DEMOKRATIA

Is Racism Coming Back in America?

2010-05-21T13:43:00.002-06:00

Watch how this TV show tries to get this political candidate to share his views on civil rights and how he tries with very little skill, to conceal his racism.

Education vs. Stupidity

2009-10-10T20:04:00.002-06:00

Dumb Politicians in New Mexico

Ken Hacker, October 4, 2009

The state of New Mexico now faces a fiscal crisis that is threatening education in the state. Some politicians are moving to reduce funding for schools by 3.5% and for educators by 2.5%. The sheer stupidity of such a move should be national headlines and should serve as an election cry to throw out the nimrods come the next electoral opportunity. To help that cause, the names of the thought-challenged leaders will be listed here so that voters know who to vote out or to not vote in.

As economist Paul Krugman notes, education should always be supported and should not be funded on the basis on how the economy is doing. I personally think of this as analogous to medicine. You dont cut back on doctors and nurses because the Dow Jones has dipped. What do you cut back? How about unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy? What about rockets to nowhere?

A crucial deliberation is coming up in Santa Fe on October 17 this year. Voters should take note on who is arguing in favor of scaling back funding for education. These are the leaders who need to be cut back. If we can trim stupid leaders rather than education, we will be making progress.

After empting the garbage in Santa Fe, it will also be time to pressure President Obama and Congress to help universities and K-12 schools the way they did corporate tycoons. Allowing education to be cut back is not the mark of any administration that is serious about America's problems or its future.

Two Jelly Fish Throwers

2009-09-10T12:55:00.007-06:00

The Two Jelly Fish Throwers

Kenneth Hacker, September 10, 2009

Two American men recently made asses of themselves in a very big way. One is simply an drunk man in Florida carrying a knife in his shorts and the other is a former Army officer who seems to have never learned that the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief and that both presidents and commanders are to be treated with respect. What these two men share is the ability to throw out what should not be thrown.

Wilson appears to be once have been a respectable political leader until Sept. 9, 2009 when he began to heckle President Obama during a very important speech about health care reform. What an example for children who others are trying to teach respect to. And what about the nutcases who take weapons to presidential speeches or fly Nazi flags in protest against the President. Wilson cannot possibly believe that he will be exonerated by an apology. His party should make do him some sort of community service to help Americans understand how imbecilic his behavior was and why the crazies who keep showing disrespect for the President are threatening our heritage and even our national security by giving rhetorical aid and comfort to our enemies.

Wilson showed that he has the sense of the intoxicated beach guy in Florida who threw jelly fish at people enjoying themselves in the sun. Americans and leaders were listening to the arguments of the President when the congressman started yelling at the President and displaying total disrespect for the Congress, for the United States of America, and for the office of our Presidency.

I suggest that the BS thrower from South Carolina be placed into a cell with the jelly fish thrower so that they can share thoughts about how stupid they both are and what they might do to gain some degree of dignity back to their lives.

If you listened to President Obama, you were likely to conclude something like "What a good speaker, " but if you listened to Wilson, it was more of reaction like "What an ass!"

Smart Cops Can Do Stupid Things

2009-07-24T18:10:00.008-06:00

Smart Cops Can Do Stupid Things

Kenneth Hacker

July 24, 2009

Have President Obama address a case of racial profiling that puts an African-American man (Professor Gates) into a situation unlikely to happen to a "white" American and drug-crazed conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, nativists like Lou Dobbs, and overheated pubic relations staff for the Cambridge Police Department automatically cry injustice toward the white cop. Other white voices on radio and TV are lurching to the defense of the "white" cop. One can only wonder why the frantic defense is necessary for someone (the police officer) to defend himself while he may actually be guilty as charged in the first place. Why in the world would he have to doubt the word of Professor Gates that he was entering his own house when a) Gates showed him ID, b) the house records could be checked by computer, and c) there was no evidence of wrong-doing other than entry at a late hour into one's own home.

The cop may be a wonderful person and a smart man, but his actions reek of dumb judgment. There is no need for the President to apologize but he is doing so for political purposes, which is usually the protocol in phony crises like theses. But while the President is being gracious, other Americans ought to take the Cambridge Police Department to task and remind them that racism is real and should not be tolerated.

Another black professor, Michael Dyson puts this into the perspective of ongoing racism which is easy to deny but just as real as the raciism of the past. See the link above for his essay.

If anyone needs to apologize in this event, it is the police officer and his department. They need to apologize to Professor Gates and the American people. The officer needs more training in how to communicate with suspects. Clearly, he could have used a different manner of interacting with his suspect since all he needed was ID. He could have obtained it if he knew how to communicate effectively and the whole thing could have ended in a few minutes. Instead, he, the person with most force and authority in the moment, let the situation expand beyond any necessity.

Think of yourself being in Professor Gates' shoes. You come home late, you need to break into your own home because you cant get in, and then the police arrive and start implying that there might be a break-in in progress. You get mad and they get mad at you for being mad. You know it is your home and this is a free country where property rights and freedom are dearly valued. The cop decides you are out of control and you get arrested for disorderly conduct. The police officer needs some more education and needs to admit that he is wrong when he is wrong. Maybe then, the American people could respect him.

The officer does make a case that he did not know if Prof. Gates was the home owner or an intruder when he responded to a call regarding possible breaking and entering. Here is his own version of the event:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/24/officer.gates.arrest/index.html?iref=topnews#cnnSTCVideo

Much of what he asserts is his uncertainty of what was actually occurring. He tries to make Gates sound rational to make himself seem cool and intelligent, always doing the right thing. Back to school, SGT Crowley!

Political Insanity

2009-07-23T20:56:00.028-06:00

POLITICAL INSANITY

by Kenneth Hacker

July 31, 2009

What happens when the political mind snaps?

Governor Terminator did not lose his mind but his knife opportunity was time well with the brain implosion of conservative talk show wing nut Glenn Beck. No bones about it, Beck has lost it. He is now in orbit and far from this planet.

Along with Beck cutting ties with reality, Rush Limbaugh is spewing out incoherent nonsense about President Obama in a crazy effort to offer some kind of counter-narrative to what the president the Democrats are saying about health care.

Limbaugh is oblivious to the fact that he has had his claims refuted over and over and over again in the past 10 years and no serious political analyst can take him seriously because he is not an authority in anything other than how to get rich acting nuts on the radio. This fat radio flatulator is calling President Obama a racist because he befriended Professor Louis Gates in the recent controversy over Gates breaking into his own home after a long trip to China and back. Of course, Beck was agreeing with this insane discourse about the president being a racist. The more they do this, of course, the more they draw attention to their own racism which is very easy to detect. Limbaugh can be seen in recent video footage jumping up and down at a podium like a wild man in need of tranquilizers.

This zoo of political entertainment might be innocent if there were not consequence to insane political communication, if there were not Timothy McVeighs, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other unhinged activists in the United States looking for a discourse with which to build a case for hatred and even violence. It might be innocent and deemed free political speech if it it did not contribute to the hate speech against America and its presidents of Al Qaeda and others who seek to instigate more terrorist strikes against our nation.

Before World War II, Father Coughlin talked against Jews by pointing out over and over again that Christ was killed by Jews or at least the Romans killed Him at their bidding. He moved into more insane anti-Jewish discourse and finally support for Hitler in Germany.

David Duke, former Klansman and now public speaker for white nationalism once said that the difference between him and Rush Limbaugh is that he admits his prejudice. Both rail against liberals, minority concerns, and challenges to European American and western heritage superiority.

Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly make mistakes all of the time, bad predictions, flaws in logic, name-calling tricks, etc. but seem to keep themselves from crossing over the line into the land of "Birthers" (those who claim that President Obama was not born in the U.S.), FEMA concentration camp conspiracies, and other assorted flights of schizophrenia. Hannity flirts with political insanity and then pulls himself back in an interesting manner, probably so he does not get the same mentally ill diagnosing one might assign to Anne Coulter and others like her who say that liberals are diseased, Native Americans were once cannibals, Arabs and Muslims need to have their cultures cleansed, and Jews need to become Christians. O"Reilly can actually be rational and while suffering occasional moments when it looks like his head is going to explode with anger, can talk about facts and even admit a fact that might not have been handed to him by his staff.

Sarah Palin incites crowds to new heights of in-group love and out-group hatred by incessantly referring to her followers as the good people and the real Americans and the ones who oppose her as something less than good and too otherlike to be trusted.

Her orientalizing of fellow Americans is sheer lunacy. She has nothing of value to contribute to American, nothing positive, nothing inspiring in terms of progress and civility. Instead, she gushes with invectives and crazy talk about who we can really trust among us.

Limbaugh will deny that his speech incites anything but critical thinking but he is out of touch with the fact that people all over the world can be radicalized with words, language, stories, and arguments. He does not seem to know that terrorism-supporting loudmouths in the Middle East provide the intellectual and rhetorical justification for mayhem committed by terrorism operatives.

No, that is not a picture of William Krystol, the neo-con. It is Mussolini, a master of nutty political discourse. But political insanity does not just occur on the right side of the political spectrum. Clearly, Jeremiah Wright was ranting and raving pure nonsense at times and that is why Obama had to get away from him. Insane political discourse is not limited to any one political party or ideology but it always reduces complicated issues down to good people vs. bad people, truth vs. falsehood (as in Karl Marx arguing about "false consciousness"), and emotional claims over factual ones. Limbaugh thinks that anyone who wants medical insurance can afford it and should just go out and purchase it. His anchor has dropped so far from reality, it is amazing that he can get hours on FOX TV to throw out his BS. He blathers and he blathers and the insanity of his discourse mesmerizes his fans. For those who can read, he is hardly convincing.

So why does political insanity become so popular and why are the politically insane making themselves incredibly wealthy with childlike thoughts and imbecilic behaviors? It is quite simply because we like to be entertained and even political clowns are entertaining. We like excitement and political fruit cakes can be exciting. The ancient Greeks may sent nuts like this into otracism, but today we make them rich and famous. Perhaps our democracy will become healthier when we learn to tell the political insane that we will no longer listen to their maddening venom. If we do not, we will continue to give aid and comfort to our enemies who will always be able to point at our nuts as examples of our society.

The Persuasion Problems of the United States

2009-06-22T10:46:00.009-06:00

The Strategic Persuasion Problems of the United States Government

Kenneth L. Hacker

June 22, 2009

Today, it is irrefutable that the national image of the United States is suffering from low credibility of its political leaders, underuse of soft power, and eclipsing by terrorists in exploitation of the communication capabilities of the Internet. While attitudes of people in states of concern, particularly those most susceptible to pro-terrorism arguments, have declined over the past decade, there are signs of progress which show that the negative national image is not intractable. The attempts of President Obama to initiate dialogue with Islamic and Arabic leaders is promising even if the effects are yet to be seen (substantially).

Since the Cold War, the United State government (USG) has had formal means of disseminating messages encourage positives responses to its actions. These formal agencies and mechanisms are found the in the State Department, the intelligence community, and the United States military. What all three of the bodies do is known in the most general sense as strategic communication. Strategic communication is basically the use of numerous means of persuasion by the USG to persuade populations in other nations that we are working in our own best national interests while also respecting or aiding their interests. While the end of the Cold War led to reductions in strategic communication, new concerns about increasing the use of strategic communication have arisen in light of numerous surveys showing that the United States is not perceived as the world leader that it claims to be.

The Purpose of Strategic Communication

Two objectives of strategic communication is designed to a) improve perceptions of the United States by populations in other countries, and b) to decrease the persuasiveness of enemy persuasion which derides the United States. Strategic communication (SC) is an umbrella terms for component processes known as military information operations, public diplomacy, and public affairs (Josten, 2006). The agency with the most focus on SC is the Department of State (DOS). The goals for the SC efforts of the USG center around improving the national image of the United States and conveying is most important messages to other nations as effectively as possible (Josten, 2006). Public diplomacy is a form of strategic communication which entails overt international messages sent by the United States to other nations (Josten, 2006). It can include efforts to understand as well as influence foreign cultures (Josten, 2006).

For strategic communication to work well, it must involve common themes and messages that are reinforced by actions (Josten, 2006). It must also involve long-term rather than short-term image building (Josten, 2006). Terrorism involves strategic communication and to work more effectively against terrorism, the USG needs to confront the SC of the terrorist networks. Josten (2006, p. 19) describes the SC of terrorism as “message and action – using the global communications network more to influence than inform.”

Information operations, propaganda, strategic influence, psychological warfare and all of the other means of using message to influence other groups go back at leas as far as the Hebrew military leader Gideon and the ancient Greeks with their Trojan horse.

After 9/11, the State Department initiated the branding campaign run by Charlotte Beers. The White House set up the Office of Global Communications to coordinate government propaganda. The Defense Department had an Office of Strategic Influence agency which was intended to direct other-nation perceptions but which was canceled because of stories about intended uses of disinformation (Battle, 2002). All of these efforts were grounded in the premise that that world does not understand the good policies of the United States (Battle, 2002). Along with this assumption, it was also assumed that a neglect of public diplomacy (self-promotion) resulted in declining prestige of the United States (Battle, 2002).

Todays’ efforts can be related to efforts done after World War II. The United States used public diplomacy to attempt to increase its influence in the Middle East which was viewed as necessary for an anti-Soviet alliance and as important location of strategic oil resources (Battle, 2002). Public diplomacy was intended to channel revolutionary and nationalist movements in anti-Communist and pro-United States directions (Battle, 2002). The propaganda messages were directed at what were considered good target populations and those who shaped their views. As today, public diplomacy was a tool for attempting to change how realities are perceived. It was also a tool for inculcating American values into other cultures (Battle, 2002). It was also viewed in terms of dealing with Arab ignorance and resentment of the West (Battle, 2002).

The themes of this early PD effort said that American supports freedom and that it supports peace and the use of international institutions(Battle, 2002). Religion appeals were used to foster more anti-Comunist attitudes (Battle, 2002).

Problems with the early PD arose with contradictions between experience and claims. America claimed to support freedom at the same time that it supported dictatorships (Battle, 2002). There was also the problem of the fact that American interests were not the same as the interests of the receivers (Battle, 2002). Arabs distrusted the faith in Israel shown in 1948 and the Soviets used this to talk about American imperialism (Battle, 2002).

After the easy defeat of the Iraq army in 2003, U.S. planners directed attention to rising anti-American attitudes in face of startling findings such as the fact that bin Laden was a more trusted figure than Bush in some Muslim nations including U.S. allies Indonesia and Jordan (Kaplan, 2005). Some of these efforts made it clear that there was no national strategy for how to change the attitudes (Kaplan, 2005). In 2005, journalists reported that a classified strategy known as Muslim World Outreach was in operation (Kaplan, 2005). The goal of this operation was the highlighting of shared values with moderate Muslims such as womens rights and democracy (Kaplan, 2005).

The amount of channels now used by the U.S. government for strategic communication is daunting. In about 24 countries, it is funding Islamic radio and TV programs, programs in Muslim schools, Muslim think tanks, and federal aid to help with restoring mosques, saving ancient Korans, and building Islamic churches (Kaplan, 2005). The CIA is again using its powers of covert actions to seed messages in Islamic media, political parties, and among Islamic leaders (Kaplan, 2005). Other publicly known CIA operations include their work with Al Qaeda opponents and with discrediting various zealots who work against the U.S.

Despite the acceleration of strategic communication projects, there is evidence that the campaigns are chaotic and the results are not meeting expectations (Kaplan, 2005). Staff members of the White House National Security Council have written over 100 papers on actions to take against Jihadist propaganda and actions but few of the papers have been acted upon (Kaplan, 2005). The National Intelligence Council has cautioned about unemployed and alienated youths in the Arab world being susceptible to terrorist recruitment (Kaplan, 2005).

Anti-Americanism is one of the main factors encouraging terrorism in the world today. Rumors can be taken as truths in anti-American environments. One such rumor is that American soldiers harvest the organs from dead Iraqis (Kaplan, 2005). Themes circulating in such environments include those saying that America is at war with Arabs and with the religion of Islam (Kaplan, 2005).

Large-scale strategic communication in the U.S. began during the Cold War. The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a major agent in these efforts, to the extent that it had a network of hundreds of specialists in other nations and was producing movies that were of Hollywood studio quality (Kaplan, 2005). The central theme was the United States is good and Communism is bad. The overall strategic communication efforts included the work of the USIA, the Fulbright Scholarships, Radio Free Europe and other broadcasts, funds channeled by the CIA to journalists, political parties, scholars, and labor leaders (Kaplan, 2005). After the Cold War, these programs were pared back. While the CIA had hundreds of people working in strategic influence during the Cold War, the number was down to about 20 by later 2001. When visited in 2001, the visitors were greeted by a lady with a walker! (Kaplan, 2005).

After 9/11, Bush authorized more efforts for political warfare including political propaganda. The Pentagon showed people with political leaflets and distributed kites and comic books to influence people (Kaplan, 2005). Because of the lack of a well coordinated system of strategic communication, the defense expert created and Office of Strategic Influence (Kaplan, 2005). It closed its doors after 4 month when it was learned that the OSI planned to distribute disinformation.

The State Department ran into trouble when it attempted to employ the commercial marketing technique known as branding. Charlotte Beers, who ran the campaign, quit as head of public diplomacy just before the war began in Iraq in 2003 (Kaplan, 2005).

While Americans expected the fall of Saddam Hussein to symbolize liberation and freedom, many Arabs viewed it as confirmation of their belief that the U.S. has no problem with invading Muslim nations, ignoring the international community, supporting Israel while neglecting the concerns of the Palestinians, and supporting dictators while calling for democracy (Kaplan, 2005).

In 2002, amidst lots of complaining about not winning hearts and minds, National Security Adviser Condelezza Rice formed two inter-agency committees, one to work on strategic communication and the other to work on information strategies (Kaplan, 2005). Proposals included an information offensive on AQ and using music, comics, poetry, and the Internet to transmit American views to Arabs (Kaplan, 2005). The strategic communication group was to construct a strategy of public diplomacy (Kaplan, 2005). The group dissipated due to a lack of leadership (Kaplan, 2005). Another reason for failure was that members of these groups had trouble agreeing on what the target audience was (ex. World terrorism or Islamic extremism) and what the causes are for terrorism (Kaplan, 2005). Some participants feared the idea of criticizing a religion (Kaplan, 2005).

Three years after 9/11, there was no working effective strategic communication program for the United States (Kaplan, 2005). However, there were large-scale projects like Radio Sawa, Alhurra, as well as increased funding for the CIA’s strategic influence unit and the Pentagon’s psychological operations group (Kaplan, 2005).

A strategy called Muslim World Outreach began in 2004 (Kaplan, 2005). This program seeks to work with Muslim partners who believe in democracy, womens rights, and other key values (Kaplan, 2005). The program has critics who argue that America’s commitment to religious freedom should block criticizing Muslims (Kaplan, 2005). Supporters of the program believe that helping moderate Muslims publish and broadcast is a good way to challenge jihadist discourse (Kaplan, 2005).

There are Arab and other governments who have contributed to the terrorism problem and which require careful analysis. Saudi Arabia, for example, has spent $75 billion since 1975 to spread Wahhabism worldwide (Kaplan, 2005). Saudi-funded charities have been found to support jihadists I twenty nations (Kaplan, 2005).

U.S. intelligence officers are meeting with members of groups that have abandoned older commitments to violence. These include groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (Kaplan, 2005). The MB is not close to AQ. By meeting with members of groups like the Deobandi sect in Pakistan, the United States has been able to get conservative clerics to persuade people to abandon fatwas calling for an anti-American jihad (Kaplan, 2005).

One of the main players in public diplomacy today is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In Indonesia alone, USAID is helping to fund over 30 Muslim organizations (Kaplan, 2005). Open efforts like this can be attacked and have been. For example, there is a continuous question about whether our government should be involved with funding religious efforts.

What has been alternatively called the "war on terror," the "global war on terror," and the "long war" is suffering from an absence of what most wars end with and that is a point of victory and a point of surrender. Some experts believe that better persuasion would begin with some lingustic analysis of terms like "war on terror." We have already seen what the use of the term "crusade" did to the USG during the Bush 2 administration.

Robert Pape, Paul Pillar and other experts in terrorism note that terrorist attacks can take years of organization and planning. Counterrorism experts must always be alert to the potential of terrorist attacks. We offer a method to detect terrorism communication longitudinally.

Antecendent attributes for terrorists alone do not predict terrorism as action. Pillar (2002, p. 31) says that “No one has produced a good algorithm for the many variables that, in combination, breed terrorists.” Our use of terrorism discourse is a way to get at a mulitiplicity of factors which work together to generate the intent to commit acts of terrorism. According to Pillar (2001, p. 130), “Everything that makes a terrorist group what it is- including its culture, ideology, demographic characteristics, and history – needs to be taken into account in formulating a posture toward it.”

We need to monitor groups of concern for what they have in terms of motivations for their leaders, what are their priorities, and what might cause them to decide not to be violent. Exogenous influences are important to ascertain when analyzing groups that might become terrorist groups. Intent should be related to agendas of the group as well as calculations of what are in its best interests. It is important that intent can fluctuate as objectives remain constant but conditions make success of violence less probable. While some groups are more formal and organized than others and some have links to larger groups, there are some that are ad ho in nature.

There are many analyses which indicate the terrorists have specific political missions and goals which they pursue with their political violence. Some intelligence analysts become so overwhelmed with complicated data about threats that they seek information in the data that confirm pre-conceived hypotheses (Gutjahr2005).

Younger terrorists are more savvy with computers and the Internet than their predecssors and become more capable of using the new networks to create more complex threats (Gutjahr2005).

Terrorism is a method of affecting political order Thomas (2004). What distinguishes terrorists from common criminals is their political motivation Thomas (2004). The goal of terrorist actions is to generate psychological impacts, mainly fear Thomas (2004). Understanding culture is critical to understanding how terrorists construct their groups, causes, and intentions. Useful cultural intelligence provides govermnet analysts information about group norms and values. Norms set the standards for appopriate behavior for groups and their members (Thomas,2004). Troy Thomas (2004) notes that norms can be identified by a)evidence showing that members believe certain behaviors are expected, b)most members share beliefs about expected behaviors, and c)the norms are supported by most members.

Terrorist groups have varied and multiple avenues of influence into the group. Both direct influencers such as religious figures and indirect ones, such as weapons suppliers, can affect the intentions and planning of the group (Thomas,2004).

Webs of external and internal influence that are part of terrorist group interactions and information processing might reveal themselves to some extent in the discourse networks that emerge in various sets of conversations.

Thomas (2004) argues that the intent of a terrorist organization stems from its interests and the interests provide it motivation to do terrorist actions. He argues that intent is so difficult to identify that it is more efficient to identify capabilities - ascertain what they are capable of doing rather than what they plan on doing. We need to refute this argument. Thomas argues that if you have to choose between intent and capabilities, choose capabilities. This is essentially a false dilemma.

Certain types of discourse are more likely than others to resonate than other types. Religious discourse is one example as such discourse can motivate and mobilize believers (Lambert, 2005). Discourse of terrorist organizations can reveal strategic cultural factors and strategic narratives. The latter are cultural stories that are politically motivating (Lambert, 2005). Members of terrorist groups who are willing to die for their group are immersed in the groups social identity Lambert, 2005).

It may be possible to relate strategic cultures of these groups to their intentions and to the concept of persuasive centers of gravity. Centers of gravity for social identity, political motivation, and group attitudes are likely to be highly related to development of courses of action that will help the group reach its aspirations. Intent should not be the only target of the kind of analysis we are proposing by any means. It is one area of the total analysis.

Traditional methods of influence and persuasion work well for response shaping, response reinforcing, and response changing for certain topics, mainly commercial, health, and election campaigns. Without proper contextual understanding, these approaches fail when applied to foreign policy national image campaigns, and information operations influence. Marketing techniques like branding are likely to generate boomerang effects when applied sender centricly. Thus, we propose research and theory based methods of moving perceptions and attitudes in desired directions through various psychological and communication strategies and tactics, all of which can be tested before, during and after operations.

Numerous regime-change campaigns have bee attempted in the past that end up supporting new regimes as bad as the old ones.There is no reason to assume that cultural diplomacy is limited only State Department comunication with populations and leaders. For much of human history, cultural diplomacy has worked to build good will and international relations.French rap artist al Maliki can talk about quitting a plan to do a terrorst bombing and becoming peaceful as a Muslim in ways that reach young Muslims in his nation if not others. Tariq Ramadan can refute Islamic extremist justifications for terrorism that draw upon the Quran.Lessons learned should produce a new focus on these endeavors:

intensive study of directional momentum in political message environments and tracking of message intervention effects on such momentum.
concentrated efforts on analyzing the systemic message diffusion and community formation effects of new communication technologies. This includes the study of message disruption and counter-communication through the Internet and its linked technologies.
study of the most significant networks of influence that are exploited by terrorists and which can be used for the dissemination, diffusion, and acceptance of counterterrorism messages.
development of strategic means of creating political resonance with counter-terrorism messages.

Good intelligence is a hallmark of the intelligence community in the United States. Strategic influence follows from good intelligence and uses communication to attract populations to the policies and arguments of the USG. While the USG has steadily improved its intelligence procedures, it has been faltering in the production of messages which constitute strategic influence.

Intelligence can improved in various ways noted by the IC itself. Here are some realizations by foreign policy experts in the United States government regarding past and current political situations and how communication must be carefully managed to protect the national interestions of the U.S. American intelligence and strategic influence experts still lack sufficient knowledge that might be called cultural intelligence -- knowledge of other nations akin to knowing them like we know the neighborhoods we grew up in. Accurate perceptions of the intentions guiding messages or signal from other nations are crucial. For example, China appears to be arming itself at a rapid pace to make itself a large power rather than for any specific acts of aggression. The CIA National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq did not have enough input from Iraq expert groups. The government is trying to avoid this mistake with Iran. The United States can and should communicate with states of concern ("rogue states," "enemies," etc.) and can be persuasive with them. In conducting analyis of the political cultures of other nations, we should include analysis of what the leaders are reading and what other sources give them ways of perceiving and thinking in certain ways. If you can study how a nation makes decisions about world events and its role in international relations, you are studying its "strategic culture."

Intelligence analysis involves intensive work at identifying patterns in observed data (Garst & Gross, 2005). Analysts attempt to isolate the most important data which provide the most information. To some extent, this means finding order in chaos (Garst & Gross, 2005). There are numerous problems which affect this process including biases, stereotyps, confusion of cause and effect, and simplistic thinking (Garst & Gross, 2005).

The data which get analyzed are fragmentary, ambigous and susceptible to deception or disinformation (Garst & Gross, 2005).There is a constant pressure to make predictions. Overall, analysts have to describe, explain, evaluate, and forecast (Garst & Gross, 2005). Evaluative steps include providing implications of what has been thoroughly described. Forecasting involves making predictions about likely events based on what has been described and evaluated (Garst & Gross, 2005). While information is critical to intelligence, intelligence is more than information. Intelligence is the continuous evaluation of information in ways that provide understandings of problems and situations in actionable terms (Bei, 2005).

One of the biggest mistakes in intelligence analysis was not forecasting the potential and likely actions of Al Qaeda before 9/11 (Dowling, 2005). The U. S. tended to view Afghanistan in terms of the Cold War and the nation resisting the Soviet Union. This caused us to support groups that were anti-Soviet but would later become anti-American (Dowling, 2005). Analysts did not pay close enough attention to the political problems in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Nothern Africa which would provide incentive to Al Qaeda and organizations like it to recruit and formulate plans for terrorism (Dowling, 2005).

There have been many problems with the ways that terrorist communication and behavior are analyzed. For example, the behavior of Hebollah indicating that they do not strike Americans in their homeland can be interpreted as Hezbollah is not interested in doing such an action, but such an inference could be deadly. Terrorist organization aims and plans are always subject to change. The discourse of Osama bin Laden was evaluated as as hyperbolic and wild until it was followed by physical attacks. Yet even after his attack on the U.S. Cole, U.S. analysts and leaders failed to take him as seriously as he needed to be taken (Dowling, 2005).

Another problem with analyzing Al Qaeda was an overeliance on received wisdom regarding the differences among Arabs and other Islamists and the assumption that they would not work together. Data like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas were very important but were inadquately evaluated (Dowling, 2005). While the destruction of the giant carvings was assessed as vandalism by the Taliban, it later became apparent that bin Laden used the destruction to isolate the Talian regime from supporting states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who oppposed the destruction of the carvings (Dowling, 2005).

Robert Pape, Paul Pillar and other experts in terrorism note that terrorist attacks can take numerous years of organization and planning. Counterrorism experts must always be alert to the potential of terrorist attacks. We offer a method to detect terrorism communication longitudinally. Antecendent attributes for terrorists alone do not predict terrorism as action. Pillar (2002, p. 31) says that “No one has produced a good algorithm for the many variables that, in combination, breed terrorists.”

Our use of terrorism discourse is a way to get at a mulitiplicity of factors which work together to generate the intent to commit acts of terrorism. According to Pillar (2001, p. 130), “Everything that makes a terrorist group what it is- including its culture, ideology, demographic characteristics, and history – needs to be taken into account in formulating a posture toward it.”

The USG needs to monitor groups of concern for what they have in terms of motivations for their leaders, what are their priorities, and what might cause them to decide not to be violent. Exogenous influences are important to ascertain when analyzing groups that might become terrorist groups. Intent should be related to agendas of the group as well as calculations of what are in its best interests. It is important that intent can fluctuate as objectives remain constant but conditions make success of violence less probable. While come groups are more formal and organized than others and some have links to larger groups, there are some that are ad ho in nature.

While it is clearly necessary to use anti-terrorism against terrorists in action, it is also necessary to prevent the actions from occurring in the first place. This is where the detection of intent becomes crucial for defense. There are many analyses which indicate the terrorists have specific political missions and goals which they pursue with their political violence. Some intelligence analysts become so overwhelmed with complicated data about threats that they seek information in the data that confirm pre-conceived hypotheses (Gutjahr,2005).

Younger terrorists are more savvy with computers and the Internet than their predecssors and become more capable of using the new networks to create more complex threats (Gutjahr2005).Terrorism is a method of affecting political order Thomas (2004). What distinguishes terrorists from common criminals is their political motivation Thomas (2004). The goal of terrorist actions is to generate psychological impacts, mainly fear Thomas (2004). Understanding culture is critical to understanding how terrorists construct their groups, causes, and intentions. Useful cultural intelligence provides government analysts information about group norms and values. Norms set the standards for appropriate behavior for groups and their members (Thomas,2004). Troy Thomas (2004) notes that norms can be identified by a)evidence showing that members believe certain behaviors are expected, b)most members share beliefs about expected behaviors, and c)the norms are supported by most members.

Groups are related to cultures external to themselves but also to a culture that is internal to the group itself. The strength of a group culture is shown by how much the members share its values and norms (Thomas, 2004).Terrorist groups have varied and multiple avenues of influence into the group. Both direct influencers such as religious figures and indirect ones, such as weapons suppliers, can affect the intentions and planning of the group (Thomas, 2004).Webs of external and internal influence that are part of terrorist group interactions and information processing might reveal themselves to some extent in the discourse networks that emerge in various sets of conversations.

Certain types of discourse are more likely than others to resonate than other types. Religious discourse is one example as such discourse can motivate and mobilize believers (Lambert, 2005). Discourse of terrorist organizations can reveal strategic cultural factors and strategic narratives. The latter are cultural stories that are politically motivating Lambert, 2005). Members of terrorist groups who are willing to die for their group are immersed in the groups social identity (Lambert, 2005).

The Need for More Critical Analysis

Intelligence professionals know that intelligence gathering and analysis should gude the formation of hypotheses and not the other away around. They also know that analysis must always be as objective as possible. There are many problems with intelligence analysis including some noted above and others like information assimilation and mirror-imaging. With information assimilation, data are fit into preconceived patterns (Brei, 2006). In this instance, analysts avoid the necessary steps of determining probabilities for various hypotheses. Mirror-image is the process in which analysts project how they would act on their assessments of how adversaries will act (Brei, 2005). In WWII, this occurred when British military intelligence analysts inferred how Germany would use its air power by inferring that the Luftwaffe thinking was like that of the Royal Air Force (Brei, 2005). Another interesting problem is simply fatigue of not getting behaviors that might be indicated by repeated analysis of possible threats. For example, certain admirals noted that analysts were weary of checking out reports Japanese submarine activity near Pearl Harbor. Seven reports had been examined the week before the attack (Brei, 2005).

Moving From Intelligence to Influence to Strategic Influence

The USG employs some communication theory and some persuasion theory its development of strategic influence. Much of the theory that is applied is outdated however and there is a strong need to get communication scientists who work on cutting edge research to get involved in the IC's effort to develop more effective strategic influence.

Many present approaches to strategic influence sufer from inadequate audience analysis. Consequently, fundamental principles of effective influence campaigns such as encouraging self-persuasion as much as possible, are neglected.

Traditional persuasion theory says that persuasion consists of changing attitudes in the direction desired by the persuader. Before the traditions based on social science, classical theories from the ancient Greeks and Romans were used. Some of the ideas from the classical and traditional lines of work are still used today but contempory studies of human behavior and persuasion have made many of those ideas incapable of explaining current influence problems.

Classical notions of persuasion assumed rational receivers and powerful senders who could influence them with good argumentation.

Strategic influence for the USG must be treated as a set of persuasion campaigns. Campaigns require large-scale funding, multiple theoretical guides, channel systems, methods of tracking and adjusting, and careful monitoring. Many campaigns fail because they do not target the right audience with the most effective messages. Millions of dollars were wasted on anti-smoking, drug abuse, and unsafe sex until better audience research was conducted and more fitting messages were designed and tested. For example, with children and cigarette smoking, researches found that how children evaluate the consequences of smoking is more important than what they think about smoking alone. The consequences include what they think their friends will think of them if they smoke or others like how much they will feel grown up by smoking (Perloff, 1993).

Cigarette brands like Virginia Slims are sold by pairing the allegedly female product with women’s rights. This was actually done with other brands by Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew) in the days of the marches for women’s suffrage in the United States.

Internet communication or CMC offer more rapid diffusion of persuasive messages. This requires much faster rapid responses for SI sources. This appears to be a problem.

Effective campaigners do note assume passive receivers, but rather they know that receivers of persuasive messages are most likely to be persuaded if they are involved in the persuasion process. The principle of self-persuasion indicates that people are more likely to be persuaded of things they can or want to accept than things they are most likely to reject.

Stacking up public relations firms, marketing consultants, speech writers, and pollsters is not enough to have a successful campaign. Cults in the United States and other nations use persuasive techniques effectively. The 1950’s concept of “brainwashing” does not explain their force. Cults develop intense leadership-followership patterns in their social dynamics, isolate themselves from interaction with outside groups, provide loving environments for lonely people, and provide simple and clear explanations for all of the problems of life (Perloff, 1993). The more dedicated a cult member belongs to the sect, the more he or she feels good in terms of self-esteem. Individual identity is subordinated to group identity (Perloff, 1993). Terrorist organizations also use strong social identity formation to instill loyalty to a collective cause. Recruits are not automatons, but rather active receivers who like the meaning they find in the terrorist causes they join (Perloff, 1993).

Three of the most fundamental challenges to persuasion are response shaping, response reinforcing, and response changing. Shaping is the easiest and changing is the most difficult. Commercial and election campaigns have often successfully associated brand names and candidate names with favorable psychological symbols in ways that encourage positive responses to the products or candidates. This works best when a product is being introduced and is part of response shaping strategies.

Response reinforcing is important for two reasons. The first is to keep loyal receivers loyal. The second is to block attraction to competing messages. This includes what is known as the Inoculation Effect – giving audiences small doses of a coming competing argument along with a ready-made refutation for the argument when it arrives. The effect is analogous to a flu vaccine.

Response changing is dealing with entrenched attitudes. It requires hard work based on good audience analysis and theory-guided message design.

Unlike attitudes about commercial products and brand names, political subjects involve attitudes that are linked to emotional reactions and prejudices known as symbolic predispositions (Perloff, 1993). In these cases, the building of attitudes by building beliefs can be overpowered by strong emotional reactions to political issues. Issues like abortion and foreign policy can be charged with affective responses and are learned in socialization processes. Symbols can be attached to such issues and symbols can include communication related to attitudes about nations, values, ethic loyalties and various prejudices (Perloff, 1993). Symbolic predispositions can affect attitudes about social and political issues.

Political ideology is closely related to symbolic predispositions as ideologies hold together elements of a cognitive system such as attitudes, values, schemata, etc. This is why people of similar ideologies display what political scientists call issue constraint. This means that we can predict your view on one issue if we known your ideological view on another.

Ideologies are also closely related to values and not easy to change. Ideologies tend to promote reactions to persuasion that are top-down driven (Perloff, 1993). This means the receiver has attitudes that are organized by a set of political principles and predispositions. Interesting research shows that people can still be affected by bottom-up persuasion, however, because many people have mixed ideologies or multiple ideologies.

One opening for strategic influence is in the fact that many people have ambivalent attitudes about subjects rather than unitary or strong attitudes in one direction. This is different than not having an attitude. A population may like the American people but not the American government, for example. What then is their attitude about America? An attitude may not move in the desired direction because it is linked to another attitude or outcome cognition that prevents it from doing so. A person may want to work with the U.S., for example, but may think they will offend others in their village by doing so.

When faced with information and messages that contradict what they believe, individuals do through a process of biased processing and biased assimilation. They color what they hear and they see arguments that agree with their views as more similar to what they already believe. Thus, objective arguments can contribute to greater polarization of views. These receivers also increase their memory and resource searches to refute the messages that contradict what they already believe.

Older ideas of selective perception are challenged by more recent studies that show that people do in fact expose themselves to opposing points of view. They also remember what is said in these oppositional messages while rarely being persuaded by them (Perloff, 1993). While these receivers are seeking ways to make their own views stronger and ways to develop arguments against those they are attending, there is another open door here for SI. That is, receivers who are exposed to arguments that are stronger than those they already believe may become persuaded of certain facts and may experience some degree of attitude change.

Attitude accessibility theory in persuasion research indicates that attitudes are linked to evaluations. Attitudes with strong associations and affect can easily be retrieved. The stronger the links among what is associated with an attitude object, the easier the attitude is to access from memory and the easier it is for a persuade to activate those attitudes in relationship to advocated behaviors.

Forms of strategic influence today that will have the most likely productive effects will build on the traditional findigs just sketched above and focus on more contemporary focus areas from studies of strategic persuasion in political communication research.

Agenda Setting Theory can be applied to news, attributes of news stories, and also attributes of candidate images. This connection to attributes is called second-order agenda settting or framing. Thus, framing can be seen to connected to the construction of political images for any image object. The news media affect the cognitive more than the affective aspects of framing.

There are several types of agenda setting, There is public agenda setting which is news media affecting the public, media agenda setting which is sources affecting media, and policy agenda setting which is news media influence on public policies. Studies of priming can focus on some of the effects of agenda setting and framing. They examine how issues are used to evaluate various political subjects.

Subjects of agenda setting are called objects as in the case of psychology where things or people for which we have attitudes are called attitude objects. A political object (person, policy, etc.) has attributes which are characteristics linked to the object in framing. Framing is done in the ways that news media describe political objects. Some attributes are prominent and repeated while others are minimized.

In the process of priming, particular issues or attributes are highlighted to the extent that they are the most likely to influence evaluations of political objects. Priming works as it does because we draw on information (and attitudes) that are most salient and most accessible when making evaluations and expressing their political opinions. The link of agenda setting to priming is that agenda setting makes issues and attributes salient. Note that priming is directly related to evaluation.

New technologies of communication require intense focus in enhanced SI research. Numerous scholars, for example, are drawing attention what is called the "You Tube Effect." A video showing Chinese soldiers shooting people "like dogs" on a snow-covered footpath in the Himilayas. Shown on Romanian TV, there was little international effect, but on You Tube the effects included the Chinese government justifying the slaughter as self-defense (against Tibetan refugees including monks, women, children). Video clips are posted and sometimes produced by individuals. YouTube gets 20 million visitors each month. There are 65,000 new clips posted each day. Most of the videos are frivolous but others are political and include videos posted by terrorists, human rights organizations, and soldiers. This adds to the previous "CNN Effect" which brought constant news and increased exposure of events. Some argue a "double echo chamber" effect to the new communication technologies and news. This means that content that is posted on the Web may diffuse into other forms of news media like TV news. Other new media examples include a human rights group called Witness giveing cameras to people to film human rights abuses and Al Qaeda having a media production unit called Al Sahab (The Cloud) to make and post videos on the Net.

Much more effort is also needed in studying and modeling how social identity and political identity formation processes affect both terrorism and counterterrorism.

Short-term persuasion involves cues, imagery, emotional appeals, and belief changes while long-term persuasion involves cognitive calculation, deliberation, attitude-value onnections, and the creation, change or reinforcement of social norms. When norms (collective drivers of behavior) are consistent with attitudes (personal drivers of behavior), the strongest type of persuasion is in operation.

Norms are related to social identity. Social identity is personal identity related to collective iidentity. The stronger the social identity, the stronger the persuasive forms of norms. Norms are standards for appropriate and expected behavior.

Norms are related to intersubjective agreements and are commonly verbalized to enforce behavioral conformity to group standards. Pre-norm ideas can be articulated or nominated by individuals for consideration by a collective, but those ideas do not become norms until they are adhered to by all or most members of the group. Only when they become rules of behavior and when they can be used to determine appropriate behavior vs. deviant behavior are they actual norms.

Norms are usually taken for granted and become traditional standards. When statements are made that are consistent with norms, they resonate with members of the collective. Even new ideas for new nominations resonate most when they are consistent with existing norms. Norm construction, norm reinforcement, and norm changing are all related to framing practices. This is because framing attempts to fix meanings with discourse and language. If particular frames can fix particular interpretations of events, they can direct appropriate behavior that the framing provides by way of context.

An example of effective norm construction is the land-mine ban. Land mines were framed by ban advocates as indiscriminate violence and that frame resonated with disgust previously associated with WMD. The norm of protection from WMD was applied to protection from land mines.

Norm construction or appeal resonates when their is cognitive consistency. Norm statements can alter behavior when they stimulate cognitive dissonance. Thus, resonating statements that are consistent with existing norms are most persuasive. This can also be fit to social judgment theory which shows that messages that match attitudes in one's cogntive latitude of acceptance are the ones that have the most persuasive effects.

The unfixed nature of group social norms and planning makes analysis of its discourse over long periods of time essential to detecting its commitments to various goals and plans of action. The shared identity and social norms within a group provide justification and reinforcement for the group's political planning. They also provide a way of viewing the actions of other people and groups. The group social norms are rules of behavior that are part of the group's shared ideology which includes values and political identity in a closed system of thought and discourse (van Dijk, 1998).

With strong social identity, group norms are internalized by individual members (Hogg & Reid, 2006). But group norms are not fixed properties; instead, they are subject to change, particularly in relation to other groups (Hogg & Reid, 2006). Group norms are generated and changed in group communication (Hogg & Reid, 2006). Group social interaction is therefore the generative mechanism of group norms (Hogg & Reid, 2006). When social identity is high and an indidivual attaches personal identity to group membership, the social norms of the group (group norms), influence the behavior of the individual because of his or her desire for group acceptance (Strano, 2006).

Studies of group discussions indicate that individuals learn group norms by observing the communication of others in their group. However, individual members are not simply maninpulated by group norms but actively contribute to the shaping and reinforcing of the groups norms attached to the group that they value (Price et al., 2006). The content of group communication over time produces what is known as a transactive memory system (Price et al., 2006).

Social identity theories argue that people construct their self-concepts through self-categorization processes and that categorization into an in-group is an integral part of the self-concept (Yanovitzky & Rimal, 2006). The stronger that group membership and social identity is to self-concept, the more deindividuated or depersonalized an invidual becomes (Yanovitzky & Rimal, 2006). An individual constructs perceptions of social norms through information they receive in communication processes including processes occurring with communication technologies (Yanovitzky & Rimal, 2006). Moreover, what the person does within those communication processes is guided by social norms that have already emerged (Yanovitzky & Rimal, 2006). Consistent with Sherif's classic experiment done in 1935, social identity research today continues to confirm that norms are formed in social interaction and those norms are something group members strive to conform to in consequent communication and actions (Yanovitzky & Rimal, 2006).

While it is now old news that political cognition and communication are heavily influenced by emotional factors, there is now refutation for claims that political behavior and communication are emotional only or mainly emotional. Instead, there appear to be complex interrelationships between emotional and cognitive processing of political messages and these relationships have yet to be explicated. Propaganda seeks strong sociological mechanisms in addition to individual-level changes in perceptions and atttiudes. The process of resonance generation is connected to group norms as much as possible. Framing can be related to frames of reference held by audiences. Research communication research indicates relating macro levels of frame projection to micro levels of frame reception/response may increase framing effeciveness.

Another area that the NSDS SI division will focus intensely on is network influence. Opinion leaders affect each other as well as opinion followers. In terms of networks, the leaders are more centrally located in their social networks. While marginals may not have the same social capital in the networks, they can provide information to the leaders that is then disseminated more widely. The existence of marginal’ provisions of information indicates that opinion leadership involves bidirectional interaction rather than top-down messaging only. Information is moving from mass media and Internet sources directly to citizens. People are influencing each other regarding what they perceive from the macro-levels of communication. Diffusion Theory helps us to recognize that individual level of exposure to macro-level channels is more about gaining information rather than being persuaded, while interpersonal communication involves both information and persuasion.

One means of manipulating interpersonal networks is by variables heightening in which key variables related to individual’s needs are attached to helping the dissemination of particular messages.Certain kinds of information and persuasion campaigns rely more on interpersonal networks than on mass media. The people we can call influentials are characterized by both good positioning in social networks and possession of personal traits (such as high knowledge) that make them persuasive. The influentials are high in media dependence (as argued by Dependency Theory). These people talk about the information they gain from media and the information is subject to changes made in the social interaction.

In large societies, people become more sensitive to their local social positions than to larger social issues. Micro-level effects of mass communication are not only cognitive (information, beliefs), but also affective, and behavioral. Viewing strategic influence in terms of systems helps us to recognize that various channels of communication have specific functions and also that these functions can change the activity situation of an individual. Thus, a person who normally attends political news with Internet and TV sources, may become a radio news listener during times of driving a car. When there is, a set of conditions encouraging, ubiquity, consonance, and cumulation, it becomes increasingly difficult for competing messages to generate sufficient counterarguments to be effectively resistant. Processes of social construction of realities can be related to communication networking, opinion leadership dynamics, and other processes of political communication known as agenda setting and framing.

There are myriads of reference to political resonance in literatures by academic and government communication experts, but as yet, now comprehensive theory of what such resonance is, how it works, and how it can be manipulated. I am attempting to work on this problem with basic propositions now that remain to be tested as hypotheses. Attitude accessibility and rapid cognition theories provide one starting point. According the work in attitude accessibility, much persuasion can be accomplished by linking behavioral messages to existing attitudes and social norms. Automaticity in behavioral choices is related to this line of behavioral research. People act out in ways that are consistent with attitudes they do not think about much. In such cases, attitudes are activated at moments of behavioral decisions. Little thought is involved. If the attitudes are not activated, the behavioral choices will be driven by social norms in the behavioral choice situation. To influence behavior, the activated attitude must be strong enough to help the person define the behavioral situation. Studies show that fast activation of political attitudes is more related to political actions than slow activation. Attitudes that are most accessible are the most complex in the cognitive system, having many links to schemata, but also very strong links and strong emotional links. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden are masterful at reminding people about their strong attitudes against American, Jews and other alleged enemies. Easily accessible attitudes with powerful emotional associations are likely to bias the processing of incoming messages and to encourage resonance with messages that are consistent with the stored attitudes.

A vigorous tradition of research in academic political ommunication research concerns framing of topics, issues, and policies. Framing is crucial an understanding of political comunication because political persuasion reduces argument to central conceps, symbols, and appeals. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding exact definitions of frames and debates about how maro-level and micro-level frmaing occurs. A very recent study on framing shows that less than one quarter of framing studies demonstrate what causes particular types of framing and about the same small percentage expaling the effects of framing (Matthes, 2007).

Most research regarding strategic communication is related to political marketing and campaign strategies. Some of these are effecive and others are speculative.

Research concerning the use of the Internet is more concerned with social networking, election campaigin communication, orgnaizational communication, and interpersonal relationships, than with political ideologies problematic political communication like terrorists' increasing usage of the Internet.

Automated text analysis of online and offline discourse remains limited to surface-level structures and patterns. Analysis of new communication technology effets on political communication remain limited to site indexing and surface-level theme recognition.

Important political processes like structuration remain untouched by experts in the analysis of threats to United States National security. Communication theories like diffusion may bet mention but are not used in any deep sense.

New lines of political communication research should include the following:

States and political organizations in the world will be tracked for what they say, argue, and signal. Emphasis will be placed on what these actors seek to accomplish, how they position themselves in relation to other actors, and what potentials can be found for positive relationships with the U.S.
Centers of gravity for anti-U.S. or pro-terrorist ideologies, campaigns or arguments will be studied in terms of specific appeals, psychological strategies, and abilities to move attitude and behaviors.
Specific counter-communication message strategies will be studies and tested for effectiveness. This will apply in the areas of ideologies, narratives, and framing.
Ways to influence audiences, online and offline, with new and old media will be developed in relation to the most recent research concerning persuasion and how the minds works in relationship to political perception and behavior.
New communication technologies like blogs will be studies in detail regarding content, networking and possible influence, but will also be studied as parts of larger communication systems.
Deception research that seeks all available methods of detection for interpersonal, group, distance (video) and computer content.
Computer and software methods that map out how CMC spaces such as blogs provide ideological construction, networking of political actors, and formation of networked political arguments.

Numerous lines of inquiry need strong attention:

Intensive study of momentum in message environments and tracking of message intervention effects on such momentum.
how terrorist organizations make more convincing arguments that the USG for certain vulnerable populations.
how and why USG messages fail to change attitudes and perception where such changes are most needed.
how intervention messages appear capable of changing beliefs and networks of beliefs that facilitate changes in attitudes.
how to cultivate changes in schemata and other cognitive system elements related to perceptions of the USG ad its policies.
concentrated efforts on analyzing the systemic message diffusion and community formation effects of new communication technologies.
extensions of the boots-on-the-ground ethnographic communication research done by U.S. soldiers.
message disruption and counter-communication through the Internet and its linked technologies.
study of the most significant networks of influence that are exploited by terrorists and which can be used for the dissemination, diffusion, and acceptance of counterterrorism messages.
development of strategic means of creating political resonance with counter-terrorism messages.
studies of automaticity in political perception and communication in populations of concern.
research on attitude accessibility in audiences that are sympathetic to extremist discourse.

With better history, better stock-taking, stronger research, and more use of communication, the USG should be able to link better policy actions with more persuasiveness.

References:

Berreby, D. (2005). Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Berreby, D. (2000). Changing race. The Sciences, September-October.

Center for Strategic Intelligence Research. (2004). Global War on Terrorism: Analyzing the Strategic Threat. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

Davis, P., Kulick, J., and Egner, M. (2005). Implications of modern decision science for military decision-support systems. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Guthar, M. (2005). The Intelligence Archipelago: The Community’s Struggle to Reform in the Globarlized Era. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

Hogg, M. , & Reid, S. (2006). Social identity, self-categorization, and the communication of group norms. Communication Theory, 16, 7-30.

Kahneman, D., & Renshoon, J. (2007). Why hawks win. Foreign Policy, January/February, pp. 34-38.

Klueger, J. (2007). Why we worry about things we shouldn't... and ignore the things we should. Time, 168, 64-71.

Lambert. S. (2005). The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct.
Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

Littlejohn, S. & Foss, K. (2005). Theories of Human Communication, Eighth Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Monge, P. & Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of Communication Networks. New York: Oxford University Press.

Perloff, R. (1993). The Dynamics of Persuasion. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Pillar, P. (2001). Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Robinson. L (2006). The propaganda war. U.S. News and World Report, 29-31.

Thomas, T. (2004). Beneath the Surface: Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace for Counterterrorism. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

Quartz, S., & Sejnowkski, T. (2002). Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Tells us About How We Become Who We Are. New York: William Morrow.

van Dijk, T. (1998), Ideology. London: Sage.

Yanovitzy, I & Rimal, R. (2006). Communication and normative influence: An introduction to the special issue. Communication Theory, 16, 1-6.

LOOKING TOWARD 2012

2009-03-27T22:57:00.003-06:00

LOOKING TOWARD THE PRESIDENTAL ELECTION OF 2012

Once a new President is elected, the two main parties and their politicos begin thinking about the next election and who should run. Poll results will be posted here to show some patterns starting now in 2009.

Take the first Demokratia survey:

CLICK ON THE TITLE LINK SHOWN ABOVE.

This is a convenience, self-selected sampling survey so results needed to be viewed with much more caution than a random-sample survey.

The Role of Culture in Warfare

2009-03-21T15:59:00.002-06:00

THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN WARFARE

Kenneth L. Hacker

Last updated: March 22, 2009

Culture awareness and knowledge have ancient roots but have become terms of interest for variou sectors of the American military. In this paper, I explore the critical nature of culture to warfare and why increasing cultural competence will help the United States in choosing its battles more carefully and in making those that are fought more effective.

The place of culture in the conduct of war is not a new concern, but rather an ancient one going back to at least the warfare calculations of Alexander the Great. The wisdom of intensive cultural analysis preceding warfare or being part of it, however, may have been diminished in recent years. Alexander, the Macedonian conqueror, did not enter a territory he would conquer without first studying its culture, language, religion, politics, and ways of living. Perhaps this helps to explain why none of his conquered nations rebelled against his empire.

It should not be surprising to learn that the military of the

United States

is stressing the importance of intercultural communication more than ever. While much of this improvement in communication emphasis is based on what are called “lessons learned,” some of the improvement is also coming from communication analysis from “boots on the ground.” With the employment of communication theory, specific theories from the study of intercultural communication, this focus on the important of culture should get even better.

Culture involves common experiences, values, and norms which guide behavior (Miller, 2001). Cultures provide performance scripts, ways of interpreting experiences, and ways of participating and affirming membership in a community (Miller, 2001). There have been studies on differing communication styles and intercultural interaction between the Israelis and Palestinians, but little work on styles of arguing in the conflict between the two cultures (Ellis & Maoz, 2002). The conflict is extreme, with both sides seeing each other as enemies. Both sides use historically- formed communicative styles. Arabs employ a collectivist ethos oriented toward face saving and harmonious social relations known as musayra (Ellis & Maoz, 2002, p. 182). Israelis have a different pattern known as dugri or straight talk (Ellis & Maoz, 2002, p. 182). Speech patterns converge with agreement and diverge with disagreement. A key point here is that reconciliation-based grassroots dialogues can add a powerful context for ameliorating differences between these two groups (Ellis & Maoz, 2002, p. 191). Moreover, this effect can be amplified when participants are offered non-threatening opportunities for dialogue (Maoz, 2000).

All cultures have people concerned with saving face. There are cultural variations from there. In Chinese culture there are two kinds of face, Lien and mein-tzu, with the former signifying a sense off worth that can be hurt only through severely immoral conduct and the latter vulnerable to simple violations of social expectations (Miller, 2001).

This type of focus on cultural differences in communication is vital to

U.S.

military personnel being able to have meaningful and productive social interaction with people in other nations. In the absence of cultural intelligence and intercultural communication skills, soldiers and military leaders are likely to commit “mirroring” errors where they fail to recognize that people with cultural backgrounds different than theirs are unlikely to think and feel as they do about certain matters. Cultural intelligence involves an ability to adapt to new or different cultural contexts.

Military Focus on Culture in

Iraq

A 2004 report from a section of the Defense Department argues that strategic communication is vital for the conduct of foreign policy operation by the United States. Some military experts believe that enemies will exploit multiple forms of attack rather than single forms and refer to this as “hybrid wars” Mattis & Hoffman (2005, p. 19). They also call for a plan known as the “Four Block War” in whish troops are engaged with heavy combat on one block, handing out humanitarian aid on another, doing mediation work on the third, and engaged in information operations on the fourth Mattis & Hoffman (2005). These experts stress that information operations addresses the fact tha insurgencies involve force but also wars of ideas. They argue that “The information ops component is how we extend our reach and how we can influence populations to reject the misshaped ideology and hatred they are offered by the insurgents Mattis & Hoffman (2005, p. 19). In this view, U.S. Marines are on the ground as both “sensors” who gather intelligence and as “transmitters” who persuade Iraqi civilians that Americans are there to help them build a better future Mattis & Hoffman (2005, p.19).

The situation in

Iraq

is described by some as involving community sectarianism. Some say it is close to civil while others see it as somehow approaching unity the three most prominent factions – Shi’a, Sunnis, and Kurds. Of course, there are factions with these three major categories. While civil way may or may not occur, there is continuous polarization of the conflict in political discourse issued by the sectarian voices and political parties (De Atkine, 2006). Knowing what is most likely to occur next, despite inexactitude, and what the

United States

can do best to save fact and encourage democratic nationalism in Iraq depends on knowing more about the identities of the Iraqi people and how they affect and are affected by political communication.

There are numerous identity issues that are critical for the Iraqi society – national identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, and communal identity (De Atkine, 2006). Sectarian identity can have any of these as its most salient feature (De Atkine, 2006). If a person views their most important (salient) identity as Arab, they may behave differently than if they view their most important identity as Islamic. Some observers believe that many, if not most, people in the Middle East, have multiple personal identities (De Atkine, 2006). More importantly, these multiple identities are not fixed or static. They can change in relative salience by the situations that are encountered. Thus, an Iraqi may see that part of themselves as most important in one situation but in another see their membership in Islam as Sunni or Shi’s as more important that their national (Iraqi) identity (De Atkine, 2006). Interesting historical mistakes by political leaders are traceable to a failure to understand this shifting nature of identities in Iraqi culture. For example, Saddam Hussein thought that Arabs in

Iran

would side with him in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. At the same time, Iranians thought that Shi’a in Iraq would defect to the Iranian side. Both judgments were wrong and national identities trumped religious ones (De Atkine, 2006).

Culture intelligence needs to include an appreciation of how cultural identities are not only plural but also dynamic. Such intelligence can facilitate more effective communication and persuasion in efforts by Americans to communicate with Iraqis. There are also psychological aspects of culture that are important for cultural understanding and analysis. For example, some Iraqis have revealed that they do not like to look at the destroyed buildings of the destroyed regime of Saddam Hussein because they still think of themselves in terms of national identities and the destroyed buildings provide images of a “defeated people.” (De Atkine, 2006, p. 14). Some felt the same way about Saddam Hussein being captured and examined by a

U.S.

military medic – something embarrassing for “the president” of their nation, even if he was hated (De Atkine, 2006, p.14).

Cultural Sensitivity and Beyond

Tactical operations by Marines in

Iraq

can be perceived as harassment by civilians who request their sheik to so something about the problem. U.S. commanders use this context to negotiate cessation of tactical operations in exchange for revealing local insurgents and providing more local security Mattis & Hoffman (2005). Cultural violations can ruin this kind of negotiation context.

Cultural challenges for

U.S.

military forces include communication with Iraqi civilians, training of Iraqi soldiers and security forces, and communication with prisoners, suspects, and insurgents. The Iraqi army has the same kind of cultural diversity as the population in general (Williamson, 2006). Expectations of

U.S.

personnel are linked to American culture. This can lead to disappointment by American trainers. In Iraqi culture, the class division between officers and enlisted personnel is stronger than that for Americans, so the latter have to recognize why Iraqi officers will defer to American enlisted advisors in some matters but not in others. In the case where they insist on communication with high-ranking American officers they may be treating the latter as something like tribal chiefs (Williamson, 2006).

Simulating Culture

In Norfolk, Virginia, Marines practice communication in combat circumstances in a village that is staged for urban training (Hansen, 2006). This is cultural immersion training in a simulated environment. Simulation exercises include roadside bomb and hand grenade attacks (Williamson, 2006). Iraqi immigrants are hired to role play parts like sheiks, security forces, and angry villagers (Williamson, 2006). They also teach soldiers how to communicate with religious groups and leaders of families (Williamson, 2006). One lesson is telling the Marines to spend more time interacting with citizens to show caring.

In Twentynine Palms, California, another simulated Iraqi village is being used to train Marines in more effective intercultural communication (Carter, 2006). This is Village 215 and it is used to model what is found in typical Iraqi communities such as banks, police stations, markets, mosques, schools, etc. There are 250 people playing roles, some of them Iraqi-Americans (Carter, 2006). There are actors who play insurgents and these people simulate violence, bombings, and gunfire (Carter, 2006). Village 215 includes lessons in Iraqi customs and culture. Two women brought here from Basra, Iraq, show the Marines how to treat women in Iraq in ways that are least offensive to people in that culture (Carter, 2006).

Communication Technology and Cultural Intelligence

There are various forms of communication technologies that can used for the learning of culture as described above. These include web sites, discussion forums, computer-based simulations (captology), and collaboratoria.

References:

Carter, C. (2006). Training for Iraq: Sometimes it takes a (fake) village. Associate Press, March 6, 2006.

De Atkine, N. (2006). Iraq withdrawal: A tragedy in slow motion. Proceedings, 132, 12-15.

Ellis, D. G, & Maoz, I. (2002). Cross-cultural argument interactions between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 30, 181-194

Finer, J., & Fekeiki, O. (2006). Iraq’s crisis of scarred psyches. Washington Post, March 6, 2006.

Griffin, E. ( 2003). A First Look at Communication Theory. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Hansen, L. (2006). Marine training aims to prepare for Iraqi warfare. The Virginian-Pilot, February 28, 2006.

Johnson-Cartee, K., & Copeland, G. A. (2004). Strategic Political Communication. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lambert, S. P. (2005). The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research.

Mattis, J. N., & Hoffman, F. (2005). Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Proceedings, 131, 18-19.

Nye, J. S. (2006). Think again: Soft power. Foreign Policy, February 23, 2006. Available: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3393

Williamson, C. L. (2005). On the ragged edge: Standing up the Iraqi army. Proceedings, 132, 52-57.

ESSAYS PLANNED FOR THIS YEAR

2009-03-19T19:43:00.003-06:00

New Essays to be posted this year will begin soon.

K. Hacker

Essays to be posted soon:

The Key Problems of Persuasion Faced by the United States Government in World Affairs

The Place of Culture in Combat

Resonance in Political Persuasion

A Systems Approach to the Development of Strategic Influence Networks

Actualities of Human-Computer-Human Interaction (HCHI) Systems and Changes in Political Communication and Behavior

The Need for Hard Power

The Need for Soft Power

The Differences Between Human-Computer-Interaction (HCHI) and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) HCHI systems as Complex Adaptive Systems

Brain Plasticity and Communication

Language and Behavior

GRADING MYSELF

2008-11-16T15:12:00.006-07:00

GRADING MYSELF ON MY 2008 PREDICTION
Kenneth Hacker

I was right about Obama winning although I had him winning by less electoral college votes than he actually received. I was not too far enough with my popular vote prediction -- on the high end that is, which I said could be as much as 5% higher than McCain. But I had the low end at a 1% margin over McCain. Thus overall, I underestimated the red states turning blue in the cases of Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana. I made my predictions on October 17, 2008.

I believe that I was also correct in noting that Sarah Palin would do harm to the McCain candidacy. It is truly amazing that she still thinks she can so something big -- what might this be - sink the entire Republican Party?!

Of course, one cannot realistically pin down the defeat of McCain to any single factor, although many pundits and amateur analysts are doing just that. Some say it was the sorry state of the economy and others say it was voting turnout. In fact, the victory for Obama is a combination of good candidate image building strategies and the defeat of McCain is the product of numerous bad decisions about campaign messages. I will be posting details about the multi-faceted nature of the win and defeat later.

For now, I grade myself with a B for my effort to predict the election.

GOING OUT ON A LIMB

2008-11-03T14:19:00.005-07:00

ADDING MY PREDICTION TO THE LIST OF OTHERS

Kenneth Hacker

November 3, 2008

I predict that Barack Obama will carry the popular vote tomorrow by something like 1-5% of the vote. On the Electoral College vote, I predict the following:

Obama takes somewhere around 278 electoral votes while McCain takes something like 260 votes. Obama may do better than this but not worse.

It is interesting to see Republican consultants make their predictions right now:

David Gergen: Obama takes 338 EC votes.

Ed Rollins: Obama gets 352 EC votes.

Alex Castellanos: Obama earns 318 EC votes.

Predictably, Democratic consultants like Paul Begala, James Carville, and Donna Brazile all predict over 300 EC votes for Obama.

Yes, this takes a lot of audacity because are dealing with tons of data and tons of subjectivity in interpreting the data patterns. We simply dont know the final result with anything approaching total certainty. But we do know that Obama is trending in the patterns we try to pin down to reasonable estimates.

BLAMING THE POLLS

2008-11-02T20:20:00.002-07:00

WHY LOSING CAMPAIGNS BLAME THE POLLS

Kenneth Hacker

November 2, 2008

Today, Karl Rove let the cat out of the bag while being interviewed by FOX news host Chris Wallace. Wallace asked for a bottom line election likelihood read and Rove said that the finishing days are rough for McCain to win. Obama is ahead no matter what the margins and he is most likely to keep an electoral college vote lead. However, there is always a chance of losing for Obama, but Rove then launched into a statement about how polling announcements can affect voters and bad news can depress voting turnout for the losing candidate. Yes, indeed. He is right all the way around.

When campaigns are winning, Rove knows, and everyone in the business will tell you, they talk about being ahead in the polls and gaining support of the American people. When campaigns are losing, they will tell you that the only poll that counts is the one done on election day. They may also throw in some barbs about pollster bias, invalidity, etc. When really uninformed, they may talk about Dewey vs. Truman when sampling was not yet perfected or employed and Dewey was announced as the election day winner as the presses rolled on election day eve in 1948.

I heard one poor soul on the radio this weekend opining about how we should be not trust polls for predicting anything since they are only snapshots of voting opinion. What this person does not realize is that a series of snapshts when done well can give you some good ideas about what follows in sequence.

Can you stick the fork in McCain now? Maybe, but there is a chance that he can win despite the statistical likelihood of him losing. This is not due to polling error as much as it is the volatility of undecided voters or weakly decided voters.

Samping error is very real and partially accounts for various polls being discrepant. Still, the smart consumer is not relying one one poll at one point in time. What gives you prediction ability is an analysis of multiple polls over a course of time accounting for margins of error and possible sampling problems. Regardless of how precise polling data, there is always a possibility of error in the estimates. On the other hand, historical patterns indicate that good polling, such as that done by Gallup, is reasonably close to what occurs on election day and what we see at this stage of the game has predicted election day winners for decades now. Upsets are very rare and occur only when major events move things in the upsetter's favor. These are historical events like the Iran hostage situation which contributed to Reagan's upset against Carter in 1980.

Likely voters data is more important that data just about registered voters because the former are more likely to vote than the former. Even better are data about those who have voted in the past and intend to vote now. Gallup pollsters use the latter in their traditional model of voters. The model using intent to vote now is called the expanded model. The traditional model, again examine over many days, can give you some prediction power regarding who is most likely to win.

Today, Gallup, in its traditional model, shows Obama at 53% and McCain at 42%. Using intervals for margins of error to see if McCain has a chance at this late date shows the following. With a 2% margin of error, we that the best case for McCain is having a 44% while Obama has a 51%. This means that his campaign is finished. Obama's best case is a 55% to McCain's 42%.

John McCain is to be honored for his military service and his service in the United States Senate where he was known for working with bipartisan planning and negotiating. His campaign is not the failure of his own stature as much as it is the failure of his consultants and his running mate who turned his campaign into a circus and a nightmare of bad strategies.

Obama, now poised to become the 44th President of the United States, has an incredible challenge of helping American to heal from a bloody election and from its past mistakes it is always growing away from.

LAST FEW DAYS OF CANIDATE IMAGE CHANGES

2008-11-01T01:32:00.002-06:00

THE UNDECIDED EFFECT

Kenneth Hacker

November 1, 2008

TheBradley Effect which alleges that white Americans tell pollsters that they support African-American candidates that they then may or may not vote for, is a hypothesis still awaiting confirmation outside of anecdotal evidence. More troubling that this alleged effect is the nature of the 7% or voters that are still undecided. These voters, if prejudiced, or if simply more likely by demographics to favor McCain could bring victory to the Republican ticket on Tuesday.

Republican Denial

2008-10-31T23:49:00.002-06:00

SLIPPING INTO DENIAL ON THE MCCAIN-PALIN SIDE

Kenneth Hacker

October 31, 2008

Whether high on pills or not, Limbaugh sounded like he was losing his mind the other day as he begged Republicans not to throw in the towel but then later added that he cannot believe that Americans will vote to give up their freedom on Tuesday and they elect Obama as President. Despite the desperation of this king of rhetorical blather, voters are moving closer to Obama in more states and more Republican consultants and advisors are cashing out. Just today, former McCain advisor Mike Murphy talked about how bleak McCain's chances are and famous Republican consultant Charles Cook said that there there is very little chance of a McCain win.

A losing campaign will tend to to say that the polls are not to believed. They argue that the only poll that counts is the one on election day.

Have Governor Terminator join the campaign while Sam/Joe the Plumber is still a missing card is just another sign of desperation in a campaign that has fractured into lost themes and too much focus on the Alaska Barbie Doll named Sarah Palin.

Much will be debated about why McCain lost but it should become clear that the the main candidate displayed horrible judgment in his VP pick, his campaign focus, and his negativity against Obama. It is time for John McCain to retire.

DID AL QAEDA ENDORSE MCCAIN?

2008-10-27T22:38:00.003-06:00

TERRORISM CHARGES CAN BE USED AGAINST MCCAIN TOO

Kenneth Hacker

October 29, 2008

As the McCain campaign still tries to make an issue out of a Vietnam war protestor who bombed buildings and was willing to commit acts of terrorism 49 years ago, McCain can now be subjected to claims of support by terrorists that are far more powerful that the powerless Bill Ayers in Chicago. Indeed, Al Qaeda is said to be framing McCain as the kind of president they need in order to continue the folly of Bush -- the incessant tendency to fan the flames of violence and anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

So unless McCain wants bin Laden hung around his neck, he should halt the absurd Palin charges that Obama pals around with terrorists. All of this constitutes nonissue rhetoric that simply diverts attention from the real issues of this election. If McCain had a medical care and tax reform policy that made sense, he would not have to stoop to cheap tricks-based campaigning.

It is time for McCain to kick Palin off the stage and to propose some kind of serious foreign policy and plan to deal with terrorism against the United States. McCain is short on time and Obama is still vulnerable on foreign policy issues. Obama is saying the right thing now by noting that his administration will have taking out bin Liden as a first priority. Maybe bin Laden knows that McCain, like Bush, will let him stay in hiding...

WILL BARACK CLOSE THE DEAL OR NOT?

2008-10-27T13:55:00.004-06:00

WILL BARACK OBAMA CLOSE THE DEAL OR NOT?

Kenneth Hacker

October 29, 2008

There is less than one week left. The Obama campaign needs to close the deal now or risk some form of October surprise leading to a McCain upset on election day next week.

McCain is like the Energizer Bunny; he will not stop running. His supported are charged by the claims that an Obama presidency could bring socialism or even the Anti-Christ to the White House. Dick Morris and Karl Rove correctly note that Obama is not far enough outside of the polling margins of error to be confident of a definite win.

There are obstacles that can diminish the winning margins for Obama we see in the polls. These include voter fraud, voter intimidation, voting machine and softward tampering, a possible Bradley Effect, expected lower voter turnout for young voters, and challenge regarding taxes and wealth redistribution that begin to move up Obama's negatives or at least doubts about him.

Obama is doing fine on candidate images traits but still need to find the tipping points that close the deal with voters. He must neutralize all doubts that voters have about him and generate new doubts about McCain and Palin. There is a tendency for even Republicans to vote for McCain because of Palin's incompetence and frightening closeness to assuming high office. Joe Biden should be given a strict set of talk points that rip into Palin. He is no longer in the debate with her and he does not have to be nice. He needs to point out the lies she tells about her record in Alaska, the nutty church she attends, the insane comments she makes about foreign policy and religion, etc. etc.

While Biden axes the other team, Obama needs to clarify that he is not socialist. Republican communication director for Ronald Reagan, David Gergen should write the Obama text for the next few days. Just yesterday, Gergen took fellow Republicans to task to allowing McCain to call Obama a socialist. He noted that Republican president Teddy Roosevelt, McCain's favorit president, was a proponent of the progressive tax -- where the wealthy pay larger percentages of their income than the middle and working classes. He also noted that the proposal for earned income tax credits, which help "spread the wealth around," came from Ronald Reagan.

So much to say and so little time to say it. Use it or lose it. Say it or go back to Illinois.

HOW JOHN MCCAIN CAN STILL WIN

2008-10-26T17:53:00.001-06:00

HOW JOHN MCCAIN CAN STILL WIN THE ELECTION

Kenneth Hacker

October 27, 2008

It is no secret that the only chance McCain now has of winning is to tip some key swing states in his favor to gain the magic number of 270+ of Electoral College votes. Some fairly “red” states look like they might be vulnerable to a McCain surge. However, he needs to carry what are now designated as all of the swing states to get to this goal: These are Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, and Indiana. If he carried these states at this point, he would get about 274 electoral votes to Obama’s 264 electoral college votes. How can he possibly do this?

The first thing to do is to muzzle Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity who both do more damage to the possible persuasion of McCain that anyone can yet imagine. McCain needs to demonstrate that he is in charge of his own discourse and quit acting like a senior citizen looking for the next shuffleboard game arranged by Palin and Hannity. If he would tell all of his advisors and followers that racism has no place in American campaigns and that he will be a stop to it right this second, he would gain recognition as the strong, moral leader he claims to be. As Karl Rove has written, criticism of campaign opponents must be fair and reasonable. What Palin and Hannnity put out is pure hate speech that is designed to make Obama the “other” who cannot be counted as “one of us.” It is too late to dismiss the nutty Palin from the ticket but there may still be time to put a leash on her.

Message clarity is essential to a campaign as are vision and statesmanship. All of this is lacking now in the McCain-Palin campaign speeches. Advertising follows suit. Better quality in framing is sorely needed to make a case for John McCain being the most likely one to serve the interests of the American people. But this cannot be seen in ideas like a medical care reform proposal that sounds like a “Run along now” approach to voters and citizens. McCain needs to forget Obama for now and let Americans now how, when, where, and his proposals on the economy, taxes, national security, etc. make more sense than those of Obama.

The failure of the present communication strategies of the McCain campaign are centered in an overreliance on negative campaigning and a focus on cues and imagery with very little substance that voters can mull over and discuss. Right now, it is easy to dismiss the candidate as having little to offer other than four more years of what we have now. This is why change perceptions are dramatically in Obama’s favor.

The cynical consulting within the McCain campaign that encourages relentless attacking on the character of Obama reveals an unbelievable ignorance of psychology and how the mind works. Sure, we can implicitly learn how Obama is some sort of “other” who we cannot trust because he knows a man that bombed building during the Vietnam protests of forty years ago, but we can also implicitly learn to distrust McCain as an old cranky man who throws out invectives instead of policy proposals. This is a double-player game and the points of voter concerns are ignored by the McCain advisors to their candidate’s peril. The Obama advisors correctly concluded that McCain’s ally who shoots abortion doctors and his ally G. Gordon Liddy who teaches people how to effective shoot U.S. government federal agents are silly topics of discussion when the voters want to know what the next President will do about jobs and the economy.

If the McCain advisors had any sense at all, they would put up the signs that the Clinton aides put up in 1992: “It’s the economy stupid!” If McCain continues to listen to Rick Davis and others who say that they lose when focusing on the economy, they might as well just start asking President Obama for jobs in the new administration, perhaps as file clerks in some unheard of office.

THE BIDEN-PALIN DEBATE OF 2008

2008-10-04T20:30:00.002-06:00

BIDEN FAILS TO HIT THE HOME RUN AND PALIN SHOWS SHE IS GOOD WITH MEMORIZATION

Kenneth Hacker

October 6, 2008

Both VP candidates did well at holding their own and not making any major mistakes. However, both candidates failed to show clearly why they should be vice president over the other one. Both essentially did what they needed to do in this debate. Palin and Biden both had problems with their facts, however and Palin directly some fairly tasteless insults to Barack Obama.

What is more important that all of the stylistic behaviors are the policy statements that the candidates made on behalf of what they and their principal candidates seek to do with the direction of the nation.

Voter impressions of the election are likely to stabilize with Obama keeping a lead in the polls until John McCain connects with voters himself. His advisors have apparently forgotten that VP candidates have little if any signficant effects on presidental candidate selection.

While FOX News analysts have been gushing for days about how Palin won the debate, cleaned Biden's clock, and peformed in a spectactular fashion, the polls do not reflect their bedazzlement. A more sober analysis shows that she was throwing out more whoppers and will once again be exposed for having a truthtelling problem. And again, Biden will be noted as not reeling in his tendencies to exagerrate.

This was an interesting debate and hopefully educated voters the policy differences between the two tickets.

THE PALIN PROBLEM

2008-10-04T13:02:00.001-06:00

THE PALIN PROBLEM

Kenneth Hacker

October 4, 2008

When John McCain picked Sarah Palin (governor of Alaska for nearly two years), he must have thought that she would somehow strengthen the ticket. Now the advisor that recommended her must be feeling like the Dukakis advisor that told Dukakis he would look cool riding around in a tank. Bad calls like this can sink a campaign.

The Palin Problem has many angles. Yes she is a hardworking mother with a pretty face, but what else is there? Americans are still wondering and the persona is getting filled in with stories about lying, trying to get people fired for personal reasons, not being the anti-pork crusader she claims to be, and saying some bizarred things about the holy nature of the war in Iraq.

Ironically, the woman chosen to save the McCain candidacy may be the person who ends it in defeat. No serious voter or political analyst can take her seriously as a President and the possibilities of her taking over after John McCain are not small. McCain is old and has health problems and he may not be able to serve a second term, thus leaving her to run as an incumbent. This is frightening to many voters who see her as a smily mother who became a governor and has only the most shallow of comments to make about almost all subjects.

We would expect a person calling themselves a born-again Christian to have some commitment to truthtelling, but like Bush, Palin and truthtelling seldom meet. If the public gets a sense that she lies so often, she will rapidly nosedive on evaluations of sincerity and honesty.

She says that she visited the troops in Iraq; she has never been to Iraq. She says that she has visited Ireland. Her plane refueled there only (MSNBC News, 9.18.08). She says that she was opposed to earmark (“pork”) legislation in Alaska but had a major role in getting it both as mayor of Wasilla and governor of the state.

Palin has said that her state, Alaska, provides 20% of the energy for the United States. This is far from the true number which is 3.5% (Washington, Post, ).

Can it be any wonder that 60% of Americans do not trust Ms. Palin? (ABC News poll, 10.2.08). It cannot be surprising that less than half of American think she understands the complex issues facing the nation (ABC News poll, 10.2.08).

The debate with Joe Biden was not a smashing success for Biden but it did provide closure to the argument that Palin is not ready for prime time. She gave more evidence of her shallow view of politics, government, and the crises facing our nation. She said nothing profound or even slightly insightful to note. She is wisdom-free and deception-abundant. Once again, she was trying to deceive people about Barack Obama.

While Dick Morris and his fellow Republican activsts on FOX News try to spin a bad debate peformance into a clobbering of Biden (watch Hannity spin out of control on this one...), the fact of the matter is that Palin did not gain any points for the Republican ticket. You cannot count on winking to convice the American people that everything is peachy with an economy in crisis.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IMAGES

2008-09-25T12:26:00.002-06:00

PREDICTING THE WINNER OF THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Kenneth L. Hacker

September 28, 2008

The call for who is now winning and who is now losing the presidential election of 2008 can favor either John McCain or Barack Obama. Both have strengths and weaknesses and voters appeal to be oscillating. The debates should have some settling effects on this oscillation. While McCain is valued for his Senate experience, he is short on change appeal. And while Obama is valued for this change appeal, he is short on experience. This means that voters will continue to sort out what is most important to them as voting criteria. In this essay, I will keep moving forward toward an actural prediction on October 15, 2008.

to be continued...

Will the McCain Campaign Use Racism?

2008-09-22T13:28:00.005-06:00

WILL THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN USE RACISM?

Kenneth Hacker

September 22, 2008

We would hope that despite the facts that Nixon and other Republicans used racism to gain southern support, that G. W. Bush began his first presidential campaign at the racist Bob Jones University, and that many Americans are still prejudiced against African Americans, that our nation would have matured away from the use of racism in our presidential elections. The comes a news story like this:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2008/09/22/gop.racist.statements.koat

John McCain needs to find some courage (like he had in the military) and stand up to those in his party who seek to take the low road this year and remind them that Americans do not have to live with racism like they did in the past. He did not defend his black daughter from the racism of the Bush campaign in the 2000 primaries, for whatever reasons, but he now has a chance to redeem himself and to step up and say something important.

It is certainly true the Democratic Party has had a troubled past with racism also. It was the party of the Confederacy (many of the so-called Red States today) and it slavery. But the Democrats embraced civil rights in the 1960s and incorporated fighting for minority rights into their agenda. This might explain why 90% of African Americans are likely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate.

And John McCain? Not only was he spineless in not standing up for his daughter, but he caved into pressure to say it was alright for the Confederate flag to still fly in southern states like South Carolina. If Mr. McCain wants voters to take him seriously about leading America, he needs to show some courage today and stop relying on the courage he had in 1968. But since he voted against the Martin Luther King holiday for his state, this might be wishful thinking. In that case, the voters better take a closer look at his fit with what we seek to be as a nation.

BARACK OBAMA' CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

2008-09-20T17:01:00.005-06:00

BARACK OBAMA'S CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

Kenneth Hacker

September 20, 2008

Many campaign experts believe that this is Obama's election to lose. He has the momentum against the incumbent party on his side and he has an old man with old ideas carrying along an unknown with nutty discourse as his opposition. Still, he is gasping for air in the polls. The reason is a credibility issue that is essentially a failure to yet make most American voters comfortable with him as the chief executive (which includes being commander-in-chief) and getting rid of high-risk perceptions that some voters have of him.

Two Republican consultants who openly note this problem are Dick Morris (dickmorris.com) and Karl Rove (rove.com). Both correctly note that Obama should have been able to start closing the sale by now and can only do so by Election Day by dealing with the Obama Factor and forgetting the Palin Factor.

Like Ronald Reagan running in 1980, voters are seeking change from a man they respect as honorable but not quite up to the job (Carter, McCain). The consultants for Reagan made it clear that he would have to make himself more comfortable for those voters who saw him as dangerous. Perceptions can be changed and they were in the 1980 campaign.

WILL JOHN MCCAIN BE ANOTHER WARREN G. HARDING?

2008-09-17T16:00:00.001-06:00

Presidential Timber Counts:
Why We Should Want a Lincoln More than a Harding

Kenneth Hacker, September 17, 2008

Contrary to some popular discourse about presidential leadership being too slippery to anchor to personal traits, I belief that some key personal traits will help predict who will become a better (not perfect) president among certain choices. These personal characteristics are not innate; they are cultivated over many years in a potential president's life. I derive these traits from three sources: presidential history, leadership studies, and the formal needs of the office of the presidency.

History: Garfield was OK, Harding Was Terrible, and Lincoln Was Great

"Controlling" for political party, I examine three Republican presidents to illustrate what makes some leaders at this level better than others. Garfield was assassinated so is unrated by some historians on numerical scales, while Harding comes out the worst and Lincoln comes out the best on at least one historical ranking account.

James Garfield was the 20th President. He was considered handsome and physically fit, suffering from minor body aches, depression, and some indigestion problems. He was known as a good and persuasive public speaker. He excelled in his education and became a debating champion and then a teacher. After teaching, he went into law. He had one known extramarital affair which his wife called "lawless passion." He served in the Civil War and rose to the rank of general. In the military he was known for his abilities to study strategies and to inspire his soldiers. He served in the U.S. Congress and also as a state senator in Ohio. Shorly after being elected president, he discovered a post office scandal involving his own party, yet ordered that an investigation begin no matter who was found guilty. He was known for strong positions on issues such as his opposition to the spoils system. Garfield was shot by an assassin named Charles Guiteau who said that God told him to shoot Garfield (1881). He was known as a strong and intelligent man who had trouble with being firm and resolute in dealing with conflicts among factions and people in government. Like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Garfield was fond of mathematics. In fact, he created a math proof officially known as Garfield's Tapezoidal Proof (1876). This is a published proof.

Warren G. Harding was the 29th President fo the United States. He was known for his good looks, stylish clothes, and pleasing voice. He had poor health including a nervous breakdown and stomach problems. He was obsessed with the rumor that his ancestors may have included some African American genetic influence and used racism to fight racism as he countered the charges by a white supremacist professor (William Chancellor of Wooster College) with claims that the "finest pioneer blood" and came from good blue-eyed stock. He had one known child out of wedlock and no children by marriage. Although claiming to be religious and that God guided his actions, Harding used the White House for poker games, heavy drinking, and having sexual relations with one the women he engaged in extramartial affairs. He had no military experience, tried law school and quit, became an insurance salesman, and then ran a newspaper. While serving as a state senator, lieutenant governor of Ohio and than as as United States Senator, his political actions were marked by bigotry (allowing those supporting him to attack Catholics), missing numerous votes, being uncommitted on major issues, and being aloof on many controversites. The Harding administration was stained with numerous scandals such as the Tea Pot Dome scandal in which is Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall sold national oil reseves for his own personal profit. Fall spent 9 months in prison. A fellow Republican Herbert Hoover said of Harding that he was not intelligent nor experienced enough to be president. Harding had too much faith in his appointees and they let him down with the scandals.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States. He was the tallest of the presidents, was considered rather homely in looks, and has health problems including depression and heart disease. He was known as a careless dresser. He was known as being plain spoken and good at showing interest in people's problems. Lincoln walked four miles each way to attend school when he was a child. He had begun his own ferry business at age 18. While having only one year of formal education he read as much as he could on his own and became fond of reading and reciting entire passages from authors like Shakespeare. He volunteered for military serviced and achieved the rank of captain. However, his entire military term was only 3 months and he never experienced combat. Lincoln taught himself law and developed an apprecation for math as he learned that lawyers have to demonstrate truths. He went through Euclid and appleid the strategies of proofs to legal argumentations. Lincoln entered Illinois politics at the age of 23. He served as a postmaster, a state representative, a representative to the U.S. Congress from Ilinois, He took strong positions on the issues of U.S. involvement in the Mexican War (opposed), abolishing slave trade, and keeping the states united. His accomplishements include holding the union together through winning the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves in America. Lincoln allowed his Cabinet members to bicker over issues but he read and listened carefully, then announced his decisions made with careful deliberation. Despite some of his personal problems, Lincoln was known for his intelligence and honesty.

Leadership Studies

Leadership studies that leaders in various contexts have certain necessary and desirable characteristics. These are not about personal strengths such as honesty alone, but also about skills in dealing with people such as motivating others to do well with their strengths.

Weaknesses in leaders prevent them from being good at positions such as executive leadership. These inlcude being unifomed, being too rigid, communicating in overly authoritarian manners.

Some research indicates that leaders have good social skills, good technical skills, good administrative abilities, friendliness, abilities to motivate people, supportiveness, and emotional balance. It is crucial to recognize that none of the leadership characteristics described here are static. Good leaders know how to monitor, analyze, and adjust in flexible ways to changing circumstances.

Presidential leadership is not one-size-fits-all material. Presidential timber is the basic foundation upon which other more situational factors must be added but without which we may get in trouble.

The Formal Needs for a Presidency

Upon recognizing the duties of a President, the leadership skills necessary become readily apparent.

Presidents must be able to function as commanders-in-chief, as initiators and negotiators of both domestic and foreign policies, as spokespersons for United States foreign relations goals and policies, as chief exectives, and as symbolic leaders of the most powerful nation on the planet. Clearly, these roles require leadership skills of clear and persuasive communication, diplomacy, international transactions, economic analysis, and rhetorical adaptation.

A strong and effective President must be able to generate a national vision and sense of direction for the nation, to help set national priorities for legislation, to help with crisis management, and to help maintain unity and stability in the overall political system.

Presidential Timber

From the above discussion, I conclude that the necessary but not sufficient conditions, what I call presidential timber, for an effective President are as follows:

intelligence and continued self-education with an appreciation of complexity.
conflict management skills.
assertiveness with abilities to encourage differing viewpoints.
decision-making abilities in the face of conflict and pressures.
getting involved with controversies and taking reasoned positions.
flexibility and adaptability
good communication, persuasion, and motivation skills.
negotiation, diplomacy, and transaction abilities.
good character including honesty, morality, and caring.

While it is arguable that presidential timber cannot be rigidly defined or defined hardly at all, I argue that it can be defined with the qualified that this timber is not easy to pin down, but can be seen in the contrasts between effective and ineffective presidents. Single characteristics are not presidential timber. Clusters of good traits do seem to constitue it when they are most relevant to the office. Being locked in powerlessness by situations or circimstances does not justify a lack of timber or explain it away. Thus, a president cannot simply blame Congress for being ineffective. A good President will know how to work with Congress to move his agenda forward. And sometimes a good president will steadfastly resist pressures and temptations.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." --- Abe Lincoln

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JOHN MCCAIN'S BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

2008-09-13T15:30:00.004-06:00

JOHN MCCAIN'S BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

September 13, 2008

We are hearing lots from John McCain about how he puts country above personal interests but there is little in this campaign to prove that this is true. American voters are getting daily claims about who is the real change agent and how Sarah Palin has charmed the voters somehow with God knows what. Does anyone really believe her claim that the war in Iraq is God's war? What can we surmise about McCain's judgment when he does not select a nationally known and respected leader to be his VP running mate, but rather chooses an unknown, untested, and seemingly problematic person to be number two?

McCain is on a crash course with truth. He has been part of the Beltway insider club and American aristocracy for a quarter of a century and now is trying to re-frame himself as some sort of outsider, reformer, or maverick. The makeover does not work well for anyone who have been reading the news for the past twenty years. McCain is strictly status quo except for a handful of issues like torturing war on terror prisoners. He nothing to offer the elderly, students, working class folks, middle class people, or even veterans.

A sudden conversion to the cause of protecting working and middle class families against the excesses that he helped to support and promote is an insult to the intelligence of American voters. McCain has a bridge to the past, to the corruption of the oil company tycoons, and to the special interests that serve only the wealthy.

The State of Homeland Security

2006-12-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

THE STATE OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Kenneth Hacker

December 10, 2006

A general recently told a CNN interviewer that the United States is not capable of handling a major attack because of the overextension of the National Guard in Iraq. He correctly noted that the function of the National Guard is to protect the homeland. What went wrong?

Cut and Walk: A Plan to Exit Iraq

2006-12-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

CUT AND WALK: A PLAN TO EXIT IRAQ

Kenneth L. Hacker

December 11, 2006

Two main frames for the war in Iraq have been the White House frame, denied or not, of Stay the Course, and the alleged frame of war protestors known as Cut and Run. Of course, there are other optional frames such as the four options outlines in recent and serious news accounts of the war such as the Stay and Train frame. I offer another frame here which I simply call Cut and Walk.

Cut and Walk means leave (gracefully or not) as soon as possible at a scalable rate and walk rather than run from the chaos. Cut and Walk also means deploy air and naval power as needed to reinforce what has been accomplished by ground forces.

What are the four other options mentioned above? Are there policiticians still trying to reduce the issues to support the president or support terrorism?

Bush is acting coy in relation to the Iraq Study Group report. He was caught and the books Fiacos, The One Percent Formula, and State of Denial are suddenly freed from charges of being too radical or too harsh.

Tom Delay, opining on TV talk shows instead of serving prison time, argues that "there are bad people in the world that want to hurt America." Wow...

Let us get back to reality. The White House leaders are meeting with numerous experts to discuss the Baker-Hamilton report and recommendations. This will likely go on until the White House figures out a way to release its own plan on shifting how the war is framed. With the neocons increasingly being shown the door, more realists appear to be welcome. This does not guarantee that realist policies will be taken more seriously that the neocon fantasies. Still, we can hope for more reason.

Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon this week announced that how was ending his suport of the Bush adminstration policy on Iraq. Fox News Republican commentators debated the failing nature of what is going on in Iraq today. Fred Barnes said that many Republicans do not want to defend the war and that Sen. Sam Brownback bailed out while saying he was not bailing out. They talked about how there needs to be more signs of civility in Iraq for Bush to recover on the war. Mort Kondrake noted that some analysts are advocating an "80% policy" where the U.S. tilts toward the Shiites.

Bush is getting ready to deliver a major speech on Iraq to the American public. Lee Hamilton argues that training is the best way forward and Bush may take off on this theme because he can argue that this was a goal all along and therefore admit no flaws in his policies.

The Iraq Study Group gave Bush a new frame if nothing else - "A New Way Forward."

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2008

2006-09-15T14:17:00.000-06:00

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

Kenneth Hacker

August 19,2007

The pundits keep talking about Karl Rove being gone. Known as "Bush's Brain" by many of them, Rove is not going away but only shifting places. Look for him to be consulting, however surreptitiously, one of the Republican presidential candidates.

While the Republicans seek a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan in of the their candidates, the Democrats are trying to find the most viable winner among their stock, even if that winner is Hillary Clinton. Clinton has a momentum that even Obama seems unable to upset.

Two longshots are Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson but both should not be written off too early. Huckabee came in second in the Iowa Republican straw poll. Richardson needs to become a champion of something clearly upsetting most Americans, perhaps the war in Iraq.

Chris Matthews and Dan Rather (MSNBC, today) suggsted that Obama may need to challenge Clinton a large one on one debate to show why he is a better candidate. This may be very good advice and might apply to other candidates such as Richardson. Richardson, like Obama, seems stuck in the mud with old-school campaign techniques.

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July 19, 2007

CNN is taking questions via YouTube on the Paula Zahn (who is wearing low neckline clothes) news show. This is an interesting way of making the election news appear to be more participatory. Discussions on this show concerned how much religion is important to American politics and elections. Guest Dennis Praeger divided everything neatly in half by asking if America was -founded by believers or non-believers apparently never learning in high school that colonial leaders were mixed on how religious they were and most were not Puritans.

Back to the election, I will be writing a separate post soon called You Cannot Get Elected With a Resume. Richardson may be the only really qualified candidate for president but will never get elected assuming the campaign he has being run for him. That campaign is run by people who had no work to do in getting him re-elected as governor of New Mexico because his competition was out to lunch and defeated himself by irrational commentary.

No winner is yetpredictable but we can expect McCain to close up shop early next year due to his surge against the zeitgeist. Romney is looking more like whirling Dervish on issues than a man of commitment and Fred Thompson is pushing his Arthur Branch image to the hilt. I expect to see John Edwards losing ground to whatever Democrat hooks up to authenticity and true leadership credentials while blasting the current presidency with flourish and a total absenec of trepidation. Is there such a candidate on the Democratic side?

Voters have the war in Iraq in mind as their top issue. Nearly 70% do not approve of the war as now managed by Commander Bush. Republicans will have to change the war status of their party while showing that they are more competent than a Democrat in 2009. Is there such a candidate on the Republican side?

In both parties, viability appears to be driving candidate images a great deal. Partisans dont jus want a good speaker but also want someone who can win the war of the presidential race of 2008. We can expect Guiliani to begin to suffer polling point losses with recent news about attacks on his image by NYC firefighters.

In an election season full of flawed candidates, issues and policies like a rational and realistic approach to leaving Iraq may determine the election results.

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January 5, 2007:

McCain continues to dig a hole for himself by not only going against 71% of the American people (that percentage not approving of Bush's handing of the war in Iraq), but also by flip-flopping on what he says about Iraq. Today, he was shown on the news as advocating a substantial and sustained "surge" of American troops to serve in Iraq. He also whittled away at his own credibility by going against so much testimony by generals and other experts that indicates that an alleged "surge" of troops may not have any significant effect at all on the civil war in Iraq. McCain appears oblivious to the fact that he is losing credibility on a daily basis. Does he even care?

It is not fairly obvious that Gore and Kerry and old news and have no chance whatsover of getting the Democratic nomination. McCain may find himself outpaced by Romney, Guliani, and some Republican dark horses as he utters inane comments about fighting terrorists in Iraq so they dont have to fought here.

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December 25, 2006:

New poll data indicate that Obama is neck and neck now with Clinton in being frontrunners for the Democratic nomination. Clark does not appear to be running. Some observers think that Richardson and Edwards may be gaining speed. The best Democratic ticket in my view, at this time, would be a Richardson-Clark ticket. Richardson can handle foreign affairs, and Clark, who led the are on a much stronger state than Iraq (Serbia), can come up with a fix for Iraq.

McCain will implode with his hawkish rhetoric on Iraq while Guiliani will present a moderate possiblity for the Republican side. New Yorker Guiliani could probably beat New Yorker Clinton.
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December 18, 2006:

It seems like every day now that TV reporters ask questions about who is running in 2008. A Republican consultant, Mike Murhy, told Chris Matthews (Hardball, CNBC) that he believes Gore will get the Democratic nomination. On other shows, the talking heads wondered about where the frontrunners really are and when we will know.

In November, results from a purely emotional evaluation of political figures were released by Quinnipiac Univeristy (thermometer ratings, 0-100 with 100 being best). Here are the results( 1,623 registered voters) :

Giuliani 64.2

Obama 58.8

McCain 57.7

Rice 56.1

B. Clinton 55.8

Lieberman 52.7

Bloomberg 51.1

Edwards 49.9

H. Clinton 49.0

Richardson 47.7

Biden 47.0

Pelosi 46.9

Romney 45.9

Gore 44.9

G. Bush 43.8

Bayh 43.3

Gingrich 42.0

Frist 41.5

Reid 41.2

Kerry 39.6

m.e. = +/- 2.4

If this data is useful alone, the dream competition for Republicans would be Giuliani vs. Gore and Democrats would most relish an Obama vs. Frist race. But Frist is not running and others like Bayh are beginning to drop out.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could find themselves challenged by Edwards and Richardson. Kerry and Gore are washed up because they lost to Bush.

On the Republican side, Giuliani may it back and watch McCain march in the opposite diretion that voters are marching with his calles for more troops in Iraq. Meanwhile, he can get a social conservative makeover. Or he could get someone like Sam Brownback to run for VP.

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December 11, 2006:

Gallup Poll data indicate today that Guiliani is the Republican frontrunner among Republicans and Clinton is leading among Democrats. Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientists and election expert, argues that McCain may kill his chances of getting the Republican nominatino if he continues to out-Bush Bush on the war.

Mitt Romney is being talked about as a possible Republican nominee. It is hard to believe that some of the chattering heads are wondering about his Mormonism holding him back. Can anyone take Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell serious about anything anymore after all of the nonsense they have churned out over the past two decades? John Kennedy swept aside the alleged issue of being a Catholic in what was considered Protestant America in 1960. There is no reason to think that Americans will not focus more on issues that religious background in 2008 also. In fact, being affiliated with Robertson, Falwell and the other clergy who make themselves filthy rich off the Gospel might be a kiss of death for Republican candidates in 2008. They can no longer assume a stupid electorate moved by the emotion-based strategies of Karl Rove.

Democrats have a resonating issue with "the culture of corruption" that was part of the Abramoff, Delay, "Christian" right network of bribes, lies, and scandals. Yet Delay said on MSNBC today talking about how the "politics of personal destruction" and the "liberal media" brought him. Are we supposed to feel sorry for what we flush in the morning? Delay warns America that we are going to learn who the "real" Barack Obama is soon. Can someone switch then channel please?

Meanwhile, Democrats are still searning around for a winning set of strategies and techniques, worreid that Karl Rove might be right we he says he will get them next time. Rove knows how to read the electorate in the most economical ways possible, how to reach fear and worrries at emotional levels while attacking what Democratic candidates put out as their strongest traits. Anyone expecting a civil campaignin 2008 will be shocked.

Some commentators believe that Obama is selling what John Kennedy sold and that is hope. How much truth is there to this claim. Can it be proven for either candidate? Some believe that Obama is a completely liberal politician while otehrs believe that he his and idealistic realist. It is interesting to see how much projection is going on simply because Obama is personally attactive and has charisma. Two years of experience in the Senate hardly qualifies him to be president, however. On the other hand, Democrats might be hoping to our Rove Karl Rove by using emotion-based campaigning against the famous Rove gut-level persuasion.

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December 10, 2006:

There is evidence that various news media are looking for celebrity "buzz" about who will run for the presidency in 2008. Qualifications and policies seem to take second to the buzz about buzz. Sen. Sam Brownback is threatening to run as a conservative Republican. Apart from his Kansas fame, he is most likely unknown to most Americans. However, he makes an interesting argument that he will become known for his policy proposals.

McCain is still advocating more troops to solve the Iraq quagmire. Advisers say he does not pay close attention to polls when making policy statements. This sounds familiar and might serve as a warning that a President McCain would share the listening deficits that Bush is famous for.

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The presidential race of 2008 is now in motion with pundits all over the place not able to tell with any reasonable certainty who will be the party nominees. The Democrats went for the dynamic center of the spectrum in the congressional election of 2006 and found their resonance with voters once again.

McCain may self-destruct by not recognizeing that voters now have Iraq war fatigue. If he runs, opposition research might also note his old Keating Five status and his unwillingness to thrash the Bush campaign in 2000 for thrashing his wife.

Guiliani has womanizing issues that make him a nice target for the Democratic Party of 2008.

Barack Obama gives good speeches is short on presidential credentials.

Hillary Clinton is still a polarizing figure and would help Republicans raise money to defeat the Democrats in 2008. She is not sounding decisive on Iraq. If she sounds like McCain and calls fo more troops, she will be set up for defeat.

Bill Richardson is a dark horse and has a shot with some keen image building around his diplomacy skills. If he stays quiet about Iraq, he may never get traction, however.

December 7, 2006
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Mark Warner is no longer in the running, so I was dead wrong on that one. Hillary Clinton and John McCain look like the main frontrunners right now.

December 7, 2006
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No one, repeat no one, knows right now who will take the office of the presidency of the United States in 2009. We do know that the public is disturbed with the current direction of the nation and will be looking for new ideas from the new president.

For now, and this is total speculation, my best guess is that Mark Warner will be the next president. Next possible, in my estimation, are Hillary Clinton, Rudi Guiliani, and John McCain. Longshots and those not likely to get nominated are Bill Richardson and Newt Gingrich. The toughest fight on the Democratic side looks like it might be between Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton will marshall his backers and expertise to help his wife. Warner will rally the southern and centrist Democrats to join the Lincoln coalition. On the Republican side, futher hijacking of the party by theocrats will look insane to those in the party who wish to win the White House. Moderates like Chuck Hagel will gain more audience.

Democratic party preferences may be moving in the direction of a centrist and southern set of appeals like a Warner-Clark team. Because of his success in commanding the war against Serbia and his vast military knowledge, the public may come to view Gen. Clark as capable of handing the the phased withdrawal from Iraq that Democrats will offer as an alternative to the Republican plan of standing fast in Iraq.

Whether Democrat or Republican, I suspect that the next president will be a moderate on the overall political spectrum. This is great news for the nation.

15 September 2006

2006-08-20T12:25:00.000-06:00

A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY:
Maturing Past the Mistakes of NeoConservatism

Kenneth L. Hacker

August 20, 2006

I began writing this post on 20 August 2006 and will continue adding for a few days. This will serve as an introduction to a larger document that will posted on a web site as a PDF file. Constructive comments are welcome.

Both major political parties and all points on the political spectrum must accept the fact that the Bush administration will soon be losing gravity and will fade into the twilight of historical analysis. A new presidential administration will begin mustering as a campaign sometime after the off-year elections of 2006 and the new president that gets elected in 2008 will clear the board of the analysts, advisors, and office holders that have constituted the failed presidency of G. W. Bush.

Whether the new president is Republican or Democratic, that leader will want new and more valid ways of thinking about the role of America in the world and how to rebuild our national image in the minds of people in those nations that have turned against us. We will want strong allies again, an end to generating more terrorism than we stop, and a jettisoning of the power-based international relations schools of thought that hijacked White House analysis.

The mistakes that have brought us to where we are today, low in respect and nearly absent in world credibility, have resulted from flaws in the latter Clinton years, but mainly the years of the Bush Two presidency. The mistakes of the administration are not the results of the president alone, but are attributable to the team members he appointed, his vice president, and himself.

The role of the United States after World War II was respected by those nations we needed as allies. Today, the Iraq situation has become a drain on American credibility because the war is a war of convenience rather than one of necessity. A war of necessity would be grounded in the kind of coherent foreigh policy that guided the nation into previous conflicts - cases where the debates were about the legititate national security interests and world position of our nation. In contrast, the war in Iraq has been rooted in a succession of shifting arguents for initiating the war and changing rationalizations for continuing it.

There are interesting changes now occurring in the White House which suggest that the president could change directions, but it may be too late to expect much in a more progressive direction since the commitment to the Iraq occupation is so strong. Still, some of the neocon thinkers were given their walking papers and that is a positive sign that the White House may be looking for more more intelligent ways of analyzing the role of the United States in the world. It is better to have a sensible foreign policy emerge late than never at all.

In my view, the neocon power-based versions of policy and international relations is not a foreign policy but rather an ideological fanstasy spun by writers who do not understand the complexities of world event and systems analysis. It has done great damage to our role in international relations, with our position as the strongest world leader, and with being able to take sound believable to both friends and foes.

August 22, 2006:

The association of Saddam Hussein with the 911 attacks was done with various linguistic techniques in speeches given by President George Bush and others working in or for the White House. The war was initially framed as part of the response to 911 despite the fact (Micheal Barone's citing of nonexisting conversations by Czechs notwithstanding) that there is no credible evidence that Hussein had any involvement whatsover with 911. This initial framing, however, was not just about Iraq and 911 but also about terrorism in general. Thus, the war in Iraq was launched as part of the war on terrror and the fight against Hussein would be part of the war of terror. The latter actually was ending in Afghanistan and pro-admininisration voices seem to confuse the concepts of invasion and occupation with the concept of war.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq despite the speeches given by Bush, Rice, Cheney, and others indicating that a mushroom cloud was looming imminently as long as there was no regime change in Iraq. At least 90 million dollars was wasted trying to find the WMD that the UN had already failed to discover over many years of searching for them. The United Nations did not find WMD and neither did Kay, Dulfur, or Powell.

The rhetorical combination of 911, terrorism, and threats of Iraqi aggression created an environment of fear in the United States. Elsewhere, American leaders and their followers looked silly as most people in the world knew that a royal con game was occurring. American journalists, thrilled to be embedded with soldiers in attacking Iraq, forgot their mission to be critical thinkers. White House news outlets like Fox News made the war second only the return of Christ in terms of international importance.

The general feelings of confidence characterizing most Americans gave into feelings of fear, emergency, and trusting the president to do whatever it takes to keep the nation safe from the terrorists in Iraq who they were led to believe had attacked New York and the Pentagon.

August 26, 2006:

Terrorism is a very grave problem in the world today. It is not a new problem, but it is very serious and no one should minimize the importance of counterrorism actions by various nations and the international community. However, terrrorism is not something you can eliminate or defeat by military force. It is a methodology used for violent politics. A foreign policy that makes sense for the 21st century cannot base international relations on terrorism. Such a mistake playes right into the strategies of extremists who employ terrrorism. The United States should seek to eliminate terrorist organizations while at the same time addressing the grievances that the terrorists are bringing to the attention of their supporters.

The neocons wer trying to get President clinto to invade Iraq back in 1998. Their ideas about foreign policy were simply supremacy of the United States added to a rhetoric of aggressive national defense. These men who had never served in war themselves were anxious to send others to fight for American dominance. Dominance is not a foreign policy. Moreover the supremecist ideology of the neocons confirms the worst mpressions that other nations have of us. The Bush administration is considered (by the neocons that those in the administration they have conned), correct on all matters and anyone objecting is consider to be on the side of the enemies. Forcing viewpoints and demanding compliance with debatable positions does not make a foreign policy.

President Bush and Osame bin Laden have both done the same thing in that both have framed the world today as a binary conflict of good vs. evil and both have cast current history in light of a clash of political forces related to religion and ideologies. Despite this, the so-called war on terror is a concept that is over-manipulated by the White House and there is still a lag between what needs to be done about terrorist threats and the uses of terrorism and what is actually being accomplished.

Anti-Terrorism is Not Foreign Policy

Anti-terrorism and counterterrorism are both necessary in today's world but are police and paramilitary (clandestine, information operations, diplomacy, etc.) more than military matters. Our leaders need to argue more clearly that a "war on terror" may be like the old "war on poverty, and that concepts like the "end of evil" or the end of terrorism are akin to thinking that we can stop bad leaders, bad governments, and bad human behaviors at some magical point in the future. This is obviously wishful thinking and it detracts from the real issues of how nations and groups of nations can deal with the sources of supply networks of terrorist organizations.

Democracies are not introduced to societies by military force or invasions. Analogies of rebuilding Japan and Germany do not match the circumstances of Iraq. Iraq was not a homogeneous culture at war with the United States and the invasion was not planned carefully enough to include an exit plan for United States forces. There is a stead stream of books now about the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld and his advisors in designing the war. But even if Rumsfeld resigns, President Bush is still the focal point of the war effort. Bush finds himself caught into perpetuating a war that he hopes will succeed at some unspecified point in the future. Any good military planners knows that this is not how you run a war. As General Wesley Clark argues, you need specific details for how and why to start, how to win specific and limited objectives, and how to leave with a clear victory. The Clark approach does not trail off into the future for a succession of other presidents to manage.

Fanon was a theorist of terrorism and argued that violent attacks jolt the power of a state to overreact and that overreaction then persuades people that the terrorists are correct in arguing about the oppressive nature of the state power. This is what is occurring in the Middle East and this is why Bush placed America exactly where bin Laden wanted it.

The Bush posture (some might call it a doctrine) is inconsitent with the democratic and international heritage of the United States. It violates traditional American values and this is why many people, including Republicans, see the United States going in the wrong direction and see Bush as being out of touch.

Effective Counterterrorism Needed

Effective counterterrorism would not use fear as a means to steer American public opinion. Instead, it would seek to incorporate counterrorism (and anti-terrorism) into a coherent foreign policy that frames the role of America in terms of its positive and contructive role in promoting freedom, free markets, and democracy without imposing its will on any other nation.

Victims of terrorism, like the United States and Israel, must be vigilant about their retaliation against terrorism in order to assure that they do not employ the same terrorizing methods to gain avenge. Talk about "shock and awe" may apply well to battalions of soldiers but may constitute terrorizing actions when done against civilian populations. If victims become perpetrators, the victims reframe themselves negatively and lose credibility in their arguments about political violence by extremists. Dictators from Hitler to Mugabe in Zimbahwe have appealed to what citizens saw as injustice to their society as a way to build their own extreme form of power.

Israel had leaders who once used acts of terrorism against the British and enemies of Israel still claim that Ariel Sharon committed terrorism at Shatila and Sabra. Today, we see that the retaliation of Israel against Israel can be seen as just on one hand but inhumane when civilians are harmed much more than military forces. I have noted that the ratio of civilians in Lebanon to Hezbollah fighters is approximately ten to one (10:1). This ratio cannot help but harm public perceptions of Israel in many nations.

An approach to terrorism that would work better than what we have now would use foreign policy to assure that the U.S. is never viewed as an invader, and occupier, a state sponsor of terrorism, a perpetrator of human rights abuses, or a nation out to dominate all others. In just six years, we have moved from being a nation admired by most countries of the world to one distrusted by most nations of the world. This never needed to happen and it is the result of incompetence in the present administration and the absence of a workable foreigh policy.

Cycles of Behavior

Nations or groups involved in political conflict tend to create cycles of behavior in which both contribute to the problems of escalation and both can contribute, with enough political will, to the de-escalation of conflict. Israel, as noted earlier, is usually justified in its move to retaliate against Palestiniand or Hezbollah violence. But too much retaliation can generate more violence on both sides and escalating violence will shut down diplomacy.

The United States should, as the largest and most powerful democratic republic on the planet, help nations like Israel depolarize its political discourse and de-escalate its military solutions. Both nations are correct in hunting down terrorists (anti-terrorism) and developing innovations in working to defeat the ideological machinations of terrorists (counterterrorism). However, there are actions by both, because of poor foreign policies, that contribute to the regeneration of terrorism at the same time that efforts to reduce terrorism are accelerating.

The United States, with the Bush administration, has created more backlash, blowback, and ill will toward the United States than has ever occurred in the history of the nation. The reason for this is that the neoconservative supremacist ideology that passes for foreign policy does not account for the importance of mulitlateral politics in conflict situations, assumes that whatever is deemed national interests can also be deemed national security interests, and refuses to analyze with any depth whatsoever the roots of international problems, conflicts, and terrorism.

Most nations in the world sympathized with Americans right after the 9/11 attacks. Countries that later would not support the invasion of Iraq did support the American attacks on the Taliban in Iraq. There was plenty of political capital after 9/11 and during the assaults on Afghanistan to continue working with other nations to build a foreign policy that would include good citizenship in the international community along with strong and aggressive actions against terrorist organizations and states that aid them.

As early as 2002, because of the actions and rhetoric of the Bush administration, thirty-three percent of people in Great Britain thought that Bush was more of a threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein (Soros, 2004). Around the same time, more South Koreans viewed the United States as a greater threat to them than North Korea (Soros, 2004).

The mistakes of the administration can be blamed on a multitude of factors, but the easiest charge to prove is that Bush's advisors do not know what they are doing with international affairs. The fact that so many of Bush's aids had to disemble to make a case for the invasion of Iraq is dramatic proof of the failure to construct a rational and coherent foreign policy before ever consider the invasion. The lack of policy is evident in the fact that terrorism became a new frame for justifying the war after the war had already been on the drawing board since the 1990s for other reasons.

George Soros (2004) correctly argues that a major problem with using terrorism as a jusification for foreign policy decisions is that the terrorists end up controlling the foreign policy agenda. In fact, some experts argue that Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders would have far less rhetorical power if they were not elevated to high levels of influence in the discourse of American political leaders. Soros (2004) observes that terrorists win when their actions make their victims of violence perpetrators of retaliatory violence. In other words, terrorists set out to generate the cycles of violence we see today. An American with a strong and ethical foreign policy would not play this game.

A better vision for a strong and ethical foreign policy includes the objective of fulfillng the expectations other nations for the United States to be a key leader of free and democratic states in the world. As Soros (2004) notes, other nations are in a position in which they need to respond to the policies of the United States, so the United States should be careful about constructing good policies.

Undoing Goodwill

The present presidential administration has done much to undo the goodwill between the United States, it allies, and other nations in the world. This is not likely as deliberate as it is the result of negligence in foreign affairs analysis. The current ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, exemplfies what other nations disdain about this eight years of American relations with them. Not since the Vietnam war, have we had such an atrocious lack of intellectual ability and fortitude in the White House staff.

The leader of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, had improved diplomatic ties with North Korea. But President Bush did not extend this effort, intead choosing to stop the efforts of Kim Dae Jun and American President Bill Clinton to normalize relations with North Korea. The North Koreans, who are surrounded by states they perceive as possible threats, retreated into a rhetoric of self-protection and an accelerated push to develop nuclear weapons.

Soft Power and New Policy

While Donald Rumsfeld and others may scoff at the utility of soft power versus hard power in international relations, many experts know that soft power is being used daily by nations that are increasing their political clout and power networks in the world. Ironically, some of these nations include states considered enemies of the United States, such as China and Iran.

A Need for Consistency

A new foreign policy for the United State should include a commitment to reject regimes that are undemocratic and repressive and to not throw some out while coddling others. You can hear President Bush rail about the dictator Saddam Hussein yet say nothing about other dictators, just as repressive such as Islam Karimov who is the president of Uzbekistan. The leader of Libya is also a dictator but has bee privileged with being cajoled with soft power rather than shock-and-awe massive bombing, to empty his nation of WMD. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is actually the dictator of Pakistan who still refuses to hold elections.

Promoting Democracy

The promotion of democracy in the world should always be part of American foreign policy because of the historical commitments the United States had made over many years in that direction. The present war in Iraq is now being sold as promoting democracy, but other nations might be more impressed if they saw us actively helping the democracy in Turkey and the one in Lebanon as ways to change the turbulent situation in the Middle East.

A commitment to democratization and the stablization of democracy must not be the marketing pitch given by necons who seek to use the concept to justify American supremacy, however. Democracy is not equatable with a regime that simply helps us with economic and military benefits. While freeing up elections in Iraq in conducive to the eventual emergence of some kind of democratic system, there is no guarantee that elections will produce the kind of democratic system consistent with American democracy. The oil reserves in Iraq are second only to those of Saudi Arabia. Some experts believe that Americans are occupying Iraq to create permanent military bases and to secure an important source of fuel (Soros, 2004).

REFERENCES:

Cetron, Marvin & Davies, Owen (1989). American Renaissance. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Dallek, Robert. (1983). The American Style of Foreign Policy. New York: New American Library.

Ferguson, Niall. (2006). The next war of the world. Foreign Affairs, 85, 61-74.

Kennan, George. American Diplomacy. (1951). New York: New American Library.

Kennedy, Paul (1993). Preparing for the Twenty First Century. New York: Random House.

Soros, George. (2004). The Bubble of American Supremacy. New York: Public Affairs.

Viereck, Peter. (1962). Conservatism Revisited. New York: Collier Books.

Seymour Hersh On Possible U.S. Plans To Attack Iran

2006-04-10T20:49:00.000-06:00

There is interesting contoversy today about the likelihood of the United States launching military strikes on Iran for not complying with international demands to halt nuclear weapons development. The meaning of diplomacy should not be extended to include bombing but we will have to keep a close watch on how all sides frame this intesifying controversy. KH

The State of Iraq

2006-03-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

The State of Iraq

Kenneth Hacker

July 17, 2007

We hear that there will be a major assessment of how the war is going. This will be provided to the American people by top military leaders and then the White House. For now, consider the following observations. A top aide (Hassan al-Suneid) to Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki, says that the United States has embarrassed the Iraqi government by commiting human rights violations and treating the nation like an "experiment in a U.S. lab." (Associated Press, July 15, 2007). Still, the Iraqi government is saying it can handle the situation left by the redeployment (back to America) of U.S. troops.

The Iraqi war continues to cost American taxpayers about $8 billion and hundreds of soldiers each month. Americans have a right to ask if the war is worth the cost and are not likely to fall victims to fantasy claims like "If we dont fight them there, they will follow us home." Together, the war in Iraq and the sustained military fighting in Afghanistan are costing taxpayers $12 billion per month (Associated Press, July 10, 2007).

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July 15, 2007

The news from Iraq continues to look like the same old, same old with some signs of military progress. The problem is that the necessary political progress is still not happening significantly.

Totay, we learned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that Iraqi forces are capable of defending themselves and that American troops can leave at any time (Associated Press, July 15, 2007).

January 5, 2007

There is a great deal of talk about Bush's intention to increase troop numbers in Iraq. What amazes me about this is that no one can prove that such an increase will help or harm the war. It is just a hunch either way. Sadly, it appears that more soldiers will die as more Americans what the mission is the for the United States in Iraq.

People with more intelligence than comedians like Fox TV's Dennis Miller know that the hanging of Saddam Hussein was not a simple act of justice without problems. Capital punishment, in any society, carries symbolic weight with message both about the executed and the executor. There is little doubt that Hussein deserved to die, but this fact alone does not justify how and when the execution occurred. Mindless blathering about how he got what he deserved and how well the U.S. "brought him to justice" miss the point about how all political actions send important messages. If we are not careful, many of those messages end up recruiting more enemies.

Charles Krauthammer makes some interesting observations about the Hussein execution. In a column called "Tragedy for the new Iraq," he says that the execution was a "rushed, botched, unholy mess that exposed the hopelessly sectarian nature of the Maliki government." (Jan. 5, 2007).

The execution was not out of American hands as U.S. force was used to bring him to the execution and to fly his body back to his home town. Our nation has been shaping the current the current government of Iraq. We have een lecturing it about the rule of law. We have been preaching the need for Sunnis to be shown respect as the Shia dominate the political system. Yet we allowed the execution to occur on the first day of the Sunni religious holiday (Eid al-Adha). We ignored the fact that this violated Iraqi law.

Krauthammer observes that the Iraqi constitution requires the signature of the president and two vice presidents of the nation for an execution. This would involve Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd input into the authorization process. Maliki avoided it and the president did not sign.

Beside the symbolic and legal issues of the execution, there is the lost opportunity side. Perhaps Dennis Miller needed to watch a dirty leader taunted and hung in a medieval setting but the rest of the world would have benefited from a more controlled process. The rush to execute may have provided closure for the Millerites, but is denied closure for the Kurds in Iraq who wished to see Hussein tried for his genocidal killing of Kurds.

Krauthammer argues that the hanging party, constituted of Maliki hacks, turned the scene into one of intense sectarian violence with only Hussein not shouting. The people in the room shouted "Moqtada, Moqtada" who is another muderous extremist. The Dawa death sqads are killing Sunnis like Hussein and his Sunnis used to kill the Shiites. What kind of progress are we talking about?

If the United States is fighting to support one sectarian group hellbent on dominating others, we may be gaining reasons to exit the failing state of Iraq.

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March 6, 2006

It is now argued that the war in Iraq has become a "communal civil war." Has it been this all along, or is it still just on the edges of becoming such a civil war? The war and occupation now enter into a fourth year and there still appears to be society torn by violence and still unable to pull together a strong unified government that can stop insurgencies and anarchy. This does not mean that Iraq will not eventualy become stable. It suggests that no one has come up with a coherent set of strategies to make stability come soon.

Do all terrorists oppose democracy?

2005-07-22T15:18:00.000-06:00

What are the causes of terrorism and are all terrorists opposed to democracy? Do some want to find avenues for political dissent and power that could include participation in democracy?

What kind of democracy will emerge in Iraq?

2005-07-22T15:17:00.000-06:00

While our leaders say they do not have a timetable for success and democracy, they initially made arguments about a short war. What was supposed to happen? Will the war be successful in terms of democracy?

What Needs to be done in Iraq?

2005-07-19T00:02:00.000-06:00

May 3, 2007:

Today, I can say that Iraq is engaged is sectarian violence and appears to be a failing state. Yet, there is some hope and this is what needs to be argued clearly now. Therefore, I have started a new posted called A Solution for the Problem of Iraq.

KH

This is what I said when I started this post:

The war has raged for two years now. Is Iraq close to becoming a functioning democratic system or are there problems which prevent the democracy from taking hold?

What are the necessary conditions for democracy?

2005-07-18T23:59:00.000-06:00

Is it true that democracy can be imported from one nation into another in what is commonly called nation building today or is it true that democracies arise from within societities (with possible encouragement and support from external sources?

Welcome to Demokratia

2005-07-18T22:39:00.000-06:00

Demokratia is the ancient Greek word for rule by the people or what we call democracy today. This site is dedicated to serious issues of democratization today.