“When it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed [to] looking at what we got wrong in the past”, so said president elect Barack Obama when commenting on possible investigations of wrongdoing by the CIA and other American government agencies. I read this in the train to Tokyo (having just arrived from Shanghai) in the Daily Yomiuri. That paper, despite erratic editorial ups-and-downs, has probably been the best instant English language guide to Japanese editorial preoccupations and simultaneously carries most of the editorial pages of the Washington Post, thus serving as a pretty good substitute browser when the internet is not within reach. Taken out of context, one cannot on the basis of that one phrase be sure what Obama actually thinks. But what jumps from the page right at me, as the empty rice paddies and stands of bamboo pass by under that unsurpassed cobalt blue sky (a well-kept secret: the Tokyo area is the place to be in January) is David Ignatius’s praise of Obama’s remark as a display of realism, of a kind that “will disappoint liberal score-settlers”. This is a new category for me....

...word. How does The Hague compare to that? President Karzai has found himself this time in the midst of a censorious international community. The warlords at the Petersberg conference were permitted to congratulate themselves as “expressing their appreciation to the Afghan mujahideen who, over the years, have defended the independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the country and have played a major role in the struggle against terrorism and oppression, and whose sacrifice has now made them both heroes of jihad and champions of peace, stability and reconstruction of their beloved homeland, Afghanistan.” This week the gentlemen in question were being held responsible, for much of what has gone wrong, for the corruption, the violence, the drug trade and assorted criminality. Even more so than the Taleban who have returned to the front. The switch marks a new approach of hesitant attempts to start talks with the “moderate” Taleban, which appears to signal a recognition that only with the support of the adversary will any chance arise for improvement in this divided and ravaged country. In any case, expectations must be adjusted after The Hague conference. While last year November one could hope for a 180 degree reversal in...

...Yet another term that is being celebrated in the context of Obama’s approach to policy making is ‘pragmatic’. In an interview with the New York Times he said “what I have been constantly searching for is a ruthless pragmatism”. Now, pragmatism describes an approach toward a purpose. Should the newspaper not have asked what he was ruthlessly pragmatic about? Has his aim been merely to get the economy running again as it did before? The incontestable fact that Obama has inherited about the worst set of problems that a predecessor can bequeath a new incumbent has also delivered him the benefit of a mighty reservoir of patience. The most charitable conclusions that have come out of the widespread endeavour to make sense of Obama’s governing so far revolve around the idea that the new American president wisely chooses to first fight the political battles that he thinks he can win, and that having won those he will move slowly, with increased ‘political capital’, to incrementally repair the things that need repairing. And the idea that he is constantly playing a kind of three-dimensional chess, as one awakening critic put it, against known and potential political opponents continues to linger. Practically...

...however, did little more than buy the presidency, and the deal was clinched only when his men resorted to intimidation of the opposition and legal sleights of hand. Can such a president ever enjoy the authority of wartime presidents like Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman? A torrent of wishful thinking has deluged the United States at the moment. The media consume considerable amounts of propaganda. Independent thought is not given much of a hearing, and while the authorities keep repeating that they are dealing with an entirely new kind of war, and that the world finds itself in a wholly new situation, there is no indication of fundamentally new questions being discovered and being asked. The President must be seen as a commanding commander in chief, assisted by knowledgeable advisers. The country is unified behind him – for the first time since Vietnam even ready to sacrifice soldiers of flesh and blood. American skeptics, too, must try to believe that they have a competent president. Not to believe it risks being labeled unpatriotic. But trying to believe such a thing is a hard task, not envied by politically aware people outside the United States. On the day of the attack...

...Gaza could only be observed, and that sparsely so, from a distance, from refugees, and from Al Jazeera broadcasts. In that way the impression that Israel had chosen its use of arms for defending itself and was very careful in its choice of targets could continue to flourish. Hamas was accused of using the Palestinian population as a shield, while foreign audiences are hardly aware of the fact that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on the globe, which turns any armed intervention into a slaughtering party. Why have the international media been such easy victims of Israeli propaganda? Is it prejudice that drives them? Is it the effect of the American filter through which we all get most of our international news which gives this news its terrible slant? What has been kept far in the background in most analyses is that Hamas won elections, that the Palestinian Authority has kept it away from power, and that the international community has been boycotting it. Could an honest account of the circumstances of life, life ebbing away, and death in Gaza now create some compensation for that inaccurate reporting? Sarkozy now pleads for a major international conference...

...terms instead, would render commentary about social affairs and politics much clearer and thus more useful. In the way ‘values’ is bandied about it may refer to a predilection for rock music, or to the deepest religious beliefs that govern all activity. Social scientists aspiring to ‘rigor’ in their analyses compressed all of these meanings into something that could then be used in a most trivial manner (e.g. the values of a particular teenage club) as well as made to stand for something beyond critical scrutiny, something sacred or semi-sacred, something that justified and gave contours to that other vague new quality known as ‘identity’. Especially now the Soviet Union has been replaced with new enemies we should dump the term, as it has dangerously begun to overlap with what Washington believes are security imperatives. Fighting for ‘our values’ has a sonorous resonance, far more compelling than fighting for oil. It implies that the military apparatus is used in the service of the deeper meaning that ties together much of what used to be called the ‘free world’, us Westerners, heirs to the Enlightenment, or Christianity. The moment you replace the amorphous ‘values’ with a more closely defined term, which...