SIM-candidate

If I were to ask you design a perfect candidate for Congress for the Age of Obama, what would you come up with? You might say a West Point and Harvard-educated, young, attractive, black, gay Iraq veteran with economic policy experience, right? Well check out Tony Woods, who is running the the special election to replace Ellen Tauscher in California's 10th district.

Well now those of you in DC have a chance to meet Tony, at a fundraiser this Wednesday at Darlington House near Dupont Circle from 7-9pm. And you get to meet the always-engaging Richard Clarke. RSVP here. Hope to see you there!

Walking the Iranian Balance Beam

Lots of good stuff to read on Iran, perhaps too much... much like clicking on the #Iranelection feed on Twitter. So far I think President Obama is doing an excellent job of walking the fine line between expressing support for democracy and not being seen as meddling or taking sides.

First read the op-ed in the New York Times from an anonymous Iranian student, who states that all our outside opinions, beliefs, and assumptions about Iran are likely to be at best outdated and at worst dead wrong. As both the student and Walt point out, even if a recount or re-vote occurs and Mousavi is declared the winner that doesn't necessarily mean a more pro-U.S. government or one that will stop pursuing nuclear weapons.

Also check out Tom Ricks' post about how the current situation reminds him of the aborted Hungarian revolution in 1956. Although my memories of Budapest are entirely from history books and The Company I had the same thought, and would hate to egg on the protests into a revolution with veiled promises of support only to leave the protesters holding their limp... lets just say empty handed and alone.

Guest Post: The Politics Behind the Acoustics

Ed. Note: The following is a guest post by my colleague, Michael Rohrs.

The show was organized and advertised in under two weeks.The tickets were sold out in under twenty minutes.Dispatch, a world famous yet eternally philanthropic college band from Vermont, has been broken up for five years, but was playing a reunion concert in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. I came into two coveted tickets by a cosmic stroke of luck. The evening performance coincided with Prime Minster Morgan Tsvangirai’s eminently diplomatic visit with President Barack Obama that afternoon. The entire set was played acoustically, the Prime Minister himself spoke eloquently, without notes, and the proceeds went directly to the starving people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s government exists today, as it has for four months, as a two-headed snake. The unlikely ‘unity’ or ‘power-sharing’ system has precariously empowered two heads of state—the inexorable Robert Mugabe and the ineluctable Morgan Tsvangirai—each the illustrious champion of his party.

For the impoverished people of Zimbabwe, caught between the pestle and the mortar, it’s midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Depending upon the political leadership in the country and which man best leverages the power of the government ministries he controls (in general, Tsvangirai controls the treasury and Mugabe controls the secret police), determines whose political will be done. As the Post’s Michael Gerson wrote today in his op-ed Taking Meetings with a Murderer,

His [Tsvangirai] intention is to fight arbitrary and personal rule with the weapons of process—a Madisonian response to a Neronian dictator…If Tsvangirai fails, he will be just another victim of Mugabe’s charming ruthlessness. But if the prime minister succeeds, he will be an exceptional statesman who set aside his own claims of justice for the peace and progress of his country.

For the citizenry, the cessation of despotism, the economic prosperity of the country, the existence of sustainable democracy, and so many more basic human and civil rights hang in the balance.

Last Friday, the United States tipped the scale towards Tsvangirai. The Obama Administration devoted $73 million in foreign aid to the people of Zimbabwe—a salvational humanitarian effort that will, however, require an international political end-around. The Obama Administration will mete out millions of dollars for medicine bottles, bread loaves, and text books through NGOs and charities—effectively circumnavigating the graft of the Mugabe machine. The Dispatch Foundation, and the proceeds from their small but sold-out acoustic evening in the Kennedy Center, is one such charity. The amount of U.S. aid to ease the suffering and promote the suffrage of Zimbabweans just went up to $73,022,000. Now, we’ll watch and hope—as Obama remarked during his meeting with Tsvangirai—that concrete things solidify and enable the Prime Minister’s commitment to concrete improvement in day-to-day life in Zimbabwe.

I was lucky to get two tickets to see my favorite band reunited. But from what I saw on Friday night, the Zimbabwean people are even luckier to have the immanent resolve of PM Tsvangirai and the attention and aid of the United States.

Promising Pakistani Prognostications

Four hopefull signs relating to Pakistan recently:

1. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the aid bill for Pakistan and Afghanistan last week.
2. The European Union pledged $100 million in aid to Pakistan and will hold a meeting on EU-Pakistan relations in the near future.
3. Pakistani authorities caught at least one of the terrorists who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.
4. Prime Minister Singh and President Zardari met in Russia at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, and the back-channel negotiations, primarily on Kashmir, are likely to resume soon.

Hopefully things will keep trending upward. The country could use good news.

Piecing Together the Story From Iran

I spent much of the past weekend at the Truman National Security Project's mid-annual conference (yes, two major conferences in one week). As part of the conference we had a tabletop exercise where we played members of the National Security Council debating ways to work toward President Obama's stated goal of getting to zero nuclear weapons. The event included fictional, though realistic, news inputs, such as an announcement that Kim Jong-Il had had another stroke, but this being a modern age people were also able to get real news, like the announcement that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Friday's elections. A bit surreal to mix real and fake news like that.

I mention the experience because of the different sources of news flowing in from Iran. I was sufficiently dissatisfied by the mainstream media reports (this video is one of the best) to join Twitter (@robinjwalker) in hopes of some more news from different sources.

The only large-scale protests I've been in the middle of that turned violent was the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, in what was essentially the communications stone age. I remember how scary and disorienting the whole experience was, not knowing if anarchists, riot police with tear gas, or just a wall of protesters running from one of the above was coming around any given corner. I wonder if Twitter, YouTube and the like make it any less confusing, or if the fire hose of information, some good and some bad, makes it just as confusing.

Known Knowns

One of the most memorable experiences in my career was walking into a room full of more than 100 mid-career U.S. military officers (mostly captains and majors) on November 8th, 2006 and announcing that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned. They instantly broke out into a standing ovation. 

Still, I believe we can learn as much from failed leaders as from successful ones. I enjoyed watching Robert McNamara's discussions in "The Fog of War" and I enjoyed reading the profile of Rumsfeld in Sunday's Post Magazine. His efforts at "transformation" greatly undermined the actual operations he was charged with running. His replacement, Robert Gates, has focused much more on the wars and left the "transformation" to others. In Godfather parlance, Rumsfeld simply wasn't a wartime consigliere. 

The Genius of The Economist

I'm always amazed at how the authors of The Economist can sum up the facts, salient points, arguments, and options that would take a typical graduate student (some of my friends included) a whole Master's thesis to go over. For example, check out Asia columnist Banyan's take on Indian Ocean naval competition between India and China in the June 13th issue. It's the most concise take on the "string-of-pearls" theory I've read yet.