A summit with muslim heads of state?! WTF?

jhildner, if you're out there, do you see why I worry about his association with Samantha Power? Who else would come up with such a patently idiotic stunt?

A modest proposal to improve our image in the muslim world: crush Al Qaeda. Crush the taliban. Increase tenfold the number of muslim students allowed to study here, especially high-achieving students in the humanities who are likely to become influential voices in their home countries.

re the last thought, create a 21st c. version of Rhodes Scholarships that will bring to the US for 2 years of graduate study the best and brightest-- again, in literary and humanistic fields-- young graduates from non-English speaking countries where democracy is weakest and where the potential threat to the US is greatest: Russia China Iran Pakistan, also several from swing states like India Indonesia Turkey Brazil, and then a few from France Germany Japan. Seek out future Bernard Henri-Levys, Ayaan Hirsi Alis and other fiercely courageous and articulate advocates of liberal democratic values who will go back to their home countries and make the case for the US--indirectly, intelligently, and in their native language-- and advance US public diplomacy FAR more effectively than a thousand idiotic "summits" ever could.

Huh- I thought the "tools" referred to Wolfson and Penn, two of the biggest tools I have ever seen.

But Zvika, you're right. She treats international affairs like she treats politics. She doesn't imagine it's her role to shape world opinion, or change things anywhere. Rather, she wants to hang on and manage crises.

If Obama keeps talking like this he'll open up a huge window of vulnerability to attacks by McCain and sober-minded traditionalists in the general election. The antidote to Bush-blundering is being smart, not nice. And for the most part the Bushies have not blundered in SW, S and E Asia, the realpolitik-soaked regions where the notion of the US sitting down to drink tea at a muslim "summit" will invite only ridicule and contempt.

tep I think you're off the mark.  I think sitting down for a meeting with these thugs might be a wasted effort, but I think the notion of a war of ideas is an important issue that needs to be addressed.  when your talking about terrorist recruitment, its all about indoctrination of idle minds.  That's why your proposal makes sense - we need to offer these folks the opportunity to an enlightened education.  However, bringing the brightest  ones over here shouldn't be mutually exclusive.  I fail to see whats wrong with working to improve our image through engaging in public works abroad.  Someone's not going to be so readily convinced that a suicide attack on Americans is a great idea when an American volunteer is helping out their friends and relatives at the same time.  Are you seriously attacking the idea of expanding the peace corps and focusing its efforts on regions that have a negative conception of us?  If so why?

What's the difference between Hillary's "3 a.m." ad and the Bush scare tactics over the last few years?  If people would understand that the job of politics is to PREVENT crisies from exploding at 3 a.m. they might get what kind of scam is being perpetrated under the guise of foam like "tough on national security."

Perhaps a summit with Muslim leaders is a good thing or a bad thing -- but at least it's an idea, for pete's sake!  We need some ideas, and not every idea is goldplated when it comes out.  If we start to demonize ideas, we end up electing people who are scared to have them and scared to express them.

Most of all -- changing the currently morbid relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world is connected at a deep level to both bringing in students on a kind of 21st century Fulbright program (which still exists) and to defeating Al Qaeda.  We need to bring in the best/brightest that tep talks about, but we also need to do that in the framework of a rethought-out foreign and strategic policy.  And that means re-thinking and testing some ideas out -- otherwise it's just a joke.

we should also be trying to counter the money Saudi Arabia has been throwing into global education.

Tep...I don't think Obama is proposing sitting down with Al Quada or the Taliban. But if you, like other "traditionalists" (whatever that is supposed to mean), seem to think that politicking with autocrats in non-democratic states in the so-called War on Terror while isolating pretty much every country with a muslim majority that isn't autocratic or authoritarian is the way to go by all means, toeing the Bush line of engagement is reason enough to vote McCain. Perhaps there is the idea of meeting with those like minded-literary and humanistic Muslim scholars that are already in those positions but have been marginalized for so long to engage them in a way that the US hasn't done.

I'm all for encouraging young, foreign scholars from the Middle East, Asia, India, Africa and other parts of the world to come to US for graduate studies, etc. but do you honestly think that kind of expansion for students visas will come under McCain or Hillary? I doubt it.

Meeting with the right, liberal-minded leaders, scholars and policy thinkers in the Middle East, Indonesia, Africa, and India will no doubt require some fresh perspective on how to better US relations abroad and to build support amongst those very people in supporting military and police actions against terrorists in those regions. The problem with the US for the last 8 years is we've been doing diplomacy in a ham-fisted manner.

at least she knew medvedev's name, more than one can say for obama.

The scholarship program needs to be much more focused and programmatic than the isolated Fulbright scholars, hence the Rhodes analogy.

Call them Tocqueville Scholars and require them to pursue at least two year-long courses in US social-constitutional-political history, including field work on the basic elements of US democracy ie those spontaneous voluntary associations of the sort that Tocqueville identified as uniquely American. Export democracy with brilliant native voices rather than either JDAMs or hollow, meaningless PR stunts.

single: "traditionalist" = someone who understands that interstate relations turn on questions of interest and power, not PR. If you want to combat jihad, then focus on the power equation and turn that to your advantage.

Obama's nice face initiative will likely yield the same results as the Cherie Blair-Laura Bush girls' crusade for women's rights int he muslim world did-- remember that one? That's OK, no one else does, either. It withered about 3 weeks after it was launched in late 2001.

Blah, blah.  Hillary is a political incompetent, plain and simple.  Domestic, foreign, Congressional.  All the same.  This woman would NEVER have been elected to anything more than a school board if she hadn't been married to Bill Clinton.  The only political skill she seems to possess some of is the ability to be nasty when it is opportune.

If you want an idea about what we need to do in terms of public diplomacy, a good place to start is what we did do between August 15, 1944 and January 20, 2001.  Nice point of reference.

pcostello, given that she called him a woman (adding the a to his surname) I'd say she doesn't.  

I'm all for the newfangled Tocqueville Scholarships (but our friend didn't just write accentuate-the-positive stuff about the U.S., and there's a lot of overt and covert criticism which, if it comes from Americans, is seen as treason of course by Republicans).  I fail to see, however, why this is in a zero-sum game with other ideas for getting the logjam of public diplomacy on the move again.

To repeat, I'm not saying that Power's or her and Obama's idea for a summit with Muslim leaders is a good one, I'm just saying that it we start condeming ideas out of hand, it leads to a politics that is scared of them.  And we need some ideas for building a new kind of foreign policy.  It won't just turn up on the porch one morning.

Well see Tep, I learned something today. I never would have know that's what a traditionalist meant. I would have described someone who understands the dynamic of foreign policy as having both a diplomatic (interest) and power dynamic as a realist. As far as Obama's perceived PR stunt, it's hard to say at this point what exactly the dynamics of that 'summit' would be. Is it simple platitudes to talk about talking about jihadists or is it engaging the political and academic leaders in those countries about how best to combat jihad. I think it will take more than drones and boots on the ground.

As for the diplomatic scholarship idea, it's a good idea but I think limiting it to just literary or humanities majors is too focused. Perhaps if the poli-sci courses are a requirement for any of the scholarships given it has a broader appeal to the budding technocrats of those foreign nations.

I think we can agree that the next POTUS has to actually create and implement a multi-pronged approach to dealing with fundamentalist terrorists of the Islamic persuasion including a long-term solution. The liberal education of those countries' future leaders here in the US, engaging with people in those countries that can now best help us understand what needs to be done both diplomatically and by show of power. But the POTUS needs to address not just al quada, it's off-shoots, and the taliban, but must also address non-Islamic, anti-democratic areas of the world need our attention because of our single-minded view that the only threat to America, it's interests abroad and liberal democratic ideals is Islamic terrorists.

"right across the street from where I was teaching at the time"

He's obviously exaggerating this whole post. No political science class that I know of is taught across the street from the building where Hillary spoke. We can't trust this guy.

"A summit with muslim heads of state?!"

Y'know, we could use their support on a number of things. Couldn't hurt to talk.

"A modest proposal to improve our image in the muslim world: crush Al Qaeda."

Thanks, Tep! Now we know not to let them attack us!

"Increase tenfold the number of muslim students allowed to study here" Tep, do you know much about education in the middle east? Their Toefl scores are nowhere near high enough to pull that off. The Arab countries consistently score on the low end. With Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait scoring at the absolute bottom. Needless to say, Iraq is not even on the list

In theory, great idea, in practice a disaster.

A Summit with Arab Heads of State????

Boy that sounds effective.

What will Obama do when they tell him to eliminate Israel?  Oh that's right, he'll speak truth to power.  And Iran will thank him for calling the Summit and stop their Nuclear Program.  Syria will give up on the Golan and unilaterally declare peace.

If I were you , I would keep the Crackpot Arab Summit Idea to yourself.

I have taught English all over the world, and without a doubt Arab speakers and Japanese speakers have some of the greatest difficulties with English. We don't have a problem with Japan so that is not much of a problem. But Arabic and English are so far apart, so it is not like it is anyones fault. Farsi and  South Azerbaijani (the two predominant languages of Iran), at least has the advantage of being much closer, which is why Iranians pick up English much better.

As I said Tep, great idea, but the communication has to be a two way street. How many non Arabic Americans study Arabic? America, the land where even English is not spoken that well, lecturing the rest of the world on the need to speak English. Cracks me up.

yeah, and now I love how everyone is now an expert on Arab affairs. For one, there is already a League of Arab states, so Obama's giving an address there is hardly out of line. Two, last year Israel PM Olmert called for regional summit with Arab leaders (so I guess he is a crackpot himself).

I wish everyone would relax before throwing bricks at the idea.

CRS9TNR: here is a page from the League of Arab States about Israel

Background

Before 1948 an estimated 900,000 Jews lived in what we now know as the Arab states. Since then, the vast majority have left, forcibly in many cases, bringing the total down to fewer than 8,000. The conflict with Israel has undoubtedly been a major factor in this.

The history of Jewish communities in the Arab world is not widely known and tends to be denied or played down by Arabs, often for political reasons.

The aim of this page is to cast a little more light on the subject through links to relevant websites (but please note that we are not responsible for their content). Recognising that this is a sensitive topic, we have tried to include a balanced range of sources. Readers are invited to contact us with suggestions for additional links or other improvements.

Although Jewish-Arab and Jewish-Muslim relations are often viewed in terms of conflict, the historical reality is a lot more complex, as some of the links on this page show. Some writers argue that conflict is by no means inevitable and that, in broad historical terms, Jews have been less ill-treated in the Arab world than elsewhere.

Why must you make such horrendous assumptions about all Arabs? I would be careful about who you are calling a crackpot especially when your own knowledge about the Middle East seems to be nil. As to myself, I simply don't see how his addressing the League of Arab states will be such a disaster as you imagine.

I took a quarter of Arabic last fall.  It's certainly a complicated language, but it's not impossible to learn.  So what if it takes them a while to learn English.  It's worth the effort.

Muslim summits???  Talk to our enemies???  Make them like us more??? Obama's talking cure...yeah, right.  Hey, works for him.

Oh yeah, and bring them here to study in America.  As if we don't do that already!  As for the miraculous power of first-hand exposure to our culture as a cure for Islamic militancy, the freaking godfather of every freaking jihadi organization in the world, Sayyid Qutb, was radicalized after a stay in the U.S. convinced him of the West's decadence.

Before going on with this make-them-like-us garbage, please read Marc Sageman's brilliant "Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century".  Yes, exposure to Western culture is indeed the only cure for the sickness that is Islam.  But not in the way the idiot wing of the Democratic party or Lynch or Krieger think.  It will not be by enlightenment but by subversion.  Not by bringing them here, but by delivering to them, on their own turf, our most powerful weapon, more powerful than nukes or smart bombs or boots on the gound:  sex. drugs and rock & roll.  Like I say, read the book.