SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010 KATHLEEN PARKER
The former NPR analyst, fired from his radio job for an offhand remark he made about Muslims on the Fox News network, has become the latest victim of the thought police. What did he say? That he gets
Too scared to talk J
uan Williams has learned an important lesson: Beware the M-word.
a little nervous when he sees people on airplanes in “Muslim garb.” Bzzzzzt. Off with his lips! And so Williams is no longer af- filiated with NPR, though he did pick up a nice gig at Fox as com- pensation — a three-year con- tract worth $2 million or so. Williams’s ouster followed closely on the heels of Bill O’Reil- ly’s own public drumming on “The View,” the girl show where women of different decades dis- cuss current events in various octaves that cannot be perceived by heterosexual males. There. How many people did I manage to offend with that facetious but true-ish description? O’Reilly had the effrontery to
say that Muslims attacked us on Sept. 11. Bzzzzzt. Amid much screeching and fluster (female bluster), Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stalked off the stage in protest. O’Reilly somehow man- aged to keep his job despite hav- ing said something true. But not completely true. What we have is a failure to
qualify. In O’Reilly’s case, clearly he should have said “extremist Muslims” or “Muslim terrorists,” not simply Muslims, as he sub- sequently clarified. We’ve man- aged to evolve far enough in this country to understand that not all Muslims are guilty of attack- ing us and that the other 1.6 bil- lion neighborly Muslims shouldn’t be smeared along with the 19 evildoers who hijacked airplanes. (Thanks be to George W. Bush for giving us permission to use the word “evildoers” any- time we feel like it.)
Both Williams and O’Reilly
may have failed to sufficiently qualify their statements in the moment, but neither deserved the outrage. The Sept. 11 attacks obviously were carried out by men who claimed to be commit- ting mass murder/suicide for Al- lah. And guess what? Lots of Americans suffer an involuntary free-associative moment when boarding an airplane alongside someone whose attire says, “Oh, by the way, I’m a serious enough Muslim to dress in the way Allah commands,” but no worries. Perhaps we shouldn’t enter- tain those thoughts, but we do. Is it better that we air our fears and
DAVID S. BRODER
he most important politi- cal news last week came from across the Atlantic, where the coalition government of British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an austerity budget that radically reduces government spending on the welfare state. Both the policy and the political circumstances that brought it about have profound implications for the United States. This country has wandered far — not quite as far as Britain has — toward the pending fiasco that threatens leftist regimes world- wide, and the reaction here in the Nov. 2 midterm elections is likely to be as painful for Presi- dent Obama and the Democrats as the May 6 election was for La- bor’s Gordon Brown. George Osborne, Cameron’s chancellor of the exchequer, did not mince words. He told Parlia- ment, “Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt.” Britain’s budget deficit, now 11.4 percent of the size of its overall economy, is not that much larger than the United States’ — 8.9 percent — but the debate has been similar in both countries.
Omens of austerity T
KLMNO
R
A21
address them, or should we re- press them and keep our prayers to ourselves? Wait. Let me re- phrase that. Let’s do keep our prayers to ourselves, but let’s also speak openly about our fears. I’d happily wager that Wil- liams said nothing that 99 per- cent of Americans haven’t thought to themselves. What might have followed that state- ment — far more useful than a sanctimonious public flogging — was the conversation we’re now having. Or at least that I’m hav- ing. Hello? That conversation might in- clude asking the following ques- tions: Why are we afraid of peo- ple in Muslim attire? Is that ra- tional? What can we do about it? How do we move beyond sub- conscious profiling? It is tough for mere humans to move beyond their natural — and sometimes logic-based — fears and prejudices. Sometimes fear keeps us alive; sometimes it creates unfair assumptions. Let’s talk about that. Let’s figure out how not to fear and smear peo- ple who are not like us, but with whom we must share the planet —and the plane. NPR officials had the right to
fire Williams, but they clearly overreacted. But then, NPR (where I have many friends!) is the axis of sensitivity. People routinely sit at their desks in the lotus position and invariably get offended if you ask why they talk “that way.” Note: No stereotypes, no humor. O’Reilly’s
statement was
brasher and less sensitive than Williams’s — no surprise there — and the ladies’ foot-stomping tantrum was a bully’s fantasy: Oh, yes, please get really, really mad and stomp away and swear you’ll never speak to me again, especially when I’m on the phone with my banker. As Barbara Walters, the ma- ture voice on the show, intoned: This was exactly what shouldn’t happen. Moral of the stories: We’ll get nowhere fast in our commend- able search for equilibrium and tolerance by suppressing the ex- pression of honest thoughts. Muslims didn’t attack us on Sept. 11 (see above); and most Americans struggle with fears that, though not irrational, do need to be reviewed with dis- passion.
If we suppress speech, we risk missing the great ideas that might emerge from the chaos of our less careful thoughts.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
Constructing the Iraq of 2025
by Thomas J. Raleigh V JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty speaks in Washington in February. GEORGE F. WILL
‘Sam’s Club Republican’
orthern Iowans are Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings fans. This fact could be porten- tous 16 months from now when the Iowa caucuses occur and Minnesota’s two-term governor, Tim Pawlenty, probably will be seeking the Repub- lican presidential nomination. The son of a South St. Paul truck
N
driver, Pawlenty was 16 when his moth- er died. A short while later, his father lost his job. Nevertheless, Pawlenty be- came his family’s first college graduate. His political message — he calls him- self a Sam’s Club rather than a country club Republican — should resonate in a social climate conditioned by voters’ recoil against spending and the politi- cal class that does it. “All the stuff the country is now favoring, I’ve done,” he says. Settled by many Scandinavians and
but short of a majority. Labor fin- ished second and the Liberal Democrats, a reform-minded middle-class party, were third. Britons resigned themselves to a weak minority government and early elections. But to everyone’s surprise, it turned out that the right and center were ready for radical change. The leaders of the Conservatives and the Liber- al Democrats discovered more agreement than they had expec- ted — including on the new aus- terity budget.
Cameron and his partners in the coalition have pushed ahead boldly, brushing aside the warn- ings of economists that the sud- den, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recov- ery and throw the nation back into recession. My British friends tell me that it is only because of the two- party coalition that Cameron can take these risks. If he were de- pendent only on a minority Con- servative Party, the risk of a pub- lic meltdown — similar to what is happening in France— would be too great. The American political system
While the Obama administra- tion and the Federal Reserve have chosen to stimulate eco- nomic growth by tax cuts and spending in hopes of reducing debt service, Britain has opted for the swifter, more painful gamble of increasing taxes and slashing public spending. The budget ax was felt almost
everywhere. Retirement benefits will be delayed, and hundreds of thousands of government jobs will be eliminated. Subsidies to the arts and the BBC will shrink. The value-added tax will rise from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. As important as the policy
shift from Keynesian economics is the political calculus that led the British government to these actions. The last general election produced a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives out front
virtually precludes the possibil- ity of a coalition government. But the midterm elections pro- vide the opportunity for a similar breakthrough.
If Republicans emerge next month with sufficient leverage in the House and Senate to ap- proach Obama with a proposi- tion, they could insist that he “do a Cameron” when it comes to federal spending: a radical roll- back now in the welfare state in return for a two-year truce on such policy questions as repeal of the health-care law. The vehicle could well be Oba-
ma’s strong endorsement of the Dec. 1 report from his fiscal re- sponsibility commission, which is expected to emphasize spend- ing discipline over raising rev- enue. This would offer major gains to both parties, and set the stage for another experiment in the British model.
davidbroder@washpost.com
Germans who arrived with European, especially Bismarckian, notions of so- cial democracy, Minnesota has fur- nished leaders of American liberalism — Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCar- thy, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone. In the four decades before Pawlenty was elected governor in 2002, the average two-year increase in state spending was 21 percent. During his tenure, the average annual increase has been 2 percent. He says that the current two- year budget cycle will be the first in 150 years in which spending will be cut in real, constant dollars. It took, he said, “World War III” with the teachers unions to make Minnesota the first state to offer performance pay for teachers statewide. The state is sec- ond in the nation in health savings ac- counts: Approximately 10 percent of privately insured Minnesotans have these tax-preferred savings accounts that enable them to shop for routine health needs not covered by high- deductible insurance plans. Pawlenty has benefited from an af-
fliction — Minnesota’s Legislature. Currently, Republicans are outnum- bered 47 to 87 in the House and 21 to 46 in the Senate. As a result, he has had, and has seized, ample opportunities to veto things, including increases in tax- es on incomes, gasoline, beer and wine. He holds the Minnesota record for most vetoes cast in a single legislative session. The Cato Institute murmurs, “Be still my heart!” A libertarian think tank ardent for
government both limited and frugal, Cato gives A grades for fiscal responsi- bility to only four governors — Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), Bobby Jindal (R-La.),
minneapolis
Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Pawlenty, the only one governing a blue state. Pawlenty dismisses the Obama ad-
ministration’s stimulus as “mostly gov- ernment sustenance money.” He would have preferred a cut in payroll taxes. Actually, giving the nation a one-year holiday from federal payroll taxes would have been no more expensive and more stimulative than Obama’s stimulus. Tall (6 feet 3), slender and rarely stri-
dent, Pawlenty probably is the only po- tential president who will announce: “I’m not exactly Lady Gaga.” Indeed, he must solve the problem of “Minnesota nice” — his state’s reputation for a pleasantness incompatible with today’s appetite for politics with a serrated edge. He is, therefore, eager to emphasize
brawls he has initiated, and won, such as cutting $2 billion from public em- ployees’ pensions and helping to win a 44-day bus strike— it concerned retire- ment benefits — in this, the nation’s 16th-largestmetropolitan area. His mild manner seems to appeal to some jalapeño-flavored conservatives. A new biography of Rush Limbaugh says that, so far, Pawlenty is second only to Sarah Palin as Limbaugh’s choice for 2012. Dick Armey — the for- mer Texas congressman who became majority leader when Republicans took control of the House in 1994 — is about as close to a leader of the Tea Party movement as its agreeable anarchy permits. He has his “eye on Pawlenty,” who is on the “safest ground” of any po- tential candidate: “He has no major disappointments behind him.” Because Minnesota was the one state
that President Ronald Reagan did not carry in his 1984 contest with native son Walter Mondale, it is the only state that has voted Democratic in nine con- secutive elections. So it might seem to be a strange base for a Republican can- didacy. But the candidate who carries the states of the Mississippi Valley — basically, the Midwest — usually wins the White House. Two other Repub- lican practitioners of Midwestern con- servatism are considering presidential runs — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and South Dakota Sen. John Thune. Undeterred by the fact that George
W. Bush is the only Republican since Dwight Eisenhower to win in his first try for the presidency, Pawlenty has du- tifully enriched his résumé for national office by visiting Iraq five times and Af- ghanistan three times. And Iowa six times this year.
georgewill@washpost.com POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
JONATHAN CAPEHART Log Cabin Republicans’
hypocrisy on ‘don’t ask’ The Log Cabin Republicans deserve a lot of credit for their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. The back-and-forth over a stay of the injunction of its enforcement is the legal equivalent of a Berliner chipping away at the wall. Even- tually, “don’t ask, don’t tell” will crumble, too. But the gay Republican group is play- ing a twisted game. While it is in court fighting to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the group is backing congressional Republi- cans who voted against ending it legisla- tively.
Of the 10 incumbent House Republicans endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans, six of them voted against the amendment that would repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.” File that under “hypocrites.” Then, on Monday the organization threw its support behind Mike Fitzpatrick, the Re- publican in a close race against Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), the Iraq war vet who mas- terfully guided the repeal bill to passage. They did this despite Fitzpatrick’s opposi- tion to Murphy’s bill — and despite the or- ganization’s own extensive efforts to secure passage. And another thing: I always thought Republicans were opposed to
judges “legislating” from the bench. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is an act of Congress, and it will take an act of Congress to get rid of it. “Given that it is a LCR lawsuit that is chipping away at the statute,” I asked Log Cabin spokeswoman Melissa Kennedy in an e-mail, “how does the organization square those endorsements? Also, by its ac- tions, is LCR telegraphing that it is better for the courts to dictate military policy than Congress (in concert with the executive)?” Kennedy responded: “Log Cabin Repub- licans is firmly committed to ending the failed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy through whatever means necessary.” She added: “We are aggressively lobbying Republican members of Congress to secure their sup- port for legislative repeal, while serving in consultation with the Pentagon and the Hamm-Johnson Commission on the imple- mentation of open service.” “While we may not agree on every issue with a candidate we endorse,” she wrote, “we have a continued dialogue with these Members in our efforts to secure further Republican support for legislation that benefits gay and lesbian Americans.” I want gay Republicans talking to Repub- licans in power about equality and helping to secure their votes on legislation that matters. But what Log Cabin has done in this episode with “don’t ask, don’t tell” is the height of hypocrisy. If the group wants to know why many gay folks view it with suspicion, this is a prime example.
Minnesota’s baghdad
iewed from afar, Iraq is not a place that always lends itself to optimism. Those who have been here for a while, however, and have witnessed the enormous improvement in the security situation can put occasional setbacks in perspective. Are we frustrated that it is taking so long for the
Iraqi lawmakers elected in March to form a govern- ment? Sure. But we are pleased that the caretaker government is keeping government offices open and functioning. Are we concerned about the recent up- tick in violence? Of course. But the majority of the Iraqi people — the targets of horrific, high-profile at- tacks — have demonstrated repeatedly that they re- ject retribution. In the past year, Iraq conducted parliamentary
elections that international observers judged to be fair and credible. Iraqi security forces carried out in- creasingly sophisticated operations in an increasing- ly professional manner. The country entered into contracts for oil field development and production with consortiums of leading international oil compa- nies.
Significant political, economic, security and rule-
of-law challenges compel us to prioritize our efforts as we pursue our long-term objectives, guided by the Strategic Framework Agreement: a sovereign, stable, democratic and increasingly prosperous Iraq, which will dramatically change the strategic landscape of the Middle East and contribute to peace and security in the region. Let’s imagine how things here might look in the future. By 2025, the ethno-sectarian tensions deriving from the struggle for power and resources will have receded through years of patient negotiation and sustained U.S. diplomatic engagement. Efforts to es- tablish the rule of law as a guiding governance prin- ciple are likely to remain a key focus. Having worked with Iraqi civil society, we will have embedded the culture of human rights in legal, judicial and nation- al security institutions. Meanwhile, institution- and capacity-building, through a range of U.S. Agency for International Development programs, will keep con- tributing to Iraq’s development. Our decision to establish U.S. diplomatic posts be- yond Baghdad, including consulates in Irbil and Bas- ra, will have proved wise. Embassy branch offices in Nineveh and Kirkuk will have provided vital plat- forms to support our efforts to prevent conflict and encourage political accommodation. Honest brokers from the international community will have assisted the Baghdad government and the Kurdistan Region- al Government in resolving issues related to the dis- puted internal boundary and the status of Kirkuk. Iraq will be exporting increasingly significant amounts of oil to the world market, approaching 4 million barrels per day in 2015. Wise investments in infrastructure and education, increased foreign in- vestment, and progress toward World Trade Organi- zation accession will have set the conditions to devel- op a globally integrated, diversified and market- oriented economy, the key pillars of which will be en- ergy, agriculture and a vibrant private sector. An important indicator of lasting peace will be the
return of hundreds of thousands of refugees and dis- placed persons, thanks to aid and persistent engage- ment from the United States. Iraq will have also rees- tablished constructive ties with key neighbors. Rela- tions with Kuwait, for example, will benefit from full resolution of the Kuwait-related Chapter VII Securi- ty Council resolutions in 2011 and final resolution of all land and maritime border issues in 2012. Iraq will have joined the Gulf Cooperation Council as an observer, and full membership will be under discussion. In terms of regional security, Iraq will have taken
concrete steps to redress decades of mistrust and mutual suspicion with its neighbors. Bilateral ar- rangements and programs will eventually have pro- vided the basis for noteworthy multilateral initia- tives. (This year, we coined the term “rock soup di- plomacy” to describe this process.) We envision that in 2025, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Sau- di Arabia will implement a multilateral agreement to pursue greater transparency in military affairs. Eventually, a multi-dimensional regional security or- ganization (perhaps a trimmer version of the Or- ganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) may emerge to address such common regional secu- rity issues as border security, terrorism, proliferation and refugees. In the meantime, U.S. Central Com- mand will continue to assist Iraq and its neighbors with many of these issues. Meanwhile, Iran will be feeling increasingly isolat- ed. While Iraq reaps the benefits of increased trade, decades of sanctions continue to take their toll on Iran, and the thousands of Iranian pilgrims who visit Iraq each year will see it. As the Iraqi standard of liv- ing rises, Iranian leaders will eventually find them- selves confronting an economic “comparative crisis” much like that East German leaders confronted in the 1980s as their people looked enviously “over the wall.” The instability of the Iranian regime, and its at- tempts to influence Iraqi political life and to infringe on Iraq’s borders, contribute to Iraq’s desire to main- tain close diplomatic and defense ties with the Unit- ed States. The enduring partnership between Iraq and the
United States will have deepened. Exchanges and outreach will have assisted democratic and eco- nomic development, promoted the preservation of Iraq’s archaeological heritage, and contributed to the development of mutual understanding and re- spect between Iraqis and Americans. Between 2003 and 2015, nearly 10,000 Iraqi scholars, educators, ju- rists, engineers and doctors will have participated in various exchange programs in the United States, go- ing on to serve in senior government positions, teach in universities and lead the “hottest” Iraqi firms. Iraq occupies a central place in the Arab and
Muslim world; it is home to Shiite Islam’s holiest sites and occupies a strategic position in a challeng- ing neighborhood. A stable and secure Iraq that en- joys constructive relations with its neighbors will contribute significantly to regional stability. This ambitious vision is achievable if the United States al- locates sufficient resources to its enduring diplo- matic presence and continues to coordinate its ef- forts with the government of Iraq and key interna- tional partners.
The writer has served as a strategic planner at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad since August 2008. The views expressed here are his own.
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