By Jonathan Miller, on Tue May 3, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Yesterday was an historic day for the country, and an exciting anniversary for The Recovering Politician.
We marked the one month birthday of this web site with a series of posts that proved why a post-partisan forum for civil dialogue is so essential. Without ratings-generating hype, partisanship, rancor, chest-thumping, or name-calling, our contributors provided a diverse set of thought-provoking posts about the meaning of Sunday night’s history-making events.
If you haven’t had a chance to read yesterday’s pieces, here you can browse through the links to posts by former Congressman Artur Davis, history professor Ronald J. Granieri, New York transplant Mark Nickolas, State Senator/international businessman Jason Atkinson, and myself (here and here).
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Yesterday, of course, I also celebrated a month of sobriety, from the toxicity of the political system.
Read the rest of… The RP Celebrates A Month Clean & Sober (From Politics) w/a Diverse Array of Osama Commentary
Today was the busiest day for posts in the long history of The Recovering Politician. (OK, it’s only been a month.)
Make sure you browse through the variety of illuminating and thought-provoking posts by members of the RP team, including former Congressman Artur Davis, history professor Ronald J. Granieri, New York transplant Mark Nickolas, State Senator/international businessman Jason Atkinson, and the RP himself (here and here).
Tuesday, Jeff Smith is back, offering some ideas about election reform, and we’ll play another prize-winning game of Where in the World is the RP?
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 4:15 PM ET
I went to bed early Sunday night, and thus did not hear the big news about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden until this morning when I received an email from the RP himself asking me if I wanted to write a response. After receiving the note, I turned on my radio (which is of course tuned to NPR, because I am a College Professor) and heard the details. My initial reaction was surprise, for two reasons: I was surprised that the search for bin Laden was still ongoing, and I was surprised by how ambivalent the news made me feel.
Historians have a bad and well-earned reputation for being killjoys, so I am sure that few will be surprised by my ambivalence, but I hope my thoughts on the subject can be a useful spur to further debate.
Certainly, the elimination of a terrorist mastermind and mass murderer with thousands of deaths on his conscience cannot be anything but a good thing, and I am happy to think that some of the families of bin Laden’s victims can enjoy the thought that the man responsible for such crimes as 9/11 has been brought to justice. I have to admit discomfort with the idea that the team of SEALs went in with explicit orders to kill rather than capture bin Laden for trial. At the same time I rather doubt that he would have been willing to be taken alive, and am aware of the enormous problems that a trial would have posed, so I do not think it makes much sense to cavil at that subject.
The real source of my ambivalence is the feeling that no one really knows what this will mean in the long run. The US has scored a major symbolic victory, but it does not mean the end of the conflict in which the US and its allies are presently engaged. Furthermore, the nature of that struggle demands that we not fall prey to complacency after one success, however satisfying.
Read the rest of… Ronald J. Granieri: The Death of Public Enemy #1
The world is safer and more free with the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is demoralized, and its marginalization is on display in a vivid manner for young men and women in the Arab world trying to decide if modernity or jihad is the best principle to organize their ambitions.
I am not as quick to compare the moment with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as some commentators have rushed to do. It elevates Bin Laden to compare his virtual, quasi-state of malcontents and jihadists to Soviet totalitarianism at its peak. At the same time, it underestimates the reach and the viral quality of radical fundamentalism to assume that Bin Laden’s demise is the equivalent of military divisions dissolving or nuclear codes being disarmed.
The best way to quantify the event, I believe, is not analogy but a nod to American power wisely and assertively deployed over two administrations and ten years. Both the Bush and Obama Administration deserve tribute for a patient dismantling of Al Qaeda over that period of time: it has been appropriately lethal and effective and has required the stretching of pre 9/11 sensibilities. At times, it has veered off course–the embrace of torture as a tactic comes to mind–but not many Americans believed on the night of 9/11 that another decade would pass without a terror attack on American soil.
I have no illusion that the exhilaration in America today has permanent political significance. Our attention span is so fleeting. It also seems to me mildly profane to turn the moment into partisan chortling over how Obama accomplished what Bush did not. But I liked seeing the exultation on television in the last 12 hours–and I loved the fact that is multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and that reaction is not splintered along the dividing lines that are all over the political landscape.
I admire both Obama’s unadorned reference to “justice” last night–that is exactly how my faith describes the rooting out of evil– and George W. Bush’s September 2001 shouts above the rubble at Ground Zero that “the people who destroyed these buildings are about to hear all of us.” After a decade of evasion, Osama Bin Laden finally heard us in the frenzy of BlackHawks descending and our bullets finding their mark. The echoes of that sound are just what a dispirited nation needed to hear.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Tech
The hackers that breached the Playstation Network in mid-April and brought the entire network down now claim to have copied 2.2 million users’ credit card numbers along with CWs. It is now widely speculated that the the hackers could be European. [The Guardian]
A bit of bike tech! Here is a really cool innovation on the traditional bike lock. [Gizmag]
MaximumPC has a very interesting list of 7 things that have been leaked about Microsoft’s future OS Microsoft 8. The list includes much needed touch optimization to help get the Microsoft brand picked up by tablet makers and use of the hot-topic cloud technology. Definitely check this out. [MaximumPC]
Someone already mapped out Osama Bin Laden’s mansion hideout in Google Maps. [The Atlantic]
By Jason Atkinson, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 2:15 PM ET
Today is reopening a wound for many yet we as Americans know this is healing. Today will be history tomorrow. Ten years later, we can start to walk away.
I find it difficult to be happy today, however, my thoughts are heavy with the families who lost loved ones at the hand of this wicked man. He embodied pure evil.
Late last night our forces embodied pure courage. We Americans are proud of justice and our collective resilience. Like the unity that swept the county right after 9-11, today we stand united again as Americans.
By Sandra Moon, RP Staff, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
The Politics of Faith
Imitating a Lenten tradition observed by German monks hundreds of years ago, one man survives 46 days on beer alone. After midnight on Easter Sunday, he broke his beer-only fast with a bacon smoothie. [CNN Belief Blog]
Secular political groups in Egypt prepare to give Islamist groups some competition in the parliamentary elections scheduled for September. [Reuters.com]
A religion without God: Humanism challenges traditional views of religion and the roles that it plays in society. [The Taunton Gazette]
A church in Toledo, Ohio boldly asserts that being gay is not a sin, but rather a gift from God. [Christianpost.com]
By Mark Nickolas, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 12:45 PM ET
Two quick thoughts/observations on the Bin Laden aftermath:
First, it is quite a sight to be met upon arrival at a subway station in Manhattan by police officers carrying automatic weapons in plain view. It lessens the amount of caffeine you need to get the day started.
Second, it dawned on me this morning while watching the news that, in the history of mankind, I doubt there’s ever been a more bad ass group of people going after a single man in one singular movement like there was yesterday with those 15 ‘Seal Team 6’ members — the most elite of the top secret, black-ops, U.S. special forces — landing their helicopters in Bin Laden’s backyard and then daring him to start a fire-fight. (Here’s a great link to an article about Seal Team 6’s historic mission.)
In fact, I can’t even think of a movie that assembled such a group. Just one of these guys equals Rambo. Imagine 15 of them at once…wild stuff.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET
Today, we introduce our newest contributing recovering politician, Andrew Romanoff, through the magic of video Skype.
Andrew served as Speaker of the House for the Colorado state House of Representatives until he was term-limited in 2010. That year, he bucked the state and national Democratic establishment by challenging his party’s U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, who had been appointed to that office by the Democratic governor and supported by President Obama. Despite this challenge — and with an assist from President Clinton who endorsed him — Andrew almost pulled the upset of the election cycle.
Now a Senior Advisor for International Development Enterprises, Andrew shares with The RP his thoughts about his race, term limits, and global conflict and development:
