WhirledView

On Parenting and the Dangers of Arrogant “Smart” Closed Minds

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

A few days ago, I was attending a seminar on the situation in Afghanistan.  That morning the local daily had front paged a midnight horror: an accident involving five teens in a car hit by an apparently drunk driver speeding down the wrong lane. 

Meanwhile: the seminar.  The scheduled speaker had just spent six months on duty in Afghanistan, and a guest in the audience was on the faculty at the Naval War College, where he and the speaker had met as students.  In case you don’t know, attending the Naval War College is one of the must-dos of anyone aspiring to high leadership in the U.S. military or the government’s international affairs apparatus.  Those who pull it off come away with some inside info, stellar contacts and, often, I discovered during my foreign service years, a very swelled head.

The seminar guest was one of the arrogant types.  He was sitting next to me when the across-the-table pre-presentation conversation turned to the ghastly accident.  Four of the teens were dead.  One was in the hospital in critical condition.  All of us agreed the offending driver deserved to have the book thrown at him.  Homicide times four, at least.  But I wanted to explore other factors as well.  The driver was just sixteen.  Three passengers were sixteen; one was fifteen.  The kids were heading for a party in a community about eight miles east of Santa Fe.  By the time they’d be driving home it would be, say, 2 am?

“Is there a parenting issue here?” I asked.

The previously mute guy sitting next to me gave me a censorious look. “You’re blaming the victim.”

“Not at all,” I said.   The probably drunk driver had indubitably caused the accident as such. I wanted to consider whether those kids should have been on any road at that time.  Were there  contributing factors having to do with driver inexperience, teenage distractability  and (especially) parental dereliction of duty?   In short: were there lessons to be learned for the benefit of other kids?

Smart Guy wasn’t listening. He interrupted with the same cliché, as if he were saying something profound.  “You’re blaming the victim.” 

Head Iseseisvuspäev!

by Cheryl Rofer

I'm a bit conflicted today. Yes, as the title of the post implies, I'll be celebrating Fourth of July tonight with friends. But it's the first Üldlaulupidu since 1999 that I haven't attended. There are many complicated reasons for that, and I'm not totally unhappy I'm not in Tallinn beyond always thinking that it would be nice to be in Tallinn.

So here's a mini-lalupidu. Still photos are taken from today's orgy of laulupidu photos in Postimees.

It always rains, of course, for laulupidu, although some of the photos have a bright blue sky in them. Fortunately, the northern Europeans, Finns especially, manufacture thin rain ponchos that sell (or did the last time I was there) for about a dollar apiece. They come in a little case, about four centimeters by six, only a few millimeters thick. But don't think about folding them back up when they're dry. They're usable, but they'll never see those dimensions again. I've still got an unused one in my day pack.

Unresolved in Iran

by Cheryl Rofer and Patricia H. Kushlis

Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, was kind enough to participate in a conference call with bloggers today. He wanted to emphasize, that, although the demonstrations have quieted down, the movement hasn’t ended and the election results are not yet resolved.

In contrast, John Bolton is willing to ratify the victory of his alleged enemy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so that he may give the Israelis the go-ahead for (you guessed it) bombing Iran.

It’s easy to cover a demonstration of thousands or hostile words from one person or another, but Parsi emphasized the power of the quiet, patient approach that the Obama administration has taken toward Iran. An external threat always unites a country. When the head of another country, such as President Bush, threatens regime change, even the internal opponents of a regime have to mute their criticisms lest they open their country to a greater external threat. Obama’s statements of mutual respect, Parsi said, dissolves the “glue” that the regime change rhetoric provides.

If we want to see dissent in Iran censor itself, Bolton’s bluster is the way to go. But President Obama is smarter than that.

Bolton makes much of Iran’s nuclear program, his motivator for attack. Parsi said that there is no information that the nuclear program has slowed down, nor would one expect the election to have that effect. If Mousavi were president, he has said that he would continue the civilian program, but Parsi said it is likely that Mousavi would try to build confidence in the world community that the program was indeed for civilian power, probably by re-implementing the Additional Protocol Iran has signed and which allows more intrusive IAEA inspections. Iran would likely want something in return for this, perhaps moving consideration of its nuclear program back to the International Atomic Energy Agency from the United Nations Security Council.

CKR has speculated, although not at WhirledView, that there might be a faction of engineers and scientists in Iran’s nuclear program who very much want to build a bomb. There were such factions in Israel, in India, and in Pakistan as their nuclear programs developed. Those factions took advantage of political confusion or unrest in those countries to press their cases. Parsi confirmed that such a faction exists in Iran. Their case is very much strengthened by the neocons’ bluster.

The dissidents in Iran continue their resistance. The election is not yet a done deal. It remains difficult to get information from Iran. Bolton, as usual, has it wrong.

Many thanks to Kombiz Lavasany for organizing the call.

Picturing the Manhattan Project

by Cheryl Rofer

Historical Photos of the Manhattan Project, Timothy Joseph. Turner Publishing Company, Nashville, Tennessee 2009, $39.95.

One Christmas eve – I think I must have been about seven – I woke up early and snuck downstairs. Santa had been there. I was always a sucker for construction sets, and there was one I had wanted: long sticks that threaded through paper squares and triangles, with holes at the end to be joined by pipe cleaners. And a book, titled All About Atomic Energy. I built a flying-saucer-shaped enclosure and took the book inside to read. My parents found me asleep with the book in the morning.

The construction set didn’t last – the paper ripped and the pipe cleaners broke – but my interest in atomic energy and, eventually, the Manhattan Project, continued.

It’s more than a half-century ago now since the first nuclear weapons were built, under the extreme duress of a world-shaking competition. It turned out that the German nuclear weapon project had gone badly, but the competition was felt to be real while it was on.

The clothes and postures look as dated now as photos of Nicholas and Alexandra would have looked to me that Christmas. But I still find them moving, the story full of lessons for today. It’s possible that we aren’t paying attention to the best of those lessons.

Timothy Joseph serves up a full portion of Manhattan Project photos in Historical Photos of the Manhattan Project. He takes note of what I think is the best of the lessons: how quickly a new technology was turned into something usable; regrettably, a weapon. We humans are capable of such ingenuity and competence when pressed. We haven’t yet convinced ourselves to be pressed on today’s technical challenges.

Iran is not Iraq, 2009 is not 1979, and Obama is not W

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In 2005, a student of mine began his report to the class on the relationship between politics and Islam in Iran with the title “Iran is not Iraq.” Most, if not all of the students in that upper division Islam and Politics class already knew it but his was a particularly effective opening, and as he told me later, far too few Americans knew the difference between the two countries at the time of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and fewer still could differentiate between these two large Middle Eastern countries on the map.

Presumably, after the events in Iran over the past couple of weeks and the heavy news coverage here far more Americans may – hopefully - now recognize some of the major differences between the two countries. These include the facts that the majority of Iranians speak Farsi or a Farsi dialect while most Iraqis speak either Arabic or Kurdish; that almost all Iranians are Shiite Muslims while Iraqis are either Sunni or Shiite; that Iraq was an artificial entity patched together from three former Ottoman provinces by the British during the colonial period while Iran traces its origins to the Persian Empire; and finally that Iraq has been governed as a secular state since its independence in 1932 whereas Iran has been controlled by a Shiite theocracy since 1979. There are more differences, but enough for now.

Hopefully Americans also realize that there is a huge internal political struggle underway in Iran that burst into the open in the streets in reaction to the Iranian regime’s mangling the aftermath of the country’s recent presidential election.

Getting It Wrong

by Cheryl Rofer

Here's a crabby post to start your Monday morning wrong. If you are having a bad Monday, don't click on the links. They'll make it worse.

But I found these three articles so egregiously wrong, I wanted to say something about them. Unfortunately (or maybe happily), I don't have time to work through them in detail. Maybe Tuesday will be better.

It's Not the Religion, Fareed!
I like much of what Fareed writes, but here he's reeeaaaaccchhhing for a way to distinguish the people in Iran's streets today from the people in Estonia's streets in 1989. And the other countries that emerged from Communist rule in 1989-1991. He looks around, and finds...religion! The parallels of those countries to Iran fail for a number of reasons. It was an external power, Russian Communism, that held sway in a colonial fashion. Those countries had reasonably well-developed political movements with clear paths of the insurgents to power. Religion was used in Poland as a lever, but it was much weaker in other places. That's why I've gone back to the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an analogy. It's not perfect, but it's much closer than the revolutions of 1989-1991.

Because They're Illegal, That's Why!
Jackson Diehl insists this morning that President Obama go back to business as usual with Israel.

Pressuring Israel made sense, at first. The administration correctly understood that Netanyahu, a right-winger who took office with the clear intention of indefinitely postponing any Israeli-Palestinian settlement, needed to feel some public heat from Washington to change his position -- and that the show of muscle would add credibility to the administration's demands that Arab leaders offer their own gestures.

The gesture has been made, time to return to hypocrisy.

Diehl ignores the UN resolutions and international law on the settlements to argue that they are a trivial bit of fluff that don't matter, and anyway if Israel makes any concessions, the Palestinians won't. And Obama will have to back down and lose face. But perhaps not. A competing newspaper reports this morning that Israel may put some sort of freeze in place; not exactly what the administration is asking for, but more than Israel would have done without the pressure. And we'll see where it goes from here.

Ross Douthat's Reckless Romance
This one is just plain sexism. But what can we expect from the New York Times's pet conservative man? Douthat finds the last week to have been a good one for reckless romance.

The nation’s most famous reality-television father, Jon Gosselin of “Jon and Kate Plus Eight,” threw over his marriage for a fling with a 23-year-old schoolteacher. Not one but two prominent conservative politicians torpedoed their careers with public confessions of adultery — with Mark Sanford’s Argentine disappearing act eclipsing John Ensign’s accusation of extortion against his lover’s spouse.

Um, Ross, those are all guys breaking up their marriages. Romance has some mutuality to it, and I can't see any of the women involved in those scenarios feeling particularly good just now. But reckless romance rules in Ross's fantasyland. Oh well, he's the guy who thought that cartoon character had to be male. I saw her as female, myself. Who else would have to correct all the guys who are getting it wrong on the internet? (That last one is safe to click.)

Whither Iran

By: Bill Stewart

The Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer a theocracy; it has become a military dictatorship. Iran was never a democracy, not even under the Shah. But much of its current institutional framework could be made to work as one. Parliament was freely elected, as was the presidency. The problem has been that there is an unelected religious framework that runs parallel to, around and through the elected secular institutions. In practice, it is this unelected body of mullahs and clerics who have the final say in all matters secular and religious.

At the top has been the Supreme Leader, chosen for life, who is thought to be - and sees himself - as God's spokesman and guardian of the principles of Shia Islam. In short, he plays the role of an all-powerful medieval pope, or an equally powerful medieval Caliph. He cannot be disobeyed. Just below him stands the 12-member Council of Guardians, which can veto any law and any candidate for parliament or the presidency. The Supreme Leader and the Guardians have played their respective roles with increasing abandon, convinced they are right because, in the name of God, they are doing God's work. We have our own examples in western history. Remember the Divine Right of Kings? In the long sweep of history, that was not so long ago. Even today, in matters of faith and morals, the pope is deemed to be infallible. The difference is that today, one does not get bloodied by the pope or his guardians for daring to disagree. That was not always the case.

Still Not 1913

by Cheryl Rofer

I’d like to thank Mark and others for the discussion about what decreasing the numbers of nuclear weapons and even eliminating them might do to the world. I remain unconvinced, however, that eliminating them, or decreasing them significantly, would take us back to the bad old days of 1913.

First, however, a word about my method. Mark took my argument to be that democracies don’t go to war against each other. My earlier post probably wasn’t clear, but that’s not what I said, and I’m going in a different direction. I find that argument to be poorly supported. I am working out a longer and more complex argument here; I find blogging and discussion useful for that sort of thing. So we’re in the middle of a work in progress: sometimes it may look like one thing and sometimes something else.

Mark argues several points.

Turning Points

by Cheryl Rofer

A while back, before I even started thinking about reading Nicholas and Alexandra, I was at a dinner with a noted diplomat. One of the other attendees was almost totally focused on what might have happened, had the Tsar and Tsarina not become so dependent on Rasputin. Or perhaps her turning point was the Tsarevich’s hemophilia. I didn’t listen closely, because I found her monopolization of the guest of honor with this stuff annoying. I had some things I would have liked to ask him.

The Russian Revolution certainly looks like a turning point, and it can look like the problems with Rasputin, which probably would not have happened had the Tsarevich not had hemophilia, were “the” trigger. But there were problems even before Nicholas became Tsar, long before he married Alexandra, long before Tsarevich Alexei was born.

Do Pictures Lie?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Not exactly.  But our interpretations may be way way off.

Look at this photo.  Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari is extending two hands and he’s smiling—grinning really, as if he’s trying hard to be agreeable. He wants to be friends, and he wants the camera to get this.  But Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, apparently isn’t buying it.  His body is rigid.  He’s allowing, just barely, his hand to be grasped.  The absolute diplomatic minimum.  Aha! I thought, when I first saw this photo, a wonderfully graphic indication that Singh and India want as little as possible to do with Pakistan, until Pakistan takes stronger action against those behind the murderous rampage in Mumbai last year. 

So that’s how I was going to play it when I was writing my post on Pride and Paralysis.  

Fortunately before I’d posted that draft, I came across another photo, this one of all the principals at the BRIC conference in Russia.  Look at Manmohan Singh, who has no reason to be conveying anything negative in this situation.  The same aloof body posture.  That now familiar, seemingly reluctant participation in the rite when all the others are reaching eagerly into a two handed press-the-flesh fest for photographers.   (This time, of course, there is a ghost of a smile, which may or may not mean anything. )

So I advance another hypothesis, which I’ll share with you.  Manmohan Singh does what’s necessary, diplomatically, but maybe he really doesn’t like handshakes.  As an Indian of the old school, he may prefer a namaste.  Folded hands.  Gentle reserve.  No physical contact.

But that, too, is only a guess.

Photo Credits:  The Hindu; The New York Times.