Global Paradigms

I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Ron Paul when I visited his office and briefed him and his colleagues on Middle Eastern issues last year (and I know that he had read my two books on the Middle East and liked them). He is clearly a man of integrity and an American patriot who is committed to classical liberal principles and is opposed to the current interventionist U.S. foreign policy. I hope that he win the Republican party's presidential nomination (and this is my personal view which doesn't necessarily reflect the outlets I'm associated with). But even if he doesn't, it seems to me that he has helped transform the debate on foreign policy, and especially the war in Iraq by drawing the attention of the general public and the media (including MSM) to the idea that America needs to start reducing its military commitments abroad, and especially in the Middle East, and embrace a policy that reflects U.S. interests and principles. We clearly need that!

My radio interview with Federal News Service on Bhutto's death, etc. is here. Also see comments by Jim Henley and Henri. And I also liked the op-ed by David Ignatius, , who is one of the smartest guys in town, and especially the following words of wisdom: Bhutto's death is a brutal demonstration of the difficulty for outsiders in understanding -- let alone tinkering with -- a country such as Pakistan. The Bush administration attempted a bit of political engineering when it tried to broker an alliance between Musharraf and Bhutto and sought to position her as the country's next prime minister. Yesterday's events were a reminder that global politics is not Prospero's island, where we can conjure up the outcomes we want. In places such as Pakistan, where we can't be sure where events are heading, the wisest course for the United States is the cautious one of trying to identify and protect American interests. Pakistanis will decide how and when their country ma...

(Lithograph by Honoré Daumier(1808-1879) Business Times - 28 Dec 2007 Events in 2007 and in 2008 accentuating the trend By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THERE was a time - many years ago - when Time magazine was considered to be an American and international 'institution'. That explained why the world's movers and shakers paid a lot of attention to the individual that the founder Henry Luce and his successors picked as the magazine's Man of the Year. That choice - basically announcing who was the persona that had the power to change the world - reflected the wisdom prevailing then among the political and corporate elites, located mostly in New York and Washington. But gradually, Time magazine was transformed from that institution into the older and serious brother of People magazine, and now it has become, for all practical purposes, the Lenin Mausoleum of American journalism, an institutional corpse that is being preserved for some reason (prestige?) while People...

My piece from the January 2008 issue of Chronicles magazine: (and sorry about speaking ill of the dead...) PAKISTAN: HERE WE GO AGAIN Condi Rice had a vision: It was springtime in Pakistan, and love was in the air—which was an ideal time for a chick flick. From the lady who brought us the Shiite-Sunni Love Fest in Iraq, Fatah-Hamas: Isn’t It Romantic? in Palestine, The Amorous Cedars in Lebanon, not to mention the first season of Democratic Idol in Ukraine (Viktor Yushchenko) and Georgia (Mikheil Saakashvili) would come a new production, A Match Made in Heaven, starring small-time military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the slick and crooked ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. At the Happy End of this new romantic drama would come the ultimate Celebration of Sisterhood: Two hip babes are brought together—Rice, the symbol of the powerful awakening of African-American feminism, commanding the world’s attention with her pair of black knee-high boots, hugs Bhutto, whose trademark white s...

I initially had some hesitations about going to see a film that takes place in a hospital. I’m glad that I did see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It is a cinematic masterpiece that invites you to enter into the mind of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the 43-year-old Elle editor, who is played by Mathieu Almaric, (who btw is the son of famous French journalist, Jacques Amalric). Bauby suffered a massive stroke that left him completely paralyzed, unable to speak and with the use of his one good eye he communicated through blinking—once for yes, twice for no, and once when he heard a letter he wanted to use in a word and dictated the novel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Visiting Bauby’s mind consists of a collage of memories and fantasies. You experience the recreation of brain activity that keeps him alive. The visual effects are sensational and you are forced to consider central religious and philosophical dilemmas such as the meaning of consciousness. It’s a movie about de...

There was a time – many years ago – when Time magazine was an “institution” (Henry Luce, etc.) and I used to read it from cover to cover. I even received an award from ex-editor Henry Grunwald when I graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and was offered a job in their “Discover” magazine (didn’t take it). In any case, since those days Time was gradually transformed into the older and serious brother of People magazine, and now it has basically become the Lenin Mausoleum of American journalism. Which begs the question: who really cares which person or thing (remember “You” ?) Time chooses at the end of the year? Time has decided to put Vladimir Putin on the cover this year. Wow! I don’t plan on reading the reasons for their choice. I guess that it’s something along the lines of Russia turning into a renewed “threat” to the West? Putin=Peter the Great=Stalin? Cold War II? My “thing” of 2007 is the move by Government of Singapore Investment Corp. and an “identified Midd...

A few years ago I had assigned the late 60 Minutes producer George Crile’s Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times for one of my political science classes. It’s a great read. But I was also hoping that the book about the alcoholic, (druggie?), womanizing and corrupt Democrat who represented Texas’s Second Congressional District, a Bill Clinton-type minus Yale/Oxford, and the “adventures” he and a loud-mouth and fat CIA operator and a Born-Again Reaganite and over-sexed socialite from Texas had shared during the twilight years of the Cold War supporting Osama bin Ladin and his gang would help demonstrate to my students one of the arguments that classical liberals/libertarians make that “war is the health of the state,” and in the case of Charlie and his pals, that wars help you raise election campaign money, get re-elected, get laid and party until it’s the end of the Soviet Union. Ind...

The conventional wisdom de jour in Washington, DC, can be summed up in a catchphrase popularized by Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign: "It's the economy, stupid!" The former Arkansas governor was challenging then-President George H.W. Bush, who had led the United States into a military victory against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, criticizing Bush Senior for focusing too much attention on foreign policy as opposed to dealing with the economic recession of the early 1990s. Clinton and his aides were suggesting that American voters were sick and tired of Iraq, the Middle East, and other global policy issues and wanted the election campaign to concentrate on the economy. According to pollsters and pundits, it's déjà vu all over again at the end of George W. Bush's presidency, with the aftermath of another Gulf War, the U.S. economy entering a recession, and Democrats seeming to have a chance of regaining the White House. The promoters of this ...

I loved the book by the British Ian Mcewan who is one of the contemporary fiction writers that I enjoy reading. The movie is quite remarkable (some of the war scenes in the film are unbelievable!). But here is my problem: What Mcewan is trying to do in the book is to demonstrate how we as individuals or communities (in the case of the book, a family) create our separate narratives that in many cases do not correspond to reality, and that we end up embracing them to a point where the narrative becomes our reality. But sooner or later the truth comes out in all its ugliness. Now..this transition from narrative to reality works in the book, but not in the movie (which explains why so many viewers say they were "confused" by the ending of the movie). I think that the main reason is that to use the cliche, seeing is believing. And when you watch something happening on the screen, it's difficult to consider the possibility that all of that didn't happen (which explains w...

During my weekly visits to Borders and B&N I came across Moncole magazine, a monthly published in Europe which is a very weird creature, imagine a cross between GQ and Foreign Affairs. I assume that the target readership consists of young CEO's with Ph.Ds. Actually, it's more interesting than some of the American political-cultural magazines and it is certainly less U.S.-centric. BTW, annual subscription comes to about US$150.

Neocons Won't Let Facts Stand in the Way of Iran 'Threat' by Leon Hadar Longtime viewers of the popular NBC television show Saturday Night Live probably recall "Emily Litella" – an elderly woman with hearing problems commenting on the news on the "Weekend Update" segment, played by the late comedian Gilda Radner. Litella would read an editorial addressing a public issue, only to be interrupted in the middle of her report by the anchorman, who would point to her error. "Oh, that's very different," she would humbly respond, adding, "Never mind" and then turn to another topic. But while Litella was humble enough to admit her mistake and smart enough to change the subject, the proponents of a U.S. military confrontation with Iran will not allow the release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear weapons program to interrupt their march to World War III.( read the rest )

Business Times - 15 Dec 2007 RELIEF PLANS US sub-prime bailout creates a moral hazard Proposed rate freeze may drag out recession, responsible mortgagees will have to compete for benefits and tax breaks By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT 'HELP is on the way!' is the kind of slogan that should probably be embraced by every US politician ranging from the Republican White House to the Democratic-controlled Congress - all of whom seem to agree that the federal government needs to come with a 'relief plan' to help consumers and businesses devastated by the ups and downs of the economy. Indeed, notwithstanding the ideological differences between the free marketers who supposedly dominate the Republican party and the more social-democratic-oriented Democrats, the fact is that both parties share the view that the government needs to 'do something' to deal with the current sub-prime crisis. While Democratic lawmakers, presidential candidates and liberal pundits have ...

Business Times - 06 Dec 2007 Does the 'Bernanke put' matter any more? Critics argue that financial bailout policies encourage risky lending in the future By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IS IT fair to suggest that the US central bank is predisposed to 'bail out' the financial markets? That is what critics of the Fed have charged, pointing out to predictable expansionary policy adjustments in response to pressures from investors worried about the diminishing value of their assets. And these measures have been named after the chairmen of the US Federal Reserve - thus the 'Greenspan put' or the 'Bernanke put'. The critics have argued that such policies have amounted to a 'moral hazard'; the argument being that financial bailouts encourage risky lending in the future, if those that take the risks come to believe that they will not have to carry the full burden of losses. William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, in an ad...