Blogs

Liberal political correctness is running amok again. The latest example is the move to censor Mark Twain's Huck Finn. As the Los Angeles Times editorial page observes,

Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University, is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a joint edition of Mark Twain's classics, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer," in which the word "nigger" — used 219 times in "Huck Finn" alone — is replaced by the word "slave." Other politically correct alterations include a name change for menacing villain Injun Joe (now he's "Indian Joe"). Frankly, Scarlett, we give a darn about this kind of bowdlerism.

So do I. So, apparently, does much of America, to judge by the widespread indignation triggered by Gribben's move. The blunt fact is that in effacing the "n" word from Twain's text, the editors are countermanding his own repudiation of slavery as well as rewriting America's past. Anyone who thinks Twain was a racist--a charge sometimes hurled at him--fundamentally misunderstands the novel. The novel is, at bottom, about Huck's own struggle to reconcile his racist impulses with his affection for Nigger Jim.

Fresh off news that the Pentagon is boosting troop levels in Afghanistan ahead of the perennial spring offensive, Joe Klein of Time thinks he’s figured out how to “finish the job.” The key is cold storage. And replacing special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, who recently passed away (and was one of Klein’s good friends). But getting refrigeration facilities in place for Afghan farmers to store their crops—which would hopefully tamp down the need to grow opium poppies—is “a litmus test for the larger questions” because, as U.S. troops begin to withdrawal over the next couple years, infrastructure will need to be left behind. And building cold-storage facilities signifies that the coalition’s ability to put in place important infrastructural support such as an electrical grid and transportation facilities. (Klein reports Holbrooke “was obsessed” with refrigeration.) But Bernard Finel worries that “something like the worst case scenario has been achieved,” but fears there’s little hope of changing America’s level of involvement.

Only a few months ago, UN and NATO officials were hailing a decline in Afghanistan’s opium crop and, therefore, a drop in the supply of the product that’s the raw ingredient of heroin. Closer reading of the data, though, showed that almost all the decline was the result of a fungus that blighted opium poppy plants. So the drop in supply was merely a temporary phenomenon, not a sign of progress in the war on drugs.

It turns out that the fungal blight may not provide even temporary benefits. Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar, Afghanistan’s deputy counter-narcotics minister, admits that while the poppy crop declined 48 percent in 2010, the price for the remaining crop nearly doubled. Understandably, Afghan farmers are rushing to plant additional opium poppies to take advantage of the financial bonanza.

This development comes as no surprise to experts who have studied the drug trade. Indeed, it should come as no surprise to anyone who understands basic economics, especially the nature of supply and demand. When demand for a product remains high, but the available supply drops, the price soars. That process applies to illegal drugs as much as it does to oil or any other commodity.

The return to Iraq on Wednesday of Moqtada al-Sadr is being described by some as a surprise. It shouldn't have been. The young cleric had already shown enough of a taste for rough-and-tumble competition for power to make it unrealistic to think he would spend the next few years in Qom, hitting the books to be an ayatollah, much less that over the longer term he would lead a contemplative life. He is leader of a major faction of Iraq. His physical return to Iraq was a shoe waiting to drop as the post-occupation Iraqi political order takes shape.

Sadr's move and the deal-making among Shia factions that is related to it underscore the sharpness of the sectarian divide in Iraq, notwithstanding earlier encouraging signs of cross-sect political activity. The chief manifestation of such activity, Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, was outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki has cut his most important deals with other Shiites, and especially with the Sadrists. What passes for democracy in Iraq doesn't go much beyond a simple concept of majority rule. Shiites are in the majority, and they are ruling. Having made a bargain with Maliki, notwithstanding earlier bloody confrontation between the two, Moqtada al-Sadr is a major part of that system.

Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund has a post up at Foreign Policy magazine that touches on an issue that has vexed me for some time now. In the post, Twining advises the Obama administration to “sustain U.S. primacy in Asia in the face of China's challenge” and simultaneously to “invest in the rise of key countervailing Asian powers that can contribute public goods of stability and security.”

 My friend and former colleague, Omar Hossino, alerted me to some troubling news coming from Lebanon. The U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is investigating the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Sunni-Lebanese prime minister and father of current Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The United States has suggested that top Syrian officials were implicated in the case, and recent media reports have suggested that militants in Hezbollah, the armed militia backed by Syria and Iran, might also be charged. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has warned that it would not accept a separation between the organization and supposed “rogue elements.” If indictments are brought against Hezbollah, one possibility is that it could fan sectarian tensions, as many Sunnis support Hariri (as well as a large portion of Christians) while many Shias support Hezbollah (Hariri’s Druze ally, Walid Jumblatt, seems to still be on the fence).

 Robert Gibbs may have been the most annoying member of the Obama administration. Arrogant, complacent, shallow, he represented the worst aspects of a White House press secretary. The news that he is departing should create a thousand hosannas across the land.

Former Democratic national chairman Howard Dean got it exactly right when he observed about Obama's departing aides:

The core issue is the contempt, which not just the progressives were treated by but lots of people were treated by, by senior advisers around the president who have been here for 20 years and thought they knew everything and we knew nothing. That is a fundamental flaw in any kind of administration. As they say, "Don't let the door hit you in the you-know-what on the way out."

Who will Obama appoint to replace Gibbs? It's hard to him imagine doing worse. Some candidates might be picked from the numerous Democrats who were defeated in the midterms. A true pick with the ability to talk to blue collar Democrats would be former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, but he lacks the kind of polish that Obama would be looking for. But the odds are that Obama will pick someone from the inside--perhaps Jay Carney, vice-president Joe Biden's spokesman and a former journalist at Time.

The truth is that Obama almost doesn't need a press secretary. He likes to turn his own press conferences into Ivy League seminars for the edification of the press corp and the nation. He is his own press secretary. In other words, he likes to hear himself talk.

Frank Ruggiero, who took over as acting special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan following Richard Holbrooke’s death, is carrying on with his former boss’s engagements. Later this week Ruggiero will head to Afghanistan and Pakistan to meet with government officials and civilian representatives on a trip that Holbrooke had previously scheduled. According to State Department spokesman PJ Crowley, Ruggiero “will focus on preparations for the upcoming U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan trilateral meeting scheduled to take place in Washington next month.” Ruggiero will also take part in a meeting this afternoon between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani.

In the Wall Street Journal, Max Boot trumpets the return of covert operations (Special Forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan; the Stuxnet computer worm that has stalled the Iranian nuclear program) after the Clinton administration's "abundance of caution." Boot thinks it would be a shame to waste "recent gains" and urges Washington bring its cloak-and-dagger tactics to bear, not only to halt Tehran's efforts to get the bomb, but to overthrow the Iranian regime (he seems to think doing the latter will automatically lead to the former). After missing a "prime opportunity" in the wake of mass protests over the 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Boot writes that the United States "must try," even if "toppling" Iran's rulers proves "impossible." (Plus, America's past covert forays into Iranian politics turned out so well.)

In other related news, the crown prince of Iran is dead. Ali Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, committed suicide Tuesday morning at home in Boston. He was forty-four years old. Stephen Kinzer, over at the Daily Beast, recounts his tragic life. You can watch TNI's March 2009 interview with Reza Pahlavi here. 

On Tuesday I spoke to a conference, organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, with the theme of "The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Revival of Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy?"  What follows are my remarks to the conference.  

Americans bring some distinctively American perspectives to the employment of different instruments of power, hard and soft. My subject is how some of the relevant perspectives grow out of the history, geography, and other circumstances of the United States, and out of the political culture that those circumstances have nurtured. We see those perspectives manifested in particular policies of particular administrations, but those policies have deeper roots. By “perspectives” I mean not only preferences for using some instruments of national power rather than other ones, but also related perceptions, including difficulties and consequences associated with such use.