House Committee On Foreign Affairs Convenes to Discuss North Korea’s Recent Failed Rocket Launch and New Leader

Earlier this week, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing with a panel of four expert witnesses to hear statements and field questions relating to current relations between Pyongyang and the United States, particularly in light of North Korea’s recent failed missile launch that was purported to merely be an attempt to put a new weather satellite into orbit but was widely viewed as a flagrant test of ICBM missile technology.

The committee’s expert panel consisted of Frederick Fleitz, managing editor of the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET) and former senior CIA analyst, Michael Green, former Senior Asian Affairs Director of the National Security Council, Scott Snyder, the US – North Korea policy director on the Council for Foreign Affairs, and Patrick Cronin of the Council for New American Security.

The hearing opened with statements from a few of the committee members, including a statement from ranking committee member Howard Berman (D-CA) who emphasized China’s continuing propping up of the North Korean regime within the context of China’s own rather poor international record of human rights violations. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) went into detail to explain the role of the funding of hard currency in Pyongyang’s dealings, highlighting the fact that North Korean’s poverty even at the governmental level evinces a thinly veiled, illicit subsidy effort on  the part of China that he sees as the only reality that made the recent failed rocket launch possible. He cites the testimony from a defected propagandist who stated the top priority within the North Korean government is the collection of hard currency with which to further nuclear ambitions and effective ICBM technology. His summary point was that the most promising avenue to diplomatic pressure would to be to find ways to pinch such funding, nearly all of which is illicit under current international law and existing sanctions.

Rounding out the committee’s opening statements was a short rant by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) who only offered even passing reference to North Korea as he spent his allotted time rather ambiguously rebuking President Barack Obama’s entire foreign policy approach of engagement. His implication seemed to be that anything short of immediate forceful intervention was playing pat to the current situation not only with North Korea but with Iran and Syria. When the hearing eventually passed into the Q&A portion, Rep. Chabot put no questions to the panel and offered no further comment.

The first to offer his five-minute, condensed expert statement, Frederick Feitz opined that the failed rocket launch last week was simultaneously a test of the NPRK’s ICBM capability as well as an ostensible test of American diplomatic resolve by a regime that seeks to gauge how distracted the US has grown by Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria–all of which has become characteristic of North Korea’s provocation-based diplomacy. Coming after the so-called ‘Leap Day’ food aid deal, Pyongyang historically engages in a patter of behavior of such provocations after gaining some ground in international negotiations that is then responded to by further negotiations where the regime often finds itself talking to Western diplomats prepared to offer even further concessions as long as the North Korean’s posturing will quiet down; when they have continuously failed to adhere, the cycle begins all over again.

Fleitz decried the international response to the launch as ‘weak’, the UN particular continuing to find itself essentially crippled of any genuine pressure due to veto power by China and Russia, always used to keep the DPRK and a geopolitical arm’s length. He went on to say the evidence seems to suggest that the young successor, Kim Jong-un, has consolidated full leadership (military backing in particular, potentially troublesome generals having long ago been liquidated by his late father) and inherited a robust and varied cache of WMD projects. The available intelligence, according to Fleitz, suggests that the Kim Jong-un regime is in possession of an amount of plutonium to allow for a minimum of six nuclear warheads to be produced and that their pursuit of highly-enriched uranium almost certainly continues. He concluded by saying that the diplomacy of US relations with both Iran and North Korea, considering their shared ambitions toward armed, intimidating sovereignty, are justly intertwined, and how the US deals with one will effect negotiations with the others–his comments coming after initial international talks with Iran opened earlier this month.

Michael Green quickly dismissed any notion that there was any semblance of ‘breathing room’ in tensions after the North Korean rocket disintegrated shortly after takeoff, surely embarrassing the new regime and evincing just how hollow their posturing tends to be. He referenced a very reliable historical record that predicts a fresh underground nuclear test is almost assured to come in the near future. He also stated that one of the most pressing threats of the DPRK’s progress in nuclear technology is a repeat of their past history of enabling third-party transfer to various sympathetic Middle Eastern tyrannies. Green cited traced evidence in stockpiles from Libya and Syria as proof of previous transfers, with no sign that Kim Jong-un would think twice about doing so again, with Iran and Burma as likely recipients.  In his opinion the US should proceed with stern, refreshingly consistent pressure in the form of more financially effective sanctions and a renewed effort to interdict the threat of third-party WMD materiel transfer.

Scott Snyder outlined several building blocks to what he perceived to be an effective diplomatic path with North Korea. Like the rest of the panel, he repeatedly emphasized a need for stronger international response to North Korea’s hostile posturing. He said he was troubled by the degree of reliance on China as something of a diplomatic proxy in even having working knowledge of North Korean leadership at the highest level, and stated that while the US should continue to work with China on a smaller scale, the US must find a way to deal more directly with upper echelons of Pyongyang. He also criticized the current sanctions, saying that while they effectively close the front door, China leaves the backdoor open and that North Korea continues to mass hard currency through a broad range of illicit activities, much of which is channeled through the support of the Chinese government’s quiet refusal to enforce almost any of the current sanctions. He supports the others’ advice to target sanctions and other political pressure on Chinese banks as a means of pressuring Kim Jong-un in a real way. Finally, Snyder outlined the role of an increased information channel with the North Korean people, some manner of, as he put it, “Long-range education and socialization with Western thinking to help in inducing internal change”.

Patrick Cronin largely re-emphasized the need to wean the US off of second-hand information and engagement, echoing calls for more direct communication channels with the highest level of the North Korean government and an opening up of the cocoon surrounding the North Korean people, saying they’re in terrible need of knowing that there’s an alternative to the desperation and starvation that most North Koreans endure.

As the hearing progressed into the Q&A phase, Rep. Berman put forth several questions probing whether or not there was much hope to be found that China, with what he called a ‘very different security calculus than [the US]’, would be altering its current diplomatic stance towards relation surrounding the DPRK, described as a ‘stability-first’, largely hands-off approach. Fleitz responded that China would most likely be encouraging of further international talks and is probably at work to set such talks up, that there’s no evidence to believe that they’ll be amicable to more stout pressure, and would work to veto any fresh sanctions.

Much of the impassioned discussion during the concluding portion of the hearing came to center on the humanitarian aspect of the North Korean mess, with complicated and somewhat differing opinions on the subject of food aid. All of the expert panel and most of the present committee members seemed to agree that the food aid was a noble and justified expense and gesture to the North Korean people, though there’s a challenging path to walk between attempting to keep millions of North Koreans from starving to death while still pressuring the government effectively. Fleitz in particular voiced the opinion that any food aid programs should be independent of negotiations with the government, as the people should not be punished for the impudent gestures of a government that is arguably the least representative and democratic in the entire world. He did agree that the programs, however, are largely ineffective in any capacity as long as their continue to be no provisions attached to them that ensure the food actually gets to the North Korean people. Rep. Royce agreed on the importance of such provisions, referring to reports that the large majority of the food was kept in the possession of the regime and sold on the Pyongyang food markets as yet another way to pull in the currency needed to fuel WMD research and production. The $800-plus million that was the estimated cost of the recent rocket launch, for instance, could have instead gone to feed millions of the DPRK’s starved and literally stunted populace.

One member of the committee however was less willing to entertain even a nuanced discussion of the history of food aid programs; Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) denounced the programs as categorically ineffective, stated that it was ‘insane and silly’ to send over millions of dollars worth of aid for ‘the nutrition of the North Korean people’, aid that is, in his words, not the US’s responsibility.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) agreed that the US and its diplomatic allies can no longer sideline the humanitarian front to focus on the nuclear one, and  also stated the importance of continued efforts to get information into the propaganda bubble and inform the North Korean people of their plight, a difficult task for a country who has literally now seen generations raised entirely within such a cloistered existence.

As the hearing wrapped up, Michael Green offered a bit of hope, stating that the geopolitical climate — taking into consideration fresh, sympathetic leadership in South Korea, France, Britain — was more conducive than ever to a multilateral approach to engaging North Korea’s deplorable humanitarian catastrophe, in particular the vile practice by China of ‘forced repatriation’ of those few refugees that manage to escape across the border from North Korea.

Center for Strategic and International Studies Hosts Discussion on Iran, Turkey, and Russia

This past week the Center of Strategic and International Studies, a public policy research institute headquartered in D.C., hosted an in-depth discussion on the state of affairs surrounding the United States, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. The eminently knowledgable panel consisted of two former presidential national security advisors: Brent Snowcraft, who served under both Gerald Ford as well as George H. W. Bush and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served under the Carter administration.

The men more or less shared common ground on most of the discussion points, and the escalating tensions with Iran and Syria came into the conversation often, as one might have expected. There was some bit of discussion on the often mysterious and always strange Putin’s Russia, but most of the compelling facets of Russia’s geopolitical place seemed to consist of Russia’s seemingly unflinching alignment with  China in resistance to essentially anything the US attempts to rouse NATO to do, particularly in regards to especially harsh sanctions and humanitarian intervention measures (see: Libya et al).

Both men agreed that Turkey’s growing confidence in their own independence is generally a good thing for the West, because while such an increasing degree of independent separation might make the West a bit uneasy, it’s all a direct result of qualities we’ve been pushing in Turkey for so long, namely democratization and a more intense pursuit of modernity. Turkey’s alignment, for lack of a better term, is still much in our favor–riled in no small part by recent firings across its border by pro-government Syrian forces aiming at a refugee camp–the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has joined his voice with those that call for nothing less than for al-Assad to step down immediately. Brzezinski emphasized that further troubles in Syria as well as the potential for violent conflict in Iran are the most severe threats Turkey’s increasingly modern, Western-friendly government faces.

Brzezinski proceeded at length to distill the palpable contrast as he saw it between the Libyan uprising and the bursts of Syrian violence seen throughout the last year, citing the thinly spread and fractured nature of the Syrian opposition as the biggest obstacle to the relatively easy and clean intervention that was effected in Libya, where the metaphorical battle lines were more clearly delineated and the rebel forces more numerous, organized, and armed from the beginning.

Despite continually alarming reports of civilian massacres and other human-rights violations being perpetrated daily, even now as the country labors under a feebly held ceasefire, both men urged caution in more direct intervention in Syria as they viewed it as a quagmire in the making that would clearly further destabilize the region.

They took much the same tact in regards to Iran, and it was clear to your faithful correspondent that whatever the humanitarian climate in Syria or perceived threat of a nuclear Iran may be, that the US in particular would be best served by a softer hand in dealing with them. Snowcraft made the obvious point that China and Russia continue to be resistant to UN votes that implicitly or otherwise set a path in such troubled states toward regime change because regime change as an abstract is a threat to both of them at home, if only slightly so by comparison. He wondered aloud what the situation would look like if they supported such measures and then at some point China were to face a genuine uprising in Tibet, an uprising it would no doubt put down swiftly and harshly.

Both men again agreed that the Chinese ‘hands-off’ approach to Syria in particular is the more prudent model amidst these tensions, and while I do think they are astute to contrast situations like those of Libya and Syria, they’re engaging in a kind of moral and political calculus and are quitting the whole process just because the Syrian equations is notably more difficult than what Libya presented. Syria is already a quagmire, and regime change seems rather inevitable at this point. I understand the scope of the risks involved–that encouraging instability as an unavoidable byproduct of intervention could cause other situations to escalate dramatically and cause untold numbers of civilian casualties–but that only suggests tremendous discretion, planning, transparency, and basically everything that went missing in so many other recent US interventions. The Syrian people still need help that only the West can feasibly provide, and one couldn’t ask for a more just cause. President Barack Obama has stated in moving terms that wherever innocent people  cry out for help and support in moving their country away from violent autocrats like Assad, that the US stands with them. We should stand more firmly with Syria, but we absolutely should do it as intelligently as possible. There may be no way to effectively intervene with any kind of military presence in Syria, but it seems a bit early to make that judgment–these two men want to brush it away without due consideration. Snowcraft seems to sidestep the obvious point that China’s hands-off approach is seemingly inspired far less by some more sophisticated statecraft than it is by its own troubles at home with human-rights violations and unrest, however quietly it is wrangled from within.

Brzezinski takes more or less the same line in regards to Iran, seeming a bit sympathetic in saying that while it’s fair to hold Iran accountable along the lines of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that the US is strangling Iran towards an end that is needlessly humiliating, ‘putting Iran in a cage’, to use his phrase. He emphasizes Iran’s long and prideful political history in this regard, but I didn’t feel he gave adequate acknowledgement to just how responsible Iran has been in bringing such harsh dealings on their own shoulders with the kind of rhetoric and action they’ve been flaunting in front of the UN’s face for years now.

Overall, these two men hold a great deal of experience and expertise between them–it feels difficult to critique their suggestions too harshly, but I simply couldn’t shake the feeling that they had relaxed too far away from the kind of urgent action needed, particularly in Syria. Like the US citizenry, they seem dogged by the mere mention of intervention, having grown tired and wounded as we all have by more than a decade now of military engagement in the Middle East. The American public has become as weary and cynical toward such measures as any time in contemporary politics that I can recall. But having made mistakes, wouldn’t it be better to learn from where we’ve made such grave errors, also acknowledging the success of the Libyan project? Watch the brutal videos recorded by immensely brave citizen journalists in Syrian funeral crowds being fired upon by pro-Assad forces; read the dispatches of the journalists that have been killed there, often almost explicitly with intention. We shouldn’t rush a single step of the process of intervention, but the UN should be ashamed as it continues to duck what is a necessary, justified engagement. We might be tired of such fights, but  those on the other side are absolutely not done with us and we can’t let them off so easily.

After Viewing ‘Miss Representation’: Some Thoughts on the Media’s Portrayal of Women

I found myself exceedingly excited yesterday after happening upon a small blurb in The South Bend Tribune a few days prior noting that the University of Notre Dame, my somewhat beloved alma mater, would be hosting a screening of the brilliant documentary Miss Representation with proceeds going to the Boys & Girls Club of South Bend and a short panel discussion afterword.  As the title cleverly suggests, the documentary is look at the continued, often boggling (hopefully it boggles you, anyway) disparity in the United States between men and women in, ostensibly, every facet of society; then it moves with more insight to spend most of its running time considering the ways in which the portrayal of women in the media is both a symptom of the disease of disparity as well as arguably the most powerful enabler of its continuation. The documentary intelligently eyes not only the Hollywood and Beer Commercial sectors of media, but the (occasionally) more subtle and insidious ways that sexism so often creeps into the news by way of how female politicians are covered as well as how female journalists themselves are treated.

To be honest, I wasn’t quite prepared to be as surprise by this documentary as I was. These are the type of issues I like to think I’m not only relatively well-informed about but often angry and passionate about discussing and trying to change in my own attitudes. I still wasn’t exactly shocked by anything here, hopefully a testament to what I prefer to think about myself, but one cannot be reminded or inspired into action often enough. Sometimes, I also think, it’s remarkably easy even for the most enlightened and sensitive and passionate to forget just how bad things really are for women in this country, particularly when it comes to positions of influence and a healthy, fair-minded zeitgeist no matter what route they choose in life. The documentary struck a compelling ratio of hard statistics to delineate concrete realities in politics and other realms alongside interviews with brilliant, influential women and men talking about their own experiences and insights–I found Gloria Steinum and Rachel Maddow particularly moving.

So, there’s been healthy discussion about the documentary itself without my rehashing too much of it, but I had a couple very slight criticisms to mention before moving on.

First, the only attitude that troubled me throughout, and it was incredibly minute I’m glad to report, came from the use of one video segment of a democratic Congresswoman (her name escapes me, the clip was brief) that was hammering on this applause-line idea that if we could just get all the men in Congress to go home for a weekend, well the women would pound out a debt-ceiling crisis solution without breaking a sweat. I think this speaks to a tired and irresponsible notion that because patriarchy is bad, simply replacing it with matriarchy would fix all the problems, there’ d be no wars and everything would be golden-rainbow perfection. I feel fairly certain that every other woman interviewed or shown in the documentary would agree that this concept, taken with any real seriousness, is astoundingly problematic. The problem isn’t patriarchy in and of itself, the problem in every way one can think about these issues is disparity and oppression. The voice of women is far too quiet, but the idea of giving them voice by taking voice completely away from men just shifts the problem. We need balance. The debt-ceiling crisis wasn’t a crisis because a bunch of men couldn’t get their shit straight, though sure it was that too, to an extent. It was a crisis because it and issues like it are almost ungraspably complicated and charged with political grandstanding. Would balance have helped? Absolutely, and I was thrilled today to see comments from President Barack Obama’s forum at the White House on women and the economy that highlighted his opinion that more empowered women both in government and outside of it make everything work better not only for women, but for all of us.

Again, this was one short clip that represented an attitude I didn’t see emphasized anywhere else in the documentary, so I don’t want to rail against it too often, but it is something one still encounters in discourse about women in society so I wanted to take a moment to talk about it.

Putting aside my opinions on the Twilight series as literature, I do have to mention I was a little put off by the inclusion of director Catherine Hardwicke. I think she had some insightful comments on the way female directors are treated in Hollywood (to summarize, she points out it’s commonplace for men to be picked to direct ‘chick flicks’ by and large, yet it’s broadly inconceivable that women could direct ‘manly movies’–or anything else, really) but I can’t get over what I can only call the hypocritical choice to direct the first Twilight film, considering that I’m not sure I know of any mega-popular female characters in recent memory that could less embody the qualities of an empowered woman than Bella. Let’s please talk as much as possible about how idolizing the Kardashians and Paris Hilton isn’t exactly healthy for young women today, but don’t overlook women who perpetuate ‘traditional’ female roles outside of the process of objectification in a way that should, I would think, prove worrisome.

My only other criticism is slight, and that is I wasn’t compelled at all by the fairly schmaltzy segments of narration by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. I’d trade those fifteen minutes or so for another few interview segments in a heartbeat.

Now, I wanted to touch on a couple of things I found myself thinking about at length after viewing the documentary and somewhat enjoying the panel afterward. The topic of modesty came up rather quickly during the panel discussion when one of the two younger (high-school age) panelists stated that she felt she hadn’t been affected rather much by the media’s exploitation and oppression of women because she had been raised as a Muslim and had been taught about self-respect and modesty.

Now, I’m trying to restrain myself a bit because the girl was much younger than myself and while she conducted herself on the panel fairly well she seemed  nervous and during the Q&A I felt uncomfortable addressing her statement because, simply put, I felt like I’d be bullying her with something I feel so strongly about. But I do think it raises several very problematic ideas; first, that any amount intelligent, sensitive upbringing inoculates anyone against the influence of media. The smartest and most critical among us are influenced, there’s no escaping it; second, being raised with religious faith (any in particular) does absolutely nothing about the extent of one’s ‘inoculation’, nor does it necessarily say anything about one’s sense of modesty. It’s a symptom of its own much larger phenomenon, but I’m so over the short-cutting and code-wording of religious faith to positive qualities–not only that an expression of faith automatically means someone is trustworthy and so on, but that one must have faith to embody the gamut of positive traits. If you were raised based on whatever justifications to respect yourself and others, isn’t it enough to just say so?

More importantly, I think, this young woman’s comment lead me down my own thoughtful path to really rest on the concept of ‘modesty’. It didn’t take long to realize that it’s a concept that is completely gendered toward women. When is the last time you encountered the concept of modesty that in any way was related to a man? If Katie Couric wears heels or shows a bit of leg when she anchors, is she being immodest? What would Dan Rather have to do in order to draw the same childish discussion? One puzzles at a culture that simultaneously communicates modesty as an admirable quality while also communicating to women that most of if not all of their worth in society is ostensibly founded in their fuckability or ability otherwise to get a man (or, via cannibalism, to tear other women down and -then- get the man). A bit more abstractly, I’m troubled by the assignment of inherent empowerment to one end of the spectrum but not the other–that is, that only modest women are or can be empowered, that if you’re a supermodel or a stripper that you’re a pawn in the game. The empowerment of women, to my mind, speaks simply to choice. Choice over their body and what to do with it, when to have children if at all, and so on without being judged; the lack of judgment must stretch in both directions.

Thinking more on this, I am a bit troubled there was zero exposure in the documentary to religion’s track record on the role of women in society, to which ‘abysmal’ is an understatement. Religion pervades media as much as nearly anything else, one would think it might have come up (there was one quote from Pat Robertson on feminism that I remember, so it -was- on the radar at least a little bit). While the young woman on this panel did not veil her face, she absolutely has sister Muslims in places like Tehran wrapped in sacks, being beaten, tortured, and killed for wanting to show their face or even learn to read. It is dangerous and ignorant to ignore not only the way ‘modesty’ is often coded as a way to oppress the free expression of women, but the way that fundamentalist religious groups seem to universally instill it as a mechanism of absolutely brutal totalitarianism.

The other really big thought that I had, inspired very smartly by the film, was that the real locus of power and change for women’s rights issues sits more heavily in our power as consumers with money to spend than as citizens with a vote to cast. This is a very sad thought, but it has been undeniable for an immensely long time. After all, do we continue to get completely objectified women riddling every movie and commercial simply because most advertising folks are men aged 18-34? No, actually, it’s because apparently the annoying axiom that ‘sex sells’ is most annoying because it’s true. The real bug in the system here is free-market capitalism, and the bottom line. If breasts didn’t sell beer and cars and movie tickets, we wouldn’t see anything like what we do in media today. I am entirely convinced that there’s no secret patriarchical mass media conglomerate council that meets in smoke-filled rooms filled with golden wheelie chairs hell-bent on keeping women out of being involved with responsible marketing campaigns. These marketing people are simply doing their job. This doesn’t make it right or absolve them of doing wrong, but we need to bear in mind why it keeps going on. If Budweiser saw a 20% increase in sales if they replaced every scantily-clad woman in their ads with an articulate woman in a business suit discussing the latest Republican primary debate, we’d never see another bikini again. They do it because the culture responds to it. We have voted with our wallets to say, please, keep giving us nothing but mindless boob commercials.

In a discussion I had after the documentary I voiced my complaint that those commercials annoy the fuck out of me too, they’re (almost) as dehumanizing to the men in the commercial as well as the implied male consumer viewing the commercial: all we are are mindless horny beasts who drool and jump at the first sight of cleavage, or we really think driving a Hummer will get us women when driving a Prius means we’re weak or gay (which is only an insult if you let it be, but that’s another blog post) or whatever. Women are getting the worst end of the stick on this, no argument, but men are getting shit on too. it’s so important to realize that every single person is worse off for this stuff, no one is really winning except the ad executive and the stockholder, and they’re only winning because we keep spending and telling them to keep going, and go further.

So, the real point I’m getting at is the biggest takeaway for me as a viewer and thinker as far as how change is actually cultivated is to forget the entire battleground around regulation or any other means by which to directly keep certain commercials off the air. The documentary spent some time talking about how television in this way has basically been deregulated for the past 30 years. It’s an interesting point, but I would contend it just doesn’t matter. It’s not the right fight to pick, especially considering the current political climate. Regulation is a naughty word right now, we’re seeing more and more heated debate about the protection of the free market, and even hinting at slight regulatory changes in this way would be met with overwhelming backlash about hurting business in what’s already a recession, censorship and free speech (rightfully so, to be honest) and so on — it’s not winnable, and even more it’s not what or where we’d really like to win anyway. I say write this off completely.

The real power is the voice we have as consumers. Women hold the vast majority of spending money in our country. The film makes it a point to ponder what would happen if there was a more conscious process when it came to spending it. Choice and expression is still important here–if a woman enjoys buying lots of expensive makeup then she shouldn’t feel guilty about that, but what about the woman who is guilted into spending almost as much time worrying over her value as an object as a man might do? Nor should anyone suddenly feel guilty about subscribing to Glamour or Maxim but what if there was more consciousness about what that money means to their advertisers? If you see unabashed fat-shaming and write a letter or cancel a subscription, it helps contribute to changing the zeitgeist. Done on a large enough scale, change is inevitable. These sponsors of TV shows and so on aren’t going to become more responsible in this way by themselves. They’re only going to listen if enough dollars tell them that what they’re doing is wrong. They aren’t in the business of being responsible in this way–they’d still be selling young children on smoking if they could get away with it. And none of this means your vote doesn’t matter, it just means it’s only pragmatic to recognize that your spending matters even more, and to think about issues of efficacy accordingly.

I keep rounding back around to the idea of expression and choice, and I really think it’s a big deal. It goes both ways–it’s absolutely imperative we create a culture that raises young girls to feel they’re just as able to become a doctor or the president as any boy, but we should also be as welcoming and non-judgmental to the girl who genuinely desires the path of the housewife or the sexy-action-movie-star-actress. The idea shouldn’t be that we need to turn every woman into a politician or CEO, but that every girl (and boy) can feel like they can make their own choice.

One quick, ending note: I found it really interesting that when it comes to news coverage, the oppressive rhetoric doesn’t break neatly across party lines. It’s certainly not equal either, but the documentary had almost as many CNN/MSNBC culprits to show as it did Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. The GOP has the greater problem, which we’re seeing increasingly taking the spotlight as the GOP continues to lose notable chunks of the female electorate nationwide, but it’s far from black and white, and even the most liberal of journalists and pundits frequently express views and language that are misogynistic. Apathy and intellectual / journalistic laziness is usually the culprit, and is probably the most insidious culprit to fight. We must hold ourselves and our media to a higher standard. Not just because it’s right, but because we all benefit from it, regardless of gender.

Review: ‘The Enemy’, by Christopher Hitchens

The Enemy by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Christopher Hitchens’ well-honed and well-worn blade has been put to many individuals throughout his extensive (though, now we must realize, always too short) career, and now one can say it has been put to no one more justified, at least in the popular mindset. While facing controversy that was his homestead in scorching, well-researched books against Mother Teresa among others, little of such would understandably be expected here. It cannot be an understatement to say that few individuals have shaped American culture and politics in the last fifty years, at least, as Osama bin Laden.

This compact e-book ‘single’, something we might call a long essay, does concise yet thorough work of grasping the presence of bin Laden both in his vile, formative work before September 11th as well as in the American zeitgeist after. While there was neither room nor need to delve into anything that might terribly surprise the average reader in this piece, I do think Hitchens succeeds in his usual brilliant way on two very key issues that Americans (and the rest of the world) should carefully bear in mind int he wake of bin Laden’s death, woven through as it is with cliches about chapters and eras coming to a close.

First, Hitchens quickly but surgically dismantles any notions, arguably fringe as they may be, that percolate (I’m tempted to say ‘infest) the left in particular from thinkers that like to make either clumsily imply or recklessly, thoughtlessly proclaim outright that bin Laden, in so many words, isn’t such a bad guy and is merely acting in justified, even admirable retaliation against the imperialistic bullying of the United States. One can hear the same disjointed harmonies at work in the words of Ron Paul and others, even within the last week, in regards to Iran in particular. Hitchens offers more of the few pages here than these notions deserve, and promptly reminds the reader of the reasoning behind bin Laden’s body of work–9/11 included–that show the ultimate desire of returning the region to an Islamic caliphate that then grows to encompass the world. No imperialism here, right? While he only very passingly gives nod to the very morally robust position of humanitarian intervention against accusations of imperialism, he’s written on it extensively elsewhere and anyone needing to guess at his thoughts on this facet of the argument would be insulting him.

The other key point, larger and more important, I would argue, is the overarching reminder that the war against terrorism–against totalarian rule, theocratic or otherwise–is quite genuinely and endless one, which might be something of a defeatist were it not so eminently (and imminently) true as well as being the most justified war there is, the one most worth fighting and so necessary (and available) to fight at every turn. This idea permeates this short text–that while perhaps we can agree a specific chapter has ended, one spectre of many put to dust, the book won’t ever end we cannot become complacent in fighting it. It feels too tempting to not let Hitchens speak for this point himself; he ends ‘The Enemy’ with the following:

“But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for. As the cleansing ocean washes over bin Laden’s carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of this he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.”

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Does Anyone Believe An Already Hobbled Iran Won’t Blink?

A rather strange article here that, among other things, feels the need in its headline to articulate that there would be ‘downsides’ to sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and  doesn’t seem to make the connection that such sanctions targeted specifically at Iran’s oil market wouldn’t fall into the realm of ‘economic sanctions’, which is apparently what ‘some analysts’ (oh convenient, lazy ambiguity) cite as preferable.

More importantly it evinces further sweat on the brow of many that seem to be erring toward superfluous caution towards Iran based explicitly on the inevitable effects on the price of gasoline at home. Implied here is a sort of hostage situation where those urging continued caution–a code word, it seems here, for appeasement–where Iran stands ready with a gun that only shoots rubber bullets. That is all to say, they can’t kill us, they can only make us uncomfortable with the only thing they have to bargain with, and they’re trying to keep us uncomfortable enough that we leave them alone while they work towards a real gun with real bullets. Their logic seems to be that we will be in a dangerous situation when the world’s leading madman gets the most destructive force ever known at his fingertips, but golly at least gas will stay under four dollars a gallon.

I have some empathy here–this logic appeals to what we know of the general American temperament, which certainly reinforces the notion that Iran is quite far away and they haven’t got The Bomb -yet-, so the capricious lethality that awaits a nuclear Iran doesn’t feel nearly as concrete or pressing as soaring gas prices during economic turmoil.

The problem is that if we wait for the former to become concrete, thus causing the latter to shrink in scale by comparison, it’ll most likely already be too late to do anything about it. We have to operate with a longer-term landscape in mind or we’ll very surely be facing a world where  long-term existence itself becomes questionable–when one cannot assume a future awaits while standing in such a destabilized global community with nuclear arsenals becoming more common rather than less so.

Meanwhile, the United States naval presence in the region that Iran continues to decry with growing desperation and empty threats has been generous enough to rescue 13 Iranian sailors and their vessel from pirates in the Arabian Sea. Apparently while Iran continues to say they could easily shut down shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, one can only assume that they could even more easily protect their own sailors from some high-sea miscreants but for some reason have chosen not to.

That Rattling Sound You Hear From Iran Is No Saber

At least, one can assume, not one they intend to actually draw if any modicum of sensible political leadership exists in a country so long held in hand by its clerics.

Just as in the case of North Korea, prominent yet again in the newscycle with their freshly-minted Dear Leader, Iran continues to suffer from what I can only think to call Empty-Scabbard Syndrome. You can only rattle about for so long before everyone involved learns the threat is hollow and treat you as so much white noise.

Tenuous relations between the US and Iran have continued to deteriorate as of late, triggered by a recent report from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency that offered all necessary evidence that Iran is continuing work towards obtaining nuclear weapons, escalating once again the Great Fear of our era–that is to say, the anxiety over just what might happen when a madman of Ahmadinejad’s proportions gets hold of weaponry to match his psychopathic ambitions. Left unhindered, we’re surely not far from getting our answer.

The latest and most desperate chest pounding has come late this week as Iran has threatened to use its military to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers carrying about a fifth of the world’s oil must  travel. Time Magazine’s esteemed Mark Thompson has thoroughly analyzed the credibility of this particular threat, and while it would certainly cause at least a temporary increase in the cost of oil and thus enact a kind of counter-sanction, it would seem everyone knows–including Iran–that the only real loser were things to get that far would be Iran itself. Simply put, not only is Iran incapable of militarily standing up to the United States (and others, and there would no doubt be others) for more than a few weeks by even the most generous estimates, Iran would be in no condition or position to incur their inevitable losses. As Thompson is astute to point out, without yet having a nuclear arsenal with which to bargain, this particular oil thoroughfare is the only real chip they have to play with. Unfortunately, it’s not worth all that much, even if they decide to play it.

Iran’s huffing about has come in response to a new round of sanctions backed by both the United States and Europe that would seek to hit a slightly different oil pipeline–the economic routes by which Iran profits from its oil exports. These sanctions would be nothing short of crippling to Iran’s already shambling economy, and one might even speculate on how this might further stir the youthful ire present in the country, particularly in light of how such uprisings, fueled by the young, have spread throughout the Middle East in the so-called Arab Spring. Economic conditions played central roles in nearly every country we’ve seen rebellion flourish, and it’d be foolish to expect Iran to not have noticed this as well. Their accelerated posturing goes a long way in showing how anxious they are over how these newest sanctions from the Obama administration might affect them. They must also realize that any moves to hinder oil shipping would affect many more countries than the United States, and while the US can strategically use targeted sanctions, Iran’s Hormuz chip is the equivalent of a carpet bomb, with which they’d surely burn more bridges than they’d like.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out here at home as we step into a presidential election year that will see every move by President Obama highly scrutinized. It would indeed seem that any moves that cause an increase in gas prices in the US would work negatively against any incumbent president, particularly once facing harsh criticism over his efficacy in economic matters.

But the US is also a country that seems increasingly uncomfortable with a global landscape involving a nuclear Iran, and against a backdrop of a GOP field full of hawkish posturing of their own, Obama’s economic warfare–especially as it produces greater results–has the benefit of striking Iran where it really hurts, while avoiding (at least for now) additional literal warfare, of which the US as a whole has grown rather tired.

Either way, Iran has no route no route to nuclear armament, at least not a one that wouldn’t cost them more than they should reasonably be willing to suffer, though wondering at how reasonable one can expect them to act under the circumstances is fair. One hopes that the American people will smartly be willing to stomach a short-term hit at the gas pump in order to not have to stomach the far scarier scenario of allowing Iran a real trump card with which to play.