Twenty Years Ago

In 1984 I was on a study abroad program in Yugoslavia. One night we met up with some German students and sampled a great deal of the local malt beverage and got talking about politics. I (clumsily) brought up the idea of reunification and they shrugged it off. A pipe dream, they said. Maybe in our lifetimes, but there's no sign of even a glimmer of possibility.

Five years later, and twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall came down, and the dominoes fell in reverse. Having visited Czechoslovakia, I confidently predicted to my friends that whatever happened elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact, Czechoslovakia would remain stubbornly communist. Then the Velvet Revolution happened. (I related this story to an international law prof who told me he said the same thing. Took a little of the sting out.)

Today I teach young men and women who have never lived in a world with a Communist bloc. Perhaps one reason political adversaries are so careless with charges of communism is that it's been so long since we've seen the real thing.

A dance club we frequented back in Yugoslavia played David Bowie's "Heroes" pretty much every night. It is to this day one of my favorite pop culture indictments of Soviet totalitarianism. The song is about lovers trysting by the Berlin Wall, but Bowies singing transcends the specific narrative to capture the universal yearning for freedom.

Pho's Akron Pages: Insufficiently Subversive

A friend returned from a business trip to China with a gift: a screen shot my blogger from inside the PRC:
He says that my blog is entirely accessible on the state-sponsored internet there. Kinda cool to think of people (OK, a white guy I've known twenty years) reading the blog in China. On the other hand it means that my blog hasn't done anything to alert the Chinese censors, much less piss them off.

Need to work on that.

The Boring Made Dull Goes Global

I was just driving and listening to the BBC's World Have Your Say on WCPN. The subject was the recent suggestion by Bishop Martinus Muskens in The Netherlands that everyone start referring to God as "Allah." As the show is wont to do, they quoted blog reaction on the topic at hand. First up was from Akron's own The Boring Made Dull quoting the following passage of this post:

I wasn't aware that we got to name God; He names himself.

. . . the name of God carries a theological position. Allah isn’t the God worshipped by Christians or Jews. This is a distinction that every Muslim understands – Why can’t a Catholic Bishop get it?

When I read it last night I thought it was a nice turn of phrase. I also think it's incorrect -- the God of Islam is called Allah in Arabic and is the same God (or concept of God if you prefer to think in those terms.) The fundamental cleavage between Islam and everyone else isn't "There is no God but Allah," it's in ". . .and Mohammed is His prophet." Therein lies the rub with the good Bishop's kumbayaa by branding plan. So Boring and I take equally dim views of the idea, but from somewhat different angles.

But I digress. I thought it was a nice turn of phrase and distilled the conservative Christian viewpoint down to a compact couple of sentences. The thing Boring excels at and that frankly keeps the blog from living down to its name. Hearing the words of a local blogger and friendly adversary quoted on an international news program underscores the "Worldwide" in Worldwide Web.

By the way, World Have Your Say maintains a program blog and Boring's words appear on the post regarding today's show, but with no link. Bad form in any language. I exhort Ohio bloggers of all stripes to dish the link love liberally.

Apparently There Is a Protest in Cleveland Tomorrow

This from ProgressOhio:

President Bush will be in Cleveland on Tuesday July 10th, 2007.
Let’s keep the conversation on the war and bring our troops home.

Join other Ohioans at the Free Stamp
to protest Bush’s wrong turns in Iraq

Free Stamp
Corner of Lakeside and E. 9th Street
Downtown Cleveland
11:15 am, Tuesday July 10th, 2007

ProgressOhio would like you to RSVP if you plan to attend.

Now I am signed up with ProgOh as a blogger using my hotmail account and somehow also got signed up on another email account I use for other business. As of now, my Hotmail has received four identical emails from ProgOh field director Matt Hurm announcing the protest, plus a press advisory from Director Brian Rothenberg about a press conference at the Free stamp. My other account has received six emails from Hurm announcing the protest.

OK guys. I get it. Protest tomorrow. I'm posting. No mas!

Saddam Had WMD and Rod Parsley Can Prove It. So There.

From the Revealer (h/t Faith in Public Life):

Rod Parsley, a rising star of charismatic fundamentalism who's had a heavy impact on national politics, features on his "Breakthrough" program tonight Dr. Perry Stone, an apocalypse scholar who claims top national security sources and Israelis assure him that inspectors discovered enough WMDs in Saddam's bunkers before the war to destroy the world three times over. Why didn't he? Because he wanted to give them to his mortal enemy of Iran, using special airplanes -- with the seats torn out to make room for more nukes!

As the Revealer post points out, this gets scary because Parsley has a sizeable flock of real people who believe him when he flogs this garbage.

And by the way, I'm sure it's entirely a coincidence that he runs out something this splashworthy at the same time he has a new book to plug. His promo campaign for the book gives some insight into how he lures people in. Here's the blurb from Amazon:

Parsley exposes the failure of the current generation of believers to engage the culture, present a relevant gospel, and lead/influence through service - and paints a vivid picture of the cost and implications of that failure.
Parsley explains how the culture wars have entered a new, critical phase for the U.S., and discusses the areas in which this war is being fought (Cultural, Scientific, Geopolitical, Media and Academia). He presents an understanding of the paradigms, assumptions, and values that animate the humanist, secularist and neo-pagan enemies of Christianity in America and offers a strategy for winning this "war" - what he calls a New Great Awakening - and how evangelism, social action the engagement of culture fit into that plan.

Well. Sounds either confrontational or hopelessly dry depending on whether you focus on the "winning the war" part or the "paradigms, assumptions and values" part. But look how he plugs it on his site:

What bothers you about America? Is this the country it should be ... or are you troubled by what it has become? A land of Red vs. Blue. Left vs. Right. Political actors. Acting politicians. Exhausted soccer moms, overworked dads and scared kids. A country where addicted athletes and violent hip-hop artists swagger through million dollar mansions dripping with “bling,” while teachers who sacrifice their lives to educate the next generation call a first-floor apartment home and sell their jewelry for textbooks.

“The minds and hearts of this generation have become the theater of conflict. It is a war of competing, mutually exclusive ways of viewing the universe and man’s place in it. It is a clash of paradigms, of value systems, and of visions of the future.”
From the East Coast to the West, and all the “flyover” states in between, America divides itself. The dichotomy is so great, in fact, that many can describe themselves using one of two words: Liberal or Conservative. And they all have an opinion. Ask anyone you meet on the street, however, and most will agree on one thing: We’re witnessing our nation’s demise.

That first paragraph would fit comfortably in campaign lit for either Edwards or Obama. And if not them, maybe Jim Webb or Jon Tester -- some Democratic economic populist in other words. Parsley was deeply free market through the last election. Now suddenly he's Jim Hightower. Some might argue he knows which way the wind blows, but I suspect a bait and switch.

Scenes from the Road: Surging from Ohio

Driving out on the Turnpike we saw a flatbed carrying a tanker truck obviously destined for the Middle East. Not only was it painted a uniform flat desert tan, the “Flammable” sign was written in both English and Arabic. A few ticks down the road we saw what looked like a C-130 in the air, then another. These were most likely headed to Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, home base for the Air National Guard’s 910 Airlift Wing. Among others, State Sen. and Congressional candidate Maj. John Boccieri flies for the 910th.

All of which got me reflecting on the surreality of this war we are in. Here we are, almost five years into an honest to goodness U.S. vs. Someone Else war and it still doesn’t feel like it. The one thing the Bush Administration has done well is insulate the American people from directly feeling the effects of the war. Much of this they did by kicking the costs down the road.

One gets the sense that the original plan was to preserve his own popularity, not that of the war. After all, post 9/11 when the whole country was rallying together, Bush didn’t ask for shared sacrifice, he told people to go shopping. Still, the ultimate effect of hiding the war from ourselves was to dampen criticism for months.

Now we are feeling it, though military families are still bearing the costs and we still go on with our lives with only the news and an occasional highway intrusion to remind us that we are a country at war.

Scenes from the Road: Starbucks and the Regular Joe

Standing in a Pennsylvania Tollway rest stop waiting for the ladies to finish up in the bathroom, I notice a guy loitering with intent outside the Starbucks stand. His shirt reads “Born to Party/Forced to Work.” From the first he looks – and this is horribly judgmental and I beg forgiveness of my readers and the rest of the universe – but he looks like a guy who drinks too much and has three ex-wives and consistently votes Republican.

I distract myself with something until, a couple minutes later, he has wandered randomly by me having now begun a cell phone conversation. He’s telling a story: “So there’s these Marines in Afghanistan and they like Starbuck’s coffee and the write and see if they can have some coffee donated and shipped over and Starbucks says ‘Go to Hell.

“Yeah, ‘Go to Hell.’ They say ‘We don’t support the war and we don’t support you so go to Hell.’

“Yeah, so forget Starbucks.”

At this point two of my three impressions now have some evidence behind them.

The Starbucks story seems more than a little off. Unless the Starbucks corporate hierarchy has been overrun by agents of International A.N.S.W.E.R., the company that seems bent on putting a kiosk on every corner probably wouldn’t respond so harshly to members of the Armed Forces.

So I did some quick Googling at the next opportunity. And happily, Starbucks hasn’t been taken over by crypto-Stalinists. Snopes as usual comes to the rescue; you can read Starbuck tale of woe here and what they've done to turn it around here. It’s interesting that this one actually gets traced back to some guy who thought it was true. And it’s a measure of Starbucks sensitivity to PR surrounding the Armed Forces that they simply talked to Sgt. Wright as opposed to suing him into a fine powder.

Stories like this one take hold because of the Right’s regrettably potent stereotype of anti-war activists – wooly-headed, Birkenstock-wearing, latte-sipping and soldier-hating.. Granted, the anti-war movement could have worked harder to not be that movement, but I doubt it would have made a difference. The Republican noise machine had too much vested in discrediting critics of the war, and people like Born to Party Guy aren’t willing to think any more deeply than Rush tells him to.

The Bank: ParkRidge47 Mashes Up Wolfowitz

Phil de Vellis who infamously produced the Hillary/1984 Mac Ad mash-up under the nom de Tube ParkRidge47 returns with a new video. This time he works Paul Wolfowitz into The Office to create The Bank. It's not as tight as the Hillary ad, but it has some funny bits in it (which would probably be funnier to me if I watched The Office.) It also makes some salient points.



This comes from Phil who is working in conjunction with an organization called Avaaz.org which is running a Fire Paul Wolfowitz petition.

Local Soldier Blogging From Afghanistan

The ABJ leads today with the story of Sgt. Brandon White from Ravenna who is a serving and blogging in Afghanistan. His blog gwot.us (or gwot dot us) is worth the visit. More than that, it's worth bookmarking.

First and foremost, Sgt. White is a good writer. His story, like the story of anyone serving in a combat theatre, is compelling. But unlike some military blogs, he can put the words together to tell it compellingly. His style is simple and straightforward. Even when he's getting exercised about something, he remains remarkable even.

But don't just take my work for it. Sgt. White's blog was voted this weekend to be the favorite Afghanistan blog and the fourth most popular overall.

Sgt. White describes himself as a "moderate conservative," so he and I don't agree on much. He still believes in both wars, though he thinks the surge and Bush's early unilateralism were mistakes. But politics is beside the point. His blog is a chance to read in more or less real time the story of one of our soldiers trying to do his job and stay alive. It shouldn't be this way, but knowing this man's family prays for his safe return in a house less than an hour from me, makes it more real.

I like the gwot dot us so much so that I added him to my reader and to a blogroll of basically miscellaneous cool stuff that I've been working on. It would be nice to be able to find other military bloggers from the area. Unfortunately the MilBlogging search function lets you search using a number of criteria, but not home town.

Meanwhile, with reports of a looming Taliban Spring offensive, we all wish the best for Sgt. White and his family.

Muslim KSU Prof Needs to Answer Some Questions

I would love to report that the right wing fulminating over Kent State prof. Julio Pino's work on a jihadist website is completely specious. I would love to post something like BREAKING: MATT DRUDGE IS FULL OF CRAP!

But I cannot. Prof. Pino has apparently done some work on behalf of the site and should be called on to account for his actions.

The controversy started when a TownHall columnist identified the blog as as belonging to Pino and broke down its contents. Drudge picked up the story and it was on. According to the Beacon Journal's report today, the blog is not Pino's, but he has done some work there:

Pino, 46, a Muslim convert and associate professor of history at KSU, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

His department head, John Jameson, defended him as a good teacher and said the allegations in the story appeared to have been blown out of proportion.

He said Pino told him he provided news stories to the Web site but didn't accept any ownership of it.

The Web site does not name the originator, but a photo of a bearded man there is not of Pino, the description of the originator does not fit Pino and none of the postings on it can be tied to Kent State, Jameson said.

So, Adam's story is overblown. Still, Pino has contributed in some way. Even a free speech and academic freedom zealot like me has a few problems with this. The blog in question carries no defensible content. It looks like this:


Less a blog than a jihadi headline writing service, it reproduces full-text news stories from all over, with original headlines spinning the story for the greater good of Allah. Every headline glorifies jihad as holy war and mass murder as a legitimat tactic. Every story is infused with that mindset. The blog is shot through and through with the most vile rhetoric justifying the murder of pretty much anyone who is not a particular stripe of Sunni Muslim.

In other words, this isn't like some liberal blogs where reasonable essays appeared side-by-side with 9/11 conspiracy nonsense or worse. One cannot aid the Global War website without at least implicitly endorsing its message.

So, I want to know, what did the professor contribute? How did he get linked to the blog, given that none of the stories are attributed? Does he endorse war against the West, against Isreal and against non-Sunni Muslims?

And what the hell is he thinking? I love this nugget from the ABJ story:

While Pino did operate a pro-Palestinian Web site in the past, he told Jameson he gave it up ``when the hate response got to be too much,'' Jameson said.

Will he call this a hate response as well? Because I try not to hate and all, but I don't love advocating the murder of civilians.

Whether a tenured professor should be dismissed for propagating these views, apalling as they are, is a close question for me. But at the very least, Citizens of the State of Ohio have a right to know.

UPDATED: The original version contained some editing errors and did not make clear my position that Adams overstated Pino's involvement with the blog. I've updated accordingly.

Marcy Kaptur Heading to the Middle East

Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-9th) will join a Congressional delegation to Iraq and Afghanistan. From the Blade:

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) announced today that she will be traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan with a congressional delegation from Monday to Feb. 26.

Ms. Kaptur will receive briefings from U.S. Command-level military officials and also meet civilian officials from both countries. She will also visit Pakistan and Kuwait during her trip. She is scheduled to meet injured troops in Germany on her return trip.

By the way, you can click through that link to her homepage, then to a link to see her speech on the resolution against Iraq escalation.

As it happens, Ezra Klein guest poster Ankush kvetches a bit about press coverage of administration "surprise" visits to Iraq, in response to Sec. of State Condaleeza Rice's recent drop-by. Here's the meat of his argument:

. . .but no one ever explicitly writes about why these visits are always a "surprise." The problem, of course, is that four years after our invasion, a high-level American official still can't go into Iraq without worrying about an assassination. The "surprises" are motivated, quite literally, by the fear of death.

Which makes me wonder: How do Congressional delegations run the gauntlet when their trips are almost always announced in advance? Certainly a bunch of lawmakers would be just as tempting a target for jihadists looking to stage a spectacular attack. So, are Congressional delegations in particular danger? Or, as Ankush intimates, does the "surprise" visit happen in part to attract press attention to a SOP visit?

Truly, I'm asking. Just don't get it.

Meanwhile, we wish Representative Kaptur a safe journey and look forward to reading about her impressions.

Iraq War Resolution -- Ohio Delegation Roundup.

The nonbinding resolution against the escalation in Iraq passed 246 to 182. Few defected on either side. The Ohio Dems all voted in favor and most, if not all of them spoke from the floor. Kudos to the office of Nancy Pelosi which has been posting speeches on YouTube. Tim Ryan wowed people all over the blogosphere. The speech by Tim Walz (D-Minn) was my favorite until I saw this.



Not only is he commanding at the podium, I like that he got under someone's skin and like even better that he would not back down when whoever was giving him the business from the galley.

Betty Sutton's floor speech was much the same as her speech in committee. One difference of interest to long-term Betty watchers -- New suit!



Rep. Charlie Wilson didn't get on Pelosi's hit parade, but BSB got a vid up.



I don't know if Marcy Kaptur spoke on this resolution, but you can see her argue against a Republican resolution in favor of the war last summer if you want an idea of what it would have sounded like. Also no word on whether Stephanie Tubbs Jones spoke or whether Dennis Kucinich yelled "WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!" one more time.

Zack Space spoke and wasn't all that great. I can't find it on YouTube and wouldn't be at all surprise if Team Pelosi declined to post it. Pretty much a standard speech, not much presence at the podium and he got horribly flustered when he ran out of time.

By the way, Steve LaTourette of the 17 Republicans who voted in favor of the Dems resolution. I'll try to update with a link. For now I'll just say I saw it on C-Span.

UPDATE: Ohio.com has a story running down the regional members.

Bill Richardson on Iran

Matthew Yglesias has a post up lauding Bill Richardson's petition on Iran. He had the same positive reaction I did when I got the notice in my ebag.

If you click through to the post you'll notice a reference to The Table. Yglesias is appending the Richardson petition to the end of a debate on the national blogs about whether we should leave the possibility of an attack "on the table" when discussing the Iran situation.

The debate started with a TPM Cafe post by Ken Baer in which he argued that promising to swear off force in Iran shouldn't be a litmus test. The core of Baer's argument was:

The reason why Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all refusing to take the military option off the table is because there is no credible expert on Iran, nonproliferation, or any combination of the two who would advise them to do so.

Baer has been around poltics and blogging long enough to know that if you grandly pronounce that something is "always" or "never," you are asking for a haymaker. Ezra Klein saw Baer drop his gloves and took the easy shot, and it was on. The national "Expert" bloggers picked it up and you can now find posts all over the blogosphere about it.

Which takes me back to the petition. As Yglesias points out, it finesses the "table" question, but put the emphasis where it needs to be -- in favor of diplomacy and pulling out of the apparent glide path to another war. After the preamble, here's the meat of the thing:

I demand this administration start direct diplomacy with Iran immediately and stop the irresponsible aggression.

This administration has stubbornly refused to pursue real, honest diplomacy in Iran and engage our allies around the world to help negotiate a solution. Instead, they are pursuing a strategy of non-negotiation and threats of possible US military action. We are clear and united - we want negotiations now and no unauthorized and unwarranted attacks in Iran.

Whether you like Richardson or not in the prez sweeps (as it happens, I quixotically support him), the petition is the best netroots effort I've yet seen on Iran.

Betty Sutton on the Floor and in Akron

According to the ebag, Rep. Betty Sutton will speak from the floor during the Iraq debate tommorrow between 2:30 and 4:30. According to Sutton's office, her committee speech got good reviews from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer:

"Congresswoman Sutton's statement cuts right to the core of this week's House debate on Iraq. Her characterization of the debate as a matter of responsibility - to the American people and especially to our brave men and women in harm's way - could not ring more true."

Assuming all goes well, she gets to come home for a post-debate/post hundred hours victory lap. From the SummitCo Dems:

Congresswoman Sutton will speak with Ohioans about the Democrats' new direction, and how recently passed legislation will help improve their lives. The Summit County Town Hall Meeting will take place on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 6:00 pm at the:

Akron-Summit County Public Library
60 S. High St.
Akron, OH 44326

Not Holding My Breath: A Presidential Address Preview

The President's major address on the new Iraq strategy is minutes away. This evening WKSU interviewed Sherrod Brown, Betty Sutton and Steve LaTourette on the local news program "Your Way Home." They were asked how they feel about the much anticipated surge or escalation or escalating surge or whatever. Additionally, they were asked something like "what would you like to hear from the President's speech.

I won't agree with what the President has to say. I'm confident of that. But if he said any of the following, I might feel like we have some longshot hope of eventually getting out of this with something like a whole shirt.

• "I screwed up." Supposedly he is going to admit that "mistakes were made." I want to hear him go one better and admit his own mistakes. I'm a firm believer that a person who won't admit mistakes is guaranteed to repeat them.


• "I’m sorry." Which is the natural follow up to admitting you screwed up. Especially when your screwup results in thousands of needless deaths.


• "Other people screwed up. Their heads will roll." Unfortunately, the administration appears to be looking for fall guys in the ranks of military commanders. In fact, it's the civilian leadership who really botched this. Remind me again which party doesn't support the troops.


• "The enemy is . . ." As of now, I don't have any confidence that this administration has a real appreciation of who we are fighting. Of course, if the did, they would recognizing that we are splitting time battling the beligerents in a civil war.


• "Victory will look like . . ." I keep hearing that we will fight until victorious, but with no indication of what victory sounds like.

OK, off to watch. Not expecting much, tho.

Harry Potter and the Iraq Study Group

The most anticipated book of the season hit stores yesterday -- the Report of the Iraq Study Group. And it's a downer, but with a magical ending. Reading the recommendations, it's as if the seventh installment of the Hogwarts series turned on Harry casting his "Death Eaters See Reason" hex.

Consider me whelmed.

According to the members hitting the chat circuit yesterday, the core recommendations include setting milestones for Iraqi progress toward self-governance, redeploying troops including an increase in the number of American trainers embedded with Iraqi brigades and negotiating with Iran and Syria. Baker et al. made clear their opinion that negotiating with Iran and Syria was essential to the success of the effort.

Which gives the whole thing a monkeys-fly-out-my-butt chance of succeeding. It's true that Iran and Syria have vested interests in a stable Iraq. Unfortunately, it's apparent that both consider it more in their interests to damage the United States. I don't see them helping us when they'd rather see a roiling Iraq that give us a successively more spectacular series of bloody noses.

I have a similarly dim view of the chances that "training" Iraqi forces will do much. The fundamental problem is that the largest and most effective fighting forces on the Shiite and Sunni sides hate us almost as much as they hate each other. And they are embedded within the Iraqi security forces. We're not going to train them to be nice. The best we can do is train them to wage more effective war on each other.

In the end the report is important as a bipartisan declaration that Bush got us into a deep deep hole and we have precious little chance of getting out. As recently as last week we were still hearing from the far right that the media is underreporting "good news" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps this report has at least a monkeys-fly-out-my-butt of putting the kibosh on that.

Ultimately what I would like to see is a realistic appraisal of our least worst options. The report contains no escape hatch should the recommendations fail. I understand that horrible things will happen no matter what we do. This would have been a good group to analyze the various options and evaluate which does the least damage to the region and to our interests.