NDN Blog

It is time for Congress to appoint one of their periodic Blue Ribbon Commissions to review all aspects of the Iraq War.  So much has gone wrong that we need to have a big discussion not how just to bring it to a close, but how to prevent it from ever happening again. 

The review should look at everything: from the pre-war build up, to the execution of the military campaign, to the planning for the aftermath, to the horrible aftermath itself.  The nation needs to turn this terrible experience, so expensive in terms of lives, money and our standing in the world into a learning experience for future generations.  If Congress were to do this, and do it well, it would be a tremendous public service to the nation.  And the review could come out in late 2008 or early 2009 so as not to interfere with the Presidential Election, but to assist the next Administration in its own conduct of foreign policy in the post-Bush era. 

Two major stories today highlight the extent of the failure of our policy in the region.  The first, in the Times, details a new report on our reconstruction efforts in Iraq.  Remarkably, the $5.8 billion reviewed in the report is the cost of perhaps 2 weeks of our military efforts there (clearly inadequate btw), and yet it has been a total disaster:

Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.

The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency, include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.

The next is a story, widely reported this morning, on how the Administration has made a massive sale of arms to Israel and the Middle East's Sunni governments.  While there is much to discuss about with this move, it has been sold as a way to counter the region's new great threat - the rise of Iran.  What amazes me about our the War Supporters newfound fear of Iran's ascension is how, of course, the rising regional influence of Iran's is the direct result of the Iraq War itself.  Remember that it was our policy to installed in Iraq a Shiite government closely allied with Iran, upsetting the Sunni-Shiite political balance in the region.  When we hear Bush, and Senator Lieberman, go on about Iran we have to ask them was there any other possible outcome of your Iraq policy, which included the instillation of a Shiite-led Iranian-allied government in Iraq, then the regional ascension of Iran?  All of this feels like so much stumbling around in the geopolitical dark. 

And how will our Shiite allies running the Iraqi government respond to the arming of the Sunni governments in the region who are already funding Sunni insurgents in Iraq working to undermine the Iraqi government? Are the Saudi's funding Al Qaeda for example? Will these new arms we are providing to the region's Sunnis end up back in Iraq in Al Qaeda's hands, or other Sunni insurgents intent on killing Americans? Is this move an acknowledgement of our failure in Iraq, that our post-war political strategy in the region has failed, and the establishment of a predicate for withdrawal and abandonment of Iraq's Shiites and their government? Have we, with this act, essential chosen the region's Sunnis over the Shiites and thrown the Iraqi government under the bus?  

The endless Iraq war has now officially become a regional war.  It is long past time for a big conversation not just about ending the war in Iraq, but also for what our vision is for the region in its aftermath.  Bush has layed down a new and powerful marker.  What is the proper response?

I hope one of the teams of Major League Soccer here in the US invite the remarkable Iraqi National soccer team to play a "friendly" match sometime soon.  

We need to do something to honor these players and their country.  Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, playing together for national pride in a troubled nation, improbably advancing to the Asia Cup finals.  Against who? Sunni Saudi Arabia, a nation that has not yet fully accepted the new Iraqi government, which of course is the first Shiite-led Arab nation in the history of the Middle East. 

I also feel that somehow the events of yesterday, the killing not just of people but of joy itself, will become to be seen as an important day.  Perhaps it will become a rallying cry for the government and average people to fight harder against the chaos and those looking to rip their country apart.  Perhaps it will be a sign of disintegration, a moment when Iraqi's descent into chaos hit the point of no return.  My own sense is on this one the insurgents went too far, and that the global and local outrage brought by the soccer bombings will become, at least for now, a rallying cry for those working against the chaos. 

In that sense these horrible killings are an opportunity, an opportunity for the Iraqi leaders and our government to start to change the impression that sustained chaos in Iraq is inevitable.

In a new paper released today by NDN Globalization Initiative Director, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, we lay out a simple plan to provide tens of millions of American workers with essential IT training. Under this proposal, America's community colleges would receive federal grants to keep their computer labs open three nights a week, staffed by instructors who would provide basic - and free - IT and computer instruction to any person in the community who walks in and requests it.

The new paper, Tapping the Resources of America's Community Colleges, is the second in our Series of Modest Proposals to Build 21st Century Skills. The first paper, A Laptop in Every Backpack, called upon the federal government to equip every U.S. sixth grader with a laptop, so that students - the workforce of tomorrow - have the tools necessary to access the internet and build IT skills. Alec Ross, of the remarkable advocacy group, One Economy, and I co-wrote this paper.

Taken together, these papers urge the U.S. government to make a new national commitment to giving all American workers and students the skills needed to use modern information technology and navigate the emerging global communications network. Providing these skills is one component of a broader economic strategy advocated by NDN to ensure that globalization works for all Americans.

Please visit our website to read these papers and the accompanying introduction. For those of you in Washington, we invite you to attend our event tomorrow on IT Skills and Training for the 21st Century Economy. The event will be held in the Capitol, room H-122, from 10:30-11:45 (*please note the new room change). Additional event details may be found on our website.

Helping to make sure that all Americans benefit from the opportunities of today's economy is one of the greatest challenges facing American policymakers. For the last several years NDN's Globalization Initiative has been offering original and compelling thinking about how we can best meet this important challenge. I am proud of our work, and hope you will find this new paper, and its companion, helpful.

Just returned from a week away and am glad to be back in the fray.   Though, of course, it was great to be away. 

We have a big couple of weeks ahead of us here at NDN.  On Thursday we will be releasing the 2nd in a series of papers from our Globalization Initiative on 21st century skills at an event here in DC.  The following day NPI releases a whole set of new papers and essays updating our "new tools" series.  These papers will also be released at an event (more info can be found on each event on our blog here or on our home page at www.ndn.org). 

And next week, NDN will have a strong presence at YearlyKos in Chicago.  Members of our team will be speaking on at least 5 different panels.  Look for Pete Leyden, Ali Weise, Rob Shapiro and Joe Garcia there next week speaking on everything from internet video to immigration reform.  I will be moderating a panel on how campaigns are changing with Joe Trippi, Jerome Armstrong and Stephanie Cutter, and Pete and I will be doing our "dawn of a new politics" presentation that has been well received in the progressive world this year.

For those new to NDN feel free to check out my foreword to Markos's and Jerome's book, Crashing the Gate.

So, in the next ten days there will be lots of opportunities to catch up with us and review some of the creative new thinking coming from NDN these days. More than anything else that's why it is good to be back.

In a new letter, Senate Democrats challenge the President to explain his foreign policy strategy:

The President

The White House

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

       Press reports today indicate that the National Counterterrorism Center, our government’s top counterterrorism experts, recently concluded that Al Qaeda has significantly rebuilt itself since 2001 and is now as strong as ever.  Earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stated he believes the country faces an increased chance of a terrorist attack this summer.  Additionally, today's Initial Benchmark Assessment Report outlines that the Iraqi government has failed to meet any of the key benchmarks they set for themselves, demonstrating that the war in Iraq continues to head in the wrong direction.  These developments are the latest troubling indicators that your national security strategy is making America less secure and has left America vulnerable to terrorist attack. 

      It has become increasingly obvious that the war in Iraq has only exacerbated the terrorist threat.  Iraq has now become what it was not before the start of the conflict there, namely a training ground and launching pad for a new generation of terrorists.  Your focus on Iraq has permitted Al Qaeda to gather strength elsewhere to the point where Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell recently concluded that the next attack on America most likely “would be planned and come out of the [Al Qaeda] leadership in Pakistan.”  Meanwhile, repeated and extended deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched our military to the breaking point and reduced readiness to levels not seen since Vietnam.  Finally, most Guard and Reserve units in our states no longer have the equipment they need to perform their tasks, either abroad or here at home in the event of a national emergency or a disaster.

       It is precisely because of our concerns about these developments that Senate Democrats have been pushing to rebuild and reequip our military, fully implement the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, enhance our special operations and intelligence capabilities, and, perhaps most urgently, change your strategy in Iraq.  We are surprised that you and many congressional Republicans have resisted these efforts and concerned that you continue to do so.

      We ask that you immediately inform Congress through the appropriate channels of (1) the near-term steps your Administration has taken or plans to take to address Secretary Chertoff’s heightened concerns about the terrorist threat, and (2) the strategy to reverse the alarming growth of Al Qaeda and affiliated extremist groups.

      Thank you for your consideration of these views and we look forward to your prompt response.

       Sincerely,

      Harry Reid

      Richard J. Durbin

      Charles E. Schumer

      Patty Murray

I had some thoughts about all this this morning. 

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has an excellent video report from Sara Taylor's Senate testimony yesterday.  A great example of how mainstream journalism is evolving.

Morning shows and the am papers all leading with the story that Al Qaeda is regrouping, stronger than ever.  Sec. Chertoff was on Fox talking about the threat, so it seems as if this is a White House strategy to scare folks during the upcoming Senate debate. 

But is this is a good strategy? Doesn't it just reinforce that the Administration's foreign policy has been an utter failure in every way? Al Qaeda is stronger.  Iraq has failed, and will end up exporting chaos throughout the region and the world.  Our traditional allies in the Middle East and Pakistan are losing ground to radical elements.  Israel is weaker than before.  Iran is closer to having nuclear weapons.  Our standing in Latin America is at an all time low, and Hugo Chavez's influence is on the rise.  Russia is becoming an ever more important problem.  Afghanistan is not coming along as promised.  On trade liberalization  Doha has stalled, TPA expired and prospects for important trade agreements with South Korea and Columbia look dim.  No action has been taken on combating climate change, and our military has been severely degraded.  

Does the Administration really want to broaden this debate beyond Iraq?

I say "bring it on."

The DC City Council approved a new leadership team for our public schools yesterday.  The Fenty-Rhee era of school reform, an era promising bold change, begins this week.  

As a parent of two kids in the DC public schools, I will be checking in from time to time on the new Chancellor's progress.  I for one am very excited about what Fenty and Rhee are talking about for our struggling schools. 

I'm quoted today in a Politico story on how the collapse of immigration reform may end up hurting the GOP in 2008.   Other examples of this story can be found by clicking on the immigration tag above and reading through previous entries in the section.   There should be little doubt that Hispanics already had blamed the GOP for the tone of the immigration debate before this year; that the Senate bill collapsed largely through the work of a handful of Republican Senators; that the already damaged GOP brand has been and will be further degraded in the Latino community, the fastest growing in the nation; and as in CA in the 1990s, the rejection of the GOP by Latinos could spell electoral doom for them nationally for a generation to come. 

You can find our statement on the collapse of the immigration bill here.

However, I'm not sure that my quotes in the final graph as are clear as I would have hoped.  What I was trying to say is that if Democrats want to take advantage of the GOP stumble it would be wise for them to do more than blame the GOP for the collapse of the immigration bill. Democrats will have to make it clear over the next two years that they will work to do more than play politics with the issue - they need to show that they can deliver on the promise to reform the immigration system.  This means spelling out, in detail, a plan, and doing everything they can to pass it, or at least make significant progress on it, now.  

What is the Democratic vision here? Do Democratic leaders want to return to the framework of McCain-Kennedy, rejecting the point sytem, the nutty guest worker plan and "touchback?" What about H1Bs and other programs for highly educated workers? Is there a set of principles that can bring together the Democrats in both chambers?

My argument in the Politico piece was that for Democrats to take full advantage of the great Republican stumble they will need to make clear what kind of immigration reform they are for, and commit to doing more than just talking about it in the months to come.  Just saying that Democrats are less bad than the Republicans is not a strong message to take to any community.  

NDN Globalization Initiative Director Rob Shapiro is quoted prominently in a thoughtful John Heilemann column in New York Magazine this week.  An excerpt:

The pace of change being driven by globalization has only accelerated in the fourteen years since NAFTA’s passage. And the political backlash against that change has only grown more bellicose, potent, and mainstream. In 2006, a raft of Democratic Senate candidates—Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Virginia’s Jim Webb, Montana’s Jon Tester—were elected in part because of their appeals to economic nationalism and their opposition to trade deals that reputedly sent countless jobs overseas. And the anti-globalization tenor of many House Democratic campaigns was even more pronounced. “In all my time in Washington,” says Rob Shapiro, chairman of the New Democrat Network Globalization Initiative and a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “I’ve never seen less support for open trade across this town than today."......

More broadly, the consensus among top-tier economists that underpinned the support for free trade has lately been rattled by a spate of revisionism. Alan Blinder of Princeton, a former vice-chair of the Federal Reserve and a staunch Democrat, has taken to arguing that the downsides of unfettered globalization may be far greater than standard doctrine has assumed—in particular, that offshoring and outsourcing may put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk in the next two decades. The Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson has joined the chorus, as has former Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who wrote recently that pledges to retrain workers displaced in the globalized economy are “pretty thin gruel” when it comes to allaying the fears of the middle class.

The rethinking going on among such economists is salutary, to be sure. There can hardly be any doubt any longer that globalization (fueled by rapid technological change) is, as Shapiro has written, “weakening the long-standing connection between increases in the productivity of workers and the wages they earn.” But what makes the responses to this new reality among the Blinders and Summerses of the world welcome is that their arguments tend to be complex, careful, and nuanced. What none of them is advocating is any form of protectionism—even though that is precisely what many of the politicians and union leaders now seizing on the rethinking have in mind. Instead, the economists favor grand-scale education reform, worker training, R&D spending, and changes in the tax code to promote the creation of high value-added U.S. based jobs, and, not least, universal health care reform to bring down costs for domestic businesses.

“The next administration has a responsibility to create a new bargain on trade,” says Shapiro. “The bargain is, we will continue to expand open trade and we will make the significant investments required to enable American workers to benefit from it.”

Given Shapiro’s roots, it’s not surprising that his new bargain embodies the spirit of Clintonism (Bill Clintonism, that is). What’s often forgotten about Clintonomics, in its original incarnation, is that its theme was “putting people first.” Yes, there was always a commitment to fiscal discipline. Yes, there was the embrace of internationalism. But there was also a promise to sink massive sums into the formation and enhancement of human capital. But Clinton’s human-capital agenda was sacrificed on the altar of budget balancing, a sacrifice that was arguably unnecessary had the president and his people been willing to take on corporate welfare, congressional pork, and entitlement spending.

Now comes a golden opportunity for a presidential candidate prepared to do just that. Ready, that is, to make good on Bill Clinton’s unfinished agenda. Without question, the candidate most suitable to taking up the task, for reasons of both temperament and historical-cum-marital continuity, would be Hillary Clinton. Doing so would require her, however, to drop the cheap posturing as a trade hawk and adopt instead a stance of, I dunno, a genuine third-way leader. Those of us who care about getting globalization right will be watching and egging her on. And so, one hopes, will be her husband, who happens to understand all of this as well as anyone alive.

For more on NDN's Globalization Initiative, visit www.ndn.org.