What the Huck?

Mike Huckabee’s recent comments on Obama and Kenya are truly perplexing. Most of the media has focussed on the fact that Huckabee is factually wrong – Obama didn’t grow up in Kenya. What I find more interesting is the theory Huck is trying to float. According to Huck:

[Obama's] having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American…But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Umm…okay. I’m not quite sure what Huck is getting at here. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Kenya isn’t the only country that ever fought a liberation movement against the mighty British Empire. Nor are the Kenyans the only colonists that felt persecuted by the British colonial apparatus. Lots of people who lived in Britain’s colonies felt this way and some even fought successful rebellions against the mother country…such as those living in what we call today the United States of America! So if Huck is trying to say that rebelling against Britain is somehow an un-American activity, what, exactly, would constitute an American activity? Huck might want to check out a rather important document in US history called “The Declaration of Independence” and rethink his position. By the way, since when did the GOP become pro-colonialism?

D&S is right on time!

We like to be timely here at D&S, but we’re not usually this timely. Our most recent issue of Democracy and Society (which just came out this week!), as it turns out, focuses on US foreign policy in the Middle East and has lots of good articles addressing the crises unfolding in the region:

• Dina Guirguis provides some good analysis about what’s unfolding in Egypt at the moment…and predicted the explosive protests we’re seeing there right now (I’m not certain if she was predicting them so soon…).
• Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (of the Park 51 Mosque controversy) and Eric Patterson provide some good advice for how the Obama administration can engage in the region in a constructive way.
• Nicholas Noe discusses (predicted?) the crisis in Lebanon.
• Uriel Abulof and David Kenner talk about the challenges of democratic reform in the region.
• István Balogh weighs in on the shifting balance of external power in the region.

As they say, RTWT (read the whole thing).

D&S Vol. 8 Iss. 1 Winter 2011

The newest issue of Democracy & Society is now available online!

The Obama Administration and the US Relationship with the Broader Middle East

Featuring:

• An interview with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
• Lessons and implications for the Obama Administration
• Discussion of the unexpected Maliki-Sadr alliance
• “Democratizing” Iran

And more!

Not serious budget debate

The Republicans are super-duper, really, really, really serious about cutting spending. I disagree. In fact, I don’t think they are serious at all. The Republicans in the House want to cut $100 billion of non-security discretionary spending from the fiscal year 2011 budget. This is a ridiculous way to reduce the budget deficit. The White House proposed budget for 2011 is $3.8 trillion. $2.4 trillion is non-discretionary (mainly social security, medicare, and interest on the debt). Defense accounts for about $850 billion. Discretionary spending, by contrast, is around $500 billion, or about 13% of the total budget. In fact, the projected budget deficit for this year is more than double all discretionary spending! Trying to “balance the budget” through “painful cuts” or by “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” but fencing off 87% of that budget from any cuts makes zero sense. Even if Congress eliminated all discretionary spending, the US budget deficit would still be more than 5% of GDP. There is simply no way to reduce the budget deficit to manageable levels (2%-3% of GDP) without raising taxes, and/or reducing spending on medicare, social security and/or defense. None. At. All.

Economic Failures & the Asia Tour

Obama "gets served" in Asia.

In the wake of blows taken by the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections, the media has labeled the President’s recent Asia tour a similarly crushing stroke on a global scale.  Where domestically the President “got served” by the Tea Party and Republicans – abroad China, South Korea and Germany delivered a similar treatment – overall displaying the growing weakness of the Obama administration.  This limited presentation of the Asia tour seems accurate only if one believes that economics was the only focus of the tour and that the G20 was somehow going to miraculously resolve the lingering woes of our global economic crises.

Overlooking the President’s activities in India and Indonesia as irrelevant in search for a single striking narrative is illustrative of the larger flaws in the way information is presented to the US populace.  However one may feel about the subjects of democracy promotion, international relations or religious freedom, acting as if these subjects simply weren’t relevant to the tour speaks of either dramatic shortsightedness or a conscious agenda.   Even in the area of economics it seems that a conscious decision has been made to ignore the activities of the administration in India.  The development and deepening of the bilateral relationship between India and the United States cannot be ignored if one is interested in economic policy.

In the area of democracy and international relations, the clashes between the China and the US over the elections in Burma and issues of human rights in the nation necessitate some attention.  The promotion of Indonesia as a thriving Muslim democracy (regardless of realities of religious freedom in Indonesia) deserves the same level of consideration.  The above issues alone would have justified the Asia tour, regardless of the successes of developing economic ties with India.  Yet the evening news supported only the conclusion that the whole of the tour was a waste of time and resources, and a dismal failure of foreign policy.  The only thing I really perceived as a marked failure in the tour was the effort to solve the world’s economic woes through the G20 summit, which I can’t imagine anyone genuinely expected.