So, during the last few days I've finally caught myself up with what's been going on in the Lebannon-Israel war these past month. (I had sort of being ignoring it as much as possible, after the initial onset and digesting the reaction of my students, and then honestly well it's been very depressing...)
I find it very interesting to hear all the commentary on Hizbollah, as a "state within a state." The New York Times reported that within days after the cease-fire during the intial Israeli pull-out, hundreds of Hizbollah members spread around the country to assess the damage, help people get moved back in and begin the process of rebuilding. This is extraordinarily smart in my opinion, as Hizbollah could easily get blamed (and some say it still may happen) for starting this war just as Lebannon was beginning to rebuild after the last one. But it's also interesting, becuase Hizbollah is again proving that it is more efficient and better organized than the Lebanese state itself.
"Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage." - NY Times.
Thus, it is described as a state-within-a-state. Or even a state within a non-state as one Lebanese professer put it. This seems odd to us in the west I think, where our government for all its' faults is efficient and dependable, the majority of the time. Our every day lives revolve around systems of efficiency and convienience, many of which are made possible by the structure and legislation of our state and federal governments. Even during disasters like Hurricane Katrina, while criticism may be warranted the response was still overwhelming compared to what the Lebanese government must be able to offer. A New York times article today reported that though the Lebanese Army was being deployed, their intial level of activity seems to be slightly disappointing.
It seems like at times we just don't know what to make of groups like Hizbollah, or Hamas. They are militant and carry out terrorist actions. But they also start wars? What happened to wars being between two states? What do we do when the war is between an independent group that has nationalistic ties and a nation-state? US foreign-policy makers are obviously still struggling with this question because it is truly complicated. Especially, when the group is Hizbollah, which offers services their state governments can't offer, is more visible to the state's people...oh and gets an "unlimited reconstruction budget" from friendly state Iran.
What do you with a state-within-a-state like that?
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The Power of Words
So, I realized something important about myself this evening as I was endeavoring to make more headway on the previously mentioned paper...I get caught up in the power of words.
Words pick me up, grab hold of me, cause excitement or awe to rise up inside of me, capture my attention, and make my thoughts fly into a thousand directions.
I think that's one of the reasons why I love reading...and yet, sometimes procrastinate on diving into a book because it always brings something new into my head, exhausting me, exhilariting me, throwing me for new loops.
On a research note, I quickly get caught up in the ideas that powerful writing presents or the power of what I'm reading about. These days as I'm reading pages on Constitutional history, the powers of the Supreme Court, Congress and the President, I get caught up in the powerful history that is captured on the page. I get overwhelmed by how much I don't know, and how much better some other author's words are for conveying an idea that I just learned about. I latch onto word order or the way in which someone describes something and it takes me awhile to step back and go "oh."
Most of the time that comes when I'm finally forced to write it out myself. That's why deadlines are so very, very important in my life.
So...what is occupying my mind so late this evening? Thoughts on American law, of course!
(This may be a bad sign in that I might have to consider law school at some point...ergh.)
"The Constitution of the United Statesis beguilingly - and misleadingly - short, tempting some poele to suppose that, unlike sacred texts, it can be read and understood by anyone...The Constitution is [instead] elusive, ambiguous, murky, sometimes quite opaque."
In deciding what the Constitution means, we must first grapple with the question, Whose meaning are we seeking?" --The Evolving Constitution, Jethro K. Lieberman
Thus surmising the constitutional conflict that is the basis for so much of American politics. Who has the power? And why do they? And should they? What happens if they go to far? Can they be stopped? Should they be stopped? And what happens if the person in the wrong believes something different?
There's something beautiful about laws that grapple with those questions. There's something frustrating about trying to put into succinct paragraphs how things like Constitutional separations of power are so imperative to understanding how US foreign policy works, when I don't really understand all of the implications...While still realizing that this is not the point of my paper anyway! Grrrargh.
These are the days when I think I would be a lot better off just finding a job after graduation and keeping my big scale ideas to relaxed evening reading for the rest of my life, therefore never having to grapple with them enough to put my own ideas on paper.
Can I just repeat the sound, GRRRARGH!?!
Words pick me up, grab hold of me, cause excitement or awe to rise up inside of me, capture my attention, and make my thoughts fly into a thousand directions.
I think that's one of the reasons why I love reading...and yet, sometimes procrastinate on diving into a book because it always brings something new into my head, exhausting me, exhilariting me, throwing me for new loops.
On a research note, I quickly get caught up in the ideas that powerful writing presents or the power of what I'm reading about. These days as I'm reading pages on Constitutional history, the powers of the Supreme Court, Congress and the President, I get caught up in the powerful history that is captured on the page. I get overwhelmed by how much I don't know, and how much better some other author's words are for conveying an idea that I just learned about. I latch onto word order or the way in which someone describes something and it takes me awhile to step back and go "oh."
Most of the time that comes when I'm finally forced to write it out myself. That's why deadlines are so very, very important in my life.
So...what is occupying my mind so late this evening? Thoughts on American law, of course!
(This may be a bad sign in that I might have to consider law school at some point...ergh.)
"The Constitution of the United Statesis beguilingly - and misleadingly - short, tempting some poele to suppose that, unlike sacred texts, it can be read and understood by anyone...The Constitution is [instead] elusive, ambiguous, murky, sometimes quite opaque."
In deciding what the Constitution means, we must first grapple with the question, Whose meaning are we seeking?" --The Evolving Constitution, Jethro K. Lieberman
Thus surmising the constitutional conflict that is the basis for so much of American politics. Who has the power? And why do they? And should they? What happens if they go to far? Can they be stopped? Should they be stopped? And what happens if the person in the wrong believes something different?
There's something beautiful about laws that grapple with those questions. There's something frustrating about trying to put into succinct paragraphs how things like Constitutional separations of power are so imperative to understanding how US foreign policy works, when I don't really understand all of the implications...While still realizing that this is not the point of my paper anyway! Grrrargh.
These are the days when I think I would be a lot better off just finding a job after graduation and keeping my big scale ideas to relaxed evening reading for the rest of my life, therefore never having to grapple with them enough to put my own ideas on paper.
Can I just repeat the sound, GRRRARGH!?!
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Foreign Policy Players (Paper #1)
So. I've hit writer's block. Yet again. And now, in an attempt to make this day worth something, I'll see if maybe I can trick my fingers into typing something worthwhile by writing the basic idea of my paper in this forum. Try not to get too bored. {PS: All informal language will be removed from the final paper. It is there purely for your enjoyment and my sanity at this point.}
Players in US Foreign Policy
On Februrary 20, 1978 Gerald Ford delivered a speech at Kansas State University, in which he posed the question: "How should [the] powers of the executive and legislative branches be coordinated, especially in the field of foreign policy?" Freshly retired from the American Presidency, he then spun out his own answer to the question of how the "complex interplay" between Congress and the President can be most effective while also responding to the issues raised by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Vietnam War. His argument reflects one side of the larger debate of who should hold the power in formulating foreign policy that has been existant from the moment that the Constitution received its' last signature. The founders spun out these arguments in the meetings of the Federal Convention, and later defended their decisions in The Federalist Papers. The debates can be found woven throughout American history, and are no less relevant today in the context of the Bush Administration, a partisan Congress, and a foreign policy bureacracy unlike any that this nation has seen before. This paper seeks to survey the players within this bureacracy and explore the question of how US foreign policy can be effectively coordinated in today's political environment.
This survey begins where US foreign policy began, with the Constitution and the Founders' outline for how foreign affairs should be dealt with on behalf of the US government. On the surface, the Constitution seems to set forth a balanced agenda for the three branches: the President is granted the power to command the army and the navy, make treaties, appoint ambassadors and other state officials, and receive foreign dignitaries; the Congress gets to declare war, regulate foreign commerce, define and punish piracies (obviously the most fun part of the job...pirates!), and make the rules for the Government and the land and sea forces; oh and the Supreme Court, it basically as the power to interpret all said laws or actions as constitutional or unconstitutional therefore keeping the other two branches in check and not allowing them to kill the other.
However, history shows that as balanced and nice as that may seem in pretty ink on ancient parchment, and as optimistic as the founders were about the quality and knowledge of the future US Senators and Presidents (see The Federalist Papers #64)...the balance didn't last too long. And once we hit World War II, the checks and balances seem to get permanently out of whack because then you have 3 things happen: #1-the government reorganizes itself drastically changing how things get done #2-the US gets handed global power (end of World War II), and simultaneoulsy is threatened to no longer be in power (silly Soviets) and #3-the foreign policy trends which had existed before sort of changed over onto a new course, changing how people looked at the US, power, and the government in general.
So, a few things important began to go on (and here's the part that I don't know how to talk about, or maybe just don't know enough about):
---National Security Act of 1947 - basically reorganizes the Executive branch's ability to formulate foreign policy by establishing the National Security Council (NSC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, formally the wartime OSS), and the Department of Defense.
---War Powers Act 1973 - Congress getting fet up with Presidents taking Executive power and running with it, especially when it involves putting Americans into harms way. Their opponents say that they've always had that power and that it was actually Congress at this point who was doing the constitutionally unthinkable and demanding more power than they were granted. Semantics. Whatever.
---Congress changing...a lot. You had shifts of Congressmen totally and utterly change, huge increases in congressional staff and individual congressional power. The up-and-down curve of respect and power of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee. And various loud voices enamating from the Congressional Chambers that affected the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches.
---Preisdents: FDR (at the end of WWII, 1933-1945), Truman ( 1945-1953), Eisenhower (1953-1961), Kennedy (1961-1963), Johnson (1963-1969), Nixon (1969-1974), Ford (1974-1977), Carter (1977-1981), Reagan (1981-1989), George Bush (1989-1993), Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-Present).
[Trying to figure out how each one of them affected these patterns in a succinct manner makes me want to cry.]
---Basically...the long and the short of it, the question of power between Congress and the President had its ups and downs over the latter half of the 20th Century, which at its' height resulted in Congressional act or reproval in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was subsequently ignored by presidential administrations.
---Now, we are in another significant turning point in foreign policy with a President who is taking a gracious view of Constitutional Executive power and who has put out significant policy changes in terms of the National Security Acts of 2002 and 2004, and the debate continues on.
But of course, it's not just the president who is making these decisions. Many people affect the decisions that he signs of on...in other words:
Players in US Foreign Policy
On Februrary 20, 1978 Gerald Ford delivered a speech at Kansas State University, in which he posed the question: "How should [the] powers of the executive and legislative branches be coordinated, especially in the field of foreign policy?" Freshly retired from the American Presidency, he then spun out his own answer to the question of how the "complex interplay" between Congress and the President can be most effective while also responding to the issues raised by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Vietnam War. His argument reflects one side of the larger debate of who should hold the power in formulating foreign policy that has been existant from the moment that the Constitution received its' last signature. The founders spun out these arguments in the meetings of the Federal Convention, and later defended their decisions in The Federalist Papers. The debates can be found woven throughout American history, and are no less relevant today in the context of the Bush Administration, a partisan Congress, and a foreign policy bureacracy unlike any that this nation has seen before. This paper seeks to survey the players within this bureacracy and explore the question of how US foreign policy can be effectively coordinated in today's political environment.
This survey begins where US foreign policy began, with the Constitution and the Founders' outline for how foreign affairs should be dealt with on behalf of the US government. On the surface, the Constitution seems to set forth a balanced agenda for the three branches: the President is granted the power to command the army and the navy, make treaties, appoint ambassadors and other state officials, and receive foreign dignitaries; the Congress gets to declare war, regulate foreign commerce, define and punish piracies (obviously the most fun part of the job...pirates!), and make the rules for the Government and the land and sea forces; oh and the Supreme Court, it basically as the power to interpret all said laws or actions as constitutional or unconstitutional therefore keeping the other two branches in check and not allowing them to kill the other.
However, history shows that as balanced and nice as that may seem in pretty ink on ancient parchment, and as optimistic as the founders were about the quality and knowledge of the future US Senators and Presidents (see The Federalist Papers #64)...the balance didn't last too long. And once we hit World War II, the checks and balances seem to get permanently out of whack because then you have 3 things happen: #1-the government reorganizes itself drastically changing how things get done #2-the US gets handed global power (end of World War II), and simultaneoulsy is threatened to no longer be in power (silly Soviets) and #3-the foreign policy trends which had existed before sort of changed over onto a new course, changing how people looked at the US, power, and the government in general.
So, a few things important began to go on (and here's the part that I don't know how to talk about, or maybe just don't know enough about):
---National Security Act of 1947 - basically reorganizes the Executive branch's ability to formulate foreign policy by establishing the National Security Council (NSC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, formally the wartime OSS), and the Department of Defense.
---War Powers Act 1973 - Congress getting fet up with Presidents taking Executive power and running with it, especially when it involves putting Americans into harms way. Their opponents say that they've always had that power and that it was actually Congress at this point who was doing the constitutionally unthinkable and demanding more power than they were granted. Semantics. Whatever.
---Congress changing...a lot. You had shifts of Congressmen totally and utterly change, huge increases in congressional staff and individual congressional power. The up-and-down curve of respect and power of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee. And various loud voices enamating from the Congressional Chambers that affected the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches.
---Preisdents: FDR (at the end of WWII, 1933-1945), Truman ( 1945-1953), Eisenhower (1953-1961), Kennedy (1961-1963), Johnson (1963-1969), Nixon (1969-1974), Ford (1974-1977), Carter (1977-1981), Reagan (1981-1989), George Bush (1989-1993), Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-Present).
[Trying to figure out how each one of them affected these patterns in a succinct manner makes me want to cry.]
---Basically...the long and the short of it, the question of power between Congress and the President had its ups and downs over the latter half of the 20th Century, which at its' height resulted in Congressional act or reproval in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was subsequently ignored by presidential administrations.
---Now, we are in another significant turning point in foreign policy with a President who is taking a gracious view of Constitutional Executive power and who has put out significant policy changes in terms of the National Security Acts of 2002 and 2004, and the debate continues on.
But of course, it's not just the president who is making these decisions. Many people affect the decisions that he signs of on...in other words:
“The president does not sit atop the bureaucracy as if it were a pyramid of power, commanding bureaucratic units to do his bidding. Rather, the president is confronted with well-established institutions and ongoing stream of foreign policy. Much of the context and direction of policy is provided by members of the foreign policy bureaucracy who have careers and perspectives that inevitably reflect more than the most recent presidential electoral returns."
Thus, within the Executive Branch you have the CIA and the NSC which provide critical intelligence that inform foreign policy decisions for the President, as well as Congress. The Department of State...Department of Defense...Various other Government agencies...Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, EPA, etc. USAID!
NGOs...Corporations, Lobbyists...International Bodies...The People
This is a mess.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
A Vision
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." - Alexandar Hamilton, the Federalist Papers
So, I've been reading selections from the Federalist Papers today as a part of some of my summer research and I was struck by the clear vision that these men had for the nation they were creating. The debated and argued and pounded out document after document and the result was the American form of government. And somehow their crazy ideas still survive on today, although my guess is some of them are probably turning over in their graves at result of 200 years of evolution...oh well.
What does it take for a vision like that to survive? What kind of person does it take to bring forth a vision for the world that so drastically changes it? Several visionaries come to mind...Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi of course. Several presidents. Saintly types like Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day or Brother Roger of the Taize community. That Jesus guy. The prophets. Church patrons...Wesley, Luther, Calvin...Then you know, there's Walt Disney. Sam Walton. And Bill Gates. George W., Oprah, Bono.
There's something about people who have a strong and compelling vision that makes people sit up and listen, even if they disagree. My guess is today sometimes we confuse the "loudness" of a voice with a vision for the future, or even the present. But still, it is a vision that makes us take notice. It is a vision that we shape our lives around.
Americans still celebrate the Founders' vision with each wave of the stars and stripes and the rhetoric of liberty and democracy. And despite the corruption that seems to cloud DC, there are people who take that vision to their hearts and souls and go after it. We might disagree about what that vision says, and yet...we seem to do alright.
These days, the vision for today and tomorrow's American foreign policy is headlinging the news (and of course more my focus that domestic politics). The need for a strong, compelling (okay...and I would argue different) vision for US foriegn policy is urgent in this globalized world. Every once in a while we get a hint of it - depending on which side you come from, maybe it's already there.
In the poltical world, the buzz is all about who will give the stronger vision for Congress in the fall elections? Who will provide the more persuasive vision for bring faith and politics together? Or at least the more persuasive rhetoric...Who is going to bring a vision for a new economic order that does away with poverty as we know it? Where is the vision for a world absent of nuclear weapons and military prowess? Where is the vision for an America that doesn't revolve around shopping and snagging the latest Britney Spears gossip? Or are those visions already there...and we just miss them?
Are we lacking the visionaries or the will to make their visions reality?
So, I've been reading selections from the Federalist Papers today as a part of some of my summer research and I was struck by the clear vision that these men had for the nation they were creating. The debated and argued and pounded out document after document and the result was the American form of government. And somehow their crazy ideas still survive on today, although my guess is some of them are probably turning over in their graves at result of 200 years of evolution...oh well.
What does it take for a vision like that to survive? What kind of person does it take to bring forth a vision for the world that so drastically changes it? Several visionaries come to mind...Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi of course. Several presidents. Saintly types like Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day or Brother Roger of the Taize community. That Jesus guy. The prophets. Church patrons...Wesley, Luther, Calvin...Then you know, there's Walt Disney. Sam Walton. And Bill Gates. George W., Oprah, Bono.
There's something about people who have a strong and compelling vision that makes people sit up and listen, even if they disagree. My guess is today sometimes we confuse the "loudness" of a voice with a vision for the future, or even the present. But still, it is a vision that makes us take notice. It is a vision that we shape our lives around.
Americans still celebrate the Founders' vision with each wave of the stars and stripes and the rhetoric of liberty and democracy. And despite the corruption that seems to cloud DC, there are people who take that vision to their hearts and souls and go after it. We might disagree about what that vision says, and yet...we seem to do alright.
These days, the vision for today and tomorrow's American foreign policy is headlinging the news (and of course more my focus that domestic politics). The need for a strong, compelling (okay...and I would argue different) vision for US foriegn policy is urgent in this globalized world. Every once in a while we get a hint of it - depending on which side you come from, maybe it's already there.
In the poltical world, the buzz is all about who will give the stronger vision for Congress in the fall elections? Who will provide the more persuasive vision for bring faith and politics together? Or at least the more persuasive rhetoric...Who is going to bring a vision for a new economic order that does away with poverty as we know it? Where is the vision for a world absent of nuclear weapons and military prowess? Where is the vision for an America that doesn't revolve around shopping and snagging the latest Britney Spears gossip? Or are those visions already there...and we just miss them?
Are we lacking the visionaries or the will to make their visions reality?
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