The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness: Part 2, Palestine

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the roots of Arab Muslim sickness: failure; blaming an external party for that failure; implicit belief in one's own powerlessness; rebellion against that sense of powerlessness by demonstrating an ability to hurt the external party; chosen means (suicide bombs) that can only cause one's conditions to worsen; more suicide bombs; cultural stagnation and moral depravity; repeat.

We all evaluate our own worth in part by reference to others, and how do Arabs feel when they compare themselves with Israel, a thriving democracy with no oil and yet a first world economy, a world class technology sector (in May, Warren Buffet invested four billion dollars for an 80% share of Iscar, an Israeli precision tool manufacturer. When Buffet invests ten figures in an Arab manufacturer... well, it's hard to imagine, and that's the point), and a military that has repeatedly fought off its numerically superior Arab neighbors?

The comparison must be painful for all Arabs, but particularly for the Palestinians, given their greater proximity. Do they have a legitimate grievance? Yes. Thousands were indeed displaced, many of them deliberately expelled, during Israel's war of independence. They live in refugee camps in Lebanon, as second class citizens in Jordan, and under Israeli military rule in Gaza and the West Bank.

But it's been nearly sixty years, and Palestinians have a decision to make. Nurse their grievance, indulge in self-righteousness by clinging to maximalist demands, and gradually worsen their circumstances and diminish their future... or compromise and achieve something concrete?

Sadly, Palestinians have repeatedly chosen the first course. The tragedy of their society is that they have become all about means, and no longer care about ends. Or, to put it another way, their means have become their end.

If the end Palestinians willed were an independent state, they could have had it many times. Most recently, all they needed to do was choose hunger strikes as their weapon instead of suicide bombs. Armed with the unique benefit of a politically powerful and favorably disposed movement (Peace Now) within the country that occupies the land they claim, and the parallel advantage of numerous sympathizers in the UN and Europe, hunger strikers could have won the Palestinians a two-state solution forty years ago.

If an objective is repeatedly attainable, and someone repeatedly fails to attain it, at some point it's fair to ask whether the party really wanted that objective to begin with... or whether, in fact, their objective was always something else. The Palestinians have had many opportunities to have their own state. They do not. What is it, then, that they really want?

Primarily, to hurt Israel. Palestinian self worth is so low that the society can salve its collective ego only through the basest refutation of a sense of powerlessness: an ability to hurt their enemy. Menacham Begin is famous for saying, "I fight, therefore I am;" the Palestinian equivalent has become, "I can hurt you, therefore I matter."

It follows that a negotiated solution with the Palestinians is impossible. Israel couldn't even give the Palestinians what they profess to want, because what they really want is not be given anything, but to take everything.

It's hard not to pity a culture like this one. Palestinians have become so obsessed with their enemy that they now define themselves exclusively by reference to that enemy. They seem to mean nothing to themselves outside their ability to blow up Israelis. They must feel there's nothing else they can achieve, and apparently there is nothing more they desire.

The status quo of military occupation, bombings, and assassinations has gone on for a long time. After many failed negotiations, Israel attempted to change that status quo by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza behind a wall. The Hamas rockets that followed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza (and those of Hezbollah, which followed Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000) have proven unilateral withdrawal to be a failure. So the status quo continues. But for how long?

If Israel can find some cost-effective way of suppressing the rocket fire as it has the suicide bombers, the status quo could continue for a long time. But if Israel can't, and the provocations continue or worsen, eventually, perhaps very soon, there will be another war.

In the next war, Israel will not attempt to occupy territories and rule local populations. It will instead drive those populations out, as indeed it did in 1947. Expulsions will probably end the peace with Egypt and Jordan. But they will prevent rockets from reaching Israel proper and eradicate the threat inside Israel's borders. Wars after that will be only against external enemies and conventional armies, an arena in which Israel has proven itself capable.

It's a bleak assessment, but I don't see alternatives. Over the course of six decades, the Palestinians have consistently demanded, explicitly and implicitly, something Israel can't give. Their circumstances have correspondingly consistently worsened. The next step in the progression of this dreadful combination of maximalist demands and worsening circumstances will be the Palestinians' loss of everything, even the territory they currently administer and de facto own by virtue of their physical presence there.

In some ways, Palestinians are like someone who owns stock that has been steadily losing value. Every day they realize they should have sold yesterday, when they could have gotten out in a better position. Now they've lost so much they prefer to hope for recovery by holding on than to lock in their losses by getting out. And so their losses worsen.

Well, there are times when things must get worse before they get better, if they can ever get better at all. The Palestinians have made such a situation for themselves. No, they weren't dealt a great hand. But they are responsible for the way they've played it, and therefore for the increasingly miserable outcome of the game.

Next week: Part 3, Solutions

Rumsfeld Redux

Not to worry, the second part of The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness is on the way. But first...

Today Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to the American Legion's annual national convention in Salt Lake City. You can read more here and here.

The excerpts I've read are depressing. For example, the Secretary asked, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”

Quick question: does anyone here believe vicious extremists can be appeased?

I guess not. But then why... oh, I get it. The question is rhetorical. Its real meaning is, "If you disagree with our policy, you must favor the appeasement of vicious extremists."

Even if you think the Bush administration has been doing a fine job (took a lot of discipline not to say "heckuva job" there) of protecting the nation, isn't this kind of simple-minded demagoguery off-putting?

Back when I was in law school, I was taught that if you can win on the facts, argue the facts. If the facts are unhelpful, attack the credibility of the witness. That's what this is. If things were going well in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of the administration would rightly trumpet progress and success. But they're not. They're attacking their critics, instead. I guess they feel they have no choice. And maybe they're right. After all, what else are they going to talk about?

Rumsfeld also said, "This enemy is serious, lethal and relentless. But this is not well recognized or fully understood.”

Show of hands, please: anyone here who doesn't recognize and fully understand the serious, lethal, and relentless nature of our enemies?

Okay, good: we all agree on the nature and severity of the threat. But then why... oh, I get it. The administration senses it's vulnerable to a discussion of how it's protecting the nation. If you disagree with how, the idea is that you must not really understand what's going on. The implication, of course, is that you're... an appeaser!

Back when I was in the CIA, I was taught, "Deny everything, admit nothing, make counter accusations." Refusing to discuss what's going wrong in Iraq and how we might make it less wrong while accusing your critics of appeasement is straight out of the playbook. If I weren't so disgusted, I'd be proud.

The Secretary claims that the American news media is part of the problem because it tends to emphasize the negative rather than the positive: for example, there was more coverage of what happened at Abu Ghraib than to Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith's winning the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I feel tremendous gratitude and respect to all our fighting men and women, and particularly to anyone who has been awarded the CMH. From the heart, thank you, Sgt. Smith.

But I have a feeling that if misdeeds at Abu Ghraib received more coverage than Sgt. Smith's heroism elsewhere, it was probably because people rightly sensed the somewhat larger geopolitical ramifications of what happened at Abu Ghraib. I don't doubt that there's bias in the media, but suggesting that bias is what put and kept Abu Ghraib on the map to the exclusion of stories of individual heroism is silly at best.

For people who claim to have all the right ideas, Rumsfeld and company come off seeming awfully insecure. Do they know something that we... do?

The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness: Part 1, Introduction

Not all Arab Muslims are terrorists. But most terrorists are Arab Muslims. It's therefore worth asking what in the Arab Muslim world is producing this uniquely widespread cultural sickness. After all, if we don't know the cause of the disease, how can we hope to cure it -- or, barring a cure, contain its spread?

Most of the explanations I've come across cite one of two factors, or a combination of both. First, poverty; second, western foreign policy.

I don't think poverty and western foreign policy are irrelevant to Arab Muslim terrorism, but they're no more the cause of the disease than oxygen is the cause of a fire. There's been plenty of talk about oxygen. I want to talk about the combustible material and what is causing it to ignite.

Muslim Arabia was once a thriving culture, a center of trade, an explorer in science. Today it is not. I may be wrong, and I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me if I'm missing something, but I'm unaware of any significant scientific, artistic, economic, or other such development emanating from the Arab middle east. What patents have issued? What literature has been written? What products are made and exported? From fashion to philosophy, I know of no contributions.

It seems that all the Arab middle east has to offer is what by happenstance exists under ground there: easily accessible, plentiful, high quality petroleum. A godsend, you would think. But in fact a curse. The countries "blessed" with oil did nothing to achieve it, so it can't be a source of pride. And Arab fecklessness becomes significantly harder to explain in the presence of all that black gold and the hundreds of billions of dollars it generates.

The question being asked over there, I imagine, must be this: "Why, despite our history, our numbers, and our oil, are we so moribund?"

If Arabs are indeed asking this question, the answer they've arrived at seems to be, "It's not our fault. After all, there's nothing wrong with us. How could there be? We have a rich history. We follow the one true religion. And we have all that oil. External forces must be to blame."

As with all good conspiracy theories, there's a germ of truth in this one. The United States has a long history of backing some of the world's most oppressive regimes as long as they're willing to pump oil (the imperative and the policy remain, despite President Bush's recent rhetorical veneer about promoting democracy in the middle east). If the Arab middle east had no oil, the area would have the same strategic importance to the west as sub-Saharan Africa, and we would have the luxury of policies driven by our ideals rather than by our addictions. But the oil does exist, our addiction does distort our ideals, and it's understandable that citizens in these repressive countries would resent the United States for supporting their oppressors.

But the list of countries with plenty of poverty and heartfelt grievances about being oppressed by the US is long, and for the most part it's only Muslim Arabs who have responded with unrelenting suicide bombing. What makes Arab Muslims different from all the people of the world who are more interested in getting ahead than in nursing a grudge?

I don't know the specific answer, but I suspect it's rooted somewhere in the nexus of Arab history and Muslim religion. As for the general answer, the psychology is clear: it's painful to acknowledge that a failure is your own fault, and comforting to believe that the failure is the fault of some Other. If the failures are monumental, so too must be the treachery of that Other, and therefore the hatred the perceived treachery justifies and breeds.

The problem with concluding that something isn't your fault is that it's the same as concluding it isn't your responsibility. And concluding that you have no responsibility for something you care about is the same as concluding you have no power over it. The Arab Muslim psychology, it seems to me, is therefore one of extreme powerlessness.

The human psyche abhors a sense of powerlessness and will rebel against it. And the most fundamental, primitive way of asserting a sense of power is by demonstrating a power to hurt. I can't get what I want, I can't persuade you to change your behavior by positive means... but I can still matter to you, and convince myself of my own power, if only I can hurt you.

This, then, is the vicious cycle in which the Muslim Arab world finds itself: I am victimized by outside forces. Nothing is my fault, meaning I am powerless. Being powerless is abhorrent and robs me of my dignity. I will recover my dignity by hurting the outside forces responsible for my misery. But hurting others does nothing to change my circumstances, so I am left with nothing to care about but my ability to hurt. And thus my sole modern contribution to the world, my innovation, my emblem, my identity, is the suicide bomber. And what was once a thriving culture becomes merely a death cult.

Next week: Part 2, Palestine

Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon

It's a little hard to understand what's going on in Lebanon right now, but here's what I think.

Hezbollah wasn't expecting the magnitude of Israel's attack, and over the month of the war sustained significant losses.

Israel wasn't expecting the ferocity of Hezbollah's resistance, and over the month of the war realized it couldn't break Hezbollah without sustaining heavy losses.

Hezbollah was afraid that continued Israeli attacks would erode its position in Lebanon. Israel was afraid that Hezbollah would continue to fire rockets at Israel and inflict casualties on Israeli troops, further denting the IDF's reputation and enhancing that of Hezbollah. So both sides were looking for a way to stop the fighting, and that's why they accepted the latest UN resolution.

But the resolution calls for Hezbollah's disarmament and removal from southern Lebanon. If the motivated, capable IDF wasn't able to achieve such an outcome, it's hard to imagine any UN force, or the feckless Lebanese army, doing it instead.

In other words, Israel has accepted a resolution that it knows will leave Hezbollah armed and in place in southern Lebanon -- exactly the conditions Israel went to war to change.

I don't know exactly how to explain the situation, but I think Israel's thinking goes like this:

The optimistic view was nicely expressed by Michael Young, the opinion editor at The Daily Star, an English-language newspaper published in Beirut. Young writes, “For the next two or three years, Hezbollah will be like the Salvation Army, tied up in rebuilding. But the party cannot put Shiites through such trauma again for the foreseeable future, maybe a decade, which means its ability to attack Israel will be limited. The reason Hezbollah is so eager to rebuild is that they know the condition of Shiites today could turn the community against them if it’s not dealt with effectively.”

The great unknown is what the Lebanese population, Shiites included, makes of Hezbollah's role in the war. Hezbollah's declared aims were the return of Lebanese prisoners of war and of disputed territory called the Shebaa farms. Neither of these aims was achieved, at a cost of horrific destruction in Lebanon. Even if Hezbollah does a magnificent job of helping people rebuild, will they forgive Hezbollah for provoking the destruction in the first place?

If not, then maybe the combination of Hezbollah's weakened military condition and weakened political base will force it to make compromises with the Lebanese government that will weaken it further still. Maybe.

The pessimistic view would hold that, with massive Iranian aid, Hezbollah will quickly rebuild, rearm, and retrench, and then, at some point in the future, renew its attacks. The question is, what will Israel do then?

With a new casus belli, Israel will go to war again, this time with better tactics based on a new understanding of Hezbollah's military capabilities. At this point, Israel would claim that it had been mistaken to put its trust in the UN force, which had proven itself unable to fulfill its responsibilities in disarming Hezbollah and removing it from southern Lebanon. Israel would warn UN forces in the south to leave, and host countries, not having any political reason to explain casualties to voters, would comply. Israel would then use leaflets to warn the entire Lebanese population south of the Litani river that after a certain date anyone south of the Litani will be treated as an enemy fighter and killed. Israel would then bombard the south massively and indiscriminately, cut off and lay siege to whoever survived the bombardment, mop up what was left, and defacto annex a depopulated southern Lebanon. The destruction and displacement would be far worse than what just occurred.

Israel must already be concerned that its stalemate with Hezbollah will embolden its other enemies. It won't allow another draw, meaning Lebanon won't survive the next war.

I hope the optimists are right.

Islamofascism

As visitors to HOTM know, I'm no fan of President Bush. But he certainly got it right yesterday when he said of Wednesday's foiled terrorist plot, "This was a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists."

In some ways, Bush's construction was odd. After all, according to the administration, we're in a Global War on Terror -- or, if you prefer, in a Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Why, then, didn't the president say, "This was a stark reminder that this nation is at war with terror and violent extremism?"

Because terror is a tactic and extremism a mindset, and wars can be fought against neither. Real wars, as opposed to the "moral equivalent" or other metaphorical variety, can only be fought against human actors. And the human actors who are in fact the enemies of our civilization are defined and identified by the nexus of Muslim religion (Islam is the only true way, everyone else is an infidel who needs to be killed or converted, etc.) and fascist ideology (the state should be all powerful and control the personal behavior of all its citizens, who exist to serve the state). Hats off, then, to President Bush for, whether deliberately or instinctively, correctly identifying the enemy: Islamic fascism (the terminology I prefer is Islamofascism and Islamofascists because the focus feels tighter to me, but this is a quibble).

The president's new terminology is welcome not just because it's correct, but for other reasons, as well. The language of tactics is the language of law enforcement. Acts are illegal, not the people who do them. From running a red light to bank robbery all the way to murder, the law prohibits acts. War is different. We didn't fight World War II against Panzer or kamikaze attacks. We fought it against the Germans and Japanese. If we really are in a war now, and I believe we are, I hope other leaders and the media will take their cue from the president and stop obscuring the issue with language that smacks of law enforcement. War is the sword, law enforcement the shield. They are different tools and we ought to be clear about which we're using and for what purpose.

Another benefit of using the proper nomenclature is that doing so tends to linguistically wrongfoot the Islamofascists. Monikers like Islamicists, Militant Islam, militants, Mujahadeen, and jihadis are points of pride to these people. Why are we acceding to their attempts at self-branding? They're islamofascists. Let's attach that powerful word -- fascism -- to its proper recipients and let them explain why they're really something else.

Iraq: It's Over.

A year ago I wrote an opinion piece for the Philadelphia City Paper that asked how and when a society would admit a war was lost. Now we're finding out.

Don't think it's over yet? Remember, whatever officials say in public, they're probably an order of magnitude more pessimistic in private.

Here's General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, testifying before the Senate last week: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”

Look at the qualifiers in that last clause. It's "possible" that Iraq "could" "move towards" civil war. My guess is that General Abazaid, mindful of what happened to then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki when Shinseki publicly disagreed with SecDef Rumsfeld, is protecting his political flank (he also described himself as "optimistic"). But if the general is talking this way in public, on the record, what do you think he's saying in private? What do you think he really believes?

Also, the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq says in a leaked memo that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely" than a stable democracy.

Okay, leave aside the pronouncements, publicly hedged and privately leaked. What's going on on the ground?

The Economist reports Shiite and Sunni militias are dividing Baghdad into de facto ethnic sectors. In the former Yugoslavia, this was known as "ethnic cleansing." The UN reports that over 100 Iraqis a day being killed in sectarian strife, mostly in Baghdad. (It'll be interesting to see at what point a public consensus emerges that what's happening in Iraq is indeed a civil war. Remember, the Pentagon at first refused to call what we were fighting following the fall of Baghdad an "insurgency." But events have a way of slipping past linguistic attempts to bottle them up, or deny them.)

Not long ago, the administration was taken with the so-called "Oil Spot Strategy," in which we would focus our efforts on improving conditions in already relatively untroubled parts of Iraq, then extend those improvements like a spreading oil spot to more troubled regions. I don't know whether the strategy was seriously attempted or whether it could really work, but it seems things have gotten so bad in Baghdad that the administration is afraid the city will act like caustic detergent on whatever oil spots might drop around it. Now, to try to halt Baghdad's slide, we're sending more troops to the city, and the oil spot approach seems forgotten.

I'm not a military man, but it's hard to see the increase as grounds for General Abazaid's professed optimism. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman describes the increase, to about 135,000, as a "sustained spike." "You're going to see that spike," he said last week, "that is a sustained spike, for a while, and you're going to still have force rotations that take place."

Quick question: is a "sustained spike" the same as a "long term development?" Just asking.

But when do we really know the game is over? Shouldn't we give our efforts just a little more time, maybe another six months? For an answer, google "six months Iraq." I've been curious about this apparently critical moving six month window for years now. Tom Friedman of the New York Times, who I think ought to be in charge of US foreign policy, has referred to it pretty much since the war began, and at some point I started to suspect that Friedman was unconsciously moving the magical six month window forward because he couldn't face that the war was lost. But in his most recent op-ed piece, called "Time for Plan B," Friedman writes, "It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war." There's no mention of six months in the piece. Friedman is writing about now.

How will things end? Check out "What do we do about Iraq."

Got Noise?

When did the world get so noisy?

I'm staying at the Hilton in NYC now, and they've got televisions installed in every elevator. For 22 floors, you have to listen to the urgent cadences of a video newscaster. Airports are doing this, too -- more and more televisions are being installed in lounges and waiting areas. And they're ubiquitous in hotel gyms. They've even got them on the Heathrow Express into London (although there, at least, there are "quiet cars," as well).

I wonder if this "all TV, all the time" trend isn't indicative of an overall move away from the notion of personal responsibility. Sensible people know they might have to wait at the airport, or inside an elevator, or on a train, and come prepared with their own (mercifully silent) reading material. If you forget your own material, you might have to endure a bit of ennui -- which should remind you to be less forgetful next time. Now, not to worry, you're not responsible for the entertainment; it's being provided for you. You don't have to remember a thing.

(You'd think that with the constant barrage of news we'd be be a well-informed society, but it doesn't feel that way to me. Maybe it's because the barrage is telecast, not printed.)

Cars beep constantly, too, warning us of an open door, a key in the ignition, and unbuckled seat belt. Makes sense, I guess... after all, what's a little omnipresent irritation if we can save one person from locking his keys in the car?

(Think personal responsibility again...)

Back to airports: why do the electric carts that ferry people through terminals have to be accompanied by such shrill beeping? At first I thought it was a (dubious) safety feature, to help prevent people from getting run down, but then I realized no, that doesn't make sense, the driver could easily slow for or otherwise avoid pedestrians. The purpose of the incessant beeping, I realized, is to get pedestrians to clear a path so the carts can go faster. The implicit tradeoff is silence for speed. An entire airport full of people has to suffer so a few lazy asses can get toted around a little more quickly? Who ran those cost-benefit numbers?

On airplanes, you have to listen to at least ten minutes of announcements after you take off. Most of it has to do with selling you something -- food, drinks, an in-flight movie, duty-free merchandise. So let me get this straight: I've paid for the ticket, and now that I'm a captive audience, you're subjecting me to ten minutes of in-your-face (actually, in-your-ears) advertising? When is one of the airlines going to catch on and start billing itself as the "quiet, haven, sanctuary, advertisement-free" alternative? It's probably just a coincidence that the big carriers are in and out of bankruptcy.

There's music playing everywhere, too. It used to be just in stores and restaurants. Now it's in restrooms, too. Which is great, if you require trumpets to accompany the act of urinating. At a Wild Oats supermarket in Cincinnati, there was music not just in the store, but in the parking lot, too, where they'd installed outdoor speakers that were supposed to look like rocks. I guess you wouldn't want to detract from the inherent naturalness of parking lot music with an artificial-looking speaker. What would happen if I had to endure the two-minute walk to my car... in silence? Would I dislike the store? Would I buy less of their food? Has Wild Oats actually studied this issue, or do they just assume that more people want more music in more places?

A discreet elevator door chime is a good idea -- lets you know when the elevator has arrived in case you didn't see it. But what happened to the discretion? The Los Angeles Bel-Age elevator chimes sound like submarine klaxons. The otherwise elegant Boston Ritz Carlton chimes sound like a pair of live cymbals clanging together over your head.

I guess there's a law requiring trucks to issue a horrible, piercing, repetitive beep when they back up. Has anyone done a study on how many injuries and lives this "feature" has saved, versus how much irritation and loss of quality of life it's produced?

Suburban lawns look serene from the interior of a car. But walk through suburbia during the day, and you'll find the serenity is entirely visual: the cacophony of mowers and blowers that produces that visual effect will ruin your walk and drive you right back into the relative sanctuary of your car. To make suburbia look pretty, we've made it sound awful. Was this choice conscious? Does it make sense?

The noise isn't just constant; it's also loud. My guess is, the volume is jacked up to get through to the hard of hearing. But is making everything loud enough to be heard by the hearing-impaired fair to the non-impaired? Is burdening the majority of the population to provide an arguable benefit to a minority sensible? Are these questions even being asked?

Technology has offered us a choice that didn't exist for previous generations: silence, or aural clutter. As a society, we seem increasingly to default to the latter. I know I'm a curmudgeon before my time but... I hate it. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you ought to.

The Middle East and America

I don't fully understand the connection between Israel's war with Hezbollah and the Bush administration's efforts to foster democracy in the region. But a few things concern me.

Sometimes I feel that President Bush believes if he says it, it makes it so. He announced a mission to Mars that was immediately forgotten. He claims America is addicted to oil, and then suggested we would be cured by technology, with no meaningful follow-through. And he has made a centerpiece of his presidency the export of democracy to the Arab middle east -- indeed, to "end tyranny in our time."

The problem with exporting democracy to the Arab middle east is that there are long-standing institutional reasons for our support of Arab dictators -- even those that are our enemies, like the House of Saud. We need oil -- we are addicted to it, apparently -- and so we back regimes that will supply it to us. And even apart from oil, we fear the alternative to the relatively stable, oil-pumping dictators we back: Islamofascists.

The problem is, President Bush seems to have lost sight of these two fundamentals -- we need oil, the elected Arab alternative might be Islamofascism -- in promoting democracy in the region. With Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Ahmadinejad in Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it's hard to be sanguine about the prospects of further elections in the Arab and Persian middle east.

It seems to me we've changed the policy without changing the fundamentals. This is like trying to move a house without touching the foundation. All you'll get is collapse.

The real choice is to back dictators to the hilt, or get off oil. We can't have it both ways.

I don't know what will be the outcome of Israel's war with Hezbollah. My guess is that it will spread, to include Syria and possibly Iran. The US could be pulled in, too. I would also guess that we'll see disruptions in the supply of oil, which will raise the price, which will encourage us to use less. Which, with some will, imagination, and guts, we could have done through taxes instead of a war.

We're going to get off oil. The only question is how. Will we do it for ourselves, gradually, sensibly, and relatively safely? Or will we wait to have an oil diet imposed on us by war and other outside events?

Door #2, no doubt. How sad to know exactly what to do, and yet lack the will to do it.

Gay Marriage, Flag Burning, And Congress Again...

The pace of the Last Assassin tour hasn't left me nearly the time I ordinarily devote to the news, but a few items have caught my attention.

The Republican-controlled Senate has now tried twice to amend the Constitution -- first, to prohibit gay marriage; second, to prohibit flag burning (so many prohibitions! It's enough to make you miss the Bill of Rights). We'll get to the substance of these issues in a moment, but first, let's pause to consider our government's apparent priorities.

The Senate's time is limited (not limited enough, if you ask me), so you might expect Senators to spend their limited time only on the issues that matter most to the nation. A reasonable shortlist might include the war in Iraq, the war against Islamofascism, securing loose nukes, reforming the tax code, making America more energy independent, immigration reform, redressing growing income disparities, protecting the environment... I'm sure I'm missing various priorities, and I'm sure reasonable people will differ on the inclusion of various items and on their proper order. But still. Gay marriage and flag burning are the foremost crises of the day?

Let's see if we can get to the heart of the matter.

Gay marriage: some people approach this issue from a religious perspective. I can't argue with them. If your position is, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," there's nothing to discuss.

The nonreligious objection to gay marriage seems to be that marriage has traditionally been between a loving, committed man and a woman, and that we shouldn't lightly alter what most people agree is the fundamental fabric of human society.

I respect this argument, although my take is slightly different. I believe the fundamental fabric of human society is marriage between two loving, committed adults. That the two adults in question have traditionally been a woman and a man reflects not some necessary element of society building, but rather that most people are heterosexual and that our laws and mores are therefore in part a reflection of heterosexual prejudice.

So although I'm a conservative, and wouldn't lightly alter marriage or any other fundamental societal building block, I don't see gay marriage as a significant alteration at all. The opposite, in fact: because I believe that loving, committed couples are the molecules that make society strong, I want to encourage more of them. Permitting gay marriage seems an excellent way to do so.

I think we can therefore safely say that the HOTM on gay marriage is one's take on this question: what is the fundamental building block of society? Marriage between a loving, committed man and a woman? Or marriage between two loving, committed adults? If you answer "man and woman," you'll be against gay marriage. If you answer, "two adults," you'll be for it.

Flag burning: I note in the introduction to this blog that I believe our political opinions and religious beliefs are located in the same place in our brain. That the sight of a burning flag can cause anger comparable to the outrage produced by the desecration of a religious symbol supports this notion. But the fact that the outrage is real and legitimate shouldn't prevent us from asking a question: is the desecration worth banning?

I tend to approach policy in cost/benefit terms. How many flag burnings are there? How many people are even aware of them of them when they occur? How much pain do they produce? Measured against: How much would it cost to amend the Constitution to ban them (direct costs of getting the amendment through plus the cost of lost opportunities)?

Because I think people who burn flags are cranks whose provocations say far more about the cranks themselves than about anything the flag symbolizes, I rate the cost of flag burning as low -- far lower than the cost of an amendment. If your sense of outrage at the sight of a burning flag is high enough, though, the cost of an amendment might be lower, in which case you'll want to amend. I think this is the HOTM on flag burning.

So maybe amendment proponents believe that what makes marriage fundamental to societal health is the institution's exclusively heterosexual provenance. And maybe proponents are also sufficiently outraged by flag burning to think it worth banning.

Of course, there's another possibility.

It's possible that amendment proponents don't give a damn about married gays or burning flags. It's possible they're simply trying to distract voters from the real news of the day, namely Iraq, by getting the media to cover a Senatorial sideshow instead. It's possible they're trying to mobilize the right-wing base a few months ahead of the November midterm elections. It's possible that, regardless of your views on gay marriage and flag burning, the Senate is insulting your intelligence.

Perhaps I'm cynical. But I like what Oscar Wilde had to say on the subject: "That quality of seeing things as they really are is called cynicism by those who have not got it."

Independents, Chains, and Drive-By Signings

Last week, I did a formal signing at a midwestern independent with two other authors. Afterward, I received a thought-provoking email from the son of the store’s owner, who is also a lawyer and the stores’s corporate counsel. The email raises two questions: first, is it okay for an author who does a formal signing at an independent to also do stock signings at chain stores in the same town? Second, even if it is okay to do stock signings, is it rude for an author to acknowledge these signings to the independent?

I asked the sender twice if he would object to my publishing our exchange on my blog, and twice he didn’t respond. Although his omission probably means he doesn’t object, I thought it would be polite to refer to him only as “G” in the following exchange. I’ve similarly changed other names, but otherwise publish our exchange verbatim.

What do you think? Are extracurricular stock signings okay? And even if they are, should we conceal them from independents? G, if you're out there, I continue to welcome your thoughts. Read on…



From: G
Subject: Feedback
Date: June 15, 2006 8:01:21 AM PDT
To: beisler@earthlink.net

Dear Barry,

It was a great event, our customers were pleased, and the sales reflected their experience. We do enjoy selling your books, Barry. Your work is atmospheric, with carefully thought out characters and plotting. Your books definitely show the effort you put into them.

A bit of information that you may want to consider as you move forward: Your book had a street date of June 1st. This is a hard on-sale date, adherence to this is demanded by the publishers for many reasons. The most obvious is that first week sales of a repeat author are particularly important for hitting the New York Times Bestseller list, a “label” that helps sell the book in perpetuity. Another other is that it gives all of the outlets for your book a level playing field in terms of being able to market the book to their clientele. Breaching an on-sale date is supposed to raise alarms, and result in the suspension of future shipments of restricted titles.

As your sales department can confirm, two area Borders and two Barnes & Noble stores (including the one you were in last night) placed your book on sale on Friday May 26th. This happens often with restricted titles. The response from Penguin when we reported it? Nothing. We were angry about the breach, the response, and the fact that we hadn’t even received our shipment yet, but we held back and waited for your books to arrive in our shipment the following Tuesday. They didn’t. In fact, your new book never arrived until the following Monday, the 5th. At that point, we had missed ten days worth of sales and more importantly the same number of customer impressions. We feature Event books prominently on the front counter.

So despite all of that negativity, we pushed on and had what we call a successful event.

You will recall our discussion about business cards and the Japanese. My family considers authors to be guests in our city, and at our event. Our goal is to make the event a comfortable, enjoyable experience for everyone. I hope that you agree that we made an effort to be professional and courteous to you, [co-signing author], and [co-signing author], as well as to our patrons.

We did background on all of you, and used that to market awareness of your books on radio (V’s weekly radio show), on TV (her weekly TV show) in print, and at all of our events and in the store. We know that we cannot sell every book in our city, but we can raise public awareness through our events. We try to make our event the pinnacle of the PR push for the book. There is a city-wide recognition that authors we host are important people. We choose who to host, not the other way around. Many people in New York City click on our web site each day because we are a reliable barometer of what sells, but more importantly we are on the cutting edge of the industry on how we sell it.

I want to clarify a few things we talked about last night. Signing stock at chain stores signals to the people who did take the time to come to your [our independent bookstore] event and support you that their effort was not necessary. More importantly, calling attention to that fact that you need to leave to do such a thing is insulting to your hosts. If that was something you felt compelled to do, you probably should have done so without drawing attention to yourself. I chalk it up to you not understanding the dynamics of the situation. Other booksellers may not be very forgiving. Some in particular that we know would simply stop carrying your books without comment.

Put another way, bookselling is a very small club. Independents talk to one another regularly. We love to make people stars, it’s why we do what we do. The chains are always late to the party, the wholesale outlets even later. Independents may not do the volume, but we definitely pick the people when we want to. Conversely, much like John Rain, when we want to kill an author we can always make it look like natural causes. There’s always a different book to push.

This is not to suggest that I did not enjoy our conversation, nor do I not look forward to continue selling your books. On the contrary, as I said you didn’t have all of the information.

To drive my point home: the full page New York Times ad for The Da Vinci Code book release quoted just one bookseller. She paid for your dinner last night. You might want to consider that when you talk about how B&N is really driving sales in this country, particularly in the presence of an independent bookseller.

Or as your agency training would put it, know who you’re talking to. Fortunately, we’re in the Midwest so we can laugh it off. If we were in Japan, I’d have killed you to avenge the family honor.

Really, truly.

Keep the faith,
G


From: Barry Eisler [mailto:beisler@earthlink.net]
Subject: RE: Feedback
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 11:49 AM
To: G

G -- glad the event went well from your perspective; we certainly seemed to have a good crowd and good atmosphere and I enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks for the info about the laydown dates. This isn't something I know much about, but I will forward your email to the relevant folks at Putnam.

As for your other points... you must have misunderstood me when we were talking about B&N. I didn't say, nor do I believe, that B&N is "driving sales in this country." If anything, for books like mine, I would ascribe such a role precisely to independents like [yours]. I did say that the chains are important distributors of mine because they sell my books in volume. I don't think that's a controversial point.

So I can't apologize for signing stock at chains, my friend. They're important distributors in my business, and I can't make a living selling through independents alone (nor would I have been able to build my business as I have without the backing of independents). If I insulted you by doing I see as best for my business, I regret it, and am somewhat surprised, as it's not a reaction I've run into before.

If you'd like to have me back for another event, I would be delighted, as you, along with other key independents, have done a tremendous amount to get me where I am, and where I hope to go. You also run a first rate signing and seem like good people. But whether I do a signing with you or not, you should know that I'll also sign stock at as many chains in town as I can. This is a business decision for me, not at all personal, and you shouldn't feel insulted by it. I assure you I wouldn't feel insulted by any business decision you were to make about my books, whether pushing them, carrying them, or "killing" them, as you put it. I would similarly understand if, knowing that I will be doing stock signings at chains while I'm in town, you were to decide not to invite me back to present with [your bookstore]. I will always expect you to do what's best for your business, and will respect your decisions even if I don't agree with them. I hope you'll be able to extend me the same understanding.

As you may know, I write a blog at http://www.barryeisler.com/blog.html . Mostly it's on politics and language, but occasionally I post something on the biz. If you like, I could publish our exchange, which I think would lead to a good amount of illuminating commentary. Just let me know.

Best wishes,

Barry
http://www.barryeisler.com



From: G
RE: Feedback
Date: June 15, 2006 11:30:10 AM PDT
To: beisler@earthlink.net

Dear Barry,

Levity apparently requires clarity. Penguin wants to push you to “the next level.” This is an exact quote from one of your publicists. This was repeated by our rep who sells your imprint. I spent the time to give you some feedback because I respect their request, and I respect your work enough to give you some constructive criticism. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do, given the expectations of your publisher. I don’t have to do anything other than sell your book. Really, truly.

What I’m trying to communicate to you is that independents are independent thinkers. We don’t make decisions that are purely corporate. We sell a lot based on emotion, gut instinct, the desire to offer our customers something special. Many independents have been hurt by B&N, Borders, Amazon. Like I said, we talk with one another. It’s a small club.

Like many of the key independents, we’re in the business of selling books and we also produce author events. In order to drive the publicity for an event, particularly for genre fiction, there has to be a unique quality to the experience we’re offering. Part of that uniqueness is the opportunity to meet the author and purchase a signed book. If someone can go anywhere in town and purchase a signed book, then that unique aspect of the event marketing is lost. Your publisher expects us to sell books when you come to town. They expect us to generate media. They expect us to build your audience. This requires a degree of cooperation.

It makes complete business sense for you to make as many personal contacts with booksellers as you can, chain or independent. These are the people who will actually sell your book. This aspect of your zeal to self-promote I respect. My instinct tells me that you’re doing whatever you can to achieve success. That’s the first rule of business growth, determination.

Do I feel insulted because you signed at B&N? Of course not. Many authors do when we host them. Did I think you asking directions to B&N was an odd request? It’s the new number one. Did we laugh about it afterward? You bet. Would other independents have been offended and done something about it? You better believe it. And that’s the lesson you need to learn, friend.

Michael Barson can confirm that there are not a big number of people who buy books in this country. I’m referring to the group of people who decide what goes on the shelves, not the readers. I’m suggesting that you may alienate some of these people with your approach. Amazon doesn’t like B&N. Wal-Mart doesn’t like Borders. And the leading independents don’t like anybody who doesn’t read what they sell. We walk the walk. We know who you are.

Again, I’m spending my time writing to you today because I’d also like to see you go to “the next level.”

Travel safe on your way there.

Cordially,
G



From: Barry Eisler [mailto:beisler@earthlink.net]
Subject: RE: Feedback
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 5:09 PM
To: G

G, I do appreciate your efforts to explain the independent world view. I'm not sure I understand your point, though -- it's okay for an author to sign at a chain, but he shouldn't admit to an independent that he's doing it?

I suppose it's an issue of sensibilities, like the Victorians and sex -- "of course it occurs, but it shouldn't be discussed." And sensibilities, even when they aren't apparently logical, are an important part of culture. So if I offended you -- even if you managed to laugh it off -- with my inquiry about the whereabouts of B&N (as opposed to with the signing itself), please accept my apology.

I think what's made me overlook this sensibility issue is two things. First, many independents have proactively steered me to the chains in their towns after I've finished a formal signing, and (mistakenly, it seems) I assumed that all independents would be equally comfortable with acknowledgment of such stock signings.

Second, I tend to be comfortable with such acknowledgment myself. For example, I certainly don't have a problem with you pushing and selling the works of other authors, and I don't expect you to try to conceal it from me. Why would I? You couldn't make a living selling only my books any more than I can make a living working only with independents. That's why I recommended other writers to you at dinner last night; that's why I was happy to do an event with other authors at your store.

Anyway, thanks for your understanding about the importance to an author of stock signings at chains. The sensibility issue aside, signing stock at chains helps me move more books -- as I'm sure you understand, given that you yourself bought two of the copies I signed at B&N last night.

I recognize this is a private exchange and won't publish it if you don't want me to, but I do think this would make excellent blog material because there are a lot of other authors who could benefit from knowing what you've tried to explain to me. What do you think?

Best wishes,

Barry



From: G
Subject: RE: Feedback
Date: June 16, 2006 7:21:48 AM PDT
To: beisler@earthlink.net

Dear Barry

V and R read our exchanges yesterday and said laughingly “it’s obvious you guys are lawyers.” I thought that was pretty funny. I’m not getting $250 an hour to keep this up so I’ll just stick to selling books.

Travel safe and keep writing great books.
Cordially
G

Television and Your Future Self

I've done 15 signings in the last two weeks, and a lot of people have asked for advice on how to write a novel. I tell them, "Don't watch television."

There's a common misconception that novels get written in a mad rush over a month or two in an isolated cabin or on a mountain top. They don't. They get written an hour or two at a time, day by day, over the course of many years (eight years, in the case of my first novel, Rain Fall).

"An hour or two at a time, day by day, over the course of many years"... well, that's exactly how people watch television, isn't it?

There are only 24 hours in a day, and only so many days in our lives. If you use those daily hours doing one thing, you can't use them for something else. It's that simple.

Television is seductive in part because when you watch an hour-long show, it feels like you've finished something. By comparison, an hour spent on something that's going to take you years to finish feels like nothing at all -- certainly it feels like something that can be skipped without consequences.

But those hours add up, one way or the other.

Think of what you can do with an hour a day for, say, four years. Become a black belt in a martial art. Acquire a foreign language. Learn a musical instrument.

Write a novel.

Or you can have watched many award-winning prime time television shows, all of which are no doubt excellent entertainment and thoroughly enjoyable.

What you can't do is both. You have to choose. There's no right answer; it's a question of what's important to you. But you should choose knowingly. Don't delude yourself into thinking, as you plop down on the Barcolounger and fire up the remote, that one day you're going to rent that isolated cabin and write that novel you've always been thinking about. It won't happen. That one day is today. It's right now. It's every day to come, however many you have.

Having trouble deciding which to do? Here's something that might help.

Have you ever wished you could send a message back in time to your past self, warning yourself to do or not do something you did in the past? Wouldn't it be great if we could do that? Sad that we can't.

But we can do something just as good as sending messages to the past. We can receive messages from the future.

If your future self could send a message to her (or his) past self -- you, today -- what message would she send? Listen hard, and you can hear it.

Is she telling you to watch television for an hour a day? Or is she telling you something else?

Listen to her. She's smarter than you are because she's lived longer. You know she has your future interests at heart. If you listen, really listen, she'll show you the way.

Cell Phones, Cars, and Guns

Various states have banned drivers from using cell phones. Other states are contemplating similar laws. Proponents of a ban argue that cell phone use in the car is distracting and causes accidents. Opponents ask, what's next? Listening to music, eating, conversing with your passengers? Some people suggest a compromise: it's dialing that's distracting, so let's permit drivers to use their cell phones only if they are wearing a headset or speaker phone.

I find public cell phone shouting so widespread and deplorable that I'm tempted to suggest permitting cell phone use only when driving, and with the windows rolled up. But I digress...

I don't think there's any reasonable debate that punching numbers into a tiny keyboard while trying to operate a motor vehicle will cause more accidents. Let's accept for the moment that it does. The more interesting question, I think, is whether talking on a cell phone, even with a headset, ear piece, or speakerphone, is sufficiently distracting to cause more accidents.

There's something about using a cell phone that suppresses people's awareness of their environments. Not all users, but certainly a significant percentage. How else to explain cell phone shouting? A diner sits in a restaurant, murmuring to his dinner companion in a tone carefully modulated to match the surrounding ambiance, and the moment the cell phone rings and is brought to his ear, he's shouting as though oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room -- as indeed, he suddenly is.

A global experiment has been conducted, and the results are in: cell phone use dissociates the user from awareness of her environment. I don't know what could be more obvious, or less controversial. And if there were a drug that dissociated the user from awareness of her environment, surely we would ban its use during the operation of motor vehicles and heavy equipment.

But here's where we come to the heart of the matter. No doubt, cell phone use in the car will cause more accidents. Equally doubtless, it is enjoyable and economically productive. The first has to be balanced against the second. I don't have any data, but let's start with an extreme example to illustrate the point: if cell phone use caused ten additional road deaths per year but added $10 billion to GNP, would opponents still want to ban it?

Maybe. It's an uncomfortable thing, assigning a dollar value to human life.

I'm in Texas now. In many stretches along Interstate 10 from El Paso to San Antonio, the speed limit is 80 miles per hour. If you've taken this drive, you'll know that 80 mph can seem agonizingly slow. I'm told there's a proposal in Texas to boost the speed limit to 85 mph. Opponents argue this would increase the number of accidents and deaths. I'm certain that it would. I'm equally certain that lowering the speed limit to 45 mph would save lives. Why aren't opponents of the faster speed limit agitating for a still slower one?

Because, like all of us, they don't like to admit that in crafting laws we must always be mindful at some level of the dollar value of a human life.

All reasonable people care about human life. All reasonable people care about the economy. Where we draw the balance is what separates us. But acknowledging the existence of that balancing act might bring us together.

Before someone tells me that every human life is sacred and can never be measured in dollar terms, let's do a quick thought experiment. To use my previous, extreme example: if each life lost to highway cell phone use added one billion dollars to the GNP, how many lives might then be saved with that additional money?

One more thought about cell phones:

It's clear that use of a cell phone induces behaviors that otherwise would not be expressed. Absent a bad row, people don't spontaneously begin shouting in restaurants and other public places. The cell phone might not be the cause of the rude behavior as such, but it is certainly the behavior's catalyst.

Now let's think about firearms. What's that saying? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Let's try putting it another way: "Cell phones don't cause public shouting, people cause public shouting."

I own firearms and enjoy using them. My views on the subject are complex. But watching (and being forced to listen) to people using their cell phones, I can't deny that there are tools the use of which dramatically alter the behavior of the user. In other words, certain tools cause people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do. We therefore ought to be open to the possibility that the ability to simply pull a trigger might induce behaviors that a knife or stick or garrote would not. That wouldn't be the end of the conversation, only its beginning. Still, I'd like to think it's worth talking about.

Hopefully without any shouting.

Shhh... It's a Secret...

Since the Kepler's launch of The Last Assassin on Thursday, I've driven 1000 miles, visited 35 bookstores, done eight interviews, and gotten an unenviable amount of sleep. So no time for a longer piece today, but here are a few thoughts provoked by what I've picked up on the televisions people insist on watching while they exercise in LA hotel gyms...

Apparently, the movie Superman cost something like $270 million to make. I heard it reported like this: "And Superman, which opens in July, cost over $200 million to make... although industry insiders tell us the true figure is closer to $270 million."

Hold on a minute, I thought. $270 million? Come on, we're talking about a movie, not an aircraft carrier. And then I realized... it's bullshit!

Book publishers inflate figures all the time to create hype. When you hear about a 100,000 hardback print run, figure the real number is 30 or 40,000. When you read about a $300,000 marketing campaign, figure about a third. (The one area where publishers seem to be scrupulously honest in their publicity efforts is the number of cities they report an author as visiting on a book tour. For example, the entire Bay Area gets counted as a single city. When you're doing the driving and the appearances, it feels like more than that. But I digress...).

The theory is, if the publisher reports that it's spending a lot of money marketing a book, that in itself will make people take notice. Why should the movie industry be any different? The feeling is, "Damn, $270 million, that's gotta be some movie. Great sets, great computer generated imagery... I ought to see it, just to know what someone spent so much money on." The alleged $270 price tag itself becomes the news.

My hat is off to Hollywood for knowing exactly how to get the public to swallow these ridiculously inflated reports. They don't say, "Superman cost $270 million to make because of the awesome set designs and CGI." The public wouldn't be impressed by that. Instead, they pretend to try to hide the actual size of the budget while "industry insiders" go around "leaking" the "true" inflated figures. If it's a leak -- if it's a secret the studios are trying to keep -- we'll believe it much more readily than we would if they just openly reported it.

When someone acts as though he's trying to hide something, we often don't notice that the dissemination is in his interests. So next time you read a "leak" about something going on in the government, ask yourself if this is something the government in fact wants you to know about. What works for Hollywood works elsewhere, too.

I've got another piece on the subject that will appear on MJ Rose's terrific blog Buzz, Balls & Hype soon.

Okay, gotta head to San Diego -- see you soon.

The Last Assassin is Here

Hi all, I hope you'll forgive what I hope will be no more than an annual indulgence: an announcement that my new books goes on sale today. It's called The Last Assassin, and it's the fifth in the award-winning series about half-Japanese, half-American "contract killer with a conscience" (EW) John Rain.

I had a great time writing this book -- partly because the research took me to Barcelona and the Sea of Japan, of course, but more importantly because of the opportunity to spend more time with Rain as his character evolves. In The Last Assassin, our hero finds himself in unfamiliar circumstances -- not just geographically, but emotionally, as well. His romance with Israeli agent Delilah is deepening, but at the same time he learns of the existence of an infant son by a former love, Japanese jazz pianist Midori Kawamura. Even for an ordinary citizen, a love triangle is dangerous business. But for a guy like Rain, it's going to be downright deadly...

In the first four Rain books, the stakes, generally speaking, are Rain's life. In The Last Assassin, Rain's life, although in constant danger, hardly matters to him -- in fact, he would gladly trade it to protect his child from enemies who look at the child as a way to get to Rain. And the harder Rain tries, the worse the danger becomes, such that you can think of the plot line of the book as a series of increasingly desperate double-or-nothing bets Rain is forced to gamble, with his son's life and his own soul the stakes of the game.

My interest in those stakes and what Rain would do if forced to play for them became first the backbone, and finally the heart of the new book. The flesh, as ever, is suspense and action; realistic tradecraft and other operator tactics; evocative locations, in this case Barcelona, New York, Tokyo, and Wajima; steamy sex; most of all, a fascinating ensemble of characters led by Rain himself, a "multifaceted killer with the soul of a poet" (Mystery Ink Online).

The Rain who will take you through this book isn't the same man we met (seemingly so long ago!) in Rain Fall. Rain is aging, for one thing, and as he does so his priorities begin to shift. His outlook changes, too, in reaction to the loves he's known and losses he's endured throughout the series. Most of all, Rain isn't the loner he was, nor does he want to be. But building a clan -- his lover Delilah, his partner and friend, ex-Marine sniper Dox -- presents its own dangers to a man used to freedom of maneuver. As Rain notes in the opening of the book when he reconnoiters Barcelona before meeting Delilah there, "Barcelona was unfamiliar, but the real territory I was trying to navigate isn't marked on any map." That new territory, and Rain's attempt to find his way safely through it, is the story of The Last Assassin. I hope you'll enjoy it. And if you find yourself in one of the more than 30 cities I'll be promoting in through June and July, stop by. It would be good to see you.

Seeing Ourselves Through Other Eyes

Last week, the Pentagon released its annual China Military Power Report. In the course of detailing China's ongoing military buildup, the 58-page report notes that "China's leaders have yet to adequately explain the purposes or desired end-states of their military expansion."

This phrase struck me as strange. Why would we expect China, or any country, to explain itself to our satisfaction? Would we believe them if they tried? Isn't the job of divining China's true intentions the job of our State Department experts and CIA spooks?

Besides, don't we already know the answer? China's economy is increasingly dependent on foreign-sourced energy. China therefore seeks a stronger ability to project power to secure sea lanes and otherwise protect those energy supplies. China also wants to pressure Taiwan, possibly to reacquire the island by force, but, even short of that, to cause the US to devote more forces to protecting its democratic ally.

Other explanations: China fears a US-North Korean conflict that could spill over its border. China has fought wars with neighbors India, Russia, and Vietnam, and if new tensions arise would like to deter or defeat them through greater military strength. China has a restive muslim population in its hinterland and would like to be better able to deal with it militarily.

Finally, China probably doesn't trust US intentions. They want to deal with us as equals on all fields, including militarily.

(I think that about covers it. Maybe now China won't have to explain.)

But the phrase isn't just strange; it's also probably unhelpful. China is nationalistic, sometimes to the point of prickliness. During a visit to the Macau museum several years ago, I was struck by the obvious "we are a great power and deserve to be treated like one!" subtext in the displays on the return of Macau by Portugal. I have western educated Chinese friends who are surprisingly vehement in insisting that Taiwan will always rightfully belong to China. And remember how way back in those halcyon, pre 9-11 days, Colin Powell persuaded China's leaders to release a US aircrew only by assuring them that we were "very, very sorry" (for once, a sensible, deliberate use of the double very!) to have unintentionally crossed into Chinese airspace?

(BTW, that episode also involved some thoughtful linguistic choices. Wishing to avoid inflaming public opinion, the administration never referred to our airmen as hostages or even captives. They were instead "being detained.")

So I can only imagine how an implicit demand that China's leaders explain their military policies to us will go over in Beijing. "Explain to you?" I would guess Hu and company are thinking. "No, you explain to us!"

And maybe we do explain ourselves to China, at least in our own eyes. But are those explanations any more satisfactory to the Chinese than theirs would be to us?

By way of explaining the request for an explanation, the report also notes that "Absent greater transparency, international reactions to China’s military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns."

Something tells me the Chinese are aware of this possible problem. It's hard for me to imagine them saying, "Hey, that's a good point... maybe we should be a little more transparent with these guys."

The notion that we could insist on an explanation like this from China suggests to me that we don't have a good idea of how China, or probably other countries, perceives us. We see ourselves as the good guys, with a concomitant right to demand explanations from others. But whether we're good or not good isn't the point. How others perceive us is. For those who don't share our view of ourselves, demands like this one will come across as arrogant, irritating, suspect, and weak.

This isn't some touch-feely notion. If we misapprehend the other side's perceptions, there's little chance that our demands or other initiatives will achieve the results we want and expect. What do we do after that?

Part of knowing your enemy is knowing how he perceives you. Without it, the war on terror is going to be a long one indeed.

Gasaholic Communists

There's a lot of angst in the air, and much hand wringing in Congress, regarding the current price of gasoline. There should be. Gasoline is way too cheap.

What am I, one of those social-engineering, green-minded, soft-headed knee jerk liberals who wants to foster a utopia where everyone would commute to work by bicycle and the only place to find an SUV would be a museum?

Not at all. I'm just a plain old, market-oriented conservative -- a dying breed, it's true, and so a quaint way to picture oneself, but that's what I am. I trust markets to set prices and don't trust governments when they interfere. All I want, really, is for the price of gasoline to reflect its true cost. To let the market work.

"What do you mean, its true cost?" you're saying. "Between federal and state taxes, there's already an average of a 59 cent surcharge on every gallon of gas we buy at the pump. Doesn't that mean the price of gasoline is already higher than its true cost?"

No. The true price of a gallon of gasoline is whatever it costs the nation to secure it. How much of the size and scope of our military is devoted to securing access to foreign oil? How often do we in fact have to wage war to secure that access? After all, while there were doubtless many reasons for the first and the current gulf war, it's impossible to imagine either of them if Iraq didn't have the world's second largest oil reserves.

Our use of oil, which involves the transfer of hundreds of billions of US dollars to regimes like those running Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, strengthens these anti-democratic regimes and finances their foreign agendas. What does that cost us?

Add these and other costs up, subject them to rational economic analysis, and you'll have the true cost of a gallon of gasoline. The difference between the true cost and the current price can be closed with a tax. Anything less than a full tax is simply a hidden subsidy. And as a good, market-focused conservative, I don't want the government to be in the business of subsidizing commodities.

And I know you don't, either. We're all Americans, after all; we know how silly it is when communist regimes like China and North Korea subsidize rice, or when the Soviets used to create those terrible Moscow queues by subsidizing bread. We're smarter than that and wouldn't want to dabble with that sort of communist market interference here.

Except... maybe we would. How long does an American politician last after suggesting that road access be priced higher during rush hour? Only until the next election, typically. But roads are in higher demand during rush hour. If the price of access is the same when the demand is higher, you'll get... why, you'll get queuing. Of course, we prefer to call road queuing "traffic jams." It helps obscure the real cause of the problem: rush hour road access is artificially cheap.

But everybody needs access to roads! And everybody has to buy gasoline! If it were more expensive, only the rich could afford it!

Well, that sounds like the definition of a market economy to me. After all, what could be more natural -- and desirable -- than items in higher demand commanding higher prices? If you think there should be exceptions to this rule, I hope you'll have a little sympathy for those Chinese peasants. They can as reasonably claim to need to eat as we claim to need to drive. Why are subsidies and artificially low prices communist claptrap for them, and a fundamental right for us? What is it about roads, cars, and driving that perverts our principles and sullies our common sense?

It's an odd thing. The same pundits and politicians who insist that medical marijuana be prohibited across the board because ordinary people might want a toke, too, simultaneously insist not only that Americans should be able to drive whatever fuel-inefficient vehicles they want, but that the government should subsidize their ability to do so. Why do we focus only on the potential costs of the first, and only on the public's appetites for the second? If we had to diagnose politics like these, we might call them... schizophrenic.

Still not convinced that something's wrong here? Try this: when it comes to cars, we're so neurotic that our favored means of creating fuel economy is by having Congress ordain it, in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. This is classic, Soviet-style, command economy stuff, yet when it comes to cars we embrace the practice as though it's Adam Smith himself. Congress ordering fuel efficiency, rather than permitting the market to create demand for it? It's worse than embarrassing. It's un-American.

President Bush made headlines in his January State of the Union address when he described America as "addicted to oil." He was right about the addiction, but wrong about the source. We're not addicted to oil. We're addicted to subsidized oil. And the way to cure our addiction isn't through "technology," as the president suggested with Dr. Feelgood sincerity and a magician's sleight of hand, but simply by ending those insidious, hidden subsidies and letting the market work the magic we Americans know it will.

FAM Management a Disgrace

While we're on the subject of airplanes, here's something considerably less lighthearted than pretentiousness at 30,000 feet.

It seems that the Federal Air Marshals -- the men and women who fly undercover on commercial flights as the last line of defense against another airborne terrorist attack -- are being put at risk, along with the passengers they're charged with protecting, by the gross ineptitude of FAM management.

Such is the conclusion of a report by the House Judiciary Committee, which recently completed a two-year investigation (the investigation took a while because of FAM management stonewalling).

Here's an article link. Google air marshal anonymity and you'll get much more.

Some of the idiocy of FAM management is mind boggling. Grooming and dress codes, for undercover operators? And even if, as a FAM spokesman claims, those policies have been modified, why have any dress code at all? It's not as though management has to worry about the public impression FAMs might make because -- are we all taking notes? -- these men and women are under cover. No one is supposed to know who they are.

The reason they're under cover, I hope to needless to say, is because we don't want to make it easy for terrorists to know who to take out first. We want to make it hard for terrorists, not easy, right?

Don't be so sure. On several occasions, FAM management invited news crews to film FAMs training for their missions, and the footage and commentary were subsequently broadcast on network news. I imagine al Qaeda has been grateful for the opportunity to learn FAM tools, training, and tactics.

Think about the burden that FAMs accept. One mistake, and an entire plane full of people, including the FAMs, will die. It's possible that a FAM could have to stand by while passengers were executed before making his move if that's what were required to save everyone else on the plane. Imagine the emotional burden you would have to carry after such a "success." Imagine what it would cost you.

I'd say it's a pretty tough job, and a hell of an important one. So why are the people who purport to manage this organization making it so much harder? What are their motives? What is going on in their minds?

Cronyism in FEMA. And in the CIA. Maybe that's what's ailing the FAMs, too.

None of this is a coincidence. There's a pattern here. You might even call it a culture. And in my experience in business, cultures are always set at the top.

Pretentiousness at 30,000 Feet

Coming back from the Much Ado About Books convention in Jacksonville, Florida on Sunday, I managed to upgrade to first class on my United flight. The steward (yes, I know it's fashionable to call them flight attendants, but I don't see what was wrong with steward and prefer two syllables to four, other things being equal) greeted each first class passenger and inquired, "And will you be joining us for lunch today?"

I couldn't help myself. When he got to me, I glanced left and right, then inquired back, "Is there somewhere else I could go?"

Is United training its people to talk this way? (Obviously, I need to fly first class more often to collect more data.) Help me understand: is the idea that by having the steward ask, "Will you be joining us for lunch today," instead of simply, "Will you be having lunch," you'll suddenly forget that you're strapped into a flying tin can breathing recycled air and be fooled into thinking you're enjoying the eight course gustation menu at Le Cirque, instead?

Look, I'm all for politeness and nuance and I believe in the power of language, but you have to use words properly to achieve the desired effect. You can't join people for lunch when you're already sitting down and have nowhere else to go without a parachute. The phrase just doesn't translate at 30,000 feet. And for the steward to suggest otherwise feels like the cheap gimmick it is.

United, if you want people to think they're having a fine dining experience in first class, you're probably going to just have to provide one. It would be more expensive than aping the customs of terrestrial restaurants, but it would have a better chance of success.

I mean, what's next, lunch reservations?

Questions About the NSA's Data Mining

Although the Bush administration hasn't formally acknowledged it, it seems clear that at some point after 9/11 the NSA began a data mining operation in which the NSA examined phone numbers called by tens of millions of Americans with the aim of creating "a database of every call ever made." Email addresses and internet use might also be subjects of the program (I'd be surprised if they weren't). The ostensible goal of the operation is to tease out and expose terrorist networks.

Revelations about the program are acting almost as a political litmus test. The Wall Street Journal thinks CIA Director nominee Michael Hayden, who ran the program at the NSA, should get a Medal of Freedom; Frank Rich of the New York Times calls him "yet another second-rate sycophant."

Here are the questions that I think will take us toward the heart of the matter:

1. What is the program's benefit? That is to say, does it expose terrorists?

I'm not sure. On the one hand, I doubt terrorists would be so stupid as to use traceable phones to call each other. On the other hand, terrorists, like other criminals, sometimes do remarkably stupid things. I can imagine terrorists believing they could call each other as long as they used code in their conversations and not realizing that it was the fact of the calls themselves that might lead to exposure. Or they might use pay phones, but those pay phones could then be monitored more closely.

Even if the program could theoretically expose stupid terrorists, though, we still have to ask whether it could adequately single them out from under mountains of false positives. Think of how many phone calls are made on any given day in the United States. That's a lot of data. Even if the program could narrow the likely hits down to only a few thousand, that's still a huge number of people for the FBI to investigate.

Without hearing from someone with expertise in the field of data mining, for me the answer to the question, "Does it expose terrorists?" is, maybe.

2. What does the program cost? That is to say, how much of a civil liberties intrusion does it represent?

It seems that the program hasn't involved listening to the content of phone calls (that was the earlier NSA program, exposed in December); rather, it seems the program's focus has been solely an examination of who's been calling whom. How invasive this feels is going to vary from person to person. My own feeling is, it's a gray area. If the government comes into my house, that's an intrusion. If they look at my house from the street, it's not. If they go through my garbage, that's a gray area (BTW, there is judicial law on all these scenarios. I'm not (yet) talking about the legal outcomes; I'm talking about how these government activities feel to me as an individual). Similarly, if the government listens to the content of my phone call, that feels like an intrusion. If they observe me with a cell phone, it's not. If they examine records to see whom I've been calling, that feels like a gray area. Your mileage may vary.

Another aspect of the program's cost is its potential for abuse. Frank Rich, in his May 14 New York Times column, suggests that the program was aimed not at al al Qaeda, but at domestic leakers. My guess would be slightly different: I imagine the program was indeed originally targeted at AQ, but regardless of whether if was found useful for its original purpose, I can all to easily see it being continued for, shall we say, domestic purposes. This is just speculation, of course, but when I imagine what it's like to be part of this embattled administration, with a sub 30% approval rating, no way out of a foreign disaster of its own making, and upcoming midterm elections, I can easily imagine the desperation and paranoia that would make certain players turn the NSA on the "traitors" in the government and media who are causing all their problems.

But my take in this regard is partly a function of my distrust of the current administration. If you trust Bush et al and believe they're good men, you might not share my concerns. Still, I think a program like this one would lead almost any administration to abuse, and I'm not much more comfortable with it in the abstract than I am in its particulars.

(By the way, remember when the first NSA domestic-surveillance program was revealed last year by the New York Times? Bush assured us that "one end of the communication must be outside the United States." I wondered at the time how, given the program's objectives, such a limitation could possibly be relevant. It now seems that it wasn't true, either.)

Let's stop here for a moment. Part of the reason reactions to the program are so divided, I think, is because it's inherently difficult to measure the program's benefits (the administration claims that the program and others like it have saved thousands of lives, but I place no weight at all on those claims given the source. Maybe the program has saved lives, maybe not. The administration has too much incentive to lie to be trusted on this) and individual impressions of the cost are idiosyncratic. Accordingly, people are coming to radically different answers to the cost/benefit question.

3. But there's another important question. Regardless of its cost effectiveness, is the program legal?

The leftist reaction is, "Of course it's illegal. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in 1978, created so-called FISA courts that must issue warrants before Americans can be subjected to eavesdropping. The administration conducted this program in the absence of FISA warrants. Ergo, illegal."

The rightist reaction is, "All the NSA did was look at what phone numbers were calling what phone numbers. That's not eavesdropping. No eavesdropping, no need for warrants. Ergo, legal."

I'd like to know more before answering. But I will say this: I've never been able to understand why the administration refused to get FISA warrants for the program that was disclosed in December, a program that apparently does involve actual eavesdropping. I can't think of any legitimate reason for the administration's failure to do so. The FISA courts almost never even refuse a requested warrant, and the FISA act provides even for retroactive warrants in cases where an agency like the NSA has to act too quickly to get a warrant in advance. The administration has already blown the "but this wasn't eavesdropping" argument with the first program. It's too late for them to claim it here.

In fact, it's probably inaccurate to think of these as two separate programs. First, the NSA plays connect-the-dots with the phone numbers. Next, it listens in on phone numbers that look suspicious. Same program, different steps.

One other thing I'd like to know is, why were the phone companies turning over these records in the absence of subpoenas? Qwest refused, but AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth cooperated. Was this out of a sense of patriotism? Were there implicit threats involving government contract awards?

What do you think? What am I missing?

More Leadership from Congress...

Representative Patrick Kennedy, a six-term Democrat from Rhode Island, admitted being addicted to prescription drugs after driving his green 1997 Ford Mustang convertible into a security barrier near the Capitol Friday and almost creaming a police officer heading in the opposite direction. The police report said that, at the time of the accident, Mr. Kennedy's "eyes were red and watery, speech was slightly slurred and, upon exiting his vehicle, his balance was unsure."

Well, that sounds like prescription drugs to me.

(This isn't the first time for Kennedy, BTW. He went to rehab as a teenager for cocaine addiction, and has since said he was in recovery for depression and alcoholism.)

Kennedy said he was rushing to a vote. It was 2:30 in the morning.

Here's Kennedy's mea culpa: "I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans."

Translation: this isn't my fault, any more than it's the fault of all the other victims who suffer from it.

Look, I'm not an expert. Maybe alcoholism and other forms of drug addiction are a disease. But is that really the point? Shouldn't we -- shouldn't Kennedy -- be focusing on whether, as a victim of this disease, he's capable of fulfilling his responsibilities as a representative to the US Congress?

Glaucoma is a disease, and it can cause blindness. What would be the relevance of the cause of the blindness if a sufferer wanted a job as a bus driver? We would say, with sincere sympathy, that the person was unqualified, and should find another way to contribute to society.

Longtime Kennedy friend and former campaign manager Jack McConnell said calls for Kennedy's resignation were misguided.

''If Congressman Kennedy had had a heart attack, nobody at all would be calling for him to step aside.''

Well, I guess if Kennedy had suffered a heart attack instead of being so blotto that by his own admission, "I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police or being cited for three driving infractions," we wouldn't be having this discussion. But what if, after the heart attack, Kennedy had been brain damaged? Or lapsed into a coma? Would we be discussing the origins of his condition then? Or only the condition itself?

Bill Lynch, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said people in Rhode Island "respect the fact that [Kennedy is] courageous enough to deal with this in the public eye, which is very difficult.''

Do they really? I don't. Where else was Kennedy going to deal with this? He crashed his car in public. The police arrested him in public. And all right, getting caught in this kind of behavior in public is difficult, I'll give Lynch that. But I can't muster a lot of respect for someone who's doing something difficult when there's simply no alternative, easy or otherwise.

Senator Edward Kennedy said of his son: "I love Patrick very much and am very proud of him. All of us in the family admire his courage in speaking publicly about very personal issues and fully support his decision to seek treatment."

Look, Patrick is Edward's son, so the senior Kennedy had to say something. And he gave it his best, with those three "verys" trying to pump up a shaky vote of confidence.

But again, what, precisely, is PK's courageous act? And why is it even noteworthy that EK supports PK's decision to seek treatment? Could EK have conceivably counseled PK against treatment?

I'd also like to know when it become a virtue to discuss personal issues in public. Call me old-fashioned, but I find this kind of behavior weak and vaguely embarrassing. I'd much rather see our leaders doing their job and not insisting that I get to know them so well.

Predictably, Kennedy made sure to say "I'm taking full responsibility." But responsibility for what, and to do what, exactly? Let's go back to sympathetic Jack McConnell's heart attack analogy, and substitute the words "heart attack" for the words "drug and alcohol addiction:"

"I take full responsibility for my heart attack, meaning I will promptly check in to the nearest emergency room."

That would be a non sequitur, of course. And in fact, Kennedy's use of the "I take full responsibility" dodge is implicit acknowledgment that his condition is nothing at all like a heart attack. Taking full responsibility for Kennedy's problems would mean resigning his seat and finding some other way to serve the public weal, a way for which he has not disqualified himself. But that would also entail a genuine regard for the people of Rhode Island, rather than a narcissistic focus only on what's best for Patrick.

I don't mean to be harsh here. Kennedy clearly has problems, and clearly needs help. I hope he'll get that help and solve his problems. But in the meantime, I don't want him driving the bus.

I only wish Rush Limbaugh were here to offer some guidance on all this.