Four Years Ago This Week

Four years ago this week, Osama Bin Laden issued his "Speech to the American People."

Having just read the contents of the speech for a class I have a midterm on Monday morning, there is an interesting quote we ought to retain as we move forward as citizens, voters, and, perhaps, policy makers.

It alludes to the fact that Salafi terrorists (including Al Queda and Hamas) are not mere madmen on the loose with stolen materiel, but, as Marc Sageman wrote in 2004, rather rational and calculated men of strategy.

Bin Laden reveals not only his paridigmatic alignment as primarily realistic, but furthermore establishes himself as a true Clausewitzian interested in the regrettable utility of war to accomplish otherwise unattainable political objectives.

In fact, Bin Laden's Central Staff in Afghanistan was arguably more precise in its determination of culminating points of victory and integration of political objectives in millitary operations than were many Western powers throughout the 20th century!

This passsage may not do these claims justice, but I encourage you to read the full text of his speech. You can find it in "Conflict After the Cold War," as compiled by Richard K. Betts (the man who will be grading the aforementioned midterm).

"Security is an indispensable pillar of human life. Free men do not forfeit their security and freedom, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If we did, let him explain to us why we have not attacked, say, Sweden?

No, we fight because we are men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.

Now, whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes in order to prevent it from happening again, I am amazed at you. Even in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion and deeption, and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, there is no reason for there not to be a repeat of what has already occurred...

No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Your security is in your own hands, and every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own safety."

From the Department of "You Know It's Over When.."

If you weren't already convinced that the McCain/Palin campaign is drawing dead on the river, here is GOP strategist Brad Blakeman.

Asked about Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe spending spree, Blakeman instead condemns Barack Obama for using campaign money to visit the woman who raised him on her deathbed.

Take a look....


Wow. I guess if you want more concrete evidence that this campaign really is over, take a look at this ad running in North Carolina, which implicitly concedes Obama the top of the ticket. The idea, as Marc's GChat poignantly noted this morning, is to rally conservatives behind downticket candidates in an effort to prevent a blue-curtain from falling over both Congress and the White House.



I really feel sorry for John McCain. The man is a war hero and his Senatorial career was among the most remarkable of the 20th century. He might even have been the best Presidential candidate eight years ago.

But then the GOP got to him.

In 2000, and maybe 2004, it wouldn't have made a difference, but here in 2008, the shotgun marriage of religious and fiscal conservatives Karl Rove put together is falling apart. The country is tired of the culture war and would rather that government focus on their wallets, not their Bibles.

The GOP's problem is really pretty simple: the vanguard of elite educated fiscal conservatives in the Republican party, who saw an opportunity to expand their base by incorporating the religious right, somehow allowed the inmates to take over the asylum.

That is the slowly sinking ship John McCain set sail on last winter, which perhaps struck its final iceberg in August when Sarah Palin hopped aboard with a new haul of guns 'n bibles, most likely at the insistence of party leaders, and not McCain.

The maverick conformed and his campaign crumbled. Now, as Jerry Garcia might have put it, Senator McCain is just old and in the way and his party is on the verge of collapse.

It's a sad ending to a political legend, but at least America wins in the end.

From the Department of Fail Pt. 2

Okay while I was procrastinating and delighting in the burrito I bought at the soup kitchen across the street I figured I might as well mention the new McCain ad...



...the degree to which McCain supporters are willing to be deluded is remarkable.

I'm not sure what is worse: 1) that people are too apathetic to read a two page abstract of Obama's tax plan which explains how none of these smears are true; or, 2) that the McCain campaign is almost completely dependent upon ignorance, intolerance, and utter fallacy to make this election remotely competitive.

At some point Senator McCain, perhaps it's better to just wave the white flag than continue to eviscerate our democracy with fantastic lies and implicit prejudice.

This campaign is not about "John McCain" anymore; it's about Joe McCarthy.

Stop this insanity before your party, and our political system, is wholly devoid of whatever moral capital it has left. The ramifications of your xenophobic jingoism during the next 13 days will resonate long after your political relevance has expired and will impact election cycles for years to come.

Have the decency now to actually put "country first." Shut your mouth and lose with honor.

From the Department of Fail

Saw this on my buddy Marc's great daily.



PAGING DR. FREUD!

On a related note, you may have noticed that the regularity of my posts has seriously declined since classes started again. To that end, I encourage you to check out Marc's blog.

Marc claims to be employed at a strategic political consulting firm in Virginia, yet he still manages to produce a diet of rich political commentary and fail several times a day. Here's to you Marc, I can only hope they don't pay you too much.

On The Financial Crisis

It's a funny thing that happens here at Columbia. Students fill out entire application essays and questionnaires demonstrating how they yearn for worldliness and the Core—and then, four years later, there is an exodus en masse some 8 miles south to join the legions of cold and calculated money manipulators on Wall Street.

As David Xia reported in the Spectator on October 8, nearly 30 percent of employed Columbia graduates leave these humble halls of Aristotle and Herodotus for the gilded skylobbies of Merrill and Lynch.

Now, does this suggest that our beloved Core has failed to cultivate the bubbling enthusiasm for humanism that students carried in with them as freshmen? Or, perhaps, were prospective students a bit more facetious on their applications than they'd like to admit?

The University’s line, of course, is that students entering the financial industry do so with the breadth of knowledge and the weight of civilization placed firmly upon their shoulders by the world-class liberal education they received here.

But whichever of these descriptions is ultimately the most accurate is not the point. The point is that Columbians are consistently and excessively lured away from their professed ideals to the glimmering teat of the financial market and its gospel of wealth and instant gratification.

What a waste of intellectual and human capital.

It is in this light that I wholeheartedly believe that this financial crisis is one of the best things that could have happened to a Columbia undergraduate. First of all, not only are we still too young to watch our savings disappear overnight, but the downturn in the economy—if for no other reason than attrition—will forcefully spur undergraduates to broaden their goals and employment options beyond the usual destinations in LowerManhattan.

Before the financial crisis, the "credit crunch," and the "mortgage meltdown," the United States was already mired in, or hurtling towards, its fair share of crises.

Education and energy were the elephants in the room during the 1990s tech-boom that venture capitalists and policy-makers swept under the rug amid all the green and black—and graduates of America's elite universities followed them in their blind march to excess.

While countries across the world invested in education and infrastructure (read: Japan, South Korea, China, the EU bloc, much of Scandinavia), America became a cubicle-country of overpaid pencil-pushers and money-managers.

These other countries also foresaw what would follow the gluttonous American addiction to fossil fuel and invested in technologies and other goods they knew we would gobble up—and we helped them invest their profits as more and more young people dropped out of high school or graduated without the credentials, skills, or motivation to succeed in the new economy.

Meanwhile, when the times were still good, Columbians and Ivy types across the board paid little mind. The rising tide of the speculation-manipulation financial markets was lifting their boats and money was plentiful. America's intellectual elite turned its back on its country, and now it's paying the price.

And you wonder where Palinism, the "culture war," and all of this other anti-elitist sentiment comes from?

There was once a time in the middle of the twentieth century when a rising tide lifted all boats. In those days, when a CEO made maybe 1000% not 1,000,000% more than a production worker, it was no less honorable, and not so disproportionately less lucrative, to work on Wall Street than it was to teach civics, or English, in a Brooklyn public school.

That time has certainly passed and, regrettably, a confluence of arrogance and hyper-individualistic self-interest produced the practices and policies of America's intellectual elite in both the private and public sector.

As Columbia students, we have a great responsibility to earn the education to which we are so privileged. At a moral level, we ought then to feel at least somewhat obligated to serve the public interest.

But I know this view is far too optimistic, and I'm not even sure if I could always hold myself accountable to the sorts of sacrifices it implies. Would that it were otherwise, it is not.

Regrettably then, the irony of the financial crisis is that it may very well impel some of us, by our own selfish nature, to inadvertently pursue the common good. To invest not only our taxes in education, energy, and the public interest, but our careers as well—and isn’t that what we wrote in our Columbia applications in the first place?

It has taken a catastrophe for us to realize the folly of our impatient short-sightedness. Now let's see if we can't learn from it ethically, or at the very least, channel our already inflated avarice for good.