My father, Sol, drove a cab, so I have an affinity for drivers.

Mohammed is not really a taxi driver. Rather, a college-educated accounting professional who had to flee his beloved Syria two years back.

My friend Leigh and I caught a late night showing of “Interstellar” at the Dubai Mall. We liked the movie, though the sound mix was off, obscuring dialogue at key moments. Worse, at the start of the movie, during some tender moments between the father and daughter protagonists (what would Rust Cohle have made of all this??), people in the theatre were yakking loudly. A couple to the right of us, two women behind us, and a very noisy pair of young Emiratis two seats to our left. This is allowed in New York, where theatergoers compete to give the funniest or snarkiest movie criticism. Here, it’s just noise. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I yelled, loudly, WILL YOU PLEASE STOP TALKING?? No more talking for the rest of the movie.

I ask Mohammed if he likes Dubai.

“I don’t want to be a refugee,” he complains. He left Syria after graduating university with an accounting degree. His English is good, but he speaks softly. “My friends are in Canada, Europe, all over. I just want to be home.”

“I am so sorry for the suffering in your country,” I offer, in sympathy. “Two hundred thousand Syrians dead in a few short years…”

“Three hundred thousand,” he insists, correcting me. “The media does not report the correct numbers. And many families don’t report their dead. The U.S. should have supported the rebels from the beginning. Assad would have been gone, and a lot of people would have been saved. Now the rebels have to fight the Islamic State and the government.”

As he talks, I struggle to present a non-intervention position.  I think of the costs, in blood and treasure of the Iraq and Afghanistan engagements. Of the gradual resentment, then resistance to the occupations. Of unexpected outcomes. Budget deficits.

We approach Sharjah and I wish him well, and wish his country peace. The civil war continues and Islamic State insurgents now control a large swath of Syria and Iraq.

What happens when the United States is invited to intervene and doesn’t?

——–

Twenty years ago in Rwanda, the Hutu tribe massacred over one million Tutsis in an orgy of genocidal violence. The United Nations did not intervene, despite desperate pleas from Rwandans and diplomats.

I’m working in my UAE hotel room on Saturday afternoon. I should be out, but I need to write and I still don’t have lodging in Afghanistan. A handsome young African man is at the door asking to clean the room. I ask him where he is from.

“I’m from Rwanda,” he says, in a thick, lyrical but understandable accent. He exudes warmth, calm, and ntelligence. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Theogene,” he says, with a smile, showing me his name tag.

“Is that a Rwandan name?”

“No, it’s Greek,” he says proudly.

We talk a while and I encourage him to seek me out the next day. He asks if I need anything, then he loads me up on instant coffee, tea and creamer.

Sunday comes, I’m back in the room, and a knock comes on the door. It’s Theo and we continue our conversation. I turn on my recorder and start to talk about the book project.

He smiles. “I know all about that. I went to your Facebook page. I know all about you. I read about your run-in with the Dubai police. I know you are going to Afghanistan. Woo, that’s a dangerous place.”

The slaughter of the Tutsis happened when he was six, after a plane carrying the Hutu president was shot down by rebels. His father was killed early on in the 100 days of killing. His mother, six brothers and two sisters survived.

“They did it with machetes. Not guns, mostly machetes.”

Do you think the United States, the UN, the EU should have intervened to stop the killing?

“Sure, they should have. I have one example, a big school. Many Tutsis fled to that school, protected by the French. Five thousand  people went there. For the first day, they were protected. Outside, the Hutus were shouting, “We want to kill them.” The French stayed two days. then they left. They went to get their luggage and left the country.The Hutus got inside and killed all those people. No one survived. The UN, the US, would have saved those Tutsis. There was only one guy, Romeo Dallaire (Canadian UN peacekeeper), who told the UN there is a genocide going on in Rwanda. But nobody cared. OK, some people would have died, but to reach one million deaths…we were abandoned.”

Are you angry?

“Yes, France and my country don’t understand each other because of that. Around 1998, Bill Clinton came to apologize, Kofi Annan came to apologize. France did nothing. The Tutsis did whatever they wanted. Nobody was there to stop them.”

When should countries intervene?

“My point of view is they should intervene if they have the ability, the equipment to stop a genocide. Some African countries are not able to stop this kind of violence by themselves.”

Colonial powers came to ‘save’ Africans in past centuries, and then enslaved them. Are you sure you want Belgian and French troops occupying your country again?

“Don’t come to enslave us, come to help us.”

How do Rwandans live together after all that killing?

“There has been a reconciliation. The killers were put in jail for a long time. Even to say Hutus or Tutsis is an abomination. We are all one. We are all Rwandans. There is no problem now.”

Theogene laughs. “OK, many people were angry. They say, you have to avenge your brothers. Some have forgiven, but some can’t. We tell them, if you can’t forgive, keep it in your mind, and don’t give it to anybody. But it’s OK, Hutus and Tutsis are living together.”

I am not looking for trouble.

I leave the Dubai Movenpick sports bar with Mississippi’s own Leigh Ziller, who has time to spare for making her 1am flight.

We are directed to the brand new Tram, which will take us to the Jumeirah Metro station, then on to luggage pickup at the hotel, and a ride to the airport.

As we turn right on the street with the Tram, the station is 100 meters away. Public transport is modern, beautiful and easily accessible in Dubai.

It’s 9:22pm Gulf Standard Time (GST).

There are three ways to get there. You could walk on the right sidewalk and jaywalk–severe penalties and very dangerous on this busy road. You could walk on the tiny divider separating traffic from the tram tracks. Even more dangerous. Or you could follow the Tram arrows and walk next to the tracks.

I had three Amstels over three hours, Leigh one or two more. OK, they were large beers, and the count is only a guess. Liquor in the Emirates is strictly confined to western-style hotels. Some emirates such as Sharjah are completely dry. As we approach the station, I encourage Leigh to walk faster as the tram is coming. Suddenly, a highly excited thirty-something man approaches us, accompanied by a young policeman.

“You can’t walk there,” he says in a huff. Laying down the law, he says, “That is dangerous. You can get hurt.”

I thank him for his safety instruction, and keep going. “Look at how wide this road is,” he says, pointing at the other side of the divider between train tracks and speeding traffic. “You could easily walk there. But you didn’t. You could have been hit by the train. That is against the rules.”  The wide area of pavement actually narrows to a tiny strip halfway to the intersection, making it unsafe, in my view.

We have less than a minute to get on that tram. “Time to spare” for a flight can quickly become, “What time do you have?,” then, “I think we can still make it.”

He goes on and on about the rules and our transgression, and, poof, away the tram goes. Whatever. They come often and I’ll assure this neurotic fellow that we fully understand and will never do it again.

“THANK you SO much,” I say, “This is fully our fault, we are so very sorry, we love your country, and we surely will make not make the mistake again. Now, we really must go…”

“You can’t go,” the policeman says. The fellow is very young, and his demeanor is more senior retail clerk than police officer. His starched gray uniform is overlaid by a bright neon yellow vest. “I called my supervisor. He is coming.”

I ask his name. “Hamad.”

I ask when this supervisor may come.  “Soon.”

Leigh speaks up. “You better just arrest us or let us go. Arrest us or let us go right now.” I ask her to allow me to talk to the police, as she is upset and is slurring her words. “I’m a southern girl. Southerners slur their words.”

It’s 9:55pm Gulf Standard Time (GST).

The supervisor does not appear to be in a hurry. We have been here half an hour. Hamad is now joined by another police officer, also young (early twenties?). “What’s your name?” I ask. “Ahmed,” he replies. “Have you ever been to the United States, Ahmed?”

“No,” he smiles. “But I want to go to Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas??” I exclaim. “No, no, Ahmed, there is drinking there and a lot of sin. You want to go to San Francisco, or New York, the greatest city in the world.”

Ahmed beams, “OK. NO LAS VEGAS!” He waves his hands dismissively and laughs.

A third policeman arrives. Clearly, this is Dubai’s principal criminal event of the evening.

As each new policeman arrives, I methodically go through the story, repeat the injustices and, with increasing fervor, point out that Leigh has a flight to catch.

One at a time, they start out telling me that we broke the law, and one at a time, they listen carefully, then agree that we should be let go.

But they can’t let us go. Ahmed points to a security camera. “I would let you go, he would let you go, but we are being watched.”

“Do you smoke?” Hamad asks. “Would you like to smoke something interesting?” He is also young, with short, wavy, black hair, uniformed and thin. The three talk to each other and are on their phones throughout.

“ARE YOU TRYING TO SELL ME MARIJUANA NOW??” I ask, exasperated.

He laughs. “No, no. If I did that, possession is at least 6-7 years in prison. This is Iranian tobacco. You should try it. I gave it to a black American woman once, and she said, are you sure this isn’t marijuana?”

“No, but thanks for offering. I don’t smoke.”  He lights up one for himself in an unusually-shaped, short metallic-looking cigarette holder.

I tell them about our visit to the Jumeirah mosque and the lecture on Islam’s protective attitude toward women, and I point at Leigh, who is looking suitably exhausted, numb and anxious. “For an innocent mistake by two visitors who LOVE YOUR COUNTRY, you are subjecting a woman to public humiliation and suffering?”

Ahmed looks guilty, and concerned. “Yes, Brian,” we are now on a first name basis, “I often stop people for speeding and when I see a woman in the car, I just let them go.”

“GREAT POLICY, Ahmed!” He asks for her flight ticket. I answer, “No one uses physical tickets anymore. She has a digital ticket. Hold that thought.” I ask Leigh for her flight information, and she fumbles in her purse and gives me the scribbled flight details. Policeman number three asks if we are thirsty, I say, sure we are, and off he goes for some drinks.

It’s 10:12pm Gulf Standard Time (GST).

The Tram station manager comes out. As he approaches us, Ahmed whispers, “He works for Oracle.” What? He is the manager and he has another job? He tries to walk past me but I step in his way. “I am told these fellows want to allow us to go, but you are insisting that we are fined.”

He offers a smug, self-satisfied smile. “I only wanted you to be safe. The train could hit you if you walk that way.”

I point out the sidewalk and the illogic in his suggestion that we walk this narrow strip. I insist there was inadequate signage. “Didn’t you see the signs?” he asks.

“Yes, there was a sign.” I pointed to a sign with an image of a tram and an arrow pointing to the station. “And we followed it.”

“I never told you to walk here,” he dissembles. “I told you to walk across the street.”

“Actually, no, you pointed to this side stretch of pavement here which narrows to a dangerously narrow one. And if we walked across the street, how would we get to the stop without jaywalking, which is dangerous and illegal?”

“I only care about your safety…”

“I am so pleased to hear that. Because my impression was that you wanted us punished and inconvenienced.” He insists that is not the case. I put my arm around him and say, “I am grateful that you are looking out for your customers, especially out of country visitors who are using your beautiful tram for the first time. We made a mistake. It is fully our error. I am sorry for it. We did our very best to follow the rules.” I look at the station’s large digital clock through the glass window. I ask him to intercede to let us go. He walks up to the policemen and huddles with them.

It’s 10:35pm Gulf Standard Time (GST).

“Can we go?” I ask. The waters arrive, bought at a local shop blocks away. We down them, along with some breath mints. Just in case.

“Ah, he’s here,” says Hamad, as a fourth officer shows up in a sturdy white police vehicle. Young. Gray uniform with yellow neon vest. He is determined to get to the bottom of things.

I go through the story again. Followed the signs. Did our best. Out of country visitors. Love your country. Arab hospitality, Islam’s courtesy to women. The flight. The absurdity of keeping us here for more than an hour. He listens carefully, but then says we broke the rules.  Two young, nicely dressed local boys, early teens, walk across the tracks.

“STOP!!” I insist, startling them. “What did you just do?? Don’t you know that you can’t cross the tracks??”

The young one, perhaps 14, said they were just trying to get to the tram to catch the train. “EXACTLY,” I protest. I turn to Ahmed, who is laughing. “Arrest these people at once, Ahmed.”

The older boy intercedes, “We didn’t do anything wrong.” He looks at me, pleading his innocence, then Leigh, then the policeman.

“OK, I say,” and remove myself from their path. “You can go now. But, please, don’t do that again.”

“We won’t,” the older boy promises, as they hurry off.

Just then, a young couple hurriedly jaywalk to get to the station. Leigh had told me about an article in the UAE’s daily newspaper The National decrying an epidemic of jaywalking deaths. I ask the policemen why they are not being stopped and fined.

Hamad sighs. “We get it. We want to let you go. I told the station manager, ‘He is an old guy, imagine if it was your father.'”

The African security guard joins the party. I tell him our story. “You did nothing wrong. There is no way you could know.”

“See?” I ask.

And, then at a few minutes before 11pm, the Major arrives. He is a little older, in his mid-thirties, with a thick mustache, shorter and more muscular than his underlings. He crosses the street and asks me what happened. Same story, only now more insistent. “This woman,” Leigh is now squirming on the concrete slab, begging to pee, “has a plane to catch, and if she misses it, there could be thousands of dollars in expense. And she has five children waiting for her at home.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We have to take you to the police station and you will have fines to pay.”

At this point I realize, whatever I think may be right, this is another country with another set of laws, and they have made their decision. And the outcome will be ugly. No matter what I say.

Unless, of course, I keep talking.

Islam. Women. Mosque, America. Tourism. Arab hospitality. Flight. Inconvenience. Best efforts. Humble apology. Already here almost two hours. Rude treatment by station manager. Your four police officers each believe we should be let go. The security manager says we did no wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he says meekly. “If the station manager insists, we have to fine you.”

“Are you saying that you, a Major in the police of the United Arab Emirates, do not have the authority to exercise your judgment over an incompetent and rude clerk at a train station??”

He looks at me. He looks at Leigh, who declares, “There is no way I will make it to my plane.” I say, angrily, “You will make your plane.”

The Major studies us and looks at his underlings and, asks, “Do you have your passports?”

“Yes,” I say, and offer mine, as Leigh retrieves hers.

He studies the stamps. “Where are you coming from?”

“Serbia,” I answer, suppressing my instinct to throttle him and scream, ‘WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER WHAT CITIES I HAVE BEEN TO??” I resist the urge to pitch him on “War: The Afterparty.”

“OK,” he says. “I will call the manager of the transport company.” I am amazed, but nod my head in a daze, as he walks across the street to talk on his phone. Why he needs to walk away is a mystery to me, but, as Very Bad Things may be imminent, my now agitated brain chooses to conserve its juice a few minutes longer.

Hamad looks at my picture in the passport. I say, “Just as attractive in person, don’t you think?” He laughs, and I add, “AND DON’T EVER CALL ME AN OLD MAN AGAIN. I am a young, attractive man, I am not old.”

He protests, “No, no, I don’t think you’re old, it’s just an expression, I was insisting that you be treated with respect.” By this time, we are on warm, intimate terms.

The Major returns. “He says, OK, but now I have to call the director.”

OF COURSE! A customer walks a few yards in the wrong area, no harm done, so let’s rouse the director of the national transport company out of bed on a Saturday night! Images of Robert DeNiro working on the cables in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” dance across the tracks.

It’s 11:20pm.

The Major returns.  He hands me back our passports. He begins a speech on how he would have to obey American laws in my country and that’s why….but I’m not listening as I realize he is letting us go and trying to put lipstick on a pig. I keep my mouth shut, resisting the impulse to argue his points, and say thankyouthankyouthankyou, can we go now?

I say goodbye to the remaining young policeman, and, grabbing Leigh’s hand, plunge into the moving traffic.

“You can’t jaywalk in front of the cops!” Leigh objects, reasonably. I walk us directly into oncoming traffic. “Please hurry, we have no time.”

I flag down a taxi. Tumbling in, I tell the Pakistani driver with the Major’s mustache, “We need to get to the airport but first she needs to pick up her bags.”

Leigh insists on stopping somewhere to pee and, drained, manic, focused, with a newfound sense of righteous authority, I insist we wait till the hotel or all will be lost. We get there and I run in and retrieve her bags while she demands the receptionist let her use the bathroom, then we dash to the airport.

On the way in, I use Leigh’s phone to check her in on the United web site.

We arrive at 12:10am, fifty-five minutes before an international flight to Washington Dulles. I fly through the airport with her suitcase while she runs behind with two bags.

I arrive at the counter first. The United attendant looks at me like I’m insane. “You’re too late. The security agent is gone. It’s less than an hour before flight time.”

Leigh arrives. “Five minutes too late,” I announce. “Well, we tried. And at least we’re not in jail.”

I look at the agent. He looks at Leigh. “Is there any way,” I ask. “Any way, anything…”

He looks around. “Can I see her passport?”

“Yes, yes, you can.” He takes it. “Are you checked in?” he asks as he hits some buttons. He hands her back her suitcase. “I can’t give you a boarding pass, you can get one at the gate, where you can check your bag. But you better hurry.”

We fly to the passport control line. I tell her my phone is dead but if she can’t get on, she can page me.

I turn around and wander through the terminal, laughing hysterically, A woman in a black hijab looks at me, frightened.

She misses the flight by one minute. But they put her on one at 2:15 via Zurich. She texts me about the Swiss men on her plane.

“Forget Dubai. I’m moving to Switzerland.”

I’m ready for Kabul.

Headline from the Wall Street Journal: House Report Finds No Attempt to Mislead Public Over Benghazi.

Also this: Military, CIA Responded Properly.

Meanwhile, in Benghazi, over two hundred Libyans  died in the past month as militia rule the cities.

Tales of the Unexpected: A US/ NATO coalition dislodges a Middle East strongman, who rules over diverse ethnic groups, and chaos ensues.

This is a surprise?

I talked to Reim, a Libyan filmmaker living and working in the United Arab Emirates.

Reim grew up in the UK but went back home to try to live in Benghazi eleven years ago. Her Dad is from Tripoli, mom from Benghazi. She stayed  six months.

“It was a very safe place to be. The sense of community was really strong. The people were very simple,” she said, asking me not to take that the wrong way. “As long as family are healthy and food is on the table, they don’t overthink much more than that. Your whole social life is based on community. Because of the embargo, there was not much western influence. If you understand ancient history, and appreciate heritage sites, ruins, it’s a beautiful place.”

UN sanctions, instituted in 1993 in connection with Libyan involvement in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, were lifted on September 12, 2003, after Libya fulfilled UN requirements. Those sanctions followed years of previous on-again, off-again US sanctions.

And, now, after the bombing, the death of Khadafy, liberation? Reim describes a country of economic devastation, nonstop violence and political chaos.

“From what I can see, from family there, it is a completely different scene. Families are moving back into grandparent’s homes. There is so much gunfire outside. My parents own an apartment building. A rocket hit the top of the building. No one got hurt. What is happening there is not being publicized.”

What was your sense of the US/ NATO bombardment?

“I was not the most nationalistic Libyan, growing up in the UK. One thing I did think, everyone wanted to have freedom of speech. That was why people got out onto the streets. It was a safe place, quality of life wasn’t a problem as it is now. At the time, everyone I knew thought the intervention was a positive step. More freedom of speech, a democracy, positive steps. So there was a lot of support for it. It has not panned out the way people thought.”

Reim laughs. Gallows humor.  “I had a hilarious conversations with my mom. They were in Tunisia for a long time, in Tunis when the revolution broke out. So they went to Cairo and it broke out there. Then to Benghazi, where they led the revolution by a day.”

Reim’s mom is now nonchalant about the daily violence. “Oh, there was just gunfire outside.”

Reim continues, “It reached a point that a bomb would go off and she would react, and then start to accept it in the background. I had a cousin get married in Libya last month, while all this gunfire is happening. It’s now a normal thing as people get on with their lives. There are way too many factions now, in different cities. They can’t even agree on a parliament.”

Foreign policy writer and professor Stephen Kinzer gave this blunt conclusion in a Boston Globe headline earlier this month:

“The US Ruined Libya”

Kinzer has scathing words for what he claims is the most ill-conceived of Obama administration interventions.

“Recent reports from Libya, issued to coincide with the third anniversary of Khadafy’s overthrow and murder, suggest that the state has ceased to exist. There is no central government. According to Amnesty International, ‘Armed groups and militias are running amok, launching indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and committing widespread abuses, including war crimes, with complete impunity.’ Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State back guerrilla factions. The unfortunate United Nations envoy, Bernardino Leon, says he can hardly begin to mediate ‘because the protagonists are hundreds of militias.’ Full-scale civil war is a real possibility, so the worst may be yet to come.”

While one committee after another paralyzes Congress with partisan investigations of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, accusing the president and secretary Clinton of high treason, thousands of Libyans are dying in the chaos.  And after ten thousand US/ NATO  sorties delivering 7,800 bombs caused the downfall of the Libyan government at a cost to US taxpayers of between $896 million to $1.1. billion, some Libyans on the wrong end of those sorties are not friends of the United States. Or western style democracy.

“This could and should have been predicted.” Kinzer continues. “Removing a long-established regime is dangerous unless a clear alternative is ready. It produces a power vacuum. Rivals fight for places in the new order. By suddenly decapitating Libya, the United States and its NATO allies made conflict, anarchy, and terror all but inevitable.”

Two hundred people dead in Benghazi alone over the past month. You don’t hear much about that. After all, non-American lives are cheap. Rather you hear wall to wall coverage of whether administration talking points were accurate in the confusing days after the tragic attacks killing four Americans. Why was there a CIA annex in Benghazi? There is plenty of speculation.

Congratulations to the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Amidst the howling from partisans embarrassed by the findings, which are dead on consistent with the New York Times’ investigative report, they get big marks for putting patriotism and process before politics. Because it was always clear what happened in Benghazi.

We dropped thousands of precision munitions on the heads of government loyalists. Relatives, comrades and maimed survivors of those assaults are still around, and very angry.

We helped decapitate a decades-old government, leaving militias, jihadis, people with guns running the country and controlling the streets.

Militias knew there was a CIA facility in Benghazi, planning things that were not necessarily friendly to them. Maybe they also knew about the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, or of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, or Arbenz in Guatemala.

There were indeed massive protests against the YouTube video ridiculing Islam and Mohammed throughout middle eastern and north African capitals, and initial logic suggested the assaults were connected to those events. Instead, they were used as a distraction.

Should we have bombed Libya? You can make your own judgment. What is not in dispute is one more set of unintended consequences, in this case, a lot of dead Libyans and the near complete breakdown of security and the economy.

One of the first programs that we produced on the still-nascent FORA.tv in April of 2006 was Stephen Kinzer speaking at the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Public forum speakers offer, if you’re lucky, a big idea or an engaging presentation. Kinzer offers both: exhaustively researched incisive analysis and big-hearted storytelling. I carried Stephen’s books around Guatemala and Nicaragua. He helped with a critical introduction to Carlos Chamorro in Managua.

Stephen spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times. He was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua during the 1980s, and in Germany during the early 1990s. In 1996, he was named chief of the newly opened Istanbul bureau. Since leaving the Times, he has taught journalism, political science, and international relations at Northwestern University and Boston University. And continues to publish some of the best reads on American foreign policy.

We caught up to discuss some of the key themes of “War: The Afterparty.”

Is there something in the American psyche that lusts for war or has a comfortableness with war that you see in very few other countries?

I think there is in the American psyche some kind of martial spirit. It comes from our history. America was largely settled by people that used force to resolve disputes, the old ‘we shoot horse thieves’. I do think you get this western movie paradigm, ‘this town isn’t big enough for both of us.’ Another reason has to do with geography, which I consider to be one of the unappreciated factor in geopolitics. If you are living in Europe, you have to learn to get along with other countries. You are in the middle of a bunch of them. If you are living far away from other countries, separated by vast oceans, you don’t have to settle much. In addition, our sense of exceptionalism leads us to believe we can accomplish whatever we want. We have had such spectacular achievements…settling the West..we built the transcontinental railroad, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal…which leads to a sense of invincibility. The idea that there is a military solution to troubles in the world is something that is more prevalent here than in other countries.

Do Americans need an existential threat?

Americans love a demon. A particular individual especially, even better than to have an idea or a concept or a force that’s agin us. You know this is not a new idea. Many historians like Arnold Toynbee had an idea that, countries need enemies, and if you don’t have an enemy, you should go out and get one. Otherwise society loses its focus, its coherence, society gets weak and flabby, you need to have a threat to keep people focused. And I guess the subtext to that is it needs a threat to show how much they need their military industrial establishment. A peaceful world is obviously a threat to a lot of entrenched interests. Americans are often quick to judge groups or tendencies or organizations or people that we don’t like as existential enemies. We tend to think there is one way to organize society. We feel like countries that are too resistant to our suggestions are automatically defiant to us. We don’t like the idea that different societies and cultures come up with different ways to organize society. We feel like we have been providentially given the key to fix people. And it would be so churlish of us not to go out and share it with other people including those people, especially those people, who are so backwards that they don’t realize how much they need our help and how important it is.

You mentioned the idea of Providence. Do you believe that the belief in a divine hand guiding America foreign policy is widespread? I mentioned the phenomenon to a Serbian writer last week and she laughed at me.

I don’t think we feel it as much in a religious sense as we did in the 18th and 19th centuries. I do think the essence is still there. We still believe that we are the indispensable nation. We are the country that all other countries should look toward.

We believe that the world is divided into two groups, one is the United States and the other group is all the other countries in the world, which in different degrees are struggling to be like us in one way or the other. But they don’t have the one thing that is really worth having in life and that is the chance to be American.

You referred before, Stephen, to an organizing principle around which the country needs to keep focused. Is there a star chamber, a group of people driving these national priorities or is it a lot more loosely organized than that?

I think it is more loosely organized than that, but I see a variety of interests converging within this national psyche that we’ve talked about. People are very easily frightened. Americans are no exception to this. The ability of government to sell its narrative is huge. And it’s not considered acceptable to question any of its fundamentals. That’s why the limits of acceptable debate on questions of foreign policy are so narrow. In order to participate in the foreign policy discussion in Washington, you have to accept a hundred principles, assumptions about America and American power, and then you can sit at the table and argue about details. Almost all of the think tanks in Washington, certainly the leaders of both political parties are part of this consensus. If you dissent from that consensus you are considered some kind of a wacko who really does not deserve a seat at the table or a chance to be taken seriously.

There is one other factor that I think is very pernicious. The political system by which we elect our leaders is effectively a form of legalized bribery that is not accepted in any other democratic country. For example, in England, if you are running for office, you don’t buy yourself an ad on television. You can’t do that. That’s illegal. If you are living in Germany or Japan or Australia, you can’t get a corporation to contribute money to your political campaign. You can’t have a corporate lobbyist sitting in the capitol writing out amendments for legislators to attach on to a bill. These are things we consider natural parts of our political system, but they are fundamentally undemocratic and they rob the political system of the variety in debate that could enrich it.

Among the worst offenders in the foreign policy sense is the defense industry. They are very clever not just in their spreading around of campaign contributions, but they do something even better, or worse, depending on your point of view. Every time they get one of these giant contracts to build one of these big defense projects like the F-35 fighter, the first thing they do is divide the project up into pieces, so that each part of the project is built somewhere else, and then they make sure that the districts of every important senator or congressman benefits from this project. Where I live in Boston, just north of us in Lynn is the General Electric plant that is building an engine for the F-35 fighter. We decided we couldn’t figure out which company should build the engine, so we gave it to two companies. You only need one engine, but we are building it twice, we are paying double. If I were the congressman from Lynn, I would like to get up and say this is a complete waste, we don’t need two engines, let’s just build one, but I couldn’t do that, it would result in a thousand people in my district losing their jobs. This is also a very effective way of controlling the political process. That is something that is more extreme in the United States than it is in other countries.

Some who supported Barack Obama’s election have been disappointed by his foreign policy. Do you think he ran into certain pressures or obligations that forced him to change his point of view?

Certainly in the area of foreign policy and security policy, there is a tremendous magnetic pull in Washington towards the center, towards all these basic assumptions. Everybody around you believes all those things, so it seems like that must be gospel. You could reach beyond that circle of people, but neither in foreign policy nor in domestic policy did Barack Obama do that. I never believed that Obama was going to name people to foreign policy, security positions who were seriously questioning the consensus view. Therefore, I haven’t been surprised about what happened.

If you were President or Secretary of State, what are the fundamental things that you would change in terms of how we see ourselves on the world stage and how we use our military?

First of all, I am a hyper-realist on foreign policy, I am not a fantasist, I am not a utopian, I don’t believe in changing the world, I’m not a Trotskyite, or a Wilsonian, who believes there should be constant upheaval. I actually like stability. And I also believe that national interest always rises as the principal force shaping foreign policy and you are not going to get away from that so that’s fine, countries should act in their own interest. But we should stop and think about what really is in our interest over the long run, and not do things that just make us feel good for a few minutes, but actually wind up undermining our own security. We tend to be very short term oriented. We want to get things done very quickly. We have the power to achieve a lot of things but we don’t have the power to control the long term consequences. We would better defend our own national security by being much more prudent and conservative in our interventions abroad.

Don’t be lustful. Don’t be promiscuous, Don’t feel like you got to grab at every problem that is out there. The world is being reshaped by forces that the United States does not control. This is a psychological shock for Americans. We still haven’t adjusted to this. We are brought up to believe that we rule, when we decide something, we get it done, that is the can-do mentality.

Watch the FORA.tv event with Stephen here:

http://fora.tv/2006/04/13/Overthrow_America_s_Century_of_Regime_Change

I asked New York Times Company President and CEO Mark Thompson whether this is a good or a bad time to be entering journalism. The exchange took place at the recent Abu Dhabi Media Summit. The audio recording of the Q/A is below and here is the transcript of his response.

My daughter just graduated with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, right up the street from you. Is the future bright for young journalists or has the ecosystem for young journalists collapsed?

It’s a really interesting question. For me, it’s never been easier in a way to become a journalist, and indeed to focus your journalism in ways that potentially millions of people can see it.  You see on platforms like YouTube incredible pieces of fresh, original journalism, where you can get to millions of people without having to go through the sort of gatekeeper of a broadcast network or a traditional newspaper.

But careers are harder. I do think that being a journalist is becoming somewhat more like becoming a novelist or becoming a singer or becoming an actor. You can still have a wonderful career. But the uncertainties and the economics look very different from when journalism always felt like an elite industrial job, where you have these very, very profitable platforms, these newspapers, and journalists could unionize hard drive repairIn some cases, best-data-recovery.com recovery from hard disk is only the first step, after which you must perform a hard drive repair. and they would get a share of the benefits. I think that’s changing somewhat.

Though I would certainly hope that, where we can, we are keeping some institutions where the great strength and depth of journalism, a kind of collegiate sense of values and professional discipline is really important. There is a danger that you will end up in the US with a rather brilliant academic structure training journalism with exactly that kind of collegiate quality and heritage, and then the graduates will go out in this kind of complete mud storm where it is very hard for them to get further professional support. One of the things that I am very proud of is that the New York Times is still recruiting great young journalists and, although not with the certainty of twenty years ago, we are giving them great careers. And we have in our newsroom great journalists in in their twenties and great journalists in their seventies.

https://soundcloud.com/brian-gruber-2/nyt-question