renewed attention due to the replacement of McChrystal with Petraus in the wake of the Rolling Stone article, but the president made it clear that our strategy has not changed and it looks increasingly doubtful that we’re really going to begin withdrawing troops on the announced deadline of July 2011.

The sad truth is that Americans have become desensitized to ongoing war. This is not like Vietnam when videos of the actual horror found their way onto the news every night. Reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan are embedded with the troops and under strict guidelines as to what they can report and what kind of footage they can show.

The wars were only a major campain issue in 2004 when they were still relatively new and it was just becoming clear to most objective observers that we’d made a massive strategic blunder. Frustration with Iraq might also have been a huge factor in the democrats’ victory in the 2006 mid-terms. But by 2008 we were all focussed on the economy, and that’s where our focus remains. This November, people will go into the polls and vote based on their pocketbook–their feelings on the war will be an afterthought.

And unfortunately nobody is really making the case–with the exception of Alan Grayson and a few others who aren’t taken seriously by the establishment–that Afghanistan is an economic issue. Republicans want Americans to tighten their belts, but they refuse to cut military spending. To dig our way out of the recession they want to cut off unemployment benefits and go after social security, but they refuse to acknowledge the fact that over half of our discretionary spending (money we could spend however we like) is going to fund a war that most serious observers are now admitting is unwinnable.

Democrats, I know you’re afraid of being called “weak” and “anti-war” by the republicans, and its not good politics to stand in opposition to a president from your own party, but you should make Afghanistan an election issue because it’s the right thing to do. Ending the war will go a long way towards ending the recession, but the war is never going to end until we start paying more attention to it.

When the Rolling Stone article that brought down General McChrystal came out, many in the establishment press immediately jumped over Michael Hastings, the reporter who wrote that story, for violating some kind of unspoken agreement between journalists and the people in power they’re supposed to cover. Most notably, CBS reporter Lara Logan criticized him for reporting things that he knew could damage McChrystal, and even though nothing was officially off-the-record he should have simply opted not to include it out of deference to the general.

As many have now pointed out, this is exactly the problem with so-called “journalism” today. Reporters don’t do actual journalism–they do stenography. They just write down whatever it is the public figure has to say and leave it at that. This is mostly because these beat-reporters are afraid that if they publish anything unfavorable to these sources, they’ll lose their access. Barack Obama might have said something that would have destroyed his entire campaign if it ever went public, but the reporter won’t publish it because she doesn’t want to burn her bridges.

This is why even if you take the differences between the liberal and conservative media into consideration, you end up with a mostly one-sided view of things. Matt Taibbi lays this out brilliantly in his blog, which is worth quoting at length:

True, the Pentagon does have perhaps the single largest public relations apparatus on earth – spending $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone and employing 27,000 people, a staff nearly as large as the 30,000-person State Department – but is that really enough to ensure positive coverage in a society with armed with a constitutionally-guaranteed free press?

And true, most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan’s own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world’s largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses.

But is that enough to guarantee a level playing field? Can a general really feel safe that Americans will get the right message when the only tools he has at his disposal are a $5 billion P.R. budget and the near-total acquiescence of all the major media companies, some of whom happen to be the Pentagon’s biggest contractors?

[...]

Apparently not, according to Lara Logan. Apparently in addition to all of this, reporters must also help out these poor public relations underdogs in the Pentagon by adhering to an “unspoken agreement” not to embarrass the brass, should they tilt back a few and jam their feet into their own mouths in front of a reporter holding a microphone in front of their faces.

The media’s job is to challenge the powers-that-be, but in reality all it does is prop them up. When a reporter actually does his job and calls it like he sees it, the rest of the media loses their shit and starts running around like headless chickens squawking about how that’s not how it’s done. Geraldo Rivera’s head nearly exploded in an interview with Bill O’Reilly in which he was trying to argue that Hastings’ reporting, because it damaged the reputation of a top-commander in the U.S. military, was borderline treason!

As Cenk Uygur points out in this clip from The Young Turks, this is from a guy who was kicked out of Iraq for broadcasting details about troop movements for all to see, including the enemy.

The problem with these “journalists” is that they think they actually work for the people they cover–that their job is to help them out as much as possible. Taibbi blasts this notion:

They don’t need your help, and you’re giving it to them anyway, because you just want to be part of the club so so badly. Disgustingly, that’s really what it comes down to. Most of these reporters just want to be inside the ropeline so badly, they want to be able to say they had that beer with Hillary Clinton in a bowling alley in Scranton or whatever, that it colors their whole worldview. God forbid some important person think you’re not playing for the right team!

Meanwhile, the people who don’t have the resources to find out the truth and get it out in front of the public’s eyes, your readers/viewers, you’re supposed to be working for them — and they’re not getting your help. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed and the hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, and is that agenda the same thing we voted for? By the severely unlikely virtue of a drunken accident we get a tiny glimpse of an answer to some of these vital questions, but instead of cheering this as a great break for our profession, a waytago moment, one so-called reputable journalist after another lines up to protest the leak and attack the reporter for doing his job. God, do you all suck!

They do indeed. If “journalists” in this country had been doing actual journalism for the last nine years, we would have been out of Afghanistan a long time ago.

Use this argument on anyone who still insists on “staying the course” in Afghanistan:

Hypothetical situation: It’s the year 2101 and the United States government has long since crumbled under the weight of its own corruption. Most authority is local, with most cities and towns controlled by Evangelical Christian Militias who aim to impose their own strict interpretation of Biblical Law across the entire country.

Meanwhile, China is the world’s sole super-power and is exterting its influence around the globe. Because they are seen as anti-Christian, the Evangelical Militia groups despise China and would like nothing more than to see it crumble. So they commit an act of terrorism which draws China into a war with the United States.

The Chinese army rolls in, takes out a big chunk of the Militia’s leadership, and sets up a new federal government with China’s full support.

But most Americans never see this government as legitimate, and the remnants of the Christian Militias rise and grow stronger as even non-Christians join them in their struggle to expel the foreign occupiers. On top of that, the latest presidential election is discovered to have been fraudulent, and the president himself is known to have ties to underground drug cartels. Yet the Chinese insist on continuing to back him up militarily.

The Chinese army won’t leave until the Evangelicals are defeated and the U.S. government is capable of supporting itself and preventing any Militias from ever rising again. Yet the Evangelical Militias remain very popular in many parts of the country and the Chinese are almost universally hated because their soldiers don’t speak English, have no understanding of American culture, and frequently kill innocent civilians through carelessness.

The question: Is it possible for China to succeed in its mission? Could it succeed after only one year? Ten years? A hundred years? Or is this the kind of task that is simply impossible to accomplish, like landing safely on the moon by shooting yourself from a cannon?

Obviously, in this analogy China is the United States. The United States is Afghanistan. The corrupt government is the Karzai regime. And the Evangelical Militias are the Taliban.

The United States is as likely to be able to succeed in Afghanistan–by our own definition of “success”–as China would be likely to be able to stabilize a corrupt U.S. government and completely root out right-wing Evangelicals.

So let’s get. the fuck. out of there.

[Full disclosure: I got this idea while watching Cenk Uygur and Jonathan Kim discuss the film "Restrepo" on last Friday's episode of The Young Yurks]

What is it about Afghanistan that destroys every empire that tries to hold it? The Soviets, the British…all the way back to the time of Alexander the Great—empires have been destroyed by attempting to invade and occupy this desert.

The only reason the United States is in Afghanistan is because of the attacks on September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda wanted to draw America into a long and costly war that couldn’t be won, slowly draining our economy until we could simply no longer afford an empire. The way things are going, it’s looking like 9/11 will go down in history as the most successful terrorist attack of all time. Thanks to Bush’s knee-jerk reaction to the crisis and the inability of the neoconservatives surrounding him to come up with any response other than a military one, the perpetrators of the attack ended up getting exactly what they wanted.

Thanks to an explosive article in Rolling Stone this week in which General Stanley McChrystal shot himself in the foot with a few quotes undermining the civilian command, the media has once again shined the spotlight on Afghanistan. But in typical TV-news fashion, the focus has been almost exclusively on the personal drama between McChrystal and Obama, and almost no attention has been paid to the underlying issue of whether or not our strategy in Afghanistan can actually succeed.

It’s a shame that the bulk of this article, which is actually an extremely well-crafted look at the broader Afghanistan issue, has been ignored while all of the focus has been on the few sections in which McChrystal makes his controversial comments. So I’ll try and pick up the slack by commenting on a few passages speak to the larger story of what’s really going on there.

First of all, you have to understand the nature of our strategy. Proposed by McChrystal himself, the COIN (COunter-INsurgency) strategy would seem on the surface to actually have a chance of working:

COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps.

Rather than just killing the “bad guys”, our soldiers would be there to help the civilians, win their hearts and minds, and get them to help us defeat Al Qaeda.

The problem, of course, is that we’re not really fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, for the most part, has moved to Pakistan, and in Afghanistan we’re mostly fighting insurgents who are opposed to U.S. military presence and the Karzai government. The Karzai government itself is notoriously corrupt and likely stole the last election. If this is the government we’re supposed to be defending, it’s no wonder so many Afghanis are against us. It would be as though we sent American troops to quash the Green Revolution in Iran last year after Ahmadinejad stole that election. By propping up Karzai, we’re basically propping up Afghanistan’s Ahmadinejad.

It’s a vicious cycle. Our presence there is a result of the violence, while the violence is a result of our presence there.

“The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.”

Another problem with COIN is the lack of any clear picture of what victory would look like:

Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it’s going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win,” says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. “This is going to end in an argument.”

Case-in-point: Did we “win” the war in Iraq? Some say yes. Others laugh hysterically at those who say yes. The best case scenario is that the same will eventually go for Afghanistan, many years from now when our country is so broke that today’s economy will seem like the good old days.

Finally, COIN is terribly unpopular among the soldiers themselves:

Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. “Bottom line?” says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.”

I don’t really agree with this sentiment because I think soldiers should hold their fire as much as possible, and all-too-often make excuses to shoot first and ask questions later, but if the soldiers actually carrying out the strategy are opposed to that strategy, chances of success are significantly lower.

When all is said and done, the simple question is whether or not we have a real chance of succeeding in Afghanistan. We’re just so busy wrestling with the question of what “success in Afghanistan” could actually mean that it’s impossible to make an accurate assessment of our chances. But the final paragraph of the Rolling Stone article paints a pretty grim picture:

After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse….So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.

And now, thanks to that very article, Stanley McChrystal is no longer in charge. Obama tapped David Petraeus to carry out the COIN strategy, and as much respect as I and most Americans have for Petraeus (who was doing the right thing in Iraq long before the rest of the military caught on), a hopeless strategy is a hopeless strategy no matter who is in charge.

But I’ll end on a slightly optimistic note regarding General Petraeus. This may be our best opportunity to actually start pulling out of the grave before we’ve dug ourselves in too deep. Obama and the slew of Washington-insiders who surround him have bought into the conventional wisdom that ending the war would be political suicide. He’d be accused of weakness and of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Petraeus, on the other hand, is extremely popular particularly among conservatives. If he were to summon the testicular fortitude to tell the American people like it is—to say to Obama, “I’m sorry but this war can’t be won”—it would give the president exactly the cover he needs to pull out. Right-wing attacks would be blunted before they could even begin, as Obama could make it clear that he was only doing what General Petraeus recommended.

But if Petraeus behaves like a typical general and insists on continuing to fight at all costs, I’m afraid we’re going to be there for a long, long time. The grave we’re digging just keeps getting deeper, and unless someone in a position of power summons the courage to toss political expedience aside and do what’s necessary, it won’t be long before the American Empire finds itself buried beside all who came and failed before us.

Well, not Afghanistan per se, but at least something to do with Afghanistan:

(CNN) — Gen. Stanley McChrystal, America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, has been recalled to Washington amid his controversial remarks about colleagues in a Rolling Stone article, officials said.

Apparently he cracked a little joke about Biden and said some less-than-flattering things about Obama. Now he’s been recalled to Washington, presumably to make his proper apologies for the sake of public perception.

Am I the only one who doesn’t give a shit? What would it take for CNN or any other major news organization to actually publish stories that have to do with what we’re actually doing in Afghanistan? You know–what our strategy is, how we’re going about implementing it, whether or not we’re succeeding, what to do if we’re not…that sort of thing.

Instead we only hear about Afghanistan when a general faints or cracks a joke in Rolling Stone. Here’s an idea: don’t just recall McChrystal to Washington–fire his ass completely. Put someone in who might be willing to tell it like it is, who has the guts to tell the president and the American people that this war can’t be won and it’s become nothing more than an endless drain on our economy as soldiers continue to lose their lives, Afghani civilians continue to be terrorized, President Karzai continues to run his corrupt, horribly unpopular government with our support, and Osama bin Laden continues to breathe the free air in fucking Pakistan.

Seriously, what the hell are we still doing there?

UPDATE: The whole article for Rolling Stone is up now, and it’s the best article I’ve read on the Afghanistan issue in months. This is how the rest of the media should be doing it.

Allow me to depress the hell out of you for a moment as I step back and take a broad look at the state of affairs in the world and draw my gloomy conclusions. Hopefully someone can tell me why I’m wrong and that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Cenk Uygur, the host of my favorite political show—The Young Turks—sees most things almost exactly as I see them with one major difference. He insists that while he may be pessimistic in the short-term, he’s “long-term optimistic” and I know a lot of people who also feel that way. But not me. I look at the world and the human race and I see a species on the verge of extinction, brought about by its own blind ignorance and refusal to accept responsibility for its fate.

Just look at what’s in the headlines today. Wall Street Executives are expressing sighs of relief at the financial reform package just passed in the senate. You don’t need to know a damned thing about economics to take that as an indication that the reforms didn’t go far enough and the bankers can continue with business as usual. Banks can still be too big to fail and they can still trade derivatives. There is slightly more oversight and rules banning some of the more reckless financial practices…but no penalty for banks that break those rules. Just this one line from the New York Times piece says it all:

Some experts predict that Wall Street, like water overcoming a dam, will easily adapt to the new regulations, or at least exploit what loopholes do remain and thrive again.

If I had any money I’d bet heavily on another financial crisis hitting within the next few years. And when it does, the damage is going to be far worse than the last one. The big banks haven’t been broken up so they can still hold the economy hostage. The public has to bail them out or it all goes under. But people are still enraged about the first bailout—how is it going to be politically possible for anyone in congress to vote for another one? I suspect they all will because they can hide behind the cover of “this is absolutely necessary” like they did the first time, but there’s a chance that the people just won’t stand for it this time and the banks will go down. In any case, Obama will be blamed (rightly so in one sense) and the Tea Party movement is likely to boil into open revolt. Economies all over the world will fall like dominos and countries that have a social safety net will find the number of unemployed far too large to handle. Billions will be out on the street with nowhere to turn, and global chaos will ensue.

Maybe that won’t happen for a few decades, but that seems to be the direction we’re heading in. Thanks to these financial crises the human race seems to be waking up to the fact that the entire global monetary system is based on nothing more than a kind of international consent. We agree that your money is worth something and you agree that ours is too. But economies are becoming less based on actual tangible goods and more on abstract ‘financial products’ that have no intrinsic value. Wealth is just a number in a bank account, scarcely more real than points in a video game. The entire global financial system is a balloon filled with hot air and we’re doing nothing to stop those who keep blowing into it because they hold the balloon—they own everybody in a position to potentially stop them—and sooner or later the balloon is going to burst.

But that’s just money. The global chaos that will ensue when the balloon bursts may set humanity back to the Dark Ages but it won’t kill us all. The other big story in the news these days is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which in and of itself won’t be too devastating but it’s just one symptom of a much larger problem—one far more threatening than any economic collapse.

Not everyone accepts that CO2 emissions are warming up the earth’s atmosphere and not everyone believes that the earth’s resources are as limited as environmentalists claim they are, but just about everyone accepts the concept of a food chain. Anyone who knows anything about ecosystems knows that all forms of life depend on other forms of life for their survival. Nature establishes equilibriums, and when it’s thrown off balance the consequences are usually devastating. Remove just one species from a marsh and hundreds of others might disappear depending on how crucial that species was.

This planet is currently undergoing what scientists have labeled the Sixth Extinction, in which the earth loses about 30,000 species per year due to human activity. This has been going on since the development of agriculture thousands of years ago, but there is no doubt it’s accelerating rapidly due to industrialization. The Gulf oil spill is almost sure to take its fair share of species from the ocean, and there is no indication that we as a species have any intention to stop drilling any time soon.

And of course there’s only so much oil in the earth’s crust, so when that’s gone we’re really going to run into trouble unless we can find another fuel source that can provide us with as much energy as fossil fuels do. Wind and solar won’t provide enough power to keep civilization running as it currently is, and nuclear energy has its own problems, the biggest being radioactive waste.

But even if we find a way to keep the engines of civilization churning, those engines will continue to rape the environment, pollute the sky, and destroy species by the minute. Common sense tells us that there’s only so much damage we can do to the environment before a tipping point is reached and some element of the food chain that was critical to our survival disappears. It may not happen for another century, but unless we drastically alter our way of living it is bound to happen, and I see no sign of willingness on the part of humanity to make such drastic alterations.

The last story I read today is about the Muslim world’s perception of America on the one year anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech, and how nearly all of the hopes he raised in that speech have been dashed over the last year. The prison at Guantanamo remains open, Israel is still building new settlements in disputed territory, and American troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the wars, Iraq may be “winding down” but people are still being killed by insurgents nearly every day, while Afghanistan truly is “heating up” while many objective observers are saying that our presence there is counter-productive. Our troops are basically there to prop up and support a corrupt, criminal government with a leader who almost certainly won the election through fraud.

Why is this important? Why is it a sign of humanity’s impending doom? Because the leader of the free world is not George W. Bush anymore—it’s Barack Obama.

I came to true political awareness during the Bush administration and back then I was just as filled with doom and gloom. Clearly, the guy was the worst possible president we could have had. Not only was he an ignorant buffoon who probably genuinely believed that Jesus wanted him to start these wars—he was transparently a puppet of the giant corporations that dominate us. He was a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil and a staunch ally of the military industrial complex. Under Bush, you could be sure that the environment would continue to be raped and war would be the order of the day. Clearly, there would be no effort towards world peace or environmental sustainability.

But then Barack Obama came along with a promise of change. He talked the talk and inspired the world with the very vision we needed most—the vision of a world united in peace, an end to unnecessary wars and a true drive towards clean and renewable energy that would protect and preserve the environment we all depend on. If anyone was going to lead the way to that future dreamed about by men like Gene Roddenberry or Carl Sagan—in which humanity survives its technological adolescence and dedicates itself to its own betterment and to exploring the universe beyond our planet of origin—it was Barack Obama.

But clearly we’re a long way from the United Federation of Planets and it’s doubtful we’ll ever get there. If Obama had the best of intentions when he got into office, he quickly discovered that there were serious limitations to what he could accomplish. The powers that be were already too powerful. If the best he could do with Wall Street was to give them a slap on the wrist and warn them not to cause another financial crisis, if the best he could do with the two wars was to slightly alter the deployment numbers and shift a few resources around, if the best he could do to address climate change was to offer more subsidies for offshore drilling and then give up the fight when something went wrong, and if the best he can do during an actual environmental catastrophe like the one in the Gulf is to let the corporations handle it and hope the story just goes away—then humanity is more fucked than most people care to admit.

It turns out that it really doesn’t matter at all who the president is. If we’re heading in the wrong direction no matter who is at the helm, we’re eventually going to fall off the cliff. And what can I do about it? What can any of us do about it? That’s a question for another blog entry, one I’ll write if I ever come up with anything. For now I think the best we can do is simply recognize it. To understand that humanity’s survival is not guaranteed—that our grandchildren may not live to have grandchildren of their own—and that the only hope we have is to stop making enemies of each other and to come together and fight against extinction, the common enemy of us all.

The pattern of Obama’s method of governing is becoming clearer every day. He ran on a platform of Change, and does everything he can to appear to be delivering that change without actually changing anything. He tackles huge issues like health care and financial reform at home, and pursues lofty goals abroad such as the elimination of nuclear weapons and peace between Israel and Palestine. In each case, it’s easy to imagine that he is in fact making big changes—as long as you’re not paying close enough attention.

You’ve got people on the left who believe he really is delivering on the change he promised, and people on the right who believe that he is changing things so profoundly that America is becoming unrecognizable from what it used to be. Neither group would dispute that he is a transformative president—they only disagree on whether the transformation is positive or negative, and in the case of the tea-partiers, the most disastrous thing ever to happen in the history of America. I disagree with the whole premise. I don’t think he’s actually changing a damn thing.

Let’s start with health care reform, as this is the only major battle that is technically over and that we can speak about definitively. Judging by all the news coverage, particularly of all the tea-party protests of people absolutely furious over the bill, you’d think that Obama had completely altered the very foundation of America’s health care system. And people who don’t follow the news closely might really believe that everything will be different now. But what was really accomplished? I can’t put my finger on it. There’s going to be an insurance exchange set up in a few years, but it will only offer private insurance and will only be available to a small segment of the population. Insurance companies are technically no longer allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or to take away people’s coverage when they get sick, but there have been several stories in the news over the past few weeks about insurance companies continuing to do both things. Such practices may be illegal now—or they will be in a few years—but the penalty is less expensive than the crime, so they’ll just go on with business as usual.

Now we’re talking about financial reform that’s just as weak and watered-down as the health care bill. The biggest problem with Wall Street is the derivatives trading—selling bogus financial products and betting on them failing. This bill won’t even ban that—it will just force banks to make them public. As if everyone is paying close attention to how much money their banks have tied up in derivatives. At best, it’ll make it easier to see the next financial crisis coming when it does. It certainly won’t prevent it. Banks, like any corporation, have to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. As long as making these bets is permissible, someone is going to do it, and they’re going to make a lot of money from it. To compete, everyone else has to follow suit, even if they don’t want to. A banker might personally be dead-set against these practices but if he wants to keep his job, he has to go along with them. It doesn’t matter how transparent it is—if it’s permissible it will be done.

So ‘financial reform’ will likely be just as empty as health care reform. And now that republicans are beginning to indicate that a few of them might get on board, we can expect the bill to become even weaker. They can pass this slap-on-the-wrist legislation and pretend they all worked together to solve the problem, and in November they can claim that they stood up to Wall Street when in fact they just did exactly what Wall Street wanted them to do, save for a few minor bits and pieces that will be an inconvenience to the bankers at best. Obama can add another ‘legislative victory’ to his list of ‘accomplishments’ and go on posing as the Change president. People who don’t pay much attention will either believe he solved the problem, or in the case of the tea-partiers, that he made everything infinitely worse.

And what about his work on the global stage? For the most part, I’ve been very pleased with what he’s doing in terms of reaching out to the Muslim world and enlisting international cooperation to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation, but how much actual change will come of it? I understand that eliminating nuclear weapons altogether is unrealistic and taking an incremental approach is the only way to go about it, but it just seems like taking on nuclear weapons is a mostly political calculation, as if Obama asked an advisor “What is the least controversial cause I can champion on the world stage and thus boost my international credibility and secure my legacy?” Obviously, reducing the threat of nuclear war isn’t going to draw a lot of criticism—unless of course you’re in the tea-party.

As for the Muslim world, I’m extremely pleased with the tone he’s taking—but we all know that rhetoric is by far the president’s strongest quality. In many cases—such as financial reform—words don’t matter half as much as what you actually do, but when it comes to Muslim perceptions of the United States, words matter a great deal, and Obama typically chooses the right ones. At least it’s a far departure from the previous president, who actually used the word “crusade” to describe our presence in the Middle East. But at the point where words end and actions begin, Obama hasn’t changed anything. Our troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan and there is no sign that they’ll be coming home any time soon. The war in Iraq was already winding down when Bush left office, so you can’t credit Obama with the troop withdrawal there. At best you can say that had McCain been president, the surge in Afghanistan might have been a little bigger. In any case, regarding military policy there is nothing this president has done that can legitimately be considered ‘Change’.

Obama is not the first president to run on a platform of Change. It’s actually one of the most frequently used political platforms of all time, as the desire for change is always present when the system is so imperfect. It just happened to catch fire in the 2008 elections because everything was so incredibly bad after eight years of Bush that it was inevitable that the candidate who could most credibly promise Change (and who wasn’t named Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinitch) would win. And Obama did more than just promise change—he personified it. A black president would, in itself, be a major change in terms of how we perceive ourselves and how the world perceives us.

To be sure, there has been a major change in the perception of the rest of the world towards us. I lived in Germany when Bush was re-elected, and I lived here again when Obama was elected, and the difference in how people reacted to me after each instance was substantial. In the same respect, the perception Americans have of their own country has also been altered dramatically, though mostly in the case of the tea-partiers who now see their country as some kind of nightmarish socialist dystopia.

But beyond that, nothing is changing. The powers-that-be who really controlled things under Bush are still very much in control under Obama, only now they have to make a few minor concessions here and there so Obama can continue to maintain the façade of a transformative leader. But those of us who are paying attention are not fooled. A president truly interested in change wouldn’t spend so much time talking about compromise and bipartisanship. He wouldn’t be saying that Wall Street and Main Street rise and fall together—he’d be going after Wall Street with fury, inviting their anger and hatred just as FDR did during the Great Depression.

Yes, we occasionally hear tough rhetoric, and when we do we think, “Is this the new Obama?” We wonder if maybe he learned his lesson and is now going to forget about this bipartisanship nonsense and fight for real change. But when he says that he’d rather have a strong bill than a bipartisan bill, it’s much more likely that this is calculated to placate progressives who have been calling bullshit on bipartisanship since the very beginning. Even the changes to his own rhetoric are purely for the sake of appearance.

When all is said and done, we have a president who is going to protect the establishment, and unfortunately there’s no alternative. Republicans also protect the establishment, only they get to do so more openly. Democrats have to walk a fine line between appearing to change things and not really changing anything at all. Obama is a master at this.

Of course I know the objection: “What do you expect? Be patient, he’s doing the best he can. Change has to come incrementally. He’s laying the groundwork for future changes that really will make a difference.” Well, I hope you’re right and I’m just being naïve. But all signs seem to indicate the contrary. I think we have a president more concerned with his own political image and his presidential legacy than actually doing the hard work America needs a president to do. If Obama’s method of governing is really “Change we can believe in” then Fox News’s method of reporting is really “Fair and balanced.”
His brand of Change is just that—a brand.

Only one thing is certain about 9/11 conspiracy theories: you won’t find the truth on the internet.

Whatever you believe about the events of 9/11, there are countless websites that will back you up and countless websites that will argue against you. For every aspect of the terrorist attacks which brought down the World Trade Center buildings and hit the pentagon, you can find explanations supporting the official story or explanations that suggest a conspiracy. It would be useless for me to waste any time going into detail on this blog post. Here I only wish to look at the big picture and ask: Is it reasonable to believe that 9/11 was an inside job?

First, a little about my own history regarding “9/11 Truth”. I was not one of those people who, on September 11, immediately thought that the government must have been involved. I accepted the official story that Islamic Fundamentalist hijackers had taken over the planes with box-cutters and flown them into buildings. It certainly seemed, and still seems, plausible that such an attack could work. I found it amazing that they were actually able to pull it off, but I didn’t think it was impossible.

But the very first time I heard someone suggest that Dick Cheney and the American power-elite were behind the attack—a couple of guys at a music festival shouting at the crowd—I immediately went up and talked to them because this did not seem at all absurd to me. In fact, I barely had to speak with them for five minutes before I was completely convinced it was true. At that time we were well on our way to war in Iraq, and it was clear that the government was willing to lie in order to win support for this war that they’d seemed hell-bent on starting. If they desperately wanted war, and they obviously did, what could be a more perfect way to gain support for that war than inflicting a massive attack on our home soil and blaming it on Islamic terrorists from the Middle East?

For awhile I accepted the conspiracy theory. What turned me around, ironically, was watching Loose Change for the first time. Having the conspiracy theory spelled out like that in all of its minute details actually made it seem more absurd than when it had just been a vague idea of government involvement. But this film was saying that bombs had been planted in the towers before the attacks, that it wasn’t actually a plane but a missile that hit the pentagon, that the collapse of WTC Building 7 was a controlled demolition, and all kinds of other theories about the attack that made it seem way more complex than it needed to be. I did a little online research, found a few websites that debunk the conspiracy theory, and was satisfied that it wasn’t a conspiracy after all.

That was about five years ago, and since then my basic stance on 9/11 is that there may be some flaws in the official story, some government officials such as Cheney and Rumsfeld might have known the attack was coming, but at the end of the day the perpetrators of the attack were Islamic Fundamentalists organized by Al Quaeda and led by Osama bin Laden.

I had two basic questions which justified this belief: 1- Why would they go through so much trouble planting bombs in the towers, firing missiles, demolishing Building 7 and so on, if their only goal was to justify a war in the Middle East? Specifically, if they wanted a war in Iraq, why not claim at least some of the hijackers were Iraqis? 2- If there really were bombs planted in the buildings beforehand and people throughout the government and intelligence agencies were complicit, why haven’t people come forward? The government sucks at keeping secrets. The Bush administration was enormously incompetent in just about everything it did. The idea that these idiots could pull off such an incredibly successful attack in secret and get away with it just didn’t jive with my political perceptions.

I recently re-watched Loose Change, along with the Alex Jones documentary Terrorstorm, and opened my mind again to the possibility that Americans, not Islamic terrorists, carried out the attacks. Alex Jones does a good job of pointing out just how often in history a country carries out an attack on itself in order to justify military aggression. From Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag to Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin, such “False Flag” operations have happened repeatedly and usually to great success.

All details aside, just consider the possible motives behind the attack if it was an inside job. We know that Bush wanted to kick some ass in Iraq because his daddy didn’t finish the job. We know that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neocons were thirsty for war long before Bush was even elected. Not only would it make their buddies in the military industrial complex very rich, but a permanent war waged against an unstoppable foe (no matter how many terrorists you kill, you can never stop terrorism) would allow the powerful to get a lot more powerful. Not only do you increase your power over your own citizens via initiatives such as the Patriot Act which would never have passed during peaceful times, but you increase your power on a global scale by putting troops on the ground in the most oil-rich area of the planet. Putting them in Afghanistan would be easy. Iraq would be trickier. The real prize is Iran, which is the most difficult. But if you’ve got troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is surrounded and you can go after it more easily somewhere down the road. You just need to get public support behind you, and the best way to do that is to make everyone afraid, angry, and thirsty for vengeance. You need something to avenge—an assault on your country. And what could be more symbolic of America than those two towers standing in New York City? And while you’re at it why not hit a couple of targets in Washington as well including the pentagon to throw off suspicion of CIA involvement? And when should you do this? Early in the presidency, obviously, so you have plenty of time to carry out your plans for war. Why not right after the summer, when everyone is back from vacation and paying attention to the news again?

You see, it just makes so much sense. It made sense to me when I first heard the idea and it still makes sense now. Anyone who says that no American would ever inflict this damage on their own country is hopelessly naïve. What was really damaged? A few buildings were destroyed and a few thousand lives were lost. But America wasn’t damaged. If anything, it gave America the opportunity to increase its power, and they began to abuse that power immediately after the attacks. Besides, it’s not really “America” anyway but the powerful elites who run the corporations that run America.

What doesn’t make sense is the level of complexity and elaborate planning that had to have gone into the attacks were it really an inside job. Why put bombs in the buildings? Why destroy Building 7? Why fire a missile into the pentagon instead of crashing the plane there? If your only goal is to justify war, why not keep it simple? Previous False Flag operations have been incredibly simple. Johnson justified an escalation in Vietnam due to a False Flag attack on a single boat. Wouldn’t Americans have rallied behind Bush and supported a war if only a single plane had crashed into a single tower? Did they really need to demolish the buildings entirely? And what’s the point of blowing up Building 7? Nobody even knows about Building 7! How many people who supported the war did so because of Building 7? “Man, it pissed me off when they got the first two Trade Center buildings, but I was ready to forgive them until they took out Building 7. That was just one building too far, my friend.”

Okay, to be fair the whole Building 7 thing is the weakest sauce in the whole conspiracy theory. Both Loose Change and Terrorstorm spend way too much time dwelling on the collapse of Building 7, showing clips of news reporters talking about how the building was going to collapse before it actually came down. So I guess those reporters were in on it too! No, I remember watching TV that day and keeping my eyes glued to the screen because they were talking about how everyone expected that building to come down. It had taken massive damage when the other towers collapsed and everyone expected it would come down as well. That doesn’t mean they had foreknowledge of a plan to take it down.

I said I wouldn’t get too deep into detail, but that’s just the biggest example I have of why I’m still skeptical about the conspiracy theories. They raise a hell of a lot of really good questions—like why were no fighter jets scrambled as soon as the government realized what was going on—but they also raise a lot of stupid points that lead you to believe they’re just grasping at anything to justify their theory. It’s easy to believe that they came up with the conspiracy theory first and then just went looking for whatever evidence they could find to back it up.

So for the most part, my first major question—why go through so much trouble—remains largely intact. But in my online research I did come across a few somewhat plausible explanations for demolishing the towers. They weren’t looking to escalate a war that was already happening like Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin—they were looking to start a brand new war. And not just a war, but several wars which would stretch across the Middle East and last indefinitely. You’d need a really serious national trauma to justify that, and one plane in one building wouldn’t have been enough. The buildings had to come down to justify the whole “This country will never be the same” idea that the administration propagated as soon as the attacks took place. Okay, I suppose that’s reasonable. There are also a few possible explanations about how the owner of the buildings wanted to avoid asbestos lawsuits or something, but that seemed rather trivial.

As for the fact that none of the hijackers were Iraqi even though they supposedly wanted to use the attacks to justify the invasion of Iraq, I haven’t found an answer. They certainly went through a lot of trouble trying to find a connection between Iraq and 9/11—even waterboarding detainees to try and extract false confessions—but if they manufactured 9/11 you’d think they would have manufactured that connection as well.

And what about my second question—why has nobody come forward? Well, I suppose the most fruitful outcome of my online search was discovering that a number of people actually have come forward but nobody takes them seriously. Some websites offer explanations of how the whole thing could have been pulled off with less than a dozen people actually being completely in-the-know about the operation. And of course lots of people could be keeping quiet due to bribery, blackmail, or intimidation. And we can’t forget that if anyone did knowingly participate in this operation they probably believed in the cause and thought it was the right thing to do. Why blow the whistle on your actions if you feel your actions are justified?

Nevertheless, I can’t be swayed completely. There are real terrorist organizations who really do hate us. They could have come up with this plan and carried it out successfully not because of the administration’s complicity but merely because of its incompetence. Bush might really have though at the beginning of his administration that he was going to be remembered for education and tax cuts, not paying much attention to Al Quaeda until the attacks that changed everything came and took him by complete surprise. I’ve seen no evidence that proves otherwise, as every argument by the conspiracy theorists has a rational counter-argument from the debunkers.

If anyone reading this has more information or additional arguments either way, please share in the comments. I’m not on one side or the other, and I’m perfectly willing to be swayed in either direction. I just highly doubt that I’ll ever be completely convinced. Both explanations for 9/11 seem completely plausible to me, and there is so much bullshit surrounding the events that it hardly seems likely we’ll ever know the truth.

But I am glad that people are asking these questions. It’s nice that people in America can still openly question whether their government murdered thousands of its own citizens to justify a war. I would not put it past the powers-that-be to do something like that, and the fact that they got everything they wanted from the attacks strongly suggests complicity or foreknowledge at the very least. If these are the kind of people who really are in control, it won’t be long before such questions wouldn’t be tolerated, and I’d be locked away just for raising them.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to write about my thoughts on Obama now that we’re a few months into his presidency and we now have a much clearer picture of what kind of president he’ll be. Presidents often step back from or abandon many of the promises made or sentiments expressed on the campaign trail, and Obama has been no exception. During the campaign, he called for reform of Wall Street, but his appointment of Tim Geithner to the post of treasury secretary has ensured that no significant change will really occur, and that the boom/bust economic cycle of Ronald Reagan will continue to make the wealthy wealthier and the middle class poorer. During the campaign, he said he would end the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy but hasn’t lifted a finger to make that change even though as commander-in-chief he could easily issue a standing order that the policy is not to be enforced until legislation to overturn it goes through Congress. During the campaign, he called for openness and transparency in government, but he won’t allow the release of more photos from American prisons depicting torture.

And most grievously of all, during the campaign he called for the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and a renewed commitment to the rule of law with regards to the treatment of POWs, but his actions have been nothing more than a P.R. campaign. Guantanamo is a symbol of America’s violation of human rights, and by closing it Obama is certainly winning points around the world, but meanwhile the detention centre at Bagram Airforce Base, which is basically just Gitmo in another time-zone, will remain open. Not only that, but for some of the prisoners still at Guantanamo, those who fall into that odd category of definitely dangerous but unable to be convicted due to lack of evidence (or inadmissible evidence because it was obtained through torture), Obama is willing to keep them detained indefinitely without a trial, lest he let them go and they attack Americans. I understand perfectly well why he doesn’t want to let any dangerous detainees go even if the law demands it—a terrorist attack by a former Gitmo detainee released by Obama is the Republican party’s wettest of wet dreams, and Obama doesn’t want to take that political risk. But by refusing to take the risk, by endorsing a policy of preventive detention, he is not only blatantly violating his oath to defend the Constitution, but he is affirming the worst of the worst of Bush’s sins—of claiming for the President the rights of a despot to hold anyone in prison for any amount of time for any reason, thus rolling the progress of human rights back several centuries. When news of this came out, I was just about ready to give up hope entirely, to abandon my already tepid support of Obama and dismiss him as just another bullshit hypocrite American president, superior to Bush only in terms of style while effectively identical in substance.

Then I watched the speech he gave in Cairo. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by it. In fact, I expected to be somewhat bored by it as I’ve often been while watching other speeches he’s given on issues such as the economy. But this speech was not only completely riveting from beginning to end (foreign policy is just inherently far more interesting to me than economics anyway), but it was actually downright inspiring. For someone who spends a great deal of time dwelling on the question of whether humanity will ultimately destroy itself or come together in common interest, to witness this moment in history actually gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, it will be the latter.

Before explaining myself, I want to address the most basic and common objection I’ve been reading online, both from columnists and journalists reporting on the reactions of Muslims around the world, which is that it may have been a nice speech but words ultimately mean nothing without the actions to back it up. Of course, it is completely true that actions are more important than words, but in many cases words do matter, especially when spoken by the most powerful man in the world. Bush’s words certainly mattered when he called the Global War on Terror a “crusade”, describing it as a “clash of civilizations”. That set the tone for 7 years of jihad, of violent Islamic radicals easily recruiting angry young men into their ranks to fight a Holy War against the Evil American empire, led by a man who, in his own words, was on a “crusade” against Islamic civilisation.

But now along comes Barack Hussein Obama with his middle name and his background of life experience within the Muslim world, saying:

No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

Obama understands that this is only a speech, and that he can’t expect the Muslim world to just forget and forgive America’s transgressions just because the president quotes the Koran a few times. That’s why I don’t think it’s fair to criticise the speech because it was only words—of course it was only words: it was a speech. The goal was nothing more than to set a new tone, to open up a dialogue between the current administration and the Muslim world, and to demonstrate to Muslims around the world that just as Islam is not the stereotype of a violent fanatical religious cult bent of the destruction of all things good and decent, nor is the United States the stereotype of an evil empire bent on world dominance and the elimination of all local cultures and traditions. Those who fault Obama for merely talking about improving the relationship between East and West are missing the whole point—in order to improve the relationship you have to start by talking.

And as the speech demonstrated, Obama is willing to talk. He raised every major issue, every “source of tension” between America and the Islamic world, when most American presidents wouldn’t go near them—at least not until near the end of their second term. Obama took the biggest risk of his presidency so far by addressing these points: by announcing his positions openly in front of the world as opposed to keeping them behind closed doors, he opens himself up to be measured by history in terms of how well he lives up to the promises he made and the sentiments he expressed. Just as Americans are measuring him in terms of how his actions as president measure up to his words on the campaign trail, the world will ultimately measure him in terms of how his actions in the Middle East measure up to the aspirations he expressed in this speech.

I will now comment on each issue he raised, starting with the most obvious obstacle standing in the way of peace—violent extremism:

America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

This is essentially Obama’s explanation for America’s current actions in the Middle East, and it’s one that most reasonable Muslims can probably accept. Personally, I don’t believe that our presence in Afghanistan is making us safer, but I don’t have all the facts so I don’t know. And while I believe that the first duty of the President is to protect the Constitution (it was Bush who expressed the notion that the president’s primary responsibility was the safety of the American people), this at least serves as a legitimate, consensus-seeking explanation for our actions, as opposed to Bush’s “You’re either with us or against us” rhetoric.

Obama also drew a distinction between Afghanistan as a war of necessity and Iraq as a war of choice. And again, while I believe that Afghanistan was also a war of choice, this is something I’m glad to hear our president say to the Muslim world. He also repeated his commitment to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012, thus inviting himself to be held accountable by the Muslim world and by history if he fails to live up to this pledge.

Secondly, Obama turned to the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, first ensuring he maintain the support of the Jewish community by invoking the Holocaust and imploring Muslims to stop blindly hating Jews, but then bravely expressing the other point of view:

It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

As someone far more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis, I was extremely happy to hear the American president speak like this, and not to shy away from the word “occupation” when describing Israel’s actions. But it’s not the words themselves that fill me with hope, it’s the simple fact that he’s saying them now, at the beginning of his presidency, while most would wait until nearing the end of their second term to go near this problem, lest they invite historical judgment based on their success or failure in brining peace to middle east. Because the odds are so overwhelmingly tilted towards failure, the president has demonstrated extreme testicular fortitude by jumping right in at the beginning of his presidency, basically saying to the world, “I take responsibility for this—if peace between Israel and Palestine fails during my presidency, I will own that failure.”

Obama spoke directly to the perpetrators of violence on both ends, and delivered my favourite line of the speech when he said:

It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

It is one of the most simple, most obvious, and yet most often ignored truths in history—violence against innocents is never justified. No matter how noble your cause, if you seek to advance it through means like firing rockets indiscriminately, kidnapping people and chopping off their heads, throwing acid on the faces of little schoolgirls, or let’s say, holding people in prison indefinitely without the opportunity to stand trial, you have sacrificed your moral authority and your side no longer has any more of a right to prevail than your enemies. More than anything else he said, this part of Obama’s message must be taken to heart by everyone involved in these conflicts, including Obama himself.

Obama continued by addressing nuclear weapons, explaining why it would be dangerous for the region and the entire world if Iran acquired such a weapon and thus began an arms race in this volatile region, and confronted head-on the charge of hypocrisy that immediately follows from such a claim. He renewed America’s commitment to elimination all nuclear weapons including its own, thus further inviting history to judge him based on how well he lives up to this pledge.

One of the most eloquent passages came during his discussion of democracy. After acknowledging the controversy over America’s imposing of democracy in Iraq by clearly stating that no system of government can or should be imposed on a nation by any other, he said:

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

This is spoken with humility and respect, and is exactly the kind of thing I would want my president to say on behalf of myself and all of the American people. He does not insist that American-style democracy should be adopted by everyone, but only expresses the conviction that we all share the belief that people ought to have a say in the way they are governed, and should be free as possible to speak their mind and to live as they choose. Again, Obama would do well to listen to his own words when it comes to issues such as gay marriage or Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, as even in America there are groups of people who still don’t have the freedom to live as they choose.

The fifth issue Obama addresses is religious freedom, saying little more than that everyone ought to be free to believe as they choose. Of course I agree, but I don’t think Obama goes far enough in condemning religious intolerance. Indeed, he was much more generous to the Islamic faith in general than I would be—there are just as many Koranic verses condoning violence and intolerance as there are supporting peace and understanding—but I’m not dumb enough to expect or to hope that the American president get into any kind of theological debate. Had Obama said anything that might have been perceived as the least bit critical of Islam as a religious faith, his entire goal in reaching out to the Muslim world have been undermined. It’s a shame that this is the case, and it underscores how difficult it will be to work with nations and governments still adhering to such a stringent belief system, but Obama said only as much as he could say on the subject.

Obama also took a lot of criticism by not going far enough in talking about his sixth point—women’s rights. He merely pointed out that our daughters have just as much to contribute to society as our sons, and that countries where woman are well-educated are far more prosperous than those where they are oppressed. Of course it would have been a lot more satisfying had he strongly condemned this oppression, but Obama knows that when it comes to women’s rights issues, he must tread very carefully or he will alienate an entire segment of the Muslim population that would perceive his denouncement of their patriarchal beliefs as an attack on their religion and culture. So as much as I may despise the way women are treated in these cultures, I must accept the need for the president not to press this point too hard too early on.

Obama’s final point had to do with globalisation, and I believe he once again sent exactly the right message:

I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and changing communities. In all nations – including my own – this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities – those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.

This is exactly the fear we all have about globalisation, and an issue I will no doubt witness firsthand as I travel the world during these changing times. How much uniqueness of culture will be retained from country to country? Will travelling the world feel less and less like seeing different and exotic lands and more and more like seeing only different departments of the same worldwide multinational corporate empire? It’s already the case that you can’t go anywhere that doesn’t have a McDonald’s, and that saddens me, but it would be nice to believe Obama’s assertion that “There need not be contradiction between development and tradition.” We’re still at the relative beginning of this period of worldwide coming-together, and its ultimate effects on local cultures and traditions remains to be seen.

In closing his speech, Obama returns to the loftly, high-minded rhetoric he is so famous for, the kind of rhetoric that gave me hope in his presidency in the first place. Returning to the question of whether there is any chance for the long-term survival of humanity, I remember Bush’s warning about the “axis of evil” and how it seemed to me at the time that catastrophic destruction was inevitable. Now I sit and watch the American president standing in front of the world and using rhetoric that I thought was only used by high-minded idealists such as myself, imploring the world to think about itself in from a much broader point-of-view, for humans to think of themselves as part of a collective much greater than all of us individually:

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.

As a child I imagined a president who would unite the world in peace. The prologue to my book describes such a man, but even in my book I only imagined he would appear on the world stage after some kind of disastrous third world war and many centuries of chaos. But to see Obama standing there and using these words, I could not help but think that perhaps there is a chance for us to avoid that catastrophe and start coming together in peace right now, at this moment in history.

The essence of Obama’s message to the rest of the world is simply this: Grow up. Abandon your juvenile beliefs and your petty grudges. Think about the long-term consequences of your actions. Understand that you are responsible for the people lower than you in the social or political power structure, and operate with their interests in mind instead of just your own. Most importantly, consider the world you are leaving behind for your children, and how if you are unwilling to put the past behind you and extend an open hand to those that have offended you in the past, you are dooming your children to repeat the cycle of violence that you are perpetuating.

Finally, I will end with a reflection on Obama’s pronouncement that the heart of every religion, the Golden Rule, is essentially a “faith in other people”. He did not say “faith in a higher power” and this I believe is probably the most significant philosophical proposition in his speech. I’ve read no commentary about that particular line so it’s safe to say that its significance was missed by the media, and I believe more attention should be paid to it.

Faith in a higher power entails a lack of responsibility on our part to do any of the things Obama calls on us to do. If Allah demands the destruction of Israel, that’s the end of the story. If God intends to ends the world in fire and brimstone and save Christians alone, it’s pointless to even try to extend an olive branch. Faith in a higher power leads to a concern only for those in your circle, whether it’s your family, your local community, your nation, or your religion. When you place your faith in a higher power, your central purpose in life is to do whatever you believe is necessary to gain the favour of that higher power, often at the expense of those you belief are in disfavour. Faith in a higher power is anathema to the success of humanity.

Faith in other people, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. A faith in other people entails an unspoken agreement among all human beings to take responsibility for the welfare of all others. Whether or not God exists, it is up to us to determine the course of our own destiny. We must do what we can within our own sphere of influence to make the world a more just and peaceful place, and have faith that others are doing the same thing within their own spheres. Faith in other people is essential to the success of humanity. Without it, we’re only sitting back and waiting for civilisation to destroy itself. If we don’t believe we have the ability to overcome the challenges we face, that we don’t have the capacity to tear down the walls that divide us and embrace our common interests, then we never will.

So it remains to be seen whether Obama’s words will have a real effect on the attitudes of the rest of the world towards the United States and towards humanity in general. I am not so starry-eyed and naïve that I believe there is any strong likelihood of success, of any realisation of Obama’s vision of “a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God’s children are respected” but I do appreciate that the most powerful man in the world is expressing such a vision. No other candidate in the 2008 race would have been so bold.

As I often say, we are standing at the most crucial hinge moment in human history, a time period from which we will either spiral into complete economic, environmental, and violent disaster, or rise to meet the challenges we face and reshape humanity under the principles of freedom, sustainability, and peace. Because those who actually hold power tend to have little interest in these principles, I believe our chances are slim. However, because the masses of people throughout the world do tend to believe in these principles, and because people like Barack Obama are out there promoting them, I no longer believe we are inevitably doomed. As much as I despise some of the choices he has made since entering office, I think that in the long-term when we look back at the Obama administration and consider the speech he gave this week in Cairo, we may just see that he was in fact the right man with the right message at the right time.