Friedman for President

I have to say, one of my favorite formats that Thomas Friedman uses for his columns is when he writes a speech President Bush should give. If you have TimesSelect, definitely read this. If you don't, here is a highlight:

I want to take this opportunity to speak to the Arab and Muslim nations gathered here today and to the world at large. I begin with a simple message: I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I rushed into the invasion of Iraq. I honestly believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was wrong, and I now realize that in unilaterally launching the war the way I did, you all feel that I breached a bond of trust between America and the world. Not only did that alienate you from us, it made us less effective in Iraq. We had too few allies and too little legitimacy. I apologize — sincerely.

I’m most sorry, though, because my bungling of the war has prompted all of us to take our eye off the ball. I messed up the treatment so badly that people have forgotten the patient really does have a disease. Now that I’ve apologized, I hope you will stop fixating on me and look closely at what is happening in your backyard: the forces and pathologies that brought us 9/11 are still there and multiplying.

If only Bush really had the humility to give this speech.

Bad Gore

Gore has been getting some criticism for his high energy usage. My first thought was that people were just using it to attack global warming. While I think that is the case, his critics still have valid points.

Gore's defense has been that he buys carbon credits to compensate for his energy usage. But the question is whether this is enough. This article in the NY Times looks into that. Basically, the article says that while it helps that money is being invested in alternate energy sources and plants that soak up carbon, overall it is a consumer-based solution that makes people feel better without having to change their behavior. (The article also says that there isn't yet a way to ensure that the carbon credits are offsetting as much as they say.)

I think this is a key point. People like Al Gore tell the world we need to change our behavior, but yet they aren't leading by example. Carbon credits aren't going to get us where we need to go to decrease carbon emissions. In the end, we are going to have to do a lot to change our behavior. This means that we can't just spend a little more money to feel better about our consumption habits; we will need to make real sacrifices. I think the loudest talkers should lead the way.

Olive Branch From Iran?

Summary:
There is evidence that Iran wanted normal relations with the US in 2003. How did we go so wrong? Would Iran have lived up to its promises?

So Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about an attempt by Iran in May 2003 to establish more normal relations with the US. Before I launch into a rant about how poorly the Bush administration's policy with Iran has been, we should recognize that Iran probably wouldn't have lived up to all of their promises. At the same time though, our isolation of them has made the hard liners in their country stronger, which makes the government more willing to stand against us publicly.

One of the worst things we did was create this "Axis of Evil" label. Instead of making the countries try harder to be good, it has made them want to behave worse. Bush doesn't realize this because he wants to see the world in a good versus evil dichotomy, and to do this he needed to create enemies - ones that would be on par with the former Soviet Union. This isn't to say that Iran was benevolent, but they were mostly harmless instead of a grand power we needed to rally against.

I want to stress again that when dealing with rogue states and potentially threatening governments, there are smart ways of dealing with them that makes them weaker instead of stronger. We need a leader that understands this.