Obama won't give this speech, but I suspect he privately agrees with many of Dr. Cole's sentiments. He raises an important theme about Truman and Eisenhower: both presidents believed in the United Nations as an instrument of international law and order. From Kennedy on down to Bush, when U.S. disregard for the UN reached its nadir, this belief has steadily eroded. Even though the President subscribes to Ike's credo, the American people - and significant chunks of the foreign policy elite - have largely abandoned it.
Juan, your post stirs up some ideas that have been percolating for a long time (from my left-leaning, though unabashedly evangelical, Christian perspective).
I just returned to the U.S. after a week in Brussels. When you're in Brussels, you have to be conversant in Dutch, French, and, to a lesser extent, German, English and Spanish - not just the languages, but the politics, music, and football teams of those countries. This European geographic reality of rubbing up against your neighbors lends itself to popular engagement in foreign policy. As Christopher W. said, the BBC and Deutsche Welle have been thorough in their Pakistan coverage. Even the local Flemish press in Brussels was well-informed.
Historically, in the U.S., federalism and regional differences played a somewhat similar role. Yet the past 50 years have seen massive erosion of those differences due to television, interstate highways, and the national advertising made possible by both technologies. Moreover, the governing elite sees this homogenization of America as being in its interest. Some of the fruits - Southern desegregation, the weakening of WASP cronies - have been beneficial, but, on balance, the effects have been malign and Orwellian. George W. Bush's message control over the war in Iraq startled me; even Nixon could only have dreamed of it.
Bush Jr's political achievement was to take U.S. churches - hitherto either radical or reactionary, but in either case out of the mainstream - and make them part of "The Message". Growing American confusion about economic globalization and Internet-enabled interconnectedness became, in Bush's hands, a coherent, uniform message about terrorists lurking all over the Middle East as our scapegoat.
Among evangelical Christians, this also took the form of an end-times eschatology (based on a contested reading of the Book of Revelation) that pointed to the 1948 establishment of Israel as an event in salvation history. Non-Christians would be astonished at how many people with generally mainstream views on other topics believe this narrative. The prevalence of this belief - and the wealth and votes of those who hold it - more than any official barrier, keeps the U.S. from defending Palestinian human rights against blatant Israeli encroachments.
Obama won't give this speech, but I suspect he privately agrees with many of Dr. Cole's sentiments. He raises an important theme about Truman and Eisenhower: both presidents believed in the United Nations as an instrument of international law and order. From Kennedy on down to Bush, when U.S. disregard for the UN reached its nadir, this belief has steadily eroded. Even though the President subscribes to Ike's credo, the American people - and significant chunks of the foreign policy elite - have largely abandoned it.
Juan, your post stirs up some ideas that have been percolating for a long time (from my left-leaning, though unabashedly evangelical, Christian perspective).
I just returned to the U.S. after a week in Brussels. When you're in Brussels, you have to be conversant in Dutch, French, and, to a lesser extent, German, English and Spanish - not just the languages, but the politics, music, and football teams of those countries. This European geographic reality of rubbing up against your neighbors lends itself to popular engagement in foreign policy. As Christopher W. said, the BBC and Deutsche Welle have been thorough in their Pakistan coverage. Even the local Flemish press in Brussels was well-informed.
Historically, in the U.S., federalism and regional differences played a somewhat similar role. Yet the past 50 years have seen massive erosion of those differences due to television, interstate highways, and the national advertising made possible by both technologies. Moreover, the governing elite sees this homogenization of America as being in its interest. Some of the fruits - Southern desegregation, the weakening of WASP cronies - have been beneficial, but, on balance, the effects have been malign and Orwellian. George W. Bush's message control over the war in Iraq startled me; even Nixon could only have dreamed of it.
Bush Jr's political achievement was to take U.S. churches - hitherto either radical or reactionary, but in either case out of the mainstream - and make them part of "The Message". Growing American confusion about economic globalization and Internet-enabled interconnectedness became, in Bush's hands, a coherent, uniform message about terrorists lurking all over the Middle East as our scapegoat.
Among evangelical Christians, this also took the form of an end-times eschatology (based on a contested reading of the Book of Revelation) that pointed to the 1948 establishment of Israel as an event in salvation history. Non-Christians would be astonished at how many people with generally mainstream views on other topics believe this narrative. The prevalence of this belief - and the wealth and votes of those who hold it - more than any official barrier, keeps the U.S. from defending Palestinian human rights against blatant Israeli encroachments.
Surprised not to see any comments - that's eight deaths too many. We need to admit our mistakes and leave expeditiously.