Andrew Sullivan asks why the question of whether Hillary can win black votes is not focused on as much as the question of whether Obama can win rural, working-class, white votes. I think the answer is that the media pretty much assumes that there's not much doubt as to whether the black vote will vote Democrat no matter what. And in reality, I think that's a pretty safe assumption. But the double standard does reflect, I think, a somewhat condescending attitude on the part of the media, because clearly the media does not treat it as a safe assumption that working-class voters will vote Democrat no matter what. And remember that we've been talking about Democratic voters this entire time, so the working-class voters we're talking about are largely union members and other voters who have been reliably Democratic.

Why, one wonders, would the media not think it's safe to assume that these loyal Democrats will not stay with their party if Obama gets nominated, but that black voters will stay with their party if Clinton gets nominated? Could it perhaps be that the media thinks these rural, working-class voters are a bunch of racists who don't just prefer Clinton to Obama but rather can't accept the possibility of a black president? Maybe?

Labels: 2008, Brian, politics, race

So I'm watching MSNBC for the Pennsylvania results, and Rachel Maddow makes the sensible and largely uncontroversial point that how Barack Obama performs against Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary has little relation to how Barack Obama might perform against John McCain in a general election. Pat Buchanan then responds by calling this a "Marxist dialectic." Maddow then looks at Buchanan like he's a mental patient. Priceless stuff.

Labels: Brian, entertainment, media

Our readership might think it's all fun and games here at Urbanagora, but the reality is far more brutal and disturbing:

Labels: Brian, entertainment, internet

I want to say from the outset, I am extremely reluctant to discuss this whole matter of Obama's recent "bitter" comments, with which I'm sure everybody's familiar. There is an obvious and explicit desire on this blog to discuss things that are important and interesting. The trouble is that oftentimes, situations will arise in which a news story is both wholly irrelevant and highly reported on. It is a struggle to know how to deal with those things. On the one hand, they deserve to be ignored. On the other hand, to ignore them entirely is to leave the issue to be discussed only by demagogues and political opportunists. So it's a tough spot for somebody who tries to engage in value-adding commentary rather than noise, even if only on a meager blog like this one.

All that throat-clearing by way of saying I'm gonna talk about this, but I think it's really dumb.

What I want to talk about in particular are two instances of the same criticism of Obama's comments that I encountered within a few minutes of one another. It's a criticism not without merit (unlike, say, Hillary Clinton's absurd grandstanding). First, Tyler Cowen, in a post that is only partially critical, notes that "guns and religion do not closely track economic decline." Second, I asked on G-chat what co-contributor Billy thought about the subject, to which he in part replied:

him saying that economic conditions compel their frustrations was dishonest

because i don't honestly see the correlation between economic conditions and religion or hunting, but it is possible to see a nexus between economic conditions and anti-immigrant or anti-trade sentiments

those people would be just as religious and prone to hunting no matter the state of the economy

Labels: 2008, Brian, culture, economics, politics, religion

Okay, back for Round 2 in front of the Foreign Relations committee. One thing just off the bat is that this is an impressive committee with a lot of impressive people. Some brief thoughts:

(1) Biden Nails Crocker: One of the best moments of either hearings was when Biden asked Crocker whether, if he had to choose between taking out al-Qaeda in Pakistan/Afghanistan or al-Qaeda in Iraq, which he would want to focus on. It placed Crocker in a tough spot, and of course he was forced to give the only sensible answer, which is to focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is a central point, and Biden made it better than anybody.

(2) Sensible Republicans: Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel showed off the best we can expect from the Republican Party on Iraq. Neither have been ideal, and Lugar in particular has shown a disappointing reluctance to show some more fight in his opposition to our Iraq policy. But nevertheless, they both clearly realize that we are engaged in a failing strategy - or, more accurately, we have no strategy at all.

(3) Feingold Shows These Hearings Are Pointless: Russ Feingold, unsurprisingly, rocked the house. He expressed his disappointment that the only two people testifying at these hearings are people whose jobs are to narrowly focus on Iraq rather than taking a broader regional or global perspective. It's a point that Petraeus and Crocker themselves drove home throughout the hearings as they repeatedly answered questions about the broader consequences of our Iraq strategy by saying (accurately) that it isn't their job to look at those broader consequences. These hearings are getting a lot of attention, and in a lot of ways that's good because Iraq needs to be paid more attention than it has been recently. But ultimately, these are not the guys we most need to hear from. They're doing the best they can with the mess they've been handed, but the important decisions that the Congress and the President need to make require a broader view than either Petraeus or Crocker can possibly provide.

(4) Obama Doesn't Disappoint: I wasn't quite sure where Obama was going when he started out. His questions seemed meandering and a little insignificant, but he tied everything up pretty neatly in the end, making two good points. The first was that if Prime Minister Maliki can engage in relations with Iran despite the fact that everybody knows Iran is supporting insurgent Shi'ite militias who would like to bring Maliki's government down, then surely the United States can participate in the same kind of diplomacy. The second addressed directly the point I made in my previous post on these hearings about McCain's stunningly ambitious definition of success in Iraq. Obama first forced Petraeus and Crocker to acknowledge that we have no hope of creating a situation in which there is no remnant of al-Qaeda in Iraq and there is no degree of influence from Iran, and used these two points to illustrate the fact that any realistic notion of success in Iraq has to be messy. Requiring success in Iraq to meet something like McCain's definition, Obama said, "portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years." We have to acknowledge that when we leave, there will be some level of terrorist violence, some level of Iranian influence, and Iraq's government will not be a fully functioning, prosperous democracy.

Labels: Brian, foreign policy, Iraq, politics

I was unavoidably delayed this morning and ended up not being ready soon enough to get to class on time, so I just decided to take the day off. And I picked a good day, because now I get to watch General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The Foreign Relations hearing is just getting under way, but a few initial thoughts on this morning's Armed Services hearing.

(1) Bad Timing: One important part of Petraeus and Crocker's testimony dealt with the recent conflict in Basra between Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Claire McCaskill asked Crocker a spot-on question: wasn't the outcome of the Basra conflict a sign that al-Sadr is in a position of power over Maliki? Crocker tried hard to argue that this was not the case: "What I've seen since the [violence] in Basra has been very broad-ranging political support for Maliki." Maliki had issued al-Sadr an ultimatum to either disband his Mahdi army or give up politics. Al-Sadr responded today by threatening to end the cease-fire. More importantly, Iraq's top Shi'ite religious leaders today told al-Sadr not to disband his army. This totally undermines Crocker's argument that Basra is a sign of progress and has led to greater support for Maliki. McCaskill rightly pointed out that al-Sadr is holding all the cards here.

(2) Unexpectedly Impressive: I've never been a fan of Evan Bayh or Bill Nelson, and obviously I have my differences with Hillary Clinton. But all three of these senators were showing their best selves today and grilled Petraeus and Crocker with pointed, incisive questions. Of these three, Bayh was perhaps the best, nailing down most of the strongest arguments for withdrawal from Iraq: the central threat to American security is not in Iraq but in Pakistan and Afghanistan; we shouldn't be taking "marching orders from Osama bin Laden;" the intelligence community at large does not tend to take the rosy view of political progress that Crocker does; etc.

(3) Expectedly Impressive: Less surprising was the fact that Sens. Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, and Jack Reed were consistently sharp. Reed pointed out the seemingly impossible task of disarming the Mahdi army. Petraeus admitted that for Maliki to order the Mahdi army to disband would "undoubtedly result in violence," but tried to argue that a more gradual process could be successful in which members of the Mahdi army are provided "alternatives" for employment. Reed was skeptical: "It sounds like less an employment problem than an existential one." Webb asked Crocker a particularly smart question about the status of forces agreement currently being negotiated with Iraq, trying to pin down what sorts of provisions would need to exist in such an agreement such that the President would be required to submit it to the Senate for advice and consent. It didn't really get anywhere, but it was a good question nevertheless, and maybe Webb will push harder on that point this afternoon when it's his turn on the Foreign Relations Committee.

(4) McCain's Definition of Success: I obviously didn't expect to be in agreement with John McCain or many of the other Republicans on the committee. But unlike most of the other Republicans, McCain displayed a somewhat bizarre level of optimism. While the other Republicans did their best to emphasize that "progress" was being made as compared to the war's low point in 2006, tried to argue the central cause for that progress was the surge, and stirred up fears of a worst-case scenario for withdrawal, McCain went beyond this. Not only did he argue that there had been progress, but he painted a vision of success that was incredibly ambitious: "the establishment of a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state that poses no threats to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists." That sure does sound awesome, but also far beyond what even many supporters of a continued troop presence would think reasonable to hope for.

Petraeus is in the middle of his testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee and then questions will be underway there. There are some pretty heavy hitters on this committee: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Jim Webb, Russ Feingold, as well as Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel on the Republican side. Obviously all eyes will be on Barack Obama, but I'm betting he won't be the only one who lands some blows. I'll try to throw up some more thoughts when it's over.

Labels: Brian, foreign policy, Iraq, politics

For those interested in international and constitutional law, the Supreme Court yesterday handed down an incredibly important decision in the case of Medellin v. Texas. You can read the full decision by Chief Justice Roberts (joined by Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito), along with Justice Stevens' opinion concurring in the judgment and Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion (joined by Justices Ginsberg and Souter) here (PDF). Opinio Juris (which is just an all around fantastic legal blog) has a whole series of posts discussing the decision and its many implications.

Many news reports of the decision have focused either on its relation to the death penalty or on the Court's rejection of the President's claim of broad inherent constitutional power. This is unfortunate because it largely misses the real import of the decision, which relates to (1) when treaties are domestically enforceable in the absence of implementing legislation by Congress, and (2) the circumstances in which decisions by international adjudicative bodies such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are binding on domestic courts.

Here's a brief run-down of what the case is about. The United States is party, along with 170 other nations, to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR), which says in part that any time a foreign national is arrested, that person has a right to consult with consular officials from his or her foreign consulate. The United States had also been a party (until it pulled out in 2005) to the Optional Protocol to the VCCR, which says that the ICJ can exercise jurisdiction in disputes relating to foreign nationals' access to their consulates. Jose Ernesto Medellin is a Mexican national currently on death row in Texas after being convicted of murder. Medellin was not advised of his rights under the VCCR, and he did not raise objections to this violation until after he had been convicted at trial. The Texas court, as is typical in most US courts, did not allow Medellin to raise this complaint on appeal due to what's called a "procedural default rule," in which a claimant is generally considered to have defaulted on (i.e., forfeited) claims that are not raised in a timely manner. Medellin, along with 50 other similarly situated Mexican nationals, filed a complaint in the ICJ, arguing that the Texas court's application of the procedural default rule in these cases was a violation of the VCCR. The ICJ, in the Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Avena), agreed with this argument and held that Medellin was entitled to review and reconsideration of his conviction and sentence in Texas courts.

President Bush responded to this decision by walking a fine line. First, he argued that the ICJ's Avena decision did not bind domestic courts. But at the same time, he issued an official memorandum to the Attorney General saying he would give Avena effect, and he argued that his memorandum was binding on domestic courts as a result of the President's inherent constitutional power to conduct foreign affairs. Medellin then filed an application for writ of habeas corpus, relying on both the ICJ's decision and the President's memorandum. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, and the Court was then confronted with two questions: (1) Is the ICJ's Avena decision binding on domestic courts, and (2) Is the President's memorandum binding on domestic courts?

There's been plenty of commentary on the second question (which the Court answered, unsurprisingly, "no"), but it's the first one that is probably of greater importance. The Court held that Article 94 of the UN Charter, which reads that each member party (of which, of course, the US is one) "undertakes to comply with the decision of the [ICJ] in any case to which it is a party," does not mean that US courts are bound to follow ICJ decisions in cases to which the US is a party. The Chief Justice concedes that this means that the US is in violation of international law, but argues that for an ICJ decision to be binding on US courts, Congress must pass legislation making this as explicit as possible.

My initial reaction to hearing about this decision was fury. I've since backed off from that, but it's still a disappointing decision. The Constitution explicitly makes treaties part of the "supreme law of the land." It's true that there has been a long-established distinction between self-executing treaties and non-self-executing treaties (being a non-self-executing treaty basically means that Congress must pass legislation implementing the treaty before it takes full legal effect). But if Article 94 does not impose an obligation on US courts, how exactly is it supposed to be enforced? As Justice Holmes famously declared, an unenforceable law is no law at all. If the Chief Justice first concedes that the US is violating international law, and then concludes that this international law is unenforceable without explicit congressional authorization, he is severely undercutting the credibility of the US's commitment to respecting international law. If Congress and the President didn't want to impose a legal obligation to comply with the ICJ, they either wouldn't have voted to subject themselves to a treaty saying they would undertake to comply with the ICJ, or the Senate would have made its advice and consent contingent on implementing legislation (which it did not do).

One final note: While Justice Stevens' heart seems to lie with the dissenters, he wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment but which strongly suggested that the Texas attorney general should commute Medellin's death sentence. This, it appears, is nothing but wishful thinking, as the Texas attorney general announced after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion that he would be continuing to push for Medellin's execution. Setting aside the implications regarding international law discussed above, it is important to recognize the degree to which the United States' practice of the death penalty places us outside the norm of international practice, and the regularity with which it causes international tension and conflict.

Labels: Brian, crime, foreign policy, law

...or is Moqtada al Sadr smarter than George W. Bush?

(Disclaimer: I'm talking about strategic intelligence here, not moral equivalence.)

Labels: Brian, foreign policy

First Read looks at the delegate math for the primary and here's the bottom line:

If the remaining contests split up "as expected" meaning Clinton wins her base states (PA, KY, WV etc.) and Obama wins his base states (NC, OR, MT etc.) and the two split Indiana down the middle, the two campaigns will likely split those 566 delegates right down the middle 283-283 (margin of error +/- 5 delegates). This means Obama would need 34% of the uncommitted superdelegates to hit the magic 2024 number, while Clinton would need 72% of the uncommitted Supers to hit 2024. [emphasis added]

Is there a reason the media is paying any attention at all to Hillary?

Update: Also see here and here (the second one is David Brooks!).

Labels: 2008, Brian, politics

Peter Suderman asks in response to the release of this new Death Cab for Cutie song: "Has Ben Gibbard sold out yet, or is he still cool? Have we arrived at the backlash to the backlash stage yet?...I kind of like the song, but I need to know whether my indie cred will suffer if I say so." I don't have much indie cred to begin with, but I'll weigh in and say that I think he's still cool.

You have to be patient with this song (as in, wait until about halfway into it for it to really get started, which is annoying), but it's fairly rewarding if you are.

Labels: Brian, culture, music

I know this blog has seen its fair share of religious debate, so I'm reluctant to even write this post, but a friend of mine called me out via e-mail and requested my public rebuttal of this claim by John Gray (via Andrew Sullivan) about "contemporary atheism":

Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody. To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.

I'll try to keep this short: I don't have a problem with a "missionary creed," whether it be on the part of atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or whomever. The reason I found this debate between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris so interesting was not just because it allowed me to read Harris's best case supporting atheism, but also because it allowed me to read Sullivan's best case supporting faith. There are any number of reasonable, enlightened people out there who can lay out a persuasive argument in favor of religious belief, and not only do I not have a problem with those people trying to make that argument to me, I find the discussion stimulating and worthwhile.

What I object to is the attempt by many religious people to remove that discussion from the realm of reasoned discourse entirely, as though there is something peculiar about religion that frees it from the burden of having to respond to criticism. We should all, of course, be tolerant and respectful of one another's views, whether political, philosophical, or religious. And there are obviously people of all political parties, philosophies, and religions who are decidedly not tolerant and respectful, with atheism being no exception. But I don't believe that because many atheists want to engage in a public exchange of ideas on the subject of religion, and because atheists think they have a persuasive case to make in their favor, that this necessarily makes them intolerant or disrespectful, any more than the works of St. Thomas Aquinas are intolerant or disrespectful.

Labels: Brian, religion

If you're ever in a bad mood for any reason, go out and rent the movie Once. It will solve all of life's problems for at least one hour and twenty-five minutes.

Labels: Brian, movies, music

Buck already covered Obama's speech and voiced a pretty much identical opinion to my own. But I just wanted to note this: at this point, we have seen Obama give probably the best speech on the confluence of race and politics, as well as the best speech on the confluence of religion and politics, that we have seen in at least a generation, not to mention one of the greatest speeches at a party convention, which itself might be described as one of the best speeches on the confluence of partisanship and politics. He's also written one of the few political books by politicians that people seem to actually like.

Yes, those are all just words. But they're also ideas - ideas of great substance that possess a power and a depth and a level of nuance that most politicians dare not express. Obama's presidency would make history in a number of obvious ways, but I'm beginning to suspect that its greatest contribution might just be that it creates a successful model for other politicians to treat Americans as though they are actually intelligent human beings. Or maybe this will just be unique to him. Either way, this is a moment to savor.

Labels: 2008, Brian, politics, race, religion

For those of us a little confused by all the economic woes currently ailing us, here is a pretty useful and entertaining primer on the subprime crisis. It's got stick figures and everything. The bottom line: we need to require financial institutions to provide more transparency and openness in financial reporting.

Update: My amazing brother brought this to my attention (there, happy now?).

Labels: Brian, economics, entertainment

I just want to let it be known that I cooked this with my own two hands:


You've got your tofu, your baby corn, your pea pods, your scrambled eggs, your water chestnuts, your red pepper, your broccoli, and, of course, your peanut sauce. (Lally, by the way, holds the clearly irrational opinion that sesame oil or some nonsense is superior to peanut sauce - feel free to mock her relentlessly in the comments.)

Labels: Brian, food

This is a brief e-mail exchange between me and my brother, who is in the process of getting his MBA at Washington University in St. Louis:

Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 at 2:13 PM
From: Brian
To: Greg
Subject: a question on the economy

Are we all going to die?


Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 at 2:19 PM
From: Greg
To: Brian
Subject: RE: a question on the economy

short answer: no.

Anybody else have any other expert analysis? I'm kinda freakin' out.

Update: Okay, he just redeemed himself a little:

Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 at 2:44 PM
From: Greg
To: Brian
Subject: RE: a question on the economy

Longer answer: This would seem to be a similar situation to the early 1990s recession. In both cases there was trouble in banking and real estate (S&Ls in the 1980s-90s, Sub-Prime Today), followed by a minor decrease in the GDP (about -3% in the 8 month long 1991 recession).

All in all, this is good for us (you and I, not the general world). One way companies save money is getting rid of older (and expensive) employees and replacing them with young (cheap) employees (see http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-sun-grads-hiring-genxmar16,0,7109193.story ). Secondly, investing long-term right now is a good idea (buy low, sell high). So the money we invest in the next few years will grow a lot by the time we are buying houses or retiring.

Still, I hear things like Alan Greenspan saying, "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war," and I get nervous. Am I just panicking?

Also, while it may be good for people like my brother and me, it's bad for a lot of other people, right? What do we do about it? Bail out the banking people? No? I don't know anything!!

Labels: Brian, economics

A new Rasmussen poll has this to report concerning the recent "news" about Obama and his pastor:

Overall, voters are evenly divided as to whether Obama should resign his membership in the Church—42% say that he should while 40% disagree.

Is it just me, or is that sentence truly sickening? We're really a country that feels that comfortable telling a politician to resign his membership in a church?

Just out of morbid curiosity, do any readers here really, truly, actually care about this at all?

This is a pretty good rundown of the absurd media coverage of this story, particularly about 4:20 into it when it shows a pretty great exchange among Chris Wallace, Sen. Dodd, and Sen. Schumer on Fox News Sunday.

All this looks like it could be leading to this becoming the new attack on Obama: saying "What do we really know about Barack Obama?" over and over again.

Is that unfair? I'd say so. Is it racially charged? Absolutely. Does it make Geraldine Ferraro look like a moron? Clearly.

But I guess this is just the way it goes. Unless, by some chance, voters choose to reject it and actually vote for the guy running the kind of campaign they always say they want to see run.

On a lighter note, here is Tracy Morgan commenting on the racial politics of this presidential campaign on Saturday Night Live. Pretty quality.

Update: This news that Obama will be giving a major speech tomorrow on Wright in particular and racial politics in general makes me excited. (And honestly, how often can anybody - even political junkies - say they get excited to hear about a politician giving a speech? This is that whole "hope" thing people keep talking about.)

Later Update: This is spectacular.

Labels: 2008, Brian, media, politics, race

I've always thought one of the most fun subjects of debate that exists is the debate over prostitution, and what better time to bring it up than in the midst of Eliot Spitzer's scandalous personal tragedy?

So: should prostitution be a crime, as in most of the United States, or should it be legal-and-regulated, as in Nevada and several countries around the world, including Australia, the Netherlands, and Sweden? Brad Plumer lays down the policy nitty-gritty here on the available options, concluding that US policy is "grotesque, but honestly, I don't know what the ideal alternative is." Matthew Yglesias opines, "Given that legalize-and-regulate, even with a clear-eyed look at the problems involved, seems no worse in its overall impact than criminalization, I think it makes sense to err on the side of liberty."

I don't know about that. I'm not at all convinced that legal-and-regulate is "no worse" than criminalization. Beyond that, not to sound like a social conservative or anything, I don't really know a good reason why our default position should always be liberty rather than, say, the protection of social values (assuming those values have some rational and secular basis, and it seems to me the protection of women against objectification and coercion does).

In policy terms, it seems that the main downside of criminalization is that the sex trade becomes much more dangerous. When prostitution is criminalized, you get an array of problems: police raping prostitutes, only a 20% rate of condom use (as opposed to nearly 100% in Nevada), and so forth. Also, when it comes to sex trafficking, criminalizing it can sometimes end up hurting the women, as Plumer notes: "It's not as if those women can go find cushy office jobs instead. Most of them are faced with an array of bad options, and having the state insist that they pick one bad option over another doesn't necessarily improve their lives."

On the flipside, the downside of legal-and-regulate is clear: a massive expansion of the sex trade. In Australia it expanded so much that the state no longer had the ability to regulate it and it became "mired in organized crime and corruption." Furthermore:

In many countries, child prostitution and the trafficking of foreign women also increased dramatically. Meanwhile, surveys found that many sex workers still felt coerced and unsafe even after decriminalization. In the Netherlands—often held up as a model—a survey done in 2000 found that 79 percent of prostitutes were in the sex business "due to some degree of force."

So basically we've got a choice between prostitution being rare but brutal or common but not-quite-as-brutal. And I would further argue that nobody thinks being a prostitute is a dream come true. It is overwhelmingly an occupation for those who are financially coerced.

So I'm skeptical of decriminalization. Instead, I would put the focus on policies that combat poverty and economic inequality, and on providing adequate public services to people so as to decrease the degree to which women are so financially constrained that they choose to sell themselves for sex.

But I imagine several of our dear readers will disagree, so have at me!

Labels: Brian, economics, gender, role of government

Last week, when Brenda posted her column condemning the recognition of Kosovo's independence by the US and (most of) the EU, I expressed skepticism as to the strength of her case while agreeing that not enough attention was being paid to the risks posed by recognition. Recent events seem to be indicating that Brenda was absolutely right. Regardless of declarations that Kosovo's independence was merited due to its unique historical circumstances, other independence movements don't seem to be getting the message, and it's leading to a worrying increase in instability around the world.

Clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia over an ethnic Armenian province that declared independence from Azerbaijan in the 1990s but has gone internationally unrecognized. Russia nodding toward recognition of a de facto independent but also internationally unrecognized region of Georgia. Those are just two examples of heightened in the wake of Kosovo's independence. Some of the other consequences are discussed here.

This may all seem like small-scale stuff, but they are frightening indications of what the future holds. These sorts of ethnic conflicts can ultimately lead to all sorts of nightmarish human rights abuses and the straining of important international alliances, as they of course did in the former Yugoslavia itself. International recognition of Kosovo may be of interest to only a limited audience, but there are more broadly relevant lessons that we can take from these problems.

One is that the United States needs to take far more care when contemplating its actions abroad. This point was alluded to by Brenda in her column: "The propensity of the West to interfere in the affairs of certain countries but not others is as confusing as it is frustrating and frankly unfair." But beyond the moral implications of American interventionism, it's also important to recognize the long-term damage to national interest because of the unintended consequences of our actions. That isn't to say we need to isolate ourselves from the world. It is to say that international relations are really, really complicated. Anything we do will invariably produce results even top experts could never have predicted, and therefore any action abroad, particularly one of military intervention, needs to be approached with extreme caution.

This also relates to what I think is an even more important lesson: the importance of global international cooperation and the United Nations. The UN takes a lot of crap, a fair share of it coming from Americans afraid that giving the UN too much importance will tie our hands and impede our strategic goals. But this overlooks the enormous benefits that the UN can provide. Unlike regional international organizations (which of course are incredibly important in their own right) and certainly unlike unilateral action, the UN provides a platform for global negotiation, creating an invaluable opportunity to examine the broader international reactions of our friends and enemies alike. The mere process of acting through the UN allows actors to head off what might otherwise have been disastrous unforeseen consequences, and any resulting action that has gone through the UN gains immediate credibility. Note that this should give us pause not just before engaging in unilateral action, but even action taken through a multilateral organization like NATO if it faces objections from important, unrepresented international actors.

It is, of course, unrealistic and unwise to think all American intervention abroad must meet with the consent of the international community on a global scale, but the presence of that consent reaps invaluable benefits and the lack thereof at least provides fair warning of the degree to which the United States may be damaging its long-term interests and its image in the world.

Labels: Brian, foreign policy

Last night, the Urbanagora contributor commonly known as Augur and I went out to see Taxi to the Dark Side in the only theater in DC still showing it. Taxi is a documentary detailing the United States' treatment of those it detains in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, centered around the story of an Afghani taxi driver named Dilawar who died while in US custody at Bagram Air Base.

The movie is produced by Alex Gibney, who competed against himself this year for the Best Documentary Academy Award, having produced both Taxi and the Iraq war documentary No End In Sight. Taxi ended up winning, and rightly so. No End is a terrific film that ably catalogs the many follies committed throughout the waging of the Iraq war, but it ultimately fails by leaving the viewer wondering whether the war was merely a failure of execution or a more fundamental failure of conception. (Incidentally, one of the experts interviewed for No End is Samantha Power, the Obama foreign policy adviser who recently had to resign the campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster.")

Taxi suffers from no such muddled viewpoint. The movie is designed to outrage and disappoint its viewer, and in that goal it is successful, at least based on my reaction and the apparent reactions of the other theatergoers surrounding me. It is a scathing, brutal indictment of an administration that has both ignored high-level military experts and scapegoated low-level military personnel.

Gibney convincingly persuades us that Dilawar, the Afghani taxi driver, was the victim of a homicide at the hands of the American military, and further that he was probably innocent of any wrongdoing. But Dilawar's story serves mainly as a vehicle by which the filmmakers show that the universally condemned atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib were not the acts of "a few bad apples," but rather were the result of a widespread, deliberately vague policy coming from within the Bush administration.

Thinking back on the movie, several moments stand out in my memory: an interview of a British citizen held and abused in Guantanamo Bay without trial, Senator Carl Levin holding up documents released by the Department of Defense that had been redacted in their entirety, an FBI officer demonstrating how to conduct an interrogation that is both humane and effective. But of course what stands out the most are the shocking, sickening images of prisoner abuse - including, by the way, heart-rending footage of Senator John McCain as a young navy pilot held captive in Vietnam, choking back tears as he tries to tell his wife that he loves her. It is only too awful, then, to see Senator McCain try to subject this administration to the rules of civilized society and international law, only to eventually cave in to political pressure and allow the administration to interpret the rules as it sees fit.

Augur and I picked a good time to see this movie, on the same day that President Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited waterboarding, a technique in which restrained detainees are made to feel as if they are drowning. I heard that news before I went to see the movie and was saddened. After I saw the movie, I was downright ashamed.

Go see it, or if it's not showing in a theater near you, put it on your list of movies to rent on DVD. In a political season in which issues of the economy and foreign policy may fairly be debated, this movie stands as a useful reminder that some issues strike at the heart of our most deeply held values, and that we sacrifice those values at great risk to our security, our rule of law, and our souls.

Labels: Brian, foreign policy, jurisprudence, movies