Let Us Now Set Aside Childish Things

THIS ARTICLE LIKED THE INAUGURATION SPEECH. TOO BAD FOR HIM. WRITTEN BY ANOTHER ATHEIST. ANY BELIEVERS AT THE NEW YORKER. DOUBT IT.



There were echoes of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, but President Obama uttered no words today that will be quoted in a hundred years.

that's for sure.




He has never been a real stem-winder or a coiner of unforgettable phrases; what he’s always been is a great explainer, who pays the rest of us the highest compliment—the appeal to reason. Today he explained why Americans need to grow up,



GROW UP? I WORKED LIKE A BUG TO GET ANYTHING FOR MYSELF. GROW UP. I AM SO FUCKING GROWN UP I CAN'T STAND IT. WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF LANGUAGE IS THAT. YOU GROW UP. DON'T CALL ME INFANTILE YOU FUCKER.


WHAT IS SO GROWN UP ABOUT THIS;
“We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

IT'S DOWNRIGHT PETULANT AND CHILDISH. WE WON'T WAVER IN OUR DEFENSE.


and the tone and vision of his speech—sober, realistic, clear-minded, undaunted—were absolutely equal to the occasion and the times, down to his requisite scriptural passage: “The time has come to set aside childish things.”

WHAT CHILDISH THINGS. I AM NOT CHILDISH. YOU'RE CHILDISH. FUCK YOU. CHILDISH THINGS. SOUNDS GOOD DON'T MEAN SHIT.




(This nonbeliever was also pleased to be included, for once, in the roll call of faiths—especially after Rick Warren’s utterly sectarian invocation.)

The speech was, among other things, and in spite of the gracious gesture at its opening, a devastating repudiation of ex-President Bush, who seemed to be shrinking physically as well as historically whenever the camera found him, until, by the end, his unimportance was almost bewildering. Now he is gone.

The rest of the world was listening, too, and Obama saved his most eloquent words for them: “Because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass;





that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve;

SOON DISSOLVE??? RIGHT. OVERNIGHT. THE OLD SEA CHANGE. THE MORNINGING AFTER A GREAT DIVIDE.

that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.” He also set for his goals in America’s two ongoing wars a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a “hard-earned peace” in Afghanistan—not victory. Here, too, Obama showed that he won’t allow tempting rhetoric to undermine what’s possible,


TEMPTING RHETORIC? WON'T ALLOW?


what’s real, which is part of his call to a “new era of responsibility.” But no lines were more passionately delivered by this restrained and conciliatory man than these: “We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

OR CHANGE IT. WE WILL SQUANDER AS MUCH AS WE WANT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WORLD. NOT APPOLOGIZE OR WAVER IN ITS DEFENSE. WAVER IN ITS DEFENSE. THAT IS UNRESTRAINED TO SAY THE LEAST. NOT WAVER. SOUNDS GREAT, MEANS A LOT HE CAN'T POSSIBLY MEAN.

And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

He delivered something better than rhetorical excitement—he spoke the truth, which makes its own history and carries its own poetry. As for the poet who had the impossible job of immediately following the new President, I’ll leave it to you to judge.

The most reassuring thought on this Inauguration Day is that we Americans always get the President we deserve. NO WE DON'T. IT'S ALWAYS BEEN CLOSE CONTEST. THIS IS BULLSHIT!!
Posted by George "the big lier" Packer



Obama
| Politics


Responsibility

The key word in Obama’s Inaugural is going to be “responsibility.” David Axelrod used it on “This Week,” and other aides are saying the same thing. I think it’s just the right word.

Obama will carry with him into the White House the periodically recurring American desire to be better. It comes at the end of ages of squander and cynicism such as the one we’re just emerging from today. Like earlier periods of our history—the Progressive age, the New Deal, the New Frontier and Great Society, and, from a very different ideological perspective, Reagan’s City on a Hill—this desire has bubbled up from below, but it also requires a President who can give it a national voice. Whether or not he coins a phrase that will characterize his Presidency, Obama is the man for the moment.

2009 is not 1961, and a call to responsibility is not quite the same as asking what you can do for your country. Responsibility is a more sober thing. It demands both less and more than idealism, because what Obama will be asking Americans—and this means Wall Street and Washington, above all—is to do what is required of them.

You can see the desire in the faces of the people—especially the young people—who are gathering on the Mall. They’re almost painful to watch. Their expressions reflect both the burden of our failures and the extent of our aspirations. The desire to be better is ephemeral, and to some extent it’s bound to be disappointed, but without it the Bush era ending today would be irredeemable.
Posted by George Packer



A President Who Can Explain!

A senior Army officer in Iraq once told me that, if only Bush had explained to the public what was really going on, no euphemisms, no cheerleading, just get on T.V. regularly, maybe with a map like F.D.R. during World War II, and level with the American people, then they might not have abandoned him and the war so completely. Instead, the White House rolled out every phase of the war like a marketing campaign.

This piece in today’s Times reassures me that Obama knows the difference between campaigning and governing, and between strategic communications and deliberative democracy. I’ve expressed worry that, for all their talk of transparency, he and his team think they can bypass the press and exercise total message control after the School of Rove. But Obama’s instinct is to talk to his fellow citizens like adults (just watch his encounter with Joe the Plumber), and his pre-inaugural interviews have borne that out. Rather than simply asserting his plans with anodyne uplift and ignoring the counter-arguments, he’s explained honestly, he’s reasoned, he’s even offered to listen. This approach will serve him well in the terribly difficult months ahead.

In this way, as in so many others, Obama is about to put an end to the age of Bush. Sorry, Kristol (and by the way, Interesting Times notes that your one-year contract is up and you’re still appearing on the Op-Ed page—say it ain’t so, Rosenthal and Sulzberger).
Posted by George Packer


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January 12, 2009

From All Iraqi Refugees, Bernie, Thank You

When Bernard Madoff was defrauding investors, do you imagine he gave a thought to the refugees he was going to harm? Human Rights First, formerly Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, has a refugee protection program that advocates on behalf of, among others, Iraqi refugees (HRF also gives free and very able legal representation to Iraqis and others, including a few people I know, in asylum cases). The refugee protection program was funded by the late Picower Foundation, at $250,000 a year. All of that money is gone. Between Picower and another now-defunct foundation, JEHT, which was also conned by Madoff, HRF is looking at a shortfall of over a million dollars this year. If you want to help this excellent organization, you can.

Meanwhile, here’s hoping prosecutors get Madoff’s bail revoked so he stops sending diamond necklaces and jeweled watches to his relatives. When his net worth is totalled up and parceled out among his victims, wouldn’t it be nice if Iraqi refugees get something more than twenty-five-dollar cufflinks and two-hundred-dollar mittens?
Posted by George Packer


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January 9, 2009

Obama’s Guam Option

I know Iraqi refugees are somewhere around 87th on anyone’s agenda. I know I should be writing about Gaza or economic stimulus—another day. But today, let me call your attention away from those pressing matters to a new report, scheduled for release on Monday, by Natalie Ondiak and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress (soon to be the Obama Administration’s Heritage or A.E.I.). It’s called “Operation Safe Haven Iraq 2009,” and it’s a detailed proposal for an airlift of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have worked with Americans there and whose lives are in danger, in perpetuum, as a result.

The report establishes the rationale for such an operation, familiar to readers of this blog (where the “Guam option” was first proposed over a year ago). It also lays out, in the careful manner of Washington think-tank papers, the steps that the new President would need to take, to wit:

1. Appoint a White House coordinator
2. Review current efforts
3. Finish background checks of qualified Iraqis
4. Begin a four-to-eight-week airlift, probably to Guam
5. Make sure all government agencies—State, Homeland Security, the military—work together
6. Resettle eligible Iraqis here after they’ve been “processed” outside the country


This idea might not hold much appeal for President Obama, for obvious reasons: security risks, cost (CAP roughly estimates a hundred million dollars to resettle forty thousand Iraqis), bad publicity. Iraq wasn’t Obama’s war; he’ll be sorely tempted to want to put it behind him. He could easily point to the current half-measures, such as the Special Immigrant Visa program set up by Congress, and say that, with recent security improvements in Iraq, there’s no pressing need for anything more drastic.

The truth, though, is that present efforts remain sluggish and inadequate. According to CAP, only six hundred Iraqis made it here in 2008, under the Special Immigrant Visa program, which permits five thousand a year. And even a political-military miracle in Iraq won’t protect those Iraqis who identified themselves with the American project and in doing so marked themselves as traitors in the eyes of extremists. Their emergency continues. An airlift would cut through all the obstacles to ending it, all at once.

There are, as the report points out, strategic benefits to protecting our Iraqi allies. It would raise our standing in the region; it would save a remnant of liberal-minded Iraqis who might one day return to rebuild their country. But mainly, it’s the right thing to do. For that reason, the CAP proposal will be an early test of Obama’s willingness to take political risks on behalf of important principles without powerful constituencies behind them.

A footnote: Betrayed, the play that grew out of my New Yorker article on this theme, will be performed next Monday night, at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, as a fund-raiser for the very worthy organization Refugees International. And two of the Iraqis who inspired the play’s lead roles, and who appear in the article as Firas and Laith, will be arriving, after years of effort, on these shores any day now. Al-hamdulillah.