Nuclear proliferation is probably more dangerous now than in any time in history.  A few nukes controlled by terrorists or rogue states is more of a concern than a multi-megaton confrontation between Russia and the U.S.  North Korea is a rogue state.  A Taliban-controlled Pakistan could launch a nuclear terrorist attack.  Iran is both rogue and terrorist.  Their support of Hezbollah qualifies them as terrorists and their official goal of exterminating Israel qualifies them as a rogue state.  However, the Iranian people are starting to place demands on their totalitarian state that may lead to its collapse.  How long this takes is critical.  If Iran develops nuclear arms before reform takes place, Israel will probably act.  It’s a race against time.

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Mr. Obama’s speech last night struck me as serious and cautious.  He exhibited caution with respect to Iraq and caution with respect to the economy.  Moreover, not by what he said so much as what he didn’t say, I received the distinct impression that he now realizes there is only so much a president can do and that sometimes you just have to let events play out.

Iraq is a sore point, to be sure.  Mr. David Brooks in yesterday’s N.Y. Times declared nation building there a success.  He considered the economic and political fronts, just as Mr. Obama did.  Others are not so positive, including Mr. Obama.  While Iraq this year might end up with the fastest growing economy in the world, growing from zero is a lot different than growing from an already high level.  ABC News even thinks it’s significant that people can now go out in Baghdad and eat ice cream.  I don’t know if that’s economic or political, but it is sophistic.

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Some time ago I was collaborating with some researchers at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid.  My four weeks in that city represented the best “working vacation” I ever had.  I really got involved in Spanish culture.  Together with the cook at a coffee shop near my pension (boardinghouse), for example, I even left my mark on their culture—a grilled cheese and egg sandwich with a hole in the top where the yolk can wink at you.

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Independent of your views on the Iraq War, I would like to throw out some points of discussion.  Now that everybody is focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan (will the floods now ensure that al Qaeda and/or the Taliban get nukes?), what about Iraq?  Will it just go away?  Can we count it as one of the few friends of the U.S. in the Middle East?

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Our social and political rhetoric these days is more of a mindless rant with mostly zero content—emotional, irrational, angry, and bitter.  Perhaps those tweets on Twitter, those writings on the Facebook Wall, and the forums provided by the internet for any blogger with a chip on his shoulder have made it too easy.  We succumb to the notion that we are free to express our opinions, and do we ever!

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A delicate subject, this religious freedom thing.  I suspect this post and others expressing similar sentiments will generate a lot of debate.  Why is building an Islamic center in New York City at ground zero a problem?  And, if it is, what do we do about it?  A perusal of the press and the news this weekend and this morning shows that what was once a local debate has become a world-wide one.  Let me review the facts and provide a fresh perspective.

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I’ll focus on only those agencies that deal with intelligence—not my intelligence or yours, as taxpayers, but intel: snippets of data that allow us to stomp on the “bad guys.”  You can focus on any other part of the government, of course, and ask the same question.  Here I’m just referring to the usual alphabet soup of acronyms: DHS, DEA, CIA, FBI, etc.  In some sense, they are the most important ones when analyzing losses to our personal freedoms.  They are inextricably involved with the future of our democracy.  They also provide good examples of waste in government, especially if you add the cost of the military’s bureaucracy.  And they are the most important to me as a writer.

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The release of the Afghan Papers this weekend—notably in the N.Y. Times today—brings to the fore once again the perpetual conflict between national security and personal morality.  We don’t like to talk about this gray area even though most of us probably have opinions about particular cases, but I will try to touch upon some of the issues and hope for the best.

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I’m not cheering.  I’m wondering how long it will take BP to clean up the mess they made in the gulf.  Two years?  Five?  Ten?  Twenty?  One hundred?  A logarithmic scale seems appropriate here since the spill in the gulf is a multiplier of the Exxon Valdes disaster.  BP is probably counting on the media losing interest (they already are—success isn’t newsworthy), the local people either moving away or quietly accepting what little money BP or the government hands out, and the majority of the rest of the American public turning back to their sports, stupid reality shows, and celebrity watching (they’re already salivating with the Mel Gibson scandal).

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(John L. Betcher, The 19^th Element, 2010, ISBN 9781451521016)

Do you need an entertaining and action-packed book for your summer reading?  This is it!  A very realistically portrayed terrorist attack in an unusual setting provided me with a nerve-wrenching adrenalin rush.  If you’re into suspenseful thrillers, try this one on for size.

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