It is the end of the year again. Looking for a charity to give your money to? Maybe something other than the usual suspects? Here are five organizations worthy of your cash.
1. Ruckus Society
Training the people in the art of protest
2. Electronic Frontier Foundation
The laws on the use of technology that are established today will set the ground rules for a generation at least. Help make sure they are fair.
3. El Futuro and El Centro Latino
North Carolina has the fastest growing Latino population in the nation. These two organizations provide much needed community support in a region that is ill equipped to provide services for Spanish speakers.
4. First Place Fund for Youth
On the day they turn 18, youths in foster care, already having faced more challenges than most of us will experience in a lifetime, are turned out into the world. Help them successfully make the transition to independent adulthood.
5. Poetry Flash
Art in general and poetry in particular are only in the borders of the public consciousness. Poetry Flash, by providing monthly listings of poetry events in the West, helps maintain a vibrant artistic community.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Domestic Spying and Secrecy
At the moment, the deabate over domestic spying is centered on the legality of Bush’s executive order. The question I want to ask is this: is the secrecy of the program justified? Is such a program something over which we could have had an honest and forthright debate or is the secrecy so essential to the effectiveness of the spying that Bush was justified in issuing the order in secret?
Bush argues that public acknowledgement aids terrorists: "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country.” Twice in two sentences Bush links disclosure of the order to danger to Americans.
Is there are connection? How might knowledge of the order benefit terrorists? Terrorists would be alerted to the fact that America was being vigilant in the war against terror. Would they have taken additional precautions to avoid detection? It seems likely that terrorists already would have been doing everything possible to avoid detection. Surely any self-respecting terrorist would have already considered the possibility that a phone might be tapped. Therefore it seems unlikely that knowledge of this program would have changed terrorist behavior significantly. This being the case, the Bush’s secrecy hardly seems justified.
The only other reason for not making the spying public was that the public would not have stood for it. The justification for government secrecy is that sometimes doing what is in the public’s wishes requires that they not know what the government is doing. Bush seems to think he knows what is good for the American people better than they do.
Bush argues that public acknowledgement aids terrorists: "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country.” Twice in two sentences Bush links disclosure of the order to danger to Americans.
Is there are connection? How might knowledge of the order benefit terrorists? Terrorists would be alerted to the fact that America was being vigilant in the war against terror. Would they have taken additional precautions to avoid detection? It seems likely that terrorists already would have been doing everything possible to avoid detection. Surely any self-respecting terrorist would have already considered the possibility that a phone might be tapped. Therefore it seems unlikely that knowledge of this program would have changed terrorist behavior significantly. This being the case, the Bush’s secrecy hardly seems justified.
The only other reason for not making the spying public was that the public would not have stood for it. The justification for government secrecy is that sometimes doing what is in the public’s wishes requires that they not know what the government is doing. Bush seems to think he knows what is good for the American people better than they do.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Winning in Iraq? Timelines and Benchmarks
Last week when Howard Dean declared that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, he was forced to back down from his statements. This week a cover story in the Weekly Standard declares the war is winnable. With all the debate, no one seems to be discussing the obvious question: what does winning mean? This isn’t a war fought against a government; it isn’t a war fought for territory. It is part of the war on terror but that is a larger issue that extends beyond Iraq. What specifically does winning in Iraq mean? The best answer would seem to be that we are fighting for stability and democracy in Iraq. Which is fine, but how will we know when we have accomplished these objectives? Democracy is an abstraction and stability is relative.
We need to be engaged in a national conversation about what defines winning. The talk in Washington is now about troop withdrawals. It seems increasingly clear there will be some move in that direction as we get closer to the midterm elections. Timelines, although politically popular, only take into account half the equation: how long Americans are willing to stay in Iraq. The other more important question is what needs to happen on the ground to reach the point where it makes sense to begin withdrawing the troops and, at some point down the road, declare victory. We need benchmarks that will let us judge how we are doing and hold politicians accountable. These benchmarks could be anything from the number of trained Iraqi troops to measures of safety to measures related to elections.
The problem is that setting benchmarks aren’t in the interest of either party. Benchmarks would force the Democrats to, you know, actually have a plan and to acknowledge that immediate withdrawal of the troops isn’t an option. And benchmarks would leave Bush vulnerable to being held accountable if the benchmarks weren’t met. This is a terrible political failure. Without an honest conversation about what it means to win the war, one thing is clear: we can’t win.
We need to be engaged in a national conversation about what defines winning. The talk in Washington is now about troop withdrawals. It seems increasingly clear there will be some move in that direction as we get closer to the midterm elections. Timelines, although politically popular, only take into account half the equation: how long Americans are willing to stay in Iraq. The other more important question is what needs to happen on the ground to reach the point where it makes sense to begin withdrawing the troops and, at some point down the road, declare victory. We need benchmarks that will let us judge how we are doing and hold politicians accountable. These benchmarks could be anything from the number of trained Iraqi troops to measures of safety to measures related to elections.
The problem is that setting benchmarks aren’t in the interest of either party. Benchmarks would force the Democrats to, you know, actually have a plan and to acknowledge that immediate withdrawal of the troops isn’t an option. And benchmarks would leave Bush vulnerable to being held accountable if the benchmarks weren’t met. This is a terrible political failure. Without an honest conversation about what it means to win the war, one thing is clear: we can’t win.
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