Rage, Rockets & Rhetoric

"These are not Hezbollah buildings!" says this resident of southern Beirut ? which is a stronghold of Hezbollah support ? surveying the damage in his neighborhood following Israeli air raids, July 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

(CBS/AP) Israeli forces - now in day 14 of their war with Hezbollah - moved deeper into Lebanon Monday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her first diplomatic foray since the conflict began, encountering some resistance. As she laid out the U.S. position during an unannounced visit to Beirut Monday, Israeli troops seized a hilltop in a Hezbollah stronghold, capturing two guerrillas in heavy fighting.

The U.S. completed its evacuation of 12,000 Americans and said it would switch its focus to bringing in humanitarian aid. Rice is arguing for a cease fire simultaneous with the deployment of international and Lebanese troops into southern Lebanon, to prevent new Hezbollah attacks on Israel. CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports Lebanese officials describe Monday's meetings as tense, with Rice repeating the same conditions for a cease fire that Israel has laid out.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a prominent Shiite Muslim who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, rejected the idea and said a cease fire should be immediate, leaving the other issues for much later. Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora took a similar stance and complained to Rice about the destruction wreaked by U.S. ally Israel. Israel, the Lebanese leader told Rice, "is taking Lebanon backward 50 years and the result will be Lebanon's destruction." A day after criticizing Israel for "disproportionate" strikes against civilians, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland accused Hezbollah of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians.

"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending... among women and children," Egeland said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men." Israel appeared to be easing bombardment in populated areas and roads in Lebanon that has killed hundreds, displaced as many as 750,000 and dismembered the transportation network. Instead, it appeared to be focusing its firepower on Hezbollah at the front. Beirut saw no strikes all day, in apparent deference to Rice's visit.

In other recent developments:
Hospital and security officials say seven people were killed and another person was wounded in an Israeli missile strike early Tuesday on a house in Nabatiyeh, in south Lebanon.
President Bush on Monday ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to provide humanitarian aid. In announcing the assistance program, White House press secretary Tony Snow said there is no reason to believe an immediate cease fire would stop violence in the Mideast and said instead that the world should confront the destabilizing force of Hezbollah and its practice of using the Lebanese people as "human shields."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wants a meeting Wednesday in Rome to negotiate a deal including a cease fire, deployment of an international force and the release of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah. Annan's goal is "to keep the U.N. involved in the mediation efforts, even if the international military force is likely to be a NATO or other non-U.N. Force," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk. "Relief aid and humanitarian assistance will most likely have to be distributed by U.N. agencies."

Hezbollah's representative in Iran warned Monday that his militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel. "We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Hossein Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of the Palestinian group Hamas and the ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. "You will see a new Middle East - in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday called for an international military force in southern Lebanon to be part of a cease fire deal which has yet to be negotiated.
A group of 300 Americans and 100 other Europeans are believed trapped in villages south of Tyre, according to Erik Rattat, a German official involved in the evacuation of foreigners from Lebanon. Some 11,700 Americans have fled Lebanon.

Israel shelled a town in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, killing five Palestinians and wounding at least nine people, according to hospital officials. Israel said its attacks were aimed at two groups of Hamas militants firing rockets at southern Israel and that it regretted any civilian casualties.

An Israeli helicopter crashed in northern Israel near the Lebanese border after hitting an electrical wire while making an emergency landing, causing two casualties and starting a large brushfire atop a hill.

(CBS/AP) CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports Hezbollah's headquarters ? its offices and apartments and even its streets ? are all mostly just rubble now. But the infrastructure Hezbollah relies on isn't made of concrete and steel. Hezbollah's foundation is religious zeal and popular support, Roth reports. It is a surrogate government that runs clinics and schools and mosques ? and is a part of the establishment with 14 seats in parliament.

Israel's overall death toll stands at 39, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 22 soldiers killed in the fighting. Sixty-eight soldiers have been wounded, and 255 civilians were injured by rocket fire, officials said. On the Lebanese side, security officials said 384 people had been killed, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel continued pounding the visible infrastructure of Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday.

CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports from Tyre that the Lebanese didn't need a reminder of the danger but the Israelis gave them one anyway: High overhead, two explosions and leaflets filled the sky. The message fluttering down was as simple as it was cold. "This is just the beginning," it said. At the front, Israeli ground forces waged a fierce battle Monday with guerrillas dug in at the closest large town to the border, Bint Jbail, known as "the capital of the resistance" for its vehement support of Hezbollah during Israel's 1982-2000 occupation of the south. Four Israeli soldiers were killed ? two in fighting and two in a helicopter crash ? and 20 were wounded, military officials said.

The army said it captured two Hezbollah guerrillas, the first time it has taken any into custody during the fighting. "When the enemy surrenders, we take them prisoner. The two prisoners are located in Israel and will be held here with the aim of interrogating them," said Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman. Backed by an intense artillery barrage, troops seized a hilltop inside the town, but the rest of Bint Jbail remained in the hands of up to 200 Hezbollah guerrillas, military officials said. Israeli military officials say several thousand troops are moving in and out of southern Lebanon, but there are less than that number in there at any one time.

A day earlier, a Red Cross doctor visited Bint Jbail and reported an unknown number of families hunkered down in schools and mosques for protection, though much of the population of about 30,000 had fled. Bint Jbail holds a legendary reputation with Hezbollah, because it was one of three large towns inside Israel's buffer zone and backing for the guerrillas remained strong throughout the occupation. Signs in the town tout its nickname.

When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah held a large celebration in Bint Jbail, proclaiming that the guerrillas now stood on Israel's border. The move into Bint Jbail, about 2.5 miles from the border, represents the spear point of Israel's advance, moving forward from Maroun al-Ras, a frontier village captured in more heavy fighting over the weekend. At the same time, Israeli forces were working to destroy every Hezbollah post within a half mile of the 40-mile Israeli-Lebanese border, Israeli Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said. The Israeli bombardment hit the southern cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh.

An Israeli shell crashed into a house near the Lebanese town of Marjayoun late Monday, wounding two children, witnesses said. Persistent bombardment of southern Beirut has made three hospitals there unusable because staff and supply can't reach them, forcing the evacuation of more than 50 patients. Hospitals in Tyre in Nabatiyeh are forced to take only emergency cases to preserve supplies. "Our situation is tragic. Hospitals across Lebanon are suffering medicine and fuel shortages," Lebanese Health Minister Jawad Khalife told The Associated Press. The Red Cross sent convoys to Tyre and Marjayoun bearing blankets, generators for hospitals, hygienic supplies and other materials. Egeland called on Israel to open the port of Tyre to let in aid ships and guarantee safe passage for relief convoys. An entry point at Tyre would get material directly into the south without a dangerous convoy drive.

Two ships docked at Beirut and convoys entered from Syria, bearing blankets, food, medicine. Two convoys of trucks took material to the worst-hit areas in the south along dangerous and broken roads. Amer Daoudi, Emergency Coordinator for the World Food Program operations in Lebanon, said it is vital to move fast to get aid to the people who need it most. "We need to reach these people fast. It is bad enough that their lives have been shattered without them having to go hungry as well."

www.cbsnews.com

The world needs more foxes and fewer hedgehogs

Why are the predictions of well known experts worse than those of people who linger in obscurity? Isaiah Berlin's distinction between the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, and the fox, who knows many little things, provides a clue to the answer.


Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas, made a distinction between the intelligence of the hedgehog ? which knows one big thing ? and the intelligence of the fox ? which knows many little things. Hedgehogs fit what they learn into a world view. Foxes improvise explanations case by case. The world needs both but today it needs fewer hedgehogs and more foxes. Berlin?s terms are used to describe styles of reasoning by the American psychologist Philip Tetlock, who has spent 20 years asking pundits to predict who will win elections, what countries will acquire nuclear weapons or enter the European Union and how the first Gulf war would end. He has tested 30,000 predictions from 300 experts against outcomes. Mr Tetlock finds that his respondents are not very good. They do better than a chimp who answers at random, but not much, and worse than simple forecasting rules based on extrapolation. But some pundits are better than others. A little knowledge is helpful. Dilettantes ? people with the information you will acquire from diligent reading of this newspaper ? do much better than undergraduates who based their judgment on a one-page summary of the issues. But experts have little advantage over dilettantes. The reputation of the experts is a guide to which are worth following. But not in the way you might expect. Bad forecasters are consulted more frequently than good ones. The more famous the expert, the worse his prognostications. Mr Tetlock explains this intriguing result through the distinction between hedgehogs and foxes. He uses psychological tests to categorise his respondents. People who agree that ?it is annoying to listen to someone who cannot seem to make up his or her mind? and ?the most common error in decision-making is to abandon good ideas too quickly? are hedgehogs. People who say ?when considering most conflicts, I can usually see how both sides could be right? and ?I prefer interacting with people whose opinions are very different from my own? are foxes. Mr Tetlock?s analysis is about political judgment but equally relevant to economic and commercial assessments. Foxes are better at prediction than hedgehogs because they derive information from many sources, adjust their views in line with events and see a range of perspectives on each situation. Hedgehogs have one clear view, seek evidence that confirms that view and have ready explanations for apparent failures of foresight. But these hedgehog characteristics are exactly those that politicians, journalists and business leaders demand of advisers and commentators. Harry Truman famously sought a one-armed economist, who would never say: ?On the one hand, then on the other.? Broadcast media look for snappy soundbites. Corporate executives demand ?the elevator pitch? for new ideas. Fund managers want specific forecasts. Business audiences do not want to hear that the world is a complex and uncertain place. But, unfortunately, it is. Leaders need many hedgehog qualities ? the cry that the probability of victory is 0.6 is not inspiring. But the analytic skills needed for good judgments are those of foxes. Effective management teams include both hedgehogs and foxes, which is why the modern tendency to appoint hedgehogs and allow them to surround themselves by like-minded hedgehogs is so dangerous. It is not difficult to see how George W. Bush would score on Mr Tetlock?s personality tests. Political hedgehogs invade Iraq, business hedgehogs go to China and financial hedgehogs hype the new economy. While a few political geniuses may successfully display the skills of both hedgehog and fox, these attributes are normally incompatible. The cult of the heroic CEO, which invites us to believe all characteristics required for great leadership and good judgment can be found in a few exceptional individuals, flies in the face of psychological research as well as long experience. Philip Tetlock?s new book Expert Political Judgment is published by Princeton University Press; John Kay?s new book The Hare & the Tortoise by the Erasmus Press

Think tank report: KKTC cannot be blamed for Cyprus division

A think tank known for its studies on the European Union asked Finland, which holds the current term presidency of the EU, to help lift sanctions imposed on the Turkish Cypriots.

?Turkey is making a reasonable request to the EU to remove the present embargo on traffic through northern Cypriot sea harbors and airports,? the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) said in a report drafted to be presented to Finland.


Referring to remarks by EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who warned Turkey's negotiations are heading for a ?train wreck? unless Turkey fulfills its EU obligations, the report said: ?These are in themselves reasonable conditions to put to the candidate state. However, Turkey is also making a reasonable request? by asking the 25-nation bloc to ease the isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC).

Turkey is under pressure from the EU to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic under a customs union protocol but Ankara refuses to do so unless sanctions imposed on the KKTC are lifted. The European Commission proposed removing the embargo on the KKTC after a U.N. reunification plan was overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek Cypriots. The majority of Turkish Cypriots voted for the peace plan.

?The citizens of northern Cyprus are (or can be) passport-holding citizens of the Republic of Cyprus and therefore also citizens of the EU. As a result the EU has its obligations to the citizens of northern Cyprus, first of all their right to enjoy all freedoms that are at the heart of the EU's legal order,? the report said.

?Northern Cyprus cannot be blamed for the continued division of the island,? it stressed.
Stating that the Turkish Cypriots were being punished despite their approval of the U.N. plan, the report suggested alternatives including renegotiating an amended version of the U.N. plan and the EU opening up of bilateral channels of assistance to the KKTC.

Turkish Daily news

In the city, any day can be a killing day

When it comes to homicide in Philadelphia this year, one day of the week is pretty much like any other.

There's no weekend blip.

That is, perhaps, the most remarkable fact to be gleaned from a review of the city's 185 slayings in the first half of 2006. That review shows that, as was the case last year, the typical victim of homicide in Philadelphia is a young black male. And he has been typically killed by a handgun.
What is a little different is the day-of-the-week pattern.
According to data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department, the largest number of homicides, 32, occurred on Friday. The second-highest number of killings, 31, took place on Tuesday.


And the five other days of the week, including Saturday and Sunday, were essentially indistinguishable, all with totals ranging from 22 to 26.

In one sense, this is a statistical anomaly; through the first six months of last year, Saturday and Sunday were the most common days for killing in Philadelphia.

But professor Roger Lane of Haverford College, an expert on murder in America, says the current pattern, or lack thereof, has some significance from a historical perspective.
Decades ago, killings tended to happen on the weekend, after paydays, when people had the time and money to get drunk and/or focus on personal or domestic disputes. No more.
"To people who aren't legitimately employed, one night of the week isn't much different from another," Lane said. "I think what we're seeing in Philadelphia reflects the high level of poverty and unemployment among younger, black males who, in large part, are both the perpetrators and the victims of these crimes."

The idea that urban homicide is largely a weekend phenomenon has lived on - with a cheap handgun still known as a Saturday Night Special - even though the reality on the ground has long since changed.

Regardless of which day of the week a killing is committed, the police data paint this picture of homicide in Philadelphia:
Handguns were used in 82 percent of the city's killings in the first half of 2006; shotguns and rifles accounted for 4 percent more. Last year, the local percentages were slightly lower, about 77 percent for handguns, 80 percent for all manner of guns.
Nationally, handguns are used in about 51 percent of homicides, with other firearms accounting for nearly 15 percent.

"What we worry about is the ease with which people can get weapons in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania," Mayor Street said in a recent interview, "and the fact that they're virtually all over the place."

The legislature has shown little interest in revising the state's gun laws. Earlier this month, Attorney General Thomas Corbett and State Sen. Vincent Fumo (D., Phila.) announced the formation of a task force to curb the sale and possession of illegal firearms in the city.
About 80 percent of all victims this year in Philadelphia have been African American, which is about the norm here. Roughly 89 percent of the victims have been male, also about the same as in 2005.

Nationally, about 78 percent of homicide victims are male; slightly less than half are black.
The cities with the highest homicide rates in America, studies show, have large, poor black populations with high unemployment. Cities with homicide rates higher than Philadelphia's in 2005 included Baltimore, Birmingham, Detroit, Kansas City, Richmond, St. Louis and Washington.

Nearly half of the homicides in Philadelphia this year have occurred between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Last month, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson announced the formation of the Strategic Intervention Tactical Enforcement Mobile Unit, an elite 46-officer anticrime team to patrol the city's most dangerous areas during those hours.
The youngest adults, age 18 to 24, make up the largest group of victims, accounting for 38 percent of the total.

Locally, the percentage of victims represented by this age group has risen over the years. As recently as 1994, 18- to 24-year-olds accounted for 24 percent of the victims. Last year, the figure was 32 percent.

Nationally, there were slightly more victims in the 25-to-39 age group than in the 18-to-24 group in 2004, the last year for which breakdowns are available.
Philadelphia's 380 homicides in 2005 were its most since 1997. The homicide rate per capita was the highest of the nation's 10 largest cities.

By Larry Eichel
Inquirer Staff Writer

A Clash of Authority

Gaza, and now Lebanon.

Once again, events are proving the cardinal rule of the Middle East: that even when it seems that things have gone completely to hell, they can always get worse. This morning, Hizbullah launched a rocket barrage on northern Israel followed by a cross-border raid in which three Israeli soldiers died and two more were captured. The IDF responded with artillery and air strikes and, most ominously, a ground incursion, resulting in four more Israeli soldiers, at least two Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hizbullah fighters being killed. Israeli troops are ow on Lebanese soil for the first time in six years.


It's hard to overestimate how potentially bad this could get. Ha'aretz analyst Amos Harel describes the crisis as the most complicated since 2002, but a better comparison might be 1982. The current situation could, if it continues to spin out of control, turn into a regional war. The last Israeli invasion of Lebanon was also aimed at eliminating a threat from a non-state militia that controlled the south, and that ended up as a 20-year nightmare.
The escalation along the Lebanese border is obviously in conjunction with the fighting in Gaza, but the two have differences as well as common dimensions. My thoughts on the Gaza crisis have thus far been very mixed, and I find it hard to reflexively condemn either side. Leaving aside the question of who has authority to fight for the Palestinians (about which more later), the raid that resulted in Gilad Shalit's capture was a legitimate military attack, aimed at a beseiging army unit. The objectives of the Israeli response, which was aimed at liberating the captured soldier and suppressing Qassam fire onto Israeli territory, were likewise legitimate. Both parties have committed serious violations of the rule of proportionality, particularly Israel's destruction of the Gaza power plant and its interference with the delivery of humanitarian supplies, but they both have a reason to fight, and it's impossible to put sole blame for the crisis on either side.
I have no such trouble assigning blame for the escalation in Lebanon. Hizbullah, quite simply, committed an unprovoked act of war, and despite Nasrallah's rhetoric about solidarity with the Palestinians and liberation of Lebanese prisoners, the raid was fairly obviously aimed at maintaining political relevance. Hizbullah was once a genuine resistance group that fought Israeli occupation, but that occupation has been over since 2000, and lately it's been more in the business of provoking Israel than resisting it. The identity of the aggressor in Gaza is ambiguous, but on the Lebanese frontier it isn't.
At this point, though, placing blame is less important than figuring out how to put on the brakes - and that's where the authority problem of which I spoke earlier really comes back to bite. The refrain of the Israeli right that Israel "has no partner" isn't true, but sometimes too many partners can be worse than none at all. One of the greatest problems in resolving both the current crises is the fact that Israel's opponents are non-state factions that aren't answerable to any central authority. Israel can reach an agreement with one faction, but that doesn't prevent a rival militia or a splinter group from disavowing the accord a day later. That in fact seems to be precisely how the Gaza crisis started; to all appearances, the raid on Shalit's unit was carried out on orders of Hamas' expatriate leadership without consulting Haniyeh, and was timed to pre-empt Haniyeh's agreement with Abbas over the prisoners' document. Likewise, Hizbullah carries out its own foreign policy and reserves, to the exclusion of the Lebanese government, the right to define and fight for Lebanese interests. There is no single person or entity that can negotiate a firm end to hostilities on either front.
To be sure, Israel is partly to blame for the authority gap. The fragmentation in Gaza was caused in large part by the destruction of the infrastructure and security forces during the second intifada. Hizbullah owes its existence as a quasi-autonomous militia to the fact that the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon created a power vacuum in which it could develop as such. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority clearly choked on Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, with neither Fatah or Hamas making more than a token effort to establish a monopoly of force, and Hizbullah's current quasi-state status owes much more to the weakness of the Lebanese state than to any defensive necessity. Whatever Israel's responsibility for the original fragmentation of authority, its continuation is convenient for the Palestinian factions and Hizbullah, allowing them to carry on the conflict while maintaining deniability and keeping it in a legal gray area of non-war.
Both fronts also involve other players. Mubarak's claim that Israel and Hamas had reached a deal but were thwarted by outside agencies is a case in point. Assuming that Mubarak is telling the truth - and despite his diminished credibility, I'm inclined to believe him in light of last week's tentative Hamas leaks that a deal was in the offing - then the fragmentation of authority goes even further: not only aren't the Hamas military wing or Hizbullah answerable to their respective national governments, but they answer to other agendas that have nothing to do with their nominal constituents. This is, on top of everything else, an Iranian and/or Syrian proxy conflict, which adds a new dimension to the authority problem and makes the process of untangling it even more complicated.
With that said some authority gaps are easier to bridge than others. There's at least a possibility that things can be worked out on the Lebanese front. Hizbullah is an establishment faction with experienced foreign interlocutors, a place in the Lebanese cabinet and a quasi-state in Nabatiyeh to protect. It also has a disciplined chain of command and has largely established a monopoly of force in the areas it controls, so there's a chance that speedy and intensive international mediation might restore stability.
To that end, Olmert's characterization of the Hizbullah raid as an act of war by Lebanon is both foolish and irresponsible. This wasn't an act of war by Lebanon. This was an act of war by Hizbullah, that likely caught the Lebanese state as much by surprise as Shalit's capture caught Abbas and Haniyeh. The object of the game right now is not to involve the Lebanese state in the conflict - a move that could not only devastate southern Lebanon but potentially bring in the Syrians - and to end the conflict before it becomes a clash between nations.
Gaza, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be nearly as amenable to a brokered settlement. The outlines of a package deal in which Israel withdraws from Gaza and releases prisoners in exchange for the return of Shalit and an end to rocket fire have been suggested by both sides, and still represents the most viable way out of the crisis. As Mubarak found out, though, the PNA's nominal leadership and even the Hamas politburo don't have the effective authority to make and enforce such an agreement, and the militias are much more dependent on outside support and have too much of an interest in continued hostilities. Until the authority problem is solved, a negotiated settlement or even the balance of deterrence that usually exists along the Lebanese frontier seems unlikely, which means all too probably that we're in for another iteration of pointless violence. I wish I could write something more hopeful, but as things stand now, I don't see much cause for optimism.
UPDATE (13 July, 3:15 p.m. EDT): It's getting worse. As of this writing, 52 Lebanese civilians have been killed and more than 100 injured in Israeli air strikes. Hizbullah has launched a major rocket barrage at northern Israeli cities, killing at least two and injuring 120. Israel has hit the Beirut international airport and imposed an air and naval blockade, ostensibly to keep the captured soldiers from being moved out of the country, and Lebanese observers are reporting leaflets being dropped on Shi'ite neighborhoods in south Beirut as a possible prelude to a raid.
At this point, the only thing that can be said is that everyone's in the wrong. Hizbullah is to be condemned for starting this and for bombarding civilian targets, but the Israeli response hasn't been very discriminate either, and much of it has been directed at the wrong target. The Lebanese people are the bystanders, not the enemy. Israel is lashing out rather than responding intelligently, and is adding unnecessarily to the death toll. Right now I'm angry at everyone - Hizbullah, Israel, Syria, Iran, Hamas, the international mediators who are twiddling their thumbs, and everyone else who's playing with human life like it's some kind of children's toy.
The only sign of hope in all this is coming from the Lebanese cabinet which, after an initial cop-out, is preparing a ceasefire proposal that calls for the captured soldiers to be released and sweetens the deal with an ambiguous hint that the national army might taken control of the border. If the government can impose this on Hizbullah before things spiral too far out of control (which it's apparently hoping to do by seeking a Security Council endorsement), then there might be a way out of this, and it might lead to other substantive negotiations in the future. Whether Hizbullah can be controlled, though, is a very open question, and the window of time before events hit the point of no return is closing.

The Battle for Truman's Ghost

Everyone wants to claim the mantle of "Give'm Hell" Harry, the architect of our victory in the Cold War. Liberals. Conservatives. The President.As I mentioned below, I have something of a personal interest in this battle. And I have some opinions about who deserves to wear the Truman mantle.The place to begin this discussion is with the President's commencement address at West Point to the Class of 2006. Although talk of Truman was in the air, the President brought it to center stage with his commencement address.


He told the Class of 2006 that:
By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the Cold War...Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before -- and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory.Interestingly, Bush didn't take the analogy between himself and Truman much further. His next paragraph entails an extended analogy between the Communism of then and the terrorism of now, but that is a point Democrats tend to agree with.

With regard to himself and Trumn, Bush allowed much of his message to remain implicit.Implicit but crystal clear to those who know their recent history. Truman also committed the United States to a bloody and indecisive war that made him a pariah in the White House by the time he left office. For decades, historians reviled Truman while Democrats preferred to identify themselves with FDR.Although Bush never reminds his audience how reviled Truman was, Bush does take care to point out that Truman predicted his own vindication:
As President Truman put it towards the end of his presidency, "When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we set the course that can win it."The question then, is should George Bush derive such confidence from the belated vindication of the haberdasher from Missouri? Peter Beinart says no, in a column entitled Hijacking Harry Truman.

According to Peter, the problem with Bush's address as West Point isn't that he said, but what he didn't say:
Truman did not believe merely in promoting democracy and peace; he believed that doing so required powerful international institutions, which could invest American power with the credibility that the Soviets lacked.In the years immediately after World War II, the United States encased itself in a web of such bodies -- from the United Nations and NATO to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization). And Truman was frank in recognizing that such institutions gave weaker countries an influence over American actions.For the moment, Peter will have to forgive me for relying on his column as the authoritative source of his opinons, since I still have not read his book, even though it is sitting on my coffee table as I write this. But I will get to it soon.Anyhow, I think it is fair to say that Beinart represents multilateralism as an integral part of the Truman legacy. In short, Truman traded power for legitimacy.But is that really what Truman did? Although NATO is a multilateral institution it really doesn't belong in the same category as the United Nations. NATO was a military alliance of like-minded anti-Communist states, almost all of them democratic. The primary value of NATO was not that it legitimized American power, but that it reassured those in Europe who believed that America might retreat into isolationism once again.As for the United Nations, it doesn't really belong in the same category as the United Nations either. When it was born in San Francisco in 1945, China and the Soviet Union were American allies. The institution itself was as much an extension of the wartime alliance (to which FDR referred as "the United Nations") as it was an effort to trade power for legitimacy.Of course, the alliance did not last for long. In that regard, Noemie Emery argues in the Weekly Standard that Truman recognized the inevitable dysfunction of a United Nations with the Soviet Union on its Security Council. Thus, when preparing to go war in Korea,

Truman did not consider the approval of the Security Council to be necessary. Emery writes that:
[Truman] did get its consent, only because the Soviet Union blundered by boycotting the Council. But as Max Boot reminds us, "Truman had already committed air and naval forces to combat before the vote," later writing to Acheson that without the U.N., "We would have had to go into Korea alone."Although I've spent some time studying Truman's foreign policy, I cannot personally vouch for Emery's interpretation of this episode, although she is certainly correct that the Soviets boycotted the relevant vote.Nonetheless, the more relevant point may be that Truman's aspiring heirs on the Democratic side of the aisle never seem to recognize that the Truman of Korea is not the good multilateralist they want to canonize.

For example, the index at the back of Peter Beinart's book doesn't even have an entry for Korea (south, north or otherwise).I would also like to suggest to my friends in the Truman National Security Project that they begin to grapple with this aspect of Truman's legacy, since it is a subject that comes up very rarely, if at all, during the Project's meetings (at least that I've attended.)Emery drives this point home mercilessly:

Do not expect the subject of Asia to come up all that often in these [Democrats'] hymns to the liberal hawks.Above all, do not expect Korea to be brought up at all. Korea, in fact, is Iraq on steroids, a compendium of every complaint that the liberals bring against Bush and his administration: a war of choice that began with an error, that became in effect the mother of quagmires, that cost billions of dollars, killed tens of thousands, and dragged on years longer than anyone looked for, to an inconclusive and troublesome end.

It began with a mistake...What, one wonders, would today's liberal hawks have made of him and Korea, given their penchant for neat, well-planned wars that end quickly, and their standard of zero mistakes?...If they quail at the expense of Iraq, what would they have said to the expense of Korea? If they quail at casualties of under 3,000, what would they have said to the more than 37,000 dead? Would they have been among the 23 percent who stayed loyal to Harry? Or would there have been second thoughts, mea culpas, and abject, not to say groveling, apologies to the antiwar left?I'm guessing that Beinart and others would argue that Korea was directly relevant to our national security, whereas Iraq wasn't.

Anyhow, as you can tell from the passage above, Emery is a fierce partisan whose primary concern is the political stakes of today rather than a comprehensive understanding of what Truman stood for back then. Liberal hawks will find plenty objectionable about her article, but I think that she is very much correct about liberal hawks evading the Truman of Korea.So then, do I have a firm stance on who deserves to appoint themselves as Truman's heir? No, unfortunately I don't. I think that I would really have to develop a much better understanding of how Truman thought about international institutions and about alliances before passing judgment.But for the moment, I think the ball is in the liberals' court, since they have to explain Korea.

Turkey, US unveil new strategy for partnership

The United States backs Turkey's diplomatic efforts in Syria to help resolve an escalating crisis in the Middle East over the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants, with Rice saying the efforts are helpful

Turkey and the United States yesterday unveiled a document outlining priorities in the Turkish-U.S. partnership, which deteriorated after Turkish refusal to cooperate militarily in the Iraq war. The common strategic vision paper was announced here by visiting Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Gül told a press conference after talks with Rice that the document would further strengthen relations between the two countries, describing it as a road map for Turkey and the United States in both bilateral and international matters.
We have renewed our relations on the basis of mutual trust, Gül said.

The document was to be formally released in full later in the day.Gül and Rice also discussed the situation in Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, Cyprus and the issue of the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq. Rice reiterated the U.S. position that the PKK was a terrorist organization and insisted that the PKK cannot be allowed to have a base of operations in Iraq. The secretary of state also said that Turkey's closed-door diplomacy in Syria for contributing to the resolution of a crisis in the Middle East that broke out after abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants was very helpful.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent his special envoy, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to Damascus for talks with President Bashar Assad in an attempt to contribute to a solution to the crisis. Gül earlier implied in Washington that the United States and Israel had wanted the Syria visit.


Turkish Daily News