A riled up friend who wasn’t familiar with Samuel Huntington's more polemical side, pointed me to his cover essay in Foreign Policy, “The Hispanic Challenge.” It’s chock full of all sorts of interesting statistics about Hispanic immigration into the U.S. and how this affects U.S. culture. “Affect” is my word. Huntington would prefer “threaten” – and I’m not putting words in his mouth. Here’s a taste

In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives. Americans like to boast of their past success in assimilating millions of immigrants into their society, culture, and politics. But Americans have tended to generalize about immigrants without distinguishing among them and have focused on the economic costs and benefits of immigration, ignoring its social and cultural consequences. As a result, they have overlooked the unique characteristics and problems posed by contemporary Hispanic immigration. The extent and nature of this immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration, and the assimilation successes of the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary flood of immigrants from Latin America. This reality poses a fundamental question: Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish).

Read the now classic article "Clash of Civilizations" here.

George W. Bush doesn’t listen to focus groups when making policy. He uses his own moral compass. Or maybe not

The Bush administration, in the middle of its own campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and others it considers terrorists, found itself on Monday in the position of being pressed by world opinion to criticize as "deeply troubling" Israel's assassination of the leader of Hamas.

In a startling sequence of events unusual even for the ups and downs of Middle East policy, the administration began the day by avoiding direct criticism of Israel after the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City.
Instead, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said in a morning television interview that Hamas was a terrorist organization, that Sheik Yassin had been involved in terrorist actions and that it was "very important that everyone step back and try now to be calm in the region."
Only later in the afternoon did the administration shift tone and criticize Israel's action as harmful to the cause of bringing peace to the region.
…

An administration official acknowledged that a change of tone was chosen only after a torrent of criticism erupted throughout the Arab world, and was then joined by condemnations from the European Union and Britain, Washington's closest ally in the Iraq war.

We don’t listen to focus groups. Right.

Here’s Condi Rice lamely attempting to counter the thermonuclear bomb Richard Clarke dropped on the administration

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the president, like all Americans, wanted to know who was responsible. It would have been irresponsible not to ask a question about all possible links, including to Iraq -- a nation that had supported terrorism and had tried to kill a former president.

Here’s a question I would ask then that hasn't in response to this defense: Why was the president just asking about Iraq if we use Rice’s answer that he was simply exploring all possible options? I would think a more likely suspect would be Libya if one was concerned about a state sponsor of the attack. Why was only Iraq brought up specifically? Why not then future Axis of Evil member Iran – also on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism? These obviously are rhetorical questions. The White House defense on the Clarke allegations are like a boxer who has been seriously hurt but it still on his feet. He can swing back wildly, but can’t hit anything and if he did it wouldn’t do much damage. Don’t get me wrong though. This won’t hurt the president. In a month, this will only be a footnote in campaign 2004 as most issues of substance end up in favor of political fluff.

I found this notice from Slate more than a little amusing

Arab satellite television channels picked up the slack: All day Monday, stations such as Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, and Hezbollah's Al-Manar ran live feed from Palestinian demonstrations in the lead-up to Yassin's funeral. In contrast, at midday, when many people in the Arab world were watching television to find out what was happening, the U.S.-government-financed Arabic-language satellite station Al-Hurra was showing a translated American cooking program. This hardly endeared the station (which is supposed to provide an alternative approach to regional news that is more friendly to the United States) to Arab viewers. Whatever the reason, Al-Hurra's not pursuing the story in real time will be interpreted by many Arabs as politically motivated. Yassin's death was Al-Hurra's first test, and the station failed spectacularly.

Interestingly, Al-Hurra has no live stream on the web. Al-Jazeera used to have one accessible from their website. I can’t with my limited Arabic seem to find it any more -- although you can watch regular programs. However, it is available from other third party sites (don’t ask me about the technical aspects of this).

"Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli airstrike, residents say." The cycle of violence in Israel and the occupied territories just got a lot of fuel added to the fire.

[4:40 PM] More scary headlines: “Al-Qaida's No. 2 Claims to Have Nukes.” This time the source at least is the real deal.

[8:16 PM] Here’s a frightening headline: “Al-Qaeda Looking to Use Ships in Attacks, Analyst Says.” One of easy holes to point out in this war on terrorism we’re waging is how a lack of imagination leaves a number of angles of potential terrorist attack open. Remember all that silly talk right after 9/11 about picking Hollywood movie types’ brains for ideas on what terrorists might do in the future? Anyway, could al-Qaida use ships to attack ports with WMD? Maybe, but this article says nothing remotely like what the headline implies. “Al-Qaeda could attempt to attempt to attack a port city using a weapon of mass destruction carried by ship, a defense analyst said yesterday.” The article does not quote the analyst in question providing any rationale or intelligence for this whatsoever. I don’t know what to make of it, bad journalism or sketchy analysis. The AP story this is based on has only a slightly less hyperbolic headline. The analyst in question though seems to conflate vulnerability with intent. Let’s leave that to the current administration.

[3:06 PM] Be sure to check out the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s report “The State of the Media 2004.” “[J]ournalism is in the midst of an epochal transformation, as momentous probably as the invention of the telegraph or television. Journalism, however, is not becoming irrelevant. It is becoming more complex. We are witnessing conflicting trends of fragmentation and simultaneously, and they sometimes lead in opposite directions,” the report says in its introduction.

[2:52 PM] Reflections on Madrid -- a rant. Let’s face it. If terrorists want to strike the U.S. and cause mass casualties as well as mass panic, it wouldn’t be hard to do. This may be another Howard Dean, “we’re not safer with the capture of Saddam” moment, but I was thinking about the Madrid bombing. So much of the “increased” security measures we took in this country after 9/11 are just plain silly. If we are honest and say we can only do so much, fine. But we have this pretend debate that if we take this or that window dressing measure, we’ll somehow be safer. I saw NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg on CNN today remarking that he still takes the subway every day to work. And I thought, Are our subways any safer because we deploy some well armed National Guard units in the stations in light of the Madrid incident. Of course not. It’s not even a comfort to me. I’m not suggesting any other course of action, but it’s ridiculous how we go through the motions of trying to make things safer without doing anything substantive. What has gotten my ire about this are two incidents I’ve experienced in the last year and half, both at airports. We all hear those recorded announcements to be wary of and report unattended bags. Have you ever reported one? I have. The response? Two big collective yawns, and “yeah thanks, we’ll get to it.” One incident was at LAX and the other at San Jose’s airport – both during the holidays when the airports were packed. I reported the LAX bag to an information booth that it happened to be right across from. The women seem baffled as to why I was telling her this, but said she’d take care of it. The bag sat there for an additional 45 minutes while I watched it. The end of that story is not that TSA officers came and took it but I had to board my plane so who knows how long it actually stayed there. A similar incident happened this past holiday season at SJC, except this time I reported the bag directly to a TSA official. Still nothing but a yawn and an “okay, we’ll see about it.” Again I waited and watched while the bag sat there and it was still sitting there some time later when I had to board my plane. Now I contrast this to my experience some years ago in 1994 (note: seven years before 9/11) in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport when security officials discovered an unattended bag themselves. In less than 2 minutes, the area was cordoned off, the suspect bag isolated and prepared to be removed and exploded, before a sheepish man came running through the terminal to stop them, claiming the bag. Now I ask, does this happen at any airports here? I genuinely don’t know. It certainly hasn’t been my experience. After 9/11, we only get plastic utensils on our flights and no one except for passengers with security documents can get through security to the gates at our airports (except for that pesky little loophole where you can print your own security document at home, flash it without ID at the harried person funneling people through security and go on your merry way). This just doesn’t bode well as even not so well-prepared terrorist could easily pull off on any major subway/metro system or airport the exact same thing that happened in Madrid. I don’t have anything profound to say about this except, let’s stop fooling ourselves that these superficial steps make us any safer.

[11:11 AM] This isn’t getting any play in the mainstream media, but check out Iraq on the Record.

The Iraq on the Record Report prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. [S]earch options...can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.

[10:38 AM] A wonderful essay appeared in the NYT on Saturday that gets at the heart of one of the reasons I started this adventure – the divide between America and the rest of the world, especially Europe, both culturally and politically. Definitely worth a read.

[4:15 PM] A nice article about U.S. foreign policy particularly in the Middle East appears today in the LA Times. The article begins with the provocative assertion “When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago this week, the action transformed American foreign policy in the Middle East and around the world — but not always as its strategists intended.” The strategists quoted include Joseph Nye, Robert Kagan, and Graham Allision. The article generously refers to the current Iraq war as one of prevention – as opposed to preemption – a distinction the administration frequently conflates. It’s an interesting article though that I wish had been 1,000 words longer. Check it out.

[6:05 PM] I probably spend too much time complaining about and to CNN about poor reporting. Today was my first response from CNN so I suspend coverage of international events to relate the story. I’ve mentioned his plight with the media enough times here for people to assume I’m a Howard Dean supporter (I’m not). But let’s face it, the guy got a raw deal from a lot of the media – before the scream. My particular point of contention was the ridiculed statement he made about not being safer after the capture of Saddam – which is 100% true. Now the Iowa scream has interested me simply for its comic value. But after ABC News fessed up that the scream was a product of focusing on his individual microphone which significantly blocked out ambient crowd noise, I thought finally, a media outlet not afraid to admit that it was wrong. But as I’m sure you’re aware the Dean Scream continues to talked about in the media without that caveat. This bothers me. So last Saturday when the CNN program, In The Money, repeated the same nonsense in an interview with a Dean staffer, I’d had enough and sent off a polite email to the show. Here’s the text

Dear In the Money,

In your Saturday interview with the former Dean staffer, you (CNN) continue to ignore what other media outlets have now admitted: when you play the "Dean Scream" you're isolating on his microphone and placing it above the ambient crowd noise. As at least ABC has admitted, in the room, you could barely hear the guy. It is disingenuous to keep referring to this moment as Dean unhinged. I single out CNN because the network has admitted that perhaps it played the scream too much, but you still seem reluctant to admit that it was really the scream that wasn't.

Here’s the not so polite response I got today

Dear Jeff:

Look, Dean LOST the Iowa caucauses [sic] before the "scream" incident. In fact he came in a woeful 3rd after leading for a long time. Both the Dean supporters and lazy journalists of the world will forever point to the scream coverage as the "reason" why he lost. That's a joke. Was the Dean coverage blown out of proportion? Sure it was. Did it kill his chances? Nope.

There is no real or even logical reason why CNN would want to derail anybody's campaign. The shortening of the primary process actually cost us millions of dollars in advertising that would have come our way from Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, etc.


Jake Novak
Producer

Of course I never wrote anything about being bitter that Dean lost or that CNN derailed his campaign. I simply pointed out that I thought journalistic ethics would preclude them from repeating a false story – that is that Dean had lost his mind and was screaming irrationally rather than Dean having to yell to make himself heard over a boisterous crowd and still wasn’t doing a good job of it. I guess they’re a little sensitive over there. But thank you Jake for the lesson in primary politics.

[8:37 PM] Ask any Middle East security expert about Iran’s security situation and they’ll tell you that Iran lives in a dangerous neighborhood (admittedly less so since Gulf War II). So why can’t they have nuclear weapons if Israel does? Read here for a take on this. I’ve written hear before, that much like the U.S. “one China” policy, we can’t mention the nuclear elephant in the room with regards to Israel.

[6:38 PM] Colin Powell explains to NPR exactly what happened when Jean Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti for the Central African Republic. (not really but you can listen to his thoughts on the matter here). Juan Williams tries to pin Powell down on whether the administration reigns in his more multilateral and well, diplomatic approaches to his job. Powell insults our collective intelligence by giving a firm denial and hoping we don’t read newspapers or have very short memories.

[6:16 PM] The U.S. press isn’t too concerned with the Haiti situation. There are, however, still unanswered questions about just what happened as Aristide decided to resign and flee and what I find curious, the question of how he ended up in the Central African Republic is still a “mystery.” How did the U.S. allow 20 Marines to get on a plane with no idea of their destination? The headline in this BBC story claims that Aristide is accusing France of colluding with the U.S. in his ouster. The article however neglects to actually discuss what’s in the head line. But the BBC is on the case for your Haiti news.

[11:00 AM] Salon’s War Room links to a Knight-Ridder story that Salon says demonstrates the underreported, bogus links between Saddam and al-Qaida. Salon’s headline reads “The case for war: Sketchy and false.” But the actual story is more nuanced (if poorly written). The actual story headline reads “Hussein ties to al Qaeda appear faulty.” While the story goes on to conclude that there was no cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida, it clearly points out that there were numerous contacts between the two. To me that’s at a link. That doesn’t justify manipulating intelligence that says cooperation was unlikely, but the Salon characterization is misleading. Consider these lines from the article

Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Hussein's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings…

Administration officials reported that Farouk Hijazi, a top Iraqi intelligence officer, had met with bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1998 and offered him safe haven in Iraq.

They left out the rest of the story, however. Bin Laden said he would consider the offer, U.S. intelligence officials said. But according to a report later made available to the CIA, the al Qaeda leader told an aide afterward that he had no intention of accepting Saddam's offer because “if we go there, it would be his agenda, not ours.”

Now if you’re a Bush/Cheney defender, I would definitely point to the fact that there were these contacts. To me that’s disturbing. Enough to go to war? No. But not as simple as “there are no links between the two.” Just food for thought.