A Realistic View to the Future in Iraq?

It still looks like there aren't any good options, but this article seems to point towards the "least bad" ones. Of course, any of these would require flexibility on the part of President Bush which, based on past experience, may be hoping for too much.


war stories
Things Fall Apart
What do we do if Maliki's government falls? Here are three options.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, at 5:10 PM ET, Slate Magazine

Judging from the advance leaks and previews, the Baker-Hamilton commission's upcoming report on Iraq will do exactly what these blue-ribbon salvage jobs are meant to do: a) Stake out a position halfway between the president and his critics without fully satisfying either; b) provide "bipartisan" cover for both sides to shuffle toward middle ground; and yet c) sidestep the central question, which is too unsettling for anyone to face and which can still be kicked down the road for a bit, to everyone's relief.

The panel's recommendations seem to be as follows: Shift the U.S. military mission away from combat and more toward support of the Iraqi military (supplying logistics, intelligence, training, and advising); in tandem, cut the U.S. troop presence by roughly half, from 140,000 to 70,000 over the next year or two; redeploy most of them to the gigantic bases that we've been constructing inside Iraq over the past three years; and reach out diplomatically to Iraq's neighbors—including Iran and Syria—to help stabilize the country and keep its conflicts from spreading across the region.

This is all very sensible. (I've proposed a similar policy, so it must be.) But here's the scenario that the panel, perhaps willfully, neglects to address: What happens if the Iraqi government falls apart—in which case there would be no "Iraqi military" for the Americans to advise or supply?

Patrick Cockburn, the veteran Baghdad reporter of the London Independent, made the point in a BBC interview this morning: The key issue isn't so much the Iraqi army's training, but rather its loyalty. Nearly everyone except President Bush has conceded that the fighting has degenerated into a civil war. It has long been clear, in many towns and districts, that Iraqi soldiers—and, to a still greater extent, Iraqi police—are more loyal to a sect or tribe than to the national government. In other words, to an alarming degree, the so-called Iraqi army is in fact an array of competing militias; this will become increasingly the case if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's regime gets any weaker, and absolutely so if it crumbles.

What do we do if that happens? There are three options:

Get the hell out. This might be difficult amid sheer chaos. Personnel could be airlifted (most of those large bases are, in part, air bases), but heavy equipment—tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and so forth—would, for the most part, have to storm out on their treads and wheels or be left behind.

Take sides and fight. Earlier this year, when I interviewed some colonels and generals about U.S. military options in the event of civil war, they all said they couldn't imagine any president going this route. And yet the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have recently quoted U.S. officials floating the notion of abandoning the quest for national reconciliation and, instead, joining the civil war on the side of the Shiites. It's unclear how high these officials are (in both senses of the word). What is clear is that it's a terrible idea. There's no better way to alienate the region's Sunni governments, most of which happen to be allies of sorts (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and so forth), or to widen the conflict, perhaps beyond Iraq's borders. It's also hard to believe that many U.S. officials or politicians would tolerate such a move (though who knows, given what they've tolerated so far).

Hunker down and wait for the smoke to clear. This isn't a bad option, all told. The U.S. military has been steadily moving in this direction for a year or so already. Its larger bases in Iraq are quite secure, though protecting the supply lines to the bases might be tougher under the circumstances.

And here's where Baker, Hamilton, & Co.'s diplomatic proposal—to start talking with Syria, Iran, and the other regional powers—might have some impact. It's hard to justify keeping even 50,000 American troops in Iraq—even if they're just sitting there—unless they have a mission. One mission might be to serve as adjunct to a broader political initiative.

If Iraq falls apart, the bordering states will be tempted to rush into the vacuum, partly for their own security, partly for aggrandizement. If they do, their forces may brush up against one another (Iraq's internal sectarian borders are far from distinct). The United States could serve as a mediator to keep this from happening. To play this role, it helps to have troops on the ground and planes in the air.

This may be the only real purpose of a U.S. military presence in Iraq at this point—to keep the country and the region from erupting into flames. And it won't be possible to accomplish even this purpose without open cooperation with the neighboring countries, including—perhaps especially—Iran.

The days of America's unilateral influence in Iraq are long over, if they weren't mythical from the outset. Look at this week's fiasco. Prime Minister Maliki canceled a dinner with President Bush—just brushed off the president of the United States, the country that's sacrificed thousands of young men and women and spent hundreds of billions of dollars to keep Maliki's government standing—because keeping the date would have upset Muqtada Sadr, the most powerful Shiite militia leader, who apparently now has more leverage than the United States and its 150,000 troops.

It's pathetic, but it's also a wake-up call. Our leverage is minuscule, and it's declining by the day. To talk of grand schemes—partitioning Iraq or pressuring Maliki to form a "reconciliation government" and amend his constitution—is, quite apart from their merits, plainly absurd, because we have no control over what the Iraqis do. We still have some control, though, over what we do and, maybe, over what we can persuade others to do with us. The only choices are to give persuasion a whirl or to sit and watch a piece of the world fall apart.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

American Conservative View of French Presidential Race

It is interesting to read what a neo-con journal invites as opinion on the forthcoming French presidential election. The article really doesn't say a whole lot, but at least we can see what the authors would prefer. Who are they that we should care about their preferences?


Fraternité?
The nightmare scenario for American and French conservatives.
by Alf Ivar Blikberg & Ulf Gartzke
11/30/2006 12:00:00 AM Weekly Standard

BOTH FRANCE AND the United States will hold presidential elections in the next 24 months: France in April-May 2007 and the United States in November 2008. Earlier this month, the members of France's Socialist party overwhelmingly voted to nominate the telegenic female MP Ségolène Royal as their candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. While the 53-year-old wife of Socialist party leader François Hollande is considered by many to have great style, political and otherwise, she proved to be short on substance during the Socialist primary campaign. Nevertheless, with over 60 percent of the vote she soundly defeated former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius as well as former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In the 2007 presidential contest, Royal will now most likely face off against conservative interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has successfully portrayed himself as tough on crime. Much of the conservative UMP party has already rallied around its chairman, "Sarko," who just this morning announced the official launch of his 2007 presidential campaign. The UMP party is expected to formally nominate the ambitious 51-year-old as its presidential candidate next January. Meanwhile, the two men holding France's top jobs--incumbent 74-year-old President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin--are keeping their options open and neither has ruled out a possible run at the Palais de l'Elysée in 2007. Both men, however, are viewed by many as old-guard politicians who form part of the sleazy "système Chirac".

Sarkozy, in contrast, is seen as a reformer who wants to modernize France's costly welfare state, simplify the tax code, and abolish the 35-hour work week in an effort to make the country embrace "la mondialisation". However, Sarko's victory against Socialist candidate Royal is far from certain. Therefore, in the respective nightmare scenarios for American and French conservatives, France and the United States would both have female, left-of-center presidents in power by January 2009. Whether such an outcome would lead to better Franco-American relations is perhaps a subject worthy of a book in itself. It seems clear, though, that the Bush administration would like to leave office under very different political circumstances.

Hence, if the Bush administration prefers a Sarkozy presidency to a Royal presidency, it would be well advised to continue to build better bilateral relations and to painstakingly avoid saying or doing things that could fan anti-American sentiments before the upcoming French presidential elections. In this context, it was an encouraging sign that the U.S. House of Representatives recently decided to change the name of "freedom fries" back to "french fries" on its cafeteria menus. Back in March 2003, in the midst of rising transatlantic tensions over the Iraq war, the anti-French culinary rebuke was hailed by Congressional leaders as "a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France."

In the meantime, Franco-American relations have already improved quietly, but significantly, and the strong-anti French sentiment that was pervasive in many parts of the United States three years ago has largely dissipated. In terms of foreign policy, Washington and Paris seem to have found common ground on a range of issues, including Iran, North Korea, and Lebanon, thus allowing for the passage of important Security Council resolutions. Perhaps to the disappointment of some media outlets, the selection of the next secretary-general of the U.N. was also carried out without transatlantic mudslinging of any kind.

Transatlantic relations are not irrelevant to electoral politics, at least not in France, where Sarkozy could well be described as the most pro-American politician of his generation (admittedly, the competition for this accolade is not that stiff). Following Sarkozy's pro-American rhetoric during a recent visit to the United States--symbolically timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks--he was quickly lambasted by a leading Socialist politicians who portrayed him as George Bush's poodle and someone who could not be trusted to defend his country's interests. For a French politician, few accusations could be more serious, even in times of warming transatlantic relations.

As became evident in Germany in 2002--when Chancellor Schroeder's narrowly won re-election largely due to his outspoken opposition to President Bush and the Iraq war--anti-Americanism can play an important role in European elections, and can even tip the balance in one direction or another. So far, however, anti-Americanism--unlike anti-French sentiment--has yet to prompt the renaming of culinary dishes. Hence, if the day comes when the French feel compelled to make up their own name for "hot dog," we will know that the transatlantic relationship has tumbled to a new low.

Alf Ivar Blikberg is an independent writer currently dividing his time between the United States, Europe, and Africa.

Ulf Gartzke is a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's BMW Center for German and European Studies in Washington, D.C.

Center for American Progress First 100 Days’ Policy Agenda

The Center for American Progress, led by John Podesta, has published an interesting agenda for the new (Democratic) congress' first 100 days (and beyond). You can access it by using the link above. In the meanwhile, what follows is a self-description of this group from their web site http://www.americanprogress.org/

About the Center for American Progress

Who We Are

The Center for American Progress is a progressive think-tank dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through ideas and action.

We are creating a long-term, progressive vision for America—a vision that policy makers, thought-leaders and activists can use to shape the national debate and pass laws that make a difference.

The Center for American Progress is headed by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President William J. Clinton and a professor at Georgetown University Center of Law.

What We Believe

As progressives we believe that America should be a country of boundless opportunity—where all people can better themselves through education, hard work, and the freedom to pursue their dreams. We believe this will only be achieved with an open and effective government that champions the common good over narrow self-interest, harnesses the strength of our diversity, and secures the rights and safety of its people.

Real progress will be achieved only through innovative solutions borne of open collaboration.

To realize our vision we must:

Build an opportunity nation where every hard-working person, regardless of background, can realize their dreams through education, decent work and fair play.

Reawaken America's conscience, our sense of shared and personal responsibility, to build healthy, vibrant communities.

Reform government so that it is of, by and for the people: open, effective, and committed to the common good.

Use America's strength to bring the world together, not pull it apart.

How We Work

1) We explore the issues that matter most. We learn everything we can about the vital issues facing America and the world through dialogue with leaders, thinkers and citizens.

2) We develop bold new ideas. We debate. We develop a point of view. Then we take a stand.

3) We shape the national debate. We share our point of view—online, on campus, in the media, on the shop floor and in the boardroom, with Congress and in statehouses—with everyone who can put our ideas into practice and affect positive change.

Who is a progressive?

Founded on the ideals of the progressive movement at the turn of the century, today’s progressive movement believes that an open and effective government can improve the lives of everyday Americans by playing an active role in solving social and economic problems.

In other words, a progressive is someone who is idealistic enough to believe that things can be better and pragmatic enough to get it done.

European Isolationism?

I had never thought of Europe as isolationist, but the following article provides an interesting argument that this is the case. It also gives some good reasons for Europe to break with this world view (or not). You may recall an earlier post (http://opahervey.blogspot.com/2006/10/american-way-of-strategy.html) where I express concern that unless Europe takes a more unified view of its role in the rest of the world, a new "Concert of Power" (in Michael Lind's words) will be difficult, if not impossible, to evolve. This would likely lead to continued American hegemony, not a great idea in my opinion. Again, food for thought.

Europe must not lose sight of why it still matters

By Mark Mazower

Published: November 29 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 29 2006 02:00 FT.com

Donald Rumsfeld's infamous distinction between "old" and "new" Europe seems unlikely to live on. But there is a fault line running through Europe right now - one of outlook rather than age - which the recent political earthquake in the US will probably widen unless European policymakers begin paying more attention to it. It is the division between those focused on domestic agendas and internal issues, and those who want Europe to pull its weight in the world.

Europe's introspection goes back a long way - long before last year's voters administered such a drubbing to the misnamed constitution. As historians of 19th-century empire tell us, most Europeans were far less bothered by the world than the world was by them, even in the heyday of imperialism. In the early 1940s, Hitler's "Fortress Europe" was nothing if not a formula for Continental self-sufficiency and so, less crudely, was its more durable successor. The European Economic Community showed its members that they could survive, indeed do better than before, by giving up their overseas colonies and dealing with one another instead. The pell-mell expansion of the past decade, by presenting the European Community/Union with an unprecedented institutional challenge, has intensified this inward-looking mentality and vastly complicated foreign policymaking. The Cyprus question now blights Turkey's accession talks, while the proposed EU partnership with Russia is held hostage by the troubled Polish government. To judge from the Dutch polls and the pre-election struggle under way in France, many Europeans now see globalisation as a threat, despair of ever being able to influence Washington in a more positive direction and want simply to pull up the drawbridge.

This kind of outlook, however, is full of risks. Most of the global challenges confronting Europe remain unaltered by the results of the past weeks and, if anything, US President George W. Bush's electoral humiliation will in-crease pressure on the EU to stand up and be counted. As the Germans and the Finns have already emphasised, the crucial issue is the Middle East. No one can afford to allow the vacuum of policy there to continue. Europe should insist - as it has done, quietly, for some time - on the necessity for a settlement of the Israel/Palestine dispute as a precondition for any successful approach to the region as a whole. A Democrat-controlled Congress may not differ substantially from its predecessor on Israel's unique importance as an ally of the US but, because it will be keener on multilateralism, it will be more open to European input.

There is, in other words, an opportunity for Europe - with its substantial commercial, financial and now military commitment to the region - to do much more to bridge the yawning gulf between Washington and the Arab states. Of course, there are other issues. Dependence on overseas energy and labour is higher in Europe than in the US, yet the Union has not been able to forge a coherent policy either towards Russia or towards Africa and the Maghreb. Inside Europe, voter fatigue is jeopardising the prospect of further accession - the carrot for democratisation throughout eastern Europe in the past 15 years - threatening to destabilise the western Balkans. Bosnia remains a black hole for foreign aid. And should there be trouble this time in Kosovo, the rest of Europe cannot expect the US to bail it out again.

Yet Europe cannot make its views count in the world without institutional reform. At present there is far too little linkage between foreign, trade and energy policymaking within the Commission and, as a result, much of the EU's real power in the world is wasted. Concentrating foreign-policy powers in Javier Solana's hands will be a start; improving co-ordination of all external affairs should be next.

That Europeans should still shy away from a more decisive role abroad is not merely understandable; in a certain sense, it may be praiseworthy. After all, it suggests a consciousness of their own past excesses of power and a mistrust of the missionary use of force. Yet the current introspection so visible across much of the Continent indicates a kind of malaise, an ostrich-like desire to bury one's head and forget the wider world as global forces slip beyond the west's control. After the second world war Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian prime minister, criticised the Europeans for thinking the world's problems were chiefly their concern. He was right, of course, and their new modesty is no bad thing. Yet the world's problems are often Europe's problems, too.

The writer teaches history at Columbia University

Is Turkey European?

I found the following article particularly interesting, considering the debate whether Turkey should be allowed to enter the EU. There are many modern day issues to be resolved, but, assuming that this article is reasonably correct, at least the historical arguments can be put aside. Any thoughts?

The West's Eastern Front

By HUGH POPE
November 28, 2006; Page A14, Wall Street Journal

ISTANBUL -- The Istanbul professor who is a leading character in "Bliss," a lyrical novel by Zülfü Livaneli, imagines the Turkish intellectual as an acrobat swinging through the air. He lets go of his trapeze, sure in the belief that his European partner and inspiration waits on the other side, ready to catch him. Too late, he discovers his mistake.

If the much-bruised Turks agonize long and loud about when they'll ever be accepted as Europeans, the Europeans seem willfully blind to the Turks. Another crisis looms in the long-running negotiations over Turkey's possible membership of the European Union, this time over the conveniently distracting issue of access to Turkish ports for Cypriot ships. Meanwhile the reigning pope, who wants to reclaim Europe for Christianity to the exclusion of the Turks, today touches down in this Muslim land. So it's worth thinking again about who the Turks are, what they want, and how helpful to Europe their practice of Islam really is.

* * *

No clear answer exists, of course, to the question of whether the Turks are Europeans. There are just too many subjective variables. There is plenty of official hypocrisy, too. Europe has never negotiated with Ankara in wholly good faith, and Turkey has never been wholly sincere in its stated goal of joining the EU as it is today. But before muskets and scimitars are brought down from the attics of history, one must note that the Turks are already much more European than most Europeans realize.

The land of modern Turkey has always been part in, part out of Europe. The Roman Empire included most of today's Turkey, which has also gone by other names like Anatolia or Asia Minor. The most easterly Roman forts are inside Georgia on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. To the southeast, the main Roman customs houses were along the Euphrates -- roughly where the Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey begin today.

The subsequent Turkish conquest of Anatolia, and two sieges of Vienna, has not always meant a historic exclusion from Europe. The Ottomans had strategic alliances with France and Britain, among others. They were briefly part of the "Concert of Europe" in the late 19th century, were thought of in decline as the "Sick Man of Europe" (not Asia) and were the allies of Germany and Austria in World War I. In the Cold War, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and guarded a whole third of Europe's front line with the Warsaw Pact.

Institutionally and commercially, Turkey is already deep in modern Europe. Formal Turkish-EU ties have deepened through nearly half a century of intense negotiation, including a customs union since 1996. Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe; its well-trained soldiers are projecting European political resolve in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon and Congo; its sports teams play in European leagues; and it takes part in and once won the Eurovision song contest.

Arguments that Turks are somehow ethnically Asiatic and non-European also hold little water. Yes, the original Turkish tribes and dynasties like the Seljuks and Ottomans came from Central Asia. Turkey is the most powerful state in what can be seen as an emerging Turkic-speaking world, which counts 140 million people from Kashgar to Cologne. But the six main Turkic states do not form a political bloc and, although not EU applicants, most share Turkey's ambition to be seen as part of a European or Western culture.

Furthermore, the 70 million people in modern Turkey may be Turkic in name and language, but are not so genetically pure. The main influx of Central Asian Turks to Turkey ended in the 13th century. Overall it seems to have added only about 10% of the population to the existing muddle of ancient Anatolian populations. Western Turkey, at least, is not much different from other Eastern European members of the European Union, where Bulgars, Finns and Hungarians also have origins in the eastern steppe. Turkey's Kurds, meanwhile, speak an Indo-European language.

Nobody doubts, however, that Europe's cold shoulder to Turkey is mainly due to its Muslim identity. As a cardinal in 2004, Pope Benedict XVI put this argument in terms of Turkey as being "in permanent contrast to Europe." But Europe cannot just wish Islam away. Some 15 million to 20 million Muslims already make up nearly 5% of the EU's population; that number includes 3.5 million Turks. Europe is deluding itself if it thinks it can isolate itself from engagement with not just Turkey but its whole Islamic backyard around the Mediterranean Sea.

In contrast to the narrow defensiveness of some European opinion leaders who treat a "clash of civilizations" as inevitable, Turkey's current leaders have been reaching out to create an "alliance of civilizations." When Europe meets them half-way, as in the last phase of Euro-Turkish rapprochement, in 1999-2005, which culminated with the opening of talks on membership in the union, pro-Western Turks feel strengthened. When Europe turns its back, as this year, the local nationalist backlash forces them onto the defensive.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was indeed once a hard-line Islamist. Yet, reflecting a broader change in the country, he had to split with the fundamentalists in order to win power in 2002 with a new, more center-right party that was acceptable to 35% of the Turkish population. He has presided over an economic and commercial convergence with Europe that has put more European names than ever on Turkish products and high street stores and banks.

Turkey started its acrobatic effort to assimilate European culture in the early, 19th-century Ottoman Empire. In the 1920s, the present Turkish Republic took Europe as its model for almost everything, since back then Europe equaled modern progress. The new state dumped almost all the hallowed pillars of Islamic culture: Islamic law, dervish lodges, even the Muslim caliphate.

Europe has long been slow to appreciate these changes. In 1949, the Times of London's opinion page thought Turkey had no place in Europe because it used the Arabic script: in fact, that, too, had been discarded two decades previously. More recently, one of Germany's ambassadors to Turkey surprised a visiting Bundestag politician by giving him the news that Turkey had repudiated Islamic punishments like cutting the hands off thieves nearly a century ago.

A recent socio-economic survey by TESEV, one of Turkey's new think tanks, shows piety on the rise in Turkey -- just as in Europe. It also found that, contrary to perceptions, the number of women covering their hair had decreased in the past seven years. Only 1% of women surveyed wear the full black face-and-body covering, and that 1% is almost entirely older, rural women. Support for the use of Islamic law has fallen to 9% from 21%, and 81% condemn suicide bombing as un-Islamic, whether in Palestine or Iraq. Opinion has been liberalized, the study found, by rising wealth, stability, education and urbanization -- the same factors that have slowly improved Turkey's human-rights and democratic records in recent years.

Until recently, the pollster's question "Do you want to join the European Union?" put to a Turk was enthusiastically approved as meaning "Do you want to be rich?" Support has however plummeted as Turks have learned of European hostility, often whipped on by European politicians trying to blame external causes for internal ailments. Yet polls don't show everything. Turkey still does a booming half of its trade with the EU and more than half of its 21 million tourists come from Europe. Similarly, the negative image of Turkey elicited in Europe by the question "Do you want Turkey in the EU?" is not the whole truth. Change the question to "What do you think of Istanbul?" and many Europeans describe the city as cool, or full of desirable commercial energy.

Rudyard Kipling's old saying that "East is East and West is West" -- or its modern incarnation, "the clash of civilizations" -- is not the right paradigm for Turkey, which feels increasingly confident as part of both. The West is now all over the East and the East is firmly camped in the West. Indeed, Turkey's republican founder Kemal Atatürk believed that the "East is East" idea was fostered by Western powers to justify clinging to power over their former colonial subjects.

* * *

An impasse next month between Turkey and Europe, which threatens to freeze accession talks unless Ankara kowtows to its demands in the dispute over Cypriot ships, would be unfortunate and, on past diplomatic form, unlikely. Both sides would suffer too much commercial and political damage. The wider Islamic world, having reacted with delight to the EU's apparent decision to accept Turkey as an equal, would revert even more stubbornly to its default position that it is impossible to expect fair treatment from the West.

A pause for reflection seems in order for both sides. An acrimonious standoff with the EU in the late 1990s cleared the way for Turkey's great leap forward of 1999-2005. A Dutch ambassador at the core of those EU-Turkish negotiations once described the relationship as a wrestling match, with no time clock but no alternative. Neither Europe nor Turkey can "win." But neither side can afford to let go.

Mr. Pope is author, most recently, of "Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World" (Overlook Duckworth, 2005).

Princeton Project on National Security

I have just downloaded the report referred to in the following article below. You can too by using the link posted above. I'll make further comments, if appropriate, after I read the report. On the surface, it looks quite interesting.


Shaping Post-Bush Policy

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, November 27, 2006; A19, Washington Post

The reopened debate on Iraq will now rage for months or years, consuming most of the oxygen for foreign policy in Washington. Even if the result is a better strategy for rescuing (or ending) that beleaguered mission, larger questions about President Bush's post-Sept. 11 foreign policy will remain to be sorted out -- ideally by the time the next president takes office.

For example: Is the fight against "Islamofacism," as Bush has taken to calling it, really the defining struggle of the 21st century, comparable to the Cold War against communism? Is the president's "freedom agenda" of pressing for democratic change around the world, and especially in Muslim countries, still worth pursuing, given the failures (so far) of U.S.-backed democratic experiments in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority? Can the United Nations be salvaged as a forum for addressing threats such as Iran and North Korea, despite Bush's failure (so far) to make it work?

Right now the most audible discussion of such issues, by candidates in the midterm elections, suggests that many Republicans and Democrats would like to jettison any foreign policy connected to the Bush administration as quickly as possible. "Realists" such as James A. Baker III and Henry Kissinger are suddenly back in fashion, their own manifold failings in past administrations obscured by the panic over Iraq.

Encouragingly, however, there is also some fresh thinking going on -- strategizing that tries to rewrite the Bush administration's first cut at a 21st-century foreign policy without returning to the 20th-century nostrums that preceded it. The most impressive example of this that I've seen is something called the Princeton Project, a massive 2 1/2 year effort to formulate a bipartisan approach to the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world conducted by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The Wilson school's dean, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and politics professor G. John Ikenberry, who jointly directed the project, convened hundreds of experts from across the political spectrum in nine separate conferences; they consulted Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, George Shultz and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among many others. They then wrote a report that, refreshingly, would confound both Bush and many of their fellow Democrats -- but contains ideas that ought to have broad appeal across both parties.

So: Bush's "defining" war against Islamic extremism? "Absolutely wrong," says Slaughter, a rising star in the foreign policy world who would be a likely candidate for a top position in a future Democratic administration. "It's an attempt to simplify a world that won't be so simplified." The Princeton Project argues that the coming century will offer not one overriding threat but a "Rubik's cube" of diverse yet sometimes interlocking challenges, such as the spread of nuclear weapons, global warming, and the rise of India and China as great powers. Also, pandemics: Slaughter says she's more worried about the risk that a strain of avian flu will kill millions of Americans than about another terrorist attack.

As for the problem of terrorism, Slaughter says "it shouldn't be called Islamo-anything," because that merely invites a civilizational conflict and gives al-Qaeda and other criminal networks more credit than they deserve. They should be hunted down through an aggressive global counterterrorism campaign, she says, but not placed at the center of global politics.

What about democracy? Here Slaughter and Ikenberry refuse to buckle under the anti-Bush backlash. At the center of their strategy is the goal of "a world of liberty under law" -- a phrase that first appeared in Ronald Reagan's platform. They argue that the United States should "develop a much more sophisticated strategy of creating the deeper preconditions for successful liberal democracy" extending "far beyond the simple holding of elections."

One of the most intriguing Princeton ideas is the creation of a treaty-based "Concert of Democracies" that, like the European Union or NATO, would admit members only if they met strict requirements. The new institution would allow the democracies to work together as a concerted force within such institutions as the United Nations -- as mostly undemocratic groups such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference already do -- and could eventually replace the United Nations as a forum for legitimizing international security actions if the United Nations itself proved resistant to reform. Ideally, emerging powers such as India and Brazil would seek membership and influence in the democracy alliance, rather than allying with "nonaligned" dictatorships.

There is much more: an overhaul of every major global institution, from the International Monetary Fund to NATO; construction of a better "protective infrastructure" in the United States; a national gasoline tax and a new U.S. international initiative on climate change. Yes, it's far-reaching and none of it will happen while Bush is president. It could, however, be a start at what comes afterward.

Barone on Gates

I have just read the following "book review" which sheds some light on our forthcoming Secretary of Defense. It will be interesting to see how things develop. The argument on continuity of policy across presidencies is particularly interesting.


Michael Barone, USNews.com, November 24, 2006

Does Gates's History Mean Continuity or Change in Iraq?

I've just finished reading Robert Gates's memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. It's a well-written, thoughtful book, leavened by occasional injections of nerdy humor. Gates was a career CIA employee on the analysis rather than the operations side of the agency, and the only CIA analyst ever to become director of Central Intelligence. He specialized in the Soviet Union, though he never set foot in the U.S.S.R. until May 1989. His rapid ascent was amazing. Recruited while a graduate student at Indiana University, he served in the Air Force from 1967 to 1969, at the CIA from 1969 to 1974, at the National Security Council from 1974 to 1979, back to the CIA again from 1979 to 1989, where he became deputy director for intelligence in 1982. He was nominated to be director of central intelligence in 1987, but withdrew his nomination after it became clear that a Senate obsessed with Iran-contra would not confirm him. He was deputy national security adviser from 1989 to 1991 and then director of central intelligence from 1991 to 1993.

He served in the White House under four presidents: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush. And, as deputy to William Casey and then William Webster, he had ready access to the Reagan White House. As a career civil servant, albeit one who rose rapidly and to very high ranks, Gates tends to see continuity between different administrations. He argues in his memoirs, for example, that many of Reagan's policies had their roots in the Carter administration, including the defense buildup and the stress on human rights: "Indeed, the secret that all five of the Presidents and their political advisers hid from the American public was the extraordinary continuity in U.S. dealings with the Soviet Union from administration to administration. Hidden because, regardless of philosophy, the public approach of challengers in our politics is usually to tear down rather than to promise to build upon the work of incumbents—especially if the incumbent is of the other party.

"In truth, the roots of Nixon's SALT negotiations and his strategic programs were, for the most part, in the Johnson administration. Ford embraced Nixon's détente until Soviet actions forced a change. Carter's human-rights campaign built on Ford's signature of the Helsinki Declaration. He continued all but one of Nixon's strategic weapons programs as well as, ultimately, Ford's approach to SALT. Reagan's strategic programs, covert confrontation with the Soviets in the Third World, economic pressures, eventual engagement on arms control, and attacks on the legitimacy of the Soviet government itself built on Carter's efforts in each arena—even though partisans of both Presidents would rather have their tongues turn black and fall out than admit this."

As one who has approached foreign policy from a position as an analyst of domestic politics, I am inclined to look for big shifts in policies when Democrats replace Republicans and vice versa. But I found Gates's arguments on these issues mostly persuasive. The U.S. government is a big ship to turn around and shifts that seem small, such as Ford's on Helsinki, can turn out to have major changes on the course of the ship many years later. Around Washington these days it's assumed that when Gates takes over as secretary of defense he will make major course changes in Iraq. His stress on continuity leaves me wondering whether that will be the case.

Yet Gates also discusses times in which policy had to change course sharply in response to rapid changes in the world, notably during the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Interestingly, this career government bureaucrat did not find the government bureaucracies of much use in coming up with new ideas. Instead, his impulse was to create small committees of political appointees. In July 1989, he sent Bush a memo citing developments in the Soviet Union and concluding that "we should not be confident of Gorbachev remaining in power."

As Gates recounts in his book: "Bush agreed to the contingency planning I had first considered in the spring, and in September 1989, I asked Condi Rice to gather a group of people and in very great secrecy begin this work. When I met with her to explain the task, I told her that I thought the planning was very important because the situation in the Soviet Union could go bad in a hurry, and the U.S. government was on 'autopilot' when it came to thinking about such dramatic developments. Her group included Dennis Ross at State; Fritz Ermarth and Bob Blackwell from CIA; and Paul Wolfowitz and Eric Edelman from Defense. This group commissioned a number of studies by CIA and used them in reviewing and planning U.S. options. While no such effort can prescribe in detail policies based on specific future events, this work served us to great advantage in dealing with events over the next two years, and especially as the Soviet Union imploded in 1991."

Will Gates proceed similarly at Defense?

Gates was known during the 1980s as a hard-liner and was, by his account, often criticized by Secretary of State George Shultz for making it more difficult to negotiate arms control agreements with the Soviets. He responds by quoting some of his analyses that turned out to be prescient, but he also admits that he was wrong on occasion. He portrays himself as a frequent critic of the operations side of the CIA and as skeptical about the effectiveness of covert action in opposing Soviet initiatives. He writes that his preference, at least on Nicaragua, was a bolder and more open policy.

"By the end of 1984, I concluded that we were kidding ourselves if we thought the contras might win. I wrote [CIA Director William] Casey on December 14, and began by saying, 'The contras can't overthrow the Sandinista regime.' I continued that we were muddling along in Nicaragua with a halfhearted policy because of the lack of agreement within the administration and with Congress on our real objectives. I urged moving to an overt policy including withdrawal of diplomatic recognition; providing open military assistance and funds for a government-in-exile; imposing economic sanctions, perhaps including a quarantine; and using air strikes to destroy Nicaragua's military buildup–no invasion but no more Soviet/Cuban military deliveries. I concluded, 'Relying on and supporting the contras as our only action may actually hasten the ultimate, unfortunate outcome.'"

Those who see Gates as a consistent opponent of bold action may turn out to be disappointed. But neither was he deferential to Congress, on Nicaragua anyway. Here is his reflection in recounting events in December 1984:

"One of the enduring characteristics of Congress, especially on foreign affairs, is its eagerness to avoid clear-cut actions that will leave the Hill unambiguously responsible if something goes wrong, especially if they have acted contrary to the president."

Later, looking ahead to the Iran-contra scandal, he points the same finger at Congress:

"In sum, the second ingredient in the contra time bomb was a Congress, like the administration, unwilling to take the Nicaragua issue head-on. Instead, it steadily circumscribed CIA's ability to support the contras but without ever passing legislation that would just kill outright all American assistance to the resistance–a politically risky move that would leave Congress holding a smoking gun if Nicaragua became a Soviet outpost and communist-backed insurgencies threatened other governments in the region."

This all leads me to expect that Gates expects the Democratic Congress will not command the Pentagon to leave Iraq.

What might be Gates's attitude toward confronting the governments of Iran and Syria, which support terrorists? Here's his account of what he told Casey in February 1985, after Ronald Reagan and George Shultz asked Casey for an analysis of actions that could be taken against them.

"On February 14, I sent Casey our first assessment of Iranian, Syrian, and Libyan support to terrorism and their respective vulnerability to retaliation.

"Our work on the vulnerability of the three major state sponsors of terrorism–Libya, Iran, and Syria–began to provide the administration with information they could use, if only to begin thinking about real action against state-supported terrorism. We did targeting studies of Libyan and Iranian ports and military facilities, and examined similar targets in Syria. We analyzed the potential impact of various kinds of sanctions.

"We focused especially in Iran, the worst offender. The downsides of an attack on Iran, to everyone's regret, outweighed how much Iran deserved punishment. We pointed out that failure to hit Iran would ensure that Iranian-sponsored terrorism would continue and even grow, but terrorist-connected targets were near cities and attacks against them would, by themselves, have little impact. We suggested that while sustained military and economic pressure on Tehran might over time strengthen 'moderates,' it could also drive the Iranians closer to the Soviets for protection. And that was perhaps the most significant deterrent. This Iran proved 'too hard'–a limited attack would, as a participant in one meeting indelicately put it, 'just piss them off' and make things worse.

"Syria was not seriously considered as a target because such action would almost certainly bring a confrontation with the Soviets. The Syrians had the most effective military, would have to play a key role in any Middle Eastern peace process, and was relatively invulnerable to U.S. economic pressures."

Of course some things have changed today. The Soviet Union–"perhaps the most significant deterrent" against attacking Iran and the factor that put attacking Syria out of the question–is no more. And the Middle Eastern peace process is, at the moment anyway, very much on hold. So would a Secretary Gates be amenable to action against Iran and/or Syria? Maybe.

In the years after 1979, many American leaders have tried to do business with Iranian "moderates," and some are calling for this again today. Gates, at least in 1985, was a skeptic that there were any such "moderates" to deal with.

"As the arms deal went along, a central premise of supporters was that there was a 'moderate' faction in Tehran or an 'opposition' worth cultivating. This was the view of the Israelis and it was the view that NSC [the National Security Council] adopted. CIA's Iran experts thought differently, and in the spring of 1985 and consistently thereafter they published analyses acknowledging a faction inside Iran that strictly in terms of internal affairs–especially economic policy–might be called moderate. But there was no such faction when it came to the United States. Toward the United States, they were all radicals. This analysis was presented to [National Security Adviser Bud] McFarlane and the NSC. They chose to believe the Israelis. The notion that there was no CIA intelligence on internal Iranian affairs is incorrect. The intelligence we had was simply inconvenient."

On Libya, Gates sided with Casey in favor of taking action against the Qadhafi regime.

"Some CIA analysts thought that the Reagan administration was making a serious mistake in taking on [Qadhafi] publicly–that they were creating an Arab hero-martyr inasmuch as [Qadhafi] was seen standing up to the incredibly powerful United States. They had a valid point, but it was also true that Libya was an incubus for terrorism and for efforts to destabilize a number of African and Middle Eastern governments. To have ignored all this would have been a mistake, a greater one in my view that responding to his activities."

Only briefly in this 1996 book does Gates refer to the Islamist terrorists who are our chief enemy now. Here is the one reference I found, in his review of CIA conduct over the years:

"Similarly, on occasion, our operations–for example, in Afghanistan–had lingering and dangerous aftereffects. The paramilitary training and weapons we provided, after the conflicts ended, sometimes were put to unwelcome purposes and even used in actions hostile to U.S. interests. We always were conscious of this likelihood and, indeed, had warned policymakers about this possibility during the debate over whether to use Stingers in Afghanistan."

The picture I get of Robert Gates from his book is that of a careful analyst, one who sees American foreign policy as generally and rightly characterized by continuity but one who sees the need for bold changes in response to rapid changes in the world–and doesn't look for answers from the government bureaucracies. He is very much aware that we have dangerous enemies in the world, and he was willing over many years to confront them and try to check their advance.

Posted at 05:41 PM by Michael Barone

For Those Who Make Forecasts

Hagel on Iraq

Chuck Hagel is one (rare) Republican senator with whom I can identify much of the time. I'm not sure that he is completely right in this analysis, but it is worth taking seriously. By the way, Hagel is a good friend of John McCain who has an entirely different view on the future of the U.S. in Iraq. It won't happen, in my non-expert opinion, but Hagel might make a far better Republican candidate in 2008 than McCain. For a very uncomplementary editorial on McCain, see:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-welch26nov26,0,3481494.story?coll=la-opinion-center


Leaving Iraq, Honorably

By Chuck Hagel
Sunday, November 26, 2006; B07 Washington Post

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.

Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no formal communication.

What does this tell us? It tells us that regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work in their own self-interest -- without the United States. This is the most encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East.

We are a long way from a sustained peaceful resolution to the anarchy in Iraq. But this latest set of events is moving the Middle East in the only direction it can go with any hope of lasting progress and peace. The movement will be imperfect, stuttering and difficult.

America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission.

The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.

The writer is a Republican senator from Nebraska.

Another French Revolution?

Here is a reasonable summary of some of the key issues in France (in English). With a presidential election coming next spring, hopefully we will see some original thoughts and actions on these seemingly intractable problems.


Another French Revolution?
The rioters and their admirers--on the right and the left.
by Michel Gurfinkiel
11/27/2006, Volume 012, Issue 11

Paris
Mama Galledou, a 26-year-old student from Senegal, had just completed work on her degree in nutrition at the Saint Jerome Faculty of Science and Technology in Marseille. She will probably never lead a normal life again--if she survives at all: She was nearly burned alive on October 28 as she was traveling by bus through Marseille's 13th district, where the Saint Jerome campus is located. It was 9:00 P.M. The bus was almost empty. At the bus stop near Cité des Lilas, a public housing estate, three young men had earlier blocked the doors and asked the driver to wait for their friends. The driver obliged for a minute or two, and then got impatient, shut the doors, and left. The youths shouted that they would take their revenge. So they did, a bit later on, as the bus was driving the same road back and stopped again at Cité des Lilas. Two of the boys got on by the rear entrance, sprinkled gasoline, and set it alight. The horrified passengers rushed out. Somehow, Galledou's clothes caught fire. According to one witness, "it was as if someone peeled her skin with an invisible knife: from a black woman she was turning into a white one." At the local hospital, they reported burns over 62 percent of her body. She remains in a coma, fighting to survive.

Galledou's tragic fate is a microcosm of the crisis now engulfing France. In recent weeks, torching buses has suddenly become prevalent in the Paris suburbs and other urban areas. Just two days before the attack in Marseille, Le Mondei>, the country's authoritative (if left-wing) paper of record, ran a front-page story about this new development and noted that it usually requires a much higher level of organization and discipline than casual car torching. In Bagnolet, on October 25, a gang of ten torched a night bus on the 122 line (in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northeastern suburb of Paris). In Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine (the western suburbs), a similar attack took place the same day on a bus on the 258 line. On October 22, a bus was torched at Grigny, Essonne (the southern suburbs). As a result, the local company in charge of public transportation suspended night traffic on no fewer than 17 bus lines. It remains to be seen whether the attackers in Marseille--six suspects have been arrested--were just teenagers perpetrating a copycat crime, or if they were connected with a network.

There have also been cases of organized large-scale stoning, or caillassagei>, as it is called in contemporary French slang: On October 25, a group of 50 people or more stoned private cars on National Road 445 near Grigny, an important suburban link. National security police (CRS) had to be sent in, as well as the Anti-Crime Brigade (BAC), France's toughest cops. And consider, too, the organized attacks this fall on policemen, firemen, and other public security personnel. On September 19, two CRS officers were chased by threatening youths at the Tarterets housing project in Corbeil, Essonne. Ten days later, on September 29, a man described as "insane" opened fire on a CRS company at Clichy-la-Garenne, Hauts-de-Seine. On October 1, seven policemen were chased and wounded at Mureaux, a more distant suburb west of Paris. Similar incidents occurred, almost routinely, throughout the month of October.

More often than not, the CRS or police were not just attacked but ambushed. "One gets the feeling that war orders have been issued against the cops," wrote Le Nouvel Observateuri>, the liberal weekly, on November 1. Cyrille Brown, secretary general of the leftist CGT bus drivers union, insisted: "What we have now are organized attacks." Michel Thooris, a spokesman for Action Police, a conservative police union, expressed the view that "this is not just a matter of angry unemployed youths who get violent at times," but "something carefully planned."

The public-housing projects that gradually burgeoned around most French cities in the second half of the 20th century now serve as strongholds and training grounds for these violent gangs. After the incident on National Road 455, the stone-throwers were rolled back into the neighboring projects, but there was no further pursuit. One police source confided to Le Mondei> that security forces were actually "discouraged" from making incursions into those neighborhoods, except on rare occasions. The source went on: "It is a terrible mistake. Since we avoid going inside, where they are, they attack us outside, where we are."

Most French suburban public housing was originally designed by talented architects, and could have developed into pleasant neighborhoods. Mass immigration had an adverse effect on them, however, and turned them into either North African or black African ghettoes (an estimated 15 percent of the overall French population--one quarter of the population under 20--is now non-European and non-Judeo-Christian). Ethnic criminal gangs took over, as often happens under such circumstances: They forced the last native French or European inhabitants out, and made it increasingly difficult for the police to enter and monitor the projects. Later, fundamentalist Islamic brotherhoods asserted themselves in the projects, or cités, as they are called.

A complex relationship seems to have arisen between these two power centers. On the one hand, the fundamentalists intended to protect the immigrant community against everything the gangs stood for: drugs, alcohol, sexual promiscuity, easy money from crime. On the other hand, they derived benefits from the ethnic enclave status the gangs had secured. A tacit or not so tacit agreement was reached: The brotherhood would ignore, and at times condone as "holy war," the activities of the gangs outside the neighborhood; the gangs would help the brotherhoods to impose Islamic law on the inside.

There was a further division of labor: When the gangs would engage in inordinate violence against the police or non-Muslim communities, the brotherhoods would act as "wise men" available to mediate between the government and the gangs and to help restore law and order--on their own terms. According to many experts, this is precisely what happened last year, when the conservative minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, talked of "thoroughly cleansing" ("passer au Kärcher")i> the eight hundred or so no-go zones that had cropped up all over urban France. Neither the gangs nor the fundamentalists liked that prospect. The gangs masterminded unprecedented "youth riots"; the fundamentalists then restored civil peace, and won as a reward de facto pardon for most rioters, a "less provocative" police presence in the suburbs, i.e., no "cleansing," more privileges for Islam as "France's second and most quickly growing religion," and recognition for themselves as national leaders. As Michel Thooris put it in an interview with L'Est Républicain, an influential newspaper in eastern France: "Security is a state prerogative. Inasmuch as the national police fail to provide it, the imams are ready to usurp it."

The riots last year clearly ended as a victory for both the gangs and the fundamentalist imams. Why, then, are they being reenacted? One commonly heard explanation is that "the youths" want to "celebrate." Far more plausible is that the new wave of violence is an intervention in the coming national elections: the presidential election in April and May 2007 and then the parliamentary election of June. Oddly enough (or perhaps not so odd), the frontrunners, on both the right and the left, are champions of law and order: Sarkozy is poised to be the conservative contender; as for the Socialists, Ségolène Royal, the governor of Poitou-Charentes in western France, has just easily won the primary.

The daughter of a right-wing Catholic general, Royal aims to become France's Tony Blair and perhaps even, as the Economist suggested recently, France's Margaret Thatcher. She outdoes Sarkozy in many respects: She wants to bring back discipline to schools, send criminal teenagers to boot camps, and reinstate the draft, for both boys and girls, in order to teach them "republican and patriotic values." And that makes her quite popular among liberal and conservative voters alike. Clearly, each of these candidates is seen as a major threat by the ethnic powers that be. It would be safer to destabilize them now. Among conservatives, both President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Ville pin remain more eager than Sarkozy to show "understanding" for "the youths." Among Socialists, Royal's chief rivals--Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Laurent Fabius--are likewise posturing as more tolerant.

Some analysts claim that this urban violence, both last year's and this year's, is not ethnic but rather a matter of social class. There are, indeed, native French youths among the rioters: According to the Ministry of the Interior and other government sources, 16 percent of the young rioters brought to court last year appear to be the offspring of French-born parents. Conversely, the victims of urban violence are as likely to belong to ethnic or religious minorities as are those who engage in it. Mama Galledou is Senegalese. The passengers who, unlike her, managed to escape from the burning buses, are predominantly immigrants or the French-born children of immigrants.

A further argument for a social rather than ethnic or religious interpretation of the present crisis is that one finds much support for the rioters among the predominantly white and non-Muslim parties of the far left: the two Trotskyite parties, what is left of the old Communist party, and the Greens. Even among the far right activists--for whom hatred of America, Israel, and the "free-market European Union" tends to outweigh any other consideration--there is support for the gangs.

Indeed, there are intellectuals on the left and right who relish the prospect of a new French Revolution, and welcome the suburban rioters as its spearhead. Nothing is more revealing, in this respect, than the success of a feverish political novel, Supplément au roman national (A Sequel to the National Narrative), by 28-year-old author Jean- ric Boulin. Published two months ago, it forecasts a "social and racial" revolution in France in 2007. First a wave of suicide bombings in Paris. Then martial law. Then, finally, the great rebellion of the French poor: the native underclass, the Arabs, and the blacks, who unite under the green flag of Islam and the tricolor of France and march on Paris--as a sort of Commune in reverse. Boulin gallantly supports such an outcome.

One can make too much of this line of argument, however. Even if some rioters are of native French stock, the fact is that most of them are not. And even in Boulin's hallucinatory novel, Arabs and blacks outnumber the native French in the revolutionary coalition--an implicit admission that the present violence is primarily ethnic.

Still, it would be wise not to write off entirely the possibility of a green-red alliance. There is a historical precedent in the spread of Islam itself, in the 7th century. It is well known that the newly founded religious empire from Arabia overran in less than two decades the two mightiest powers of the time, the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Mazdean Persian Empire. What is less well known is that the Arab expansion coincided, in both places, with a deep ethnic, religious, and social crisis. In fact, the Arabs didn't outright conquer Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and the Iranian plateau. They struck alliances with the local rebels: the Copts and the Syriacs, the Nestorians and the Donatists, the Jews and the Mardakites, with those who spoke neither Greek nor Persian and shared neither the beliefs of the basileus nor those of the shah. Even the green flag of Islam was borrowed from non-Arabs: It was originally the symbol of rebellion in Byzantium, the equivalent in its day of the red flag in ours.

Can history repeat itself, and fundamentalist Islam subdue Europe in the 21st century with the help of European extremists? Will the green flag and the red flag wave side by side? Buses are burning in France and nobody, so far, seems to know how to stop that.

Michel Gurfinkiel is executive chairman of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Paris.

"Servi-Manufacturers"

I had never heard the term "servi-manufacturers" before reading this article, but have been lobbying for this concept for many years with my auto supplier clients. Some automakers and many good dealerships have recognized the value of this as well. Good advice for most industries, I suspect. Some times one can get premium price for this approach, but more often customer loyalty is the real payoff. Thus, caring about the long-term is an essential element of a "servi-manufacturer" strategy.

Dawn of steel's flexible future

By Peter Marsh

Published: November 24 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 24 2006 02:00 Financial Times

When Chiang Yao-Chung says "we have to become better at service", he is talking not only about China Steel, theTaiwanese steelmaker he chairs, but about all its competitors, too.

According to Mr Chiang, steelmakers can no longer simply produce steel; they need to back up their production with services such as design, distribution and "tailoring" of products to meet their customers' more demanding requirements.

Mr Chiang ought to know. Until about a year ago, he was the chairman of China Airlines, Taiwan's largest carrier and an archetypal service business. His comments resonate clearly in the steel industry, where many companies are recognising the need to compete by adding a service element to their production skills.

The new thinking reflects broader changes in manufacturing. In the past 20 years, it has become far more common to find "hybrid" businesses or "servi-manufacturers" that offer customers a more profitable combination of products and services.

Large manufacturers such as Germany's Siemens increasingly provide "service offerings" such as equipment maintenance, but the practice is also being adopted by smaller concerns. Munters, a Swedish maker of dehumidifying equipment, offers to run its machines on a customer's premises where, for example, the business has suffered a flood.

In the steel industry, moves towards adding service most often involve refinements to ordering and production processes, sometimes with a design element.

Even companies widely regarded as makers of "commodity" steel sold at standard prices can see the benefits of adding service operations. At the Polish arm of Mittal Steel, the world's largest steel business, managers are trying to alter the way they sell steel to customers to emphasise smaller production runs and pay closer attention to specifying particular steel grades.

"In the past, we tended to sell steel in lot sizes of hundreds of tonnes at a time," says Sanjay Samadder, sales director of Mittal's Polish subsidiary. "Now the emphasis is on accepting a more complex mix of orders so we can supply steel to customers in a wider range of product grades and in batches of as little as 50 tonnes."

A similar approach is apparent at a large plant in Scunthorpe, northern England, run by Corus - the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker subject to an agreed £5.1bn takeover deal by India's Tata Steel (though a rival, CSN of Brazil, may yet put in a higher offer). One reason Tata wants to buy Corus is to gain expertise in making steel in small batches geared to customers' needs.

Engineers at the Scunthorpe plant are adept at changing the shapes, sizes and chemical formulations of products such as rods and sections through sophisticated procedures to control the dozens of separate steps in steelmaking. In this way they can add tens of thousands of variants to basic steel to meet the requirements of customers.

Another group of steel companies concentrates on making specialist steel grades - a sector where competition is quite limited. In these plants very little "basic" steel, such as commodity coils and bars, is produced. An example is Böhler Uddeholm, the world's largest maker of high-grade steel used in production tooling.

The Vienna-based company says it makes hundreds of different grades of steel for toolmaking. It delivers these in quantities that, by the normal standards of the steel industry, are extremely small - an average of 70kg at a time.

"We sell to 100,000 customers and in many ways are more like a pharmacist than a steelmaker: we have toget our material to customers at the right time andin the right formulation," says Claus Raidl, chiefexecutive.

Furthest down the road of "servi-manufacturers" are businesses that behave more like engineering manufacturers than steel producers. The distinctive feature they offer is expertise in design.

Take Voestalpine. The Austrian steelmaker is a leader in the coated steel sheet used by vehicle companies for the exteriors of car bodies, but the company has gone further, by making "laser-welded blanks".

Voestalpine makes these by welding together two or more pieces of steel into a new sheet, which is then stamped into a part, as specified by a customer, and using its own design and development skills - sometimes in collaboration with the customer.

One of its customers for laser-welded blanks - which sell for $800-$1,000 a tonne, twice as much as conventional steel sheet - is BMW. The German carmaker uses the blanks in some of its car doors, where different grades of steel are needed to help withstand corrosion from rain water.

Two other steelmakers - Rautaruukki of Finland and Bluescope of Australia - have also hit on the idea of turning parts of their businesses into producers of specialised panels and other components.

Both make roofs and gutters used in construction. Rather than sell steel to construction businesses that fabricate the items themselves, Rautaruukki and Bluescope not only turn out the parts in different shapes and sizes but also take on the project management of the building contract.

"In some instances of work we do for customers in construction steel, only 20 per cent [of the contract price] is accounted for by the material cost. The rest comes from what we are providing through design, intellectual property and management expertise," says Sakari Tamminen, chief executive of Rautaruukki.

If "servi-manufacturing" turns out to be an important part of global industry during the next 20 years, then the steel business will have played a big part in showing others how to do it.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Church-State: Thanksgiving

One of the subjects that I have been studying of late is the issue of "Church and State" or "Religion and Politics" in the United States, both historically and currently. This editorial gives one vignette on the subject.

I have read Meecham's book on the subject (see end of article). Two other books on the subject that I recommend are:

Madeline Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs http://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Almighty-Reflections-America-Affairs/dp/0060892579/sr=8-1/qid=1164281698/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5171099-6634569?ie=UTF8&s=books

John Danforth, Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values" Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together
http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Politics-Divides-America-Together/dp/0670037877/sr=1-1/qid=1164281783/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5171099-6634569?ie=UTF8&s=books


All three are thoughtful and don't even overlap too much.


The Consummate American Holiday

By Jon Meacham
Thursday, November 23, 2006; A39 Washington Post

Abraham Lincoln knew he was in tricky territory. It was the first week of October 1863, and the president was issuing a proclamation declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday. The culmination of a campaign led by the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, Lincoln's words were calibrated to appeal to Americans of any religious inclination -- and of none at all. Despite "the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field," Lincoln wrote, the fields had been so fruitful and the mines so rich that they produced blessings of a scope that "cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. . . . No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."

Lincoln wanted the country to render thanks "with one heart and one voice," but in acknowledging that many hearts and voices were "habitually insensible" to religious feeling, he signaled his grasp of the elusive nature of what Benjamin Franklin had called America's "public religion" -- the broad belief in a God who created the world, who was attentive to history and to prayers, who intervened in the affairs of humankind through providence, and who would ultimately reward or punish men for their conduct. This was the "Creator" and the "Nature's God" of the Declaration of Independence and the God whom George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson spoke of in their public remarks. In America such talk was (and is) complicated, for the nation was founded on the principle of religious liberty -- that, at the federal level, no one's civil or political rights could be affected by his faith or lack thereof. As Washington said in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, R.I., in 1790, America "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." And Jefferson approvingly wrote of "a wall of separation between Church & State" in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut.

How, then, do we reconcile matters when that same government, one pledged to defend the rights of nonbelievers, engages in essentially religious activity -- the offering of prayers in legislative sessions; the employment, at public expense, of military chaplains; or, to bring things back to Lincoln's proclamation, the appointment of days of Thanksgiving on explicitly religious grounds?

Chiefly by noting that Jefferson's wall metaphor -- one that the Supreme Court picked up again in the middle of the 20th century -- is between church and state, not between religion and politics. Because politics is about people, religion will forever be a force in public life, for religion, like economics, is a factor in shaping ambitions, appetites, hopes and fears. History teaches us that the religious impulse is intrinsic. "All men have need of the gods," said Homer, and John Adams remarked: "Religion always has and always will govern mankind. Man is constitutionally, essentially and unchangeably a religious animal. Neither philosophers nor politicians can ever govern him in any other way."

The most fervent secularist, however, could justifiably argue that just because religion is prevalent does not mean that governments, particularly governments founded on liberty of conscience, should cater to the religious to the exclusion of the nonreligious. Why not have governments stay out of religious affairs altogether? The secular argument for this is obvious, and there is a strong theological argument for such a view. "Put not thy trust in princes," advised the Psalmist, and Jesus told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world." The dissenter Roger Williams believed that "the garden of Christ's church" should not be contaminated by "the wilderness of the world."

But neither view has ever prevailed. The American habit, formed from the very beginning, when delegates to the Continental Congress prayed as a body for deliverance from the British, has been to choose to follow the forms of Franklin's "public religion," avoiding as much as possible sectarian references to the God of Abraham or God the Father and keeping things as vague as possible. The ambiguity of exactly whom or what we are referring to when we say "God bless America" or, as Lincoln called on us to do, when we thank "the Most High God," makes the strictly religious uncomfortable, for to pray to an indistinct deity can feel idolatrous. Believers, however, must, as G.K. Chesterton said, "permit the twilight," and most Americans have chosen to permit the twilight of public religion.

And so Americans have permitted Thanksgiving as well. The roots of the feast stretch back to 1619, to Berkeley Plantation in Virginia, and, more notably, to 1621 at Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. By the time of the Civil War, Lincoln was convinced that a national day would promote unity -- given the war, it certainly could not hurt -- and he made the proclamation. To legal scholars, customs such as Thanksgiving fall under what is (infelicitously) known as "ceremonial deism" -- long-standing, innocuous rituals. "It is an argument from history," says John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. "The passage of time will show if this is a step along the way to establishment of religion or if it's a ritual show of public spirit or patriotism."

It is, admittedly, an odd argument to advance: Thanksgiving and its religious roots are acceptable precisely because the religious roots have proved benign, or at least so broadly inclusive that no single religious denomination can claim the day solely as its own. In its way, then, Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday: religious without being sectarian, with room for the nonreligious to simply pause and celebrate our common humanity. The origins of the day are inescapably theological, but there is much secular tradition on which to draw as well. Robert Ingersoll, the great 19th-century advocate of free thought, called secularism "the religion of humanity. . . . It does not believe in praying and receiving, but in earning and deserving. It regards work as worship, labor as prayer, and wisdom as the savior of mankind. It says to every human being, Take care of yourself so that you may be able to help others; adorn your life with the gems called good deeds; illumine your path with the sunlight called friendship and love."

The American experiment in religious liberty goes on. Perhaps no one ever put the matter better than John Leland, a Baptist evangelist who worked with Jefferson and James Madison on religious freedom in Virginia: "Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or 20 Gods; and let government protect him in so doing." Madison took such sentiments to heart, and, late in his long life, at Montpelier, he continued to ponder the mysteries of religion and politics.

"The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion," Madison wrote; he was debating whether the appointment of congressional chaplains was compatible with the First Amendment and with the ideal of religious liberty. "In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative," Madison acknowledged. Both pragmatic and wise, though, Madison concluded that "as the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done may be to apply to the Constitution the maxim of the law, de minimis non curat" -- Latin for "the law does not concern itself with trifles."

Is, then, Thanksgiving a trifle, or the most solemn tribute a people can render to a God? The genius of America is that we are free to believe either -- or something in between. Such freedom is something we should all give thanks for, today and always.

The writer is editor of Newsweek and the author of "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation." He and The Post's Sally Quinn moderate On Faith, an online conversation on religion athttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith.

Brooks: Building a Team of Rivals

Makes sense to me. I would only add that it would focus on their ideas/proposals more than on their egos/personalities. Maybe too much to ask.

November 23, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Building a Team of Rivals

By DAVID BROOKS

Over the next few months, I’m going to ask the presidential hopefuls the following question: What lessons do you draw from the Iraq experience about decision-making in the White House?

The candidates are going to answer by saying something like this: The lesson I draw is that the president has to have intellectual curiosity and access to all the necessary information. He can’t run a faith-based policy relying on certainty and instinct. When I’m president, I’m going to hear all sides.

Then, I’m going to respond: Oh, please. Save that stuff for the campaign rallies. If you know anything about how the Bush administration actually worked, you know that people at the midlevels were consumed by doubt. There were interagency meetings galore, and dozens of memos written by subcabinet officials fully aware of how badly things were going. Aside from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld personalities, it was the decision-making process itself that was screwed up. Did you draw any lessons from that?

Then the candidates will level with me in that low-toned voice they adopt when speaking the truth, and if they’re smart, they’ll say something like this:

O.K., you’re right. There are structural problems that have emerged during the past several administrations that crippled planning for Iraq. Here’s what I think they are:

First, the vice president can’t have his own secret policy channel. He can’t sit silently at meetings and then, during private lunches with the president, countermand all that was accomplished.

Second, the White House can’t obsess about leaks. This administration in particular twisted itself into knots to prevent leaks, and you know what? Everything came out anyway. It’s stupid to narrow decision-making to small, insular circles of trust to prevent leaks. Everybody correctly assumes their private comments will be made public in any case.

Third, the White House staff has too much power. We understand how this happened. Presidents get sick of parochial cabinet secretaries who become special pleaders for their agencies. The president needs people he can trust, and who believe in his policies, so he shifts power to those around him who worked on his campaigns.

The problem is the White House is staffed by younger people who are feverishly devoted to the president. Especially in the first years, they try to make every day pleasant for him, which means not bringing him bad news, or setting up a meeting that might turn nasty. Furthermore, while the White House staff is big enough to insulate the president, it is not big enough to carry out policy. When it is asked to, you get thousands of ad hoc meetings attended by people who have limited power to control facts on the ground.

Which leads to the fourth and most important lesson: There is a yawning gap between those who decide policies and those who carry them out. This hurts in two ways. The people who have run an operation for decades, who have some expertise, have little input before a decision is made. Then, after the decision is handed to them, they have no investment in its success and discover they can go off and subvert the policy and no one can do anything to stop them.

In the Iraq occupation, Rumsfeld became a rogue secretary, not committing enough troops, not returning phone calls, not sharing information, and nobody did anything to discipline him. The National Security Council had to jump in and try to run operations, which it’s not equipped to do.

To address these problems, the next president has to restore cabinet government — set up teams of rivals, as Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan did. For example, during his first term, President Reagan had more than 500 cabinet committee meetings, according to Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. Each cabinet committee consisted of four to six department heads, who would work out policies and put them into effect.

A president who vests power in cabinet members gives himself colleagues, people of similar age and stature who can argue with him face to face. By formalizing a decision-making process he balances egotistical secretaries against each other. A Rumsfeld would have to go to meetings and explain himself to his rivals. Entire departments couldn’t be shut out of the loop, the way Treasury and State were. The agencies that carry out policy would have a link to the people who decide it.

It’s possible to screw up cabinet government too — Jimmy Carter did. But the next president has to be a thoroughgoing reformer, which means reforming the way the executive branch works too.

More Thanksgiving Humor

The Pre-Meal Thanksgiving Safety Demonstration

Welcome to this Thanksgiving meal, with non-stop service from passive aggression to outright yelling. This afternoon's meal will last approximately two hours and 14 minutes. At this time, please direct your attention to the head of the table for the pre-meal safety demonstration.

Emergency exits are located at the door into the kitchen and through the living room into the front hall. Please take a moment to locate the exit nearest you.

When the meal begins to take off, you must fasten your lips shut. To do so, insert an alcoholic beverage into a glass, and pull it to your lips for a long swig. We suggest that you keep your beverage glass full throughout the meal, as we may experience turbulence.

In the event of a sudden pressurization of the dining room's atmosphere, various members of the family may drop insults that they don't actually mean. Remain calm. Pull the defensive psychological mask that you have constructed over your face and breathe normally. Insults will continue to flow even after the mask is in place.

In the event of water flowing from eyelids, please remember that your Walgreen's Thanksgiving print paper napkin can be used as a tear-soaking device.

This is a non-smoking meal. Tampering with, disabling, or destroying the smoke detectors located in the bathroom is an offense punishable by substantial yelling and cursing.

At this time we ask that you turn off all cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices. Please make sure that you have stowed away all painful memories and disappointments in preparation for the meal.

For complete information on meal safety procedures, please review the email provided to you by your cousin Joe detailing which family members are not talking to which other family members and which subjects are prohibited.

Thank you for choosing this side of the family for your Thanksgiving meal. At this time, you may sit back, relax, and enjoy the fight.

Thanksgiving Humor

Happy thanksgiving to all.

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10/28/06

Thanksgiving Cartoon Fun
+
History
From
Brownielocks and The 3 Bears

We have another cartoon called "Thanksgiving and Bird Flu"

The Rock How did Thanksgiving begin? Well, let's say here in the US it all started with a big granite rock...Plymouth Rock, that is. The big boulder which is rumored to be the one in which the Pilgrims first stepped on was in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The rock later was moved to Plymouth's Town Square, and then to a local museum called Pilgrim Hall. Then it was brought back to the beach and placed under a stone canopy along with a box that was suppose to contain some Pilgrim's bones. However, due to souvenir snatchers from chipping little pieces off, the rock got put in a pit with a wrought iron fence around it and portico to shelter tourists from bad weather. Top it off with the fact that there really is no official documentation to prove that this is THE rock the Pilgrims are supposed to have stepped on. But the rock has symbolized America's freedom. During the Revolutionary War, Plymouth citizens took it as a good sign (not bad) when the rock split in two while being pried from it's bed for use as a pedestal for a liberty pole. Shortly after the colonies "split from England." The two halves were eventually put together and originally it was around 12 feet in diameter and weighed 7 or 8 tons. But due to souvenir hunters and all that moving about, the rock has been worn down. So how does this big granite rock begin a tradition with turkeys, cornucopia, corn, harvests, thanksgiving, parades, football and so on?

Celebrating Harvests in Other Cultures Celebrating a harvest is not the invention of the Puritans. It has actually been going on for hundreds of years before. And rocks have always been areas for thrones for such celebrations. The Greeks celebrated a harvest festival honoring Demeter, their goddess of agriculture with a 9-day feast. Persephone, the goddess of the seasons was Demeter's daughter. The Romans honored their goddess of harvest, Ceres, with a festival called Cerealia and done every Autumn. Hebrews celebrated the harvest with Sukkoth also known as The Feast of the Tabernacles. This goes on for 8 days. The Egyptians had their God of Fertility, Min, honored in an annual harvest ceremony by having the Pharoh cut the first sheaf of grain. This act was symbolic to help insure everyone would have plenty because the Pharoh was also considered a God. The Chinese have their Harvest Moon Festival. The Japanese have field gods. The Hindu have their harvest protector and the American Seneca Indians have "Green Corn Dance" to honor a harvest. The Iroquois have their "Great Feather Dance" as a celebration of thanks for a good harvest. The ancient Celtic people held a fall celebration the first of November as a feast to the summer's end. See our Halloween History page for further information.

The Pilgrims aka Puritans and the First Thanksgiving. Or was it? So going back to the Rock again, we get the Pilgrims who were nicknamed Puritans because they wanted to purify the English Church of all traces of Roman Catholic influence. Well, that didn't go too well (and is the basis for the problems today in Northern Ireland as I understand it) so they got on a ship called the Mayflower and set sail for this so-called "New World" in which they could live free from England's dominance. And after so many days at sea, they landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts and supposedly stepped on that big granite rock! But after a while they got homesick for some English traditions, and in 1621 history tells us that the first Thanksgiving took place as a way to celebrate the English harvest festival, surviving the long voyage and the first year in this new rocky land and their helpful friends, the Indians. They were simply thankful to be alive still! Chief Massasoit, with 90 other Indians were invited to a dinner that lacked enough food. So, when the Chief saw this, he sent several of his men to go into the forest and get more to eat. They came back with 5 deer. The Indians stayed for 3 days and feasted on fowl, deer, Indian corn, pumpkins, beans, fish, clams, lobster and of course turkey! But history is a bit wrong. The 1621 Thanksgiving wasn't the first real harvest celebration in the New World. It might be the first with Indians invited' however? Actually the first harvest festival was held 40 years earlier by English Settlers in Newfoundland. Another festival was held 14 years before in Maine. And just 3 years before in 1618 a festival in Virginia known as Berkeley's Hundred was held and really beat the Pilgrims' party in 1621.

The Indians & Squanto The Wampanoags are the Indians that lived in the Massachusetts area at the time the English settlers landed. The Wampanoags didn't have an easy life because they were warring with a tribe to the north of them. When the pilgrims (that are credited with originating Thanksgiving) landed on Dec. 26, 1620, it was in the dead of winter. And, I think most of us know that this time of year is pretty harsh, even if you're already settled in with a home, etc. So, the Indians and the new settlers were having it a bit rough. Many of us are also told about Squanto, the Indian who can be considered like a public relations representative between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians because he knew both languages. Many tell the story of how Squanto knew English because he had visited England before. That's a half-truth. You see, several years before (around 1608), Squanto had been captured by the British when he was a boy (along with some other Indians) and taken to Málaga, Spain and sold into slavery. A Spanish monk bought him from his slave owner and treated him well. Squanto was taught English and Christianity by this monk. Somehow, Squanto made his way to England. In England, he worked for John Slaney, a stable owner. While working for Mr. Slaney, Squanto expressed how homesick he was. In 1618, Mr. Slaney heard about a ship sailing for the New World. He got Squanto on that ship and sent him back to live with his people. Unfortunately, when Squanto arrived back in America, he discovered most of his people had died of a disease. While living with the Wampanoags, Squanto was introduced to the Pilgrims (that we now refer to when we think of the first Thanksgiving) by his friend, Samoset. Governor William Bradford was so thrilled to have someone who knew both English and the Indian language that he asked Squanto to be his go-between between the Indians and the settlers. Squanto agreed. So, you see, Squanto didn't voluntarily visit England. He had migrated there after living in slavery and then exile for several years in Spain first. If it wasn't for Mr. Slaney arranging for Squanto to go back to America, Squanto probably would have lived the rest of his life in England. Squanto is credited with being the person who created the first Thanksgiving by speaking with both Chief Massasoit and William Bradford, to set up this feast between the Indians and the Pilgrims with the purpose of giving thanks. Squanto died in November of 1622 from a deadly illness. Governor William Bradford was by his bedside. It is said that he left all his possessions to the English settlers.

Miles Standish Miles Standish is probably the most popular pilgrim, who really wasn't a pilgrim at all. Actually he was a red-haired hot-tempered soldier hired to train the Pilgrims to defend themselves. Miles Standish was supposedly a brave man, except when it came to women. In the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Courtship of Miles Standish" he tells of sending a young John Alden (who was a soldier also and not a Pilgrim btw) to speak for him to the fair Priscilla Mullins. Well, Priscilla wasn't impressed and her reply was, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" (Remind you of Cyrano de Begerac?) Well, it was John Alden who got the girl. Him and Priscilla were married and had 11 children.

How it got to be a holiday? How did Thanksgiving get to be an official holiday? Mrs. Sarah Hale, editor of a magazine called "Dodey's Lady's Book" right after the Civil War persisted for it. For years she wrote the president and congress to establish a day of giving thanks. Eventually, Abraham Lincoln listened and in 1863 decided to proclaim the last day in November as an official Thanksgiving Day for the entire nation. So, for approximately 75 years, annually the president would have to make a proclamation that on November 25th, or November 20th, or November 27th, or November 30th and so on as Thanksgiving. Later on, President Franklin D. Roosevelt realized that it was a bit bothersome to annually declare Thanksgiving based on the last Thursday because the dates kept changing. So President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that he'd have Thanksgiving changed to always be the 4th Thursday in November (regardless of that date) and so it wouldn't have to be an annual proclamation anymore. In 1941, Congress passed a bill finally establishing Thanksgiving as the 4th Thursday in November as a national holiday for the entire nation. Canada, however felt that this was too far away from the actual harvest time, so they created Thanksgiving to be the 2nd Monday in October.

Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Cranberries, Pumpkin Pie, and Stuffing! These traditional foods of Thanksgiving are a way to remind us of living off the land (farm life) and that we really are dependent on the land even today to survive whether we realize it or not in this modern millennium. People today eat these foods as a way of universally joining together to worship and give thanks (much alike the Last Supper in the bible). When an entire nations is presumably eating the very same thing on the same day, it is a way of symbolically becoming one. And it also helps renew our ties with working the soil. Ironically, the first Thanksgiving probably didn't have any pumpkin pie as we know it today. Why? The pilgrims didn't really have many ingredients to make pastry back then. Stuffing wasn't probably eaten due to lack of flour and bread. They weren't going to waste their bread stuffing it inside a turkey. They'd simply eat it as a loaf. Corn on the cob wasn't eaten back then because Indian corn is different (harder) and all they ate was probably just cornbread from cornmeal. Sweet potatoes were not even common to our area. No one had heard of them back in 1620. And potatoes were probably boiled, let alone mashed. Forget gravy also. What might they have eaten? Fish like cod, bass and herring. Of course there were crabs, lobsters, oysers and mussells. For meats they had the turkey, but also partridge, moose, venison and ducks. They also had nuts available as well as some vegetables and edible roots.

The Corn Every nation has it's priority grain. England has it's wheat. Scotland has it's oats. Ireland has it's oats (and barley?). And the New World had it's corn or maize. The belief of a Corn Mother came over from Europe and isn't original to the New World at all. It originated in Greek and Roman times with their Gods, Demeter and Ceres, in which they remained in the LAST sheaf of grain from a harvest festival. Corn husking also became a custom community activity in many parts of Europe and the New World. But,as I said above, the pilgrims didn't eat corn on the cob because only Indian corn was grown at the time and that was too hard. Popcorn wasn't around yet either.

Tom Turkey Why the turkey got to be called "Tom" I am not sure? Some say it goes back to Thomas Jefferson. Originally, the turkey was suppose to be our national bird. Benjamin Franklin really didn't like the eagle because he felt it had bad morals because it robbed it's food for a living and it also had lice. The turkey, however, was more respectable and was a true native bird of North America. However, others felt that the eagle had a more biblical significance and so it won out over the turkey (never being mentioned in the bible). The custom of snapping the turkey's wishbone, to bring good luck or make a wish come true to the person who gets the largest part goes back to the Romans. (Aren't those Romans just full of these little silly customs?) The Etruscans are believed to have started it. When the Romans conquered England, they introduced it. And by the time the Pilgrims brought it to the New World, it was an established custom in England for years. Many word origin philosophers feel that the bone-snapping of the wishbone is the source for the common expression, "To get a lucky break." The person who gets the shorter end when it breaks will not get his/her wish.

Cranberries Nearly one-half of all the cranberries in the world grow in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which equals approximately 2 million barrels a year. The Pilgrims gave this sour tasting berry the name crane berry because of it's pink blossoms and drooping head which reminded them of a crane. Over time the word crane berry slurred into cranberry as we know it today. The Indians used the cranberry as a dye, to eat and as a poultice to draw poison from wounds of arrows. The cranberries also dried well, and therefore were a great source of Vitamin C for sailors on ships to prevent scruvy. Not all cranberries are soft. And rumor has it that a cranberry is given 7 chances to bounce over a 4-inch barrier to become juice or a sauce, or it is thrown out. If you think of Charlie the Tuna, I guess you can pun that phrase, "Sorry Crannie." ;) But, cranberry sauce probably wasn't at the first Thanksgiving meal because sugar was so scarce (if at all) back then. They probably ate cranberries, but not as a sauce.

The Cornucopia (Horn of Plenty) Cornucopia is the most common symbol for a harvest festival. It is a horn shaped container filled with abundance of the earth's harvest. The Greek legend goes that Amalthea, (a goat who honored their God Zeus with her milk for life) broke off one of her horns and filled it with fruits, nuts and flowers for him. To show his gratitude, Zeus later set the goat's image in the sky. Today we know it as the constellation Capricorn.

The Thanksgiving Day Parade The oldest Thanksgiving Day parade goes back to 1920, but it was not done by Macy's in New York City. Actually the parade was held by Gimbel's Department Store in Philadelphia. Macy's Department Store is the one that's the most famous for it's Thanksgiving Day parade. The tradition began back in the early 1920's when many of the employees of Macy's were immigrants. In honor of now being in America, they wanted to celebrate the holiday that represented the founding of this great country. So in 1924 they decided to celebrate in the style that they new back in Europe....with a parade. The employees dressed in various costumes and marched down 145th street to 34th Street. They also had some floats, a band and even some borrowed animals from the New York Zoo. The crowd was estimated to be 250,000. They also used to release the balloons, which floated around for days. Those lucky enough to find one could win a prize. This custom is no longer done. Large, big helium balloons weren't added to the parade until 1927. The first helium balloon was of Felix the Cat. By 1934, the parade grew in popularity making the crowd now 500,000. It was also the year that Disney collaborated with the Macy's parade resulting in the first Mickey Mouse balloon. But, due to the War, the parade was shut down from 1942 to 1944. Rubber and helium couldn't be wasted on parades. In 1945 the parade returned, with an audience of 2 million now. In 1952, the parade was first aired on television. Since 1979, the parade's broadcast has won 9 Emmy Awards also. Still today, the Macy's parade remains one of the main traditional celebrations for Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving & Football Today Football is now associated with Thanksgiving. This is rather traditional since the Pilgrims and the Indians did have sporting contests at their 1621 festival. The Pilgrims displayed their shooting skills with guns while the Indians exhibited their talents with bows and arrows, racing, wrestling and other games. Football has been around for centuries. But, the tradition of a Thanksgiving Day football game in the U.S. first began in the high schools. The first Thanksgiving Day high school game is said to be back in 1882 between Needham and Wellesley in Massachusetts. Wellesley won. To this day, both Needham and Wellesley claim to be the oldest high school football rivalry in the US. However, the longest, uninterrupted rivalry is boasted by Boston-Latin School and Boston-English School. They've played a game every year since 1887. San Francisco is credited with building the first football stadium for high school football. In early 1920's, Mary Kezar stated in her will that money was to be given to build a football stadium (in honor of her late husband) where kids could play football. San Francisco matched her charitable donation and a stadium was built in 1924 near Golden State Park. On Thanksgiving Day in 1925 Kezar Stadium opened. The first game was played between Polytechnic High vs. Lowell High. Lowell High won. And a Thanksgiving Day high school football game began in San Francisco. But, football on Thanksgiving Day didn't go professional until 1934 when G.A. Richards decided to hold a football game in Detroit as a way attracting football fans, because up until that time, it was baseball (Tigers) that was getting the most attention. So, the first Thanksgiving Day football game was between two NFL teams: Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. Since the Chicago Bears were the undefeated World Champions at this time, this also added to the game's popularity. Whoever won, would also be the winner of the NFL Western Division. To help promote this even further, Mr. Richards convinced the NBC Radio to broadcast the game on 94 stations! The results were: Bears = 19 Lions = 16. This 1934 game began the tradition of NFL football on Thanksgiving Day in Detroit. (Except during the War years of 1933-1944). Detroit fans are stoic football fans, especially on Thanksgiving. The tradition of football on Thanksgiving is older than 24 football franchises. The two NFL franchise cities today that hold the Thanksgiving Day football games, are either Detroit or Dallas (started in 1966).

The Beginning of Christmas Shopping Today, Thanksgiving also is the eve of what is called "Black Friday" although I really don't like that name at all. What it is is the official beginning of the Christmas commercial shopping season and it traditionally dates back to the early Norman seasonal fairs held at this time also. It was considered some sort of magical day, so today the myth is that the consumer buying for the rest of the year is based on how good or bad the sales are on Black Friday.

Thanksgiving Phobia The only real Thanksgiving phobia is termed "turkey phobia" by the professionals. No it isn't fear of turkeys. What it is is a fear of NOT cooking the turkey right! For some bizarre reason, our society seems to scorn the woman who fails at cooking a turkey, making a good stuffing and gravy. A San Francisco radio food caster, Harvey Steiman said, "We're hung up on this image if we don't do it exactly right, the ghost of Norman Rockwell will come after us." Forget Norman Rockwell...how about your mother-in-law or other relatives? It seems to be a common activity while the men watch football, the women wander in and out of the kitchen of the hostess giving aged-long advice on how their mothers cooked the bird and taught them? It's a horror every hostess dreads to have people sit down at the table and exclaim how great the beans and almonds are, and say NOTHING about the turkey! Butterball Turkey Corporation offers a Turkey Talk Line that claims to have answered 1,500 calls a day just before Thanksgiving from frantic people trying to pass the infamous "Turkey Cooking Exam" by relatives. Butterball supervisors called it "Turkey Trauma."

Ancestors of the original Mayflower The following Presidents are descendants of original Mayflower settlers as follows: John Adams (John Adams, Hannah Bass, Ruth Alden, JOHN ALDEN) John Adams (John Adams, Hannah Bass, Ruth Alden, PRISCILLA MULLINS, WILLIAM MULLINS) John Quincy Adams (John Adams, John Adams, Hannah Bass, Ruth Alden, JOHN ALDEN) John Quincy Adams (John Adams, John Adams, Hannah Bass, Ruth Alden, PRISCILLA MULLINS, WILLIAM MULLINS) Zachary Taylor (Richard Taylor, Elizabeth Lee, Sarah Allerton, Isaac Allerton, ISAAC ALLERTON ) Zachary Taylor (Richard Taylor, Elizabeth Lee, Sarah Allerton, Isaac Allerton, Fear Brewster, WILLIAM BREWSTER) Ulysses S. Grant (Jesse Grant, Noah Grant, Susanna Delano, Jonathan Delano, Mercy Warren, Nathaniel Warren, RICHARD WARREN) James A. Garfield (Eliza Ballou, Mehitable Ingalls, Sybil Carpenter, Jotham Carpenter, Desire Martin, Mercy Billington, FRANCIS BILLINGTON, JOHN BILLINGTON) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Warren Delano, Ephraim Delano, Thomas Delano, Mercy Warren, Nathaniel Warren, RICHARD WARREN) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Warren Delano, Elizabeth Cushman, James Cushman, Eleazer Cushman, MARY ALLERTON, ISAAC ALLERTON) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Warren Delano, Elizabeth Cushman, James Cushman, Elizabeth Coombs, John Coombs, Sarah Priest, DEGORY PRIEST) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Deborah Church, Deborah Perry, Samuel Perry, Ebenezer Perry, Esther Taber, Esther Cooke, JOHN COOKE, FRANCIS COOKE) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Deborah Church, Deborah Perry, Samuel Perry, Abigail Presbury, Deborah Skiffe, Lydia Snow, Abigail Warren, RICHARD WARREN) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sara Delano, Warren Delano, Deborah Church, Joseph Church, Caleb Church, Nathaniel Church, Joseph Church, Joseph Church, Elizabeth Warren, RICHARD WARREN) Franklin D. Roosevelt (James Roosevelt, Mary Aspinwall, Susan Howland, Joseph Howland, Nathanial Howland Jr., Nathanial Howland Sr., Joseph Howland, JOHN HOWLAND) Franklin D. Roosevelt (James Roosevelt, Mary Aspinwall, Susan Howland, Joseph Howland, Nathanial Howland Jr., Nathanial Howland Sr., Joseph Howland, ELIZABETH TILLEY, JOHN TILLEY) George H.W. Bush (Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Elizabeth Pierce, Betsy Wheeler, Sarah Horton, Joanna Wood, Jabez Wood, Hannah Nelson, Hope Huckins, Hope Chipman, Hope Howland, JOHN HOWLAND) George H.W. Bush (Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Elizabeth Pierce, Betsy Wheeler, Sarah Horton, Joanna Wood, Jabez Wood, Hannah Nelson, Hope Huckins, Hope Chipman, Hope Howland, ELIZABETH TILLEY, JOHN TILLEY) George H.W. Bush (Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Courtland Butler, Samuel Butler, Sarah Herrick, Silence Kingsley, Samuel Kingsley, Mary Washburn, Elizabeth Mitchell, Jane Cooke, FRANCIS COOKE) George W. Bush (George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Elizabeth Pierce, Betsy Wheeler, Sarah Horton, Joanna Wood, Jabez Wood, Hannah Nelson, Hope Huckins, Hope Chipman, Hope Howland, JOHN HOWLAND) George W. Bush (George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Elizabeth Pierce, Betsy Wheeler, Sarah Horton, Joanna Wood, Jabez Wood, Hannah Nelson, Hope Huckins, Hope Chipman, Hope Howland, ELIZABETH TILLEY, JOHN TILLEY) George W. Bush (George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Flora Sheldon, Mary Butler, Courtland Butler, Samuel Butler, Sarah Herrick, Silence Kingsley, Samuel Kingsley, Mary Washburn, Elizabeth Mitchell, Jane Cooke, FRANCIS COOKE) George W. Bush (Barbara Pierce, Marvin Pierce, Jonas Pierce, Chloe Holbrook, John Holbrook, John Holbrook, Zilpha Thayer, Mary Samson, Stephen Samson, HENRY SAMSON) The following Vice Presidents are descendants of original Mayflower settlers as follows: Dan Quayle (James Quayle, Marie Cline, Delia Burras, Oscar Burras, Sally Standish, Peleg Standish, Zachariah Standish, Zachariah Standish, Ebenezer Standish, Alexander Standish, MYLES STANDISH) Dan Quayle (James Quayle, Marie Cline, Delia Burras, Oscar Burras, Sally Standish, Peleg Standish, Zachariah Standish, Zachariah Standish, Ebenezer Standish, Sarah Alden, JOHN ALDEN) The following First Ladies are descendants of original Mayflower settlers as follows: Barbara (Pierce) Bush: (Marvin Pierce, Jonas Pierce, Chloe Holbrook, John Holbrook, John Holbrook, Zilpha Thayer, Mary Samson, Stephen Samson, HENRY SAMSON) Lucretia (Rudolph) Garfield: (Arabella Mason, Lucretia Greene, John Green, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Winslow, Edward Winslow, MARY CHILTON, JAMES CHILTON) Edith (Carrow) Roosevelt [Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt]: (Gertrude Tyler, Emily Lee, Elizabeth Gorham, Stephen Gorham, Desire Howland, JOHN HOWLAND)

The Family Gathering: Love it or Hate it? Fear of getting together with family on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other holiday or event such as graduations, weddings, funerals etc. is often the most stressful and depressing thing for many of us. I've made a separate page on this topic for those that want to read it. Holiday Stress

A Thanksgiving Toast for your table from us:

To the American Eagle- and the Thanksgiving Turkey- May one give us peace in all our States, And the other a piece for all our plates.

Visit our other Thanksgiving Pages
besides Thanksgiving History

Includes Thanksgiving Jokes, Riddles, Quotes, Poems, Etc.	Play our Thanksgiving Trivia Game.
Play our Thanksgiving Bingo Game while the turkey cooks.	We've got a couple of different fun recipes to serve with your traditional meal.

CNN's "How To Carve A Turkey" Flash Animation!
Get Turkey Wishbones for Everyone!

Try our recipe for great wild rice stuffing.

Sources:
"Holiday Folklore, Phobias and Fun" by Donald E. Dossey, Ph.D
Outcomes Unlimited Press, Inc. © 1992

Holiday Symbols, 2nd Edition by Sue Ellen Thompson
Omnigraphics, Inc. © 2000 and the following websites:

NFL.com
ProFootball Hall of Fame.com
The Detroit Lions.com
Native Americans.com
DesiJournal.com
TeacherVision.com
BillPetro.com
EnjoyMa.com/Boston
Macys.com

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