Reads of the Week.

Barak Obama's Administration picks

Burned NATO trucks Pakistan

First Vietnamese-American Congressmen Joseph Cao, Louisiana

Leading off this week is this post from Zenpundit, The Elite as a Tribe about President-elect Obama's appointment.

A taste of Mark's comments.

I’m not unhappy with Obama’s appointments, finding them so far to be well qualified and I’ll offer high praise for Obama’s selection of General Jones and Secretary Gates. The Small Wars/COIN bloggers are jumping for joy and the national security bloggers, along with the conservative political bloggers, should be pleased; the next Defense Secretary or Secretary of State might easily have been Anthony Lake. It’s a more conservative national security group than any time during the Clinton administration. Count your blessings folks.

What strikes me as amusing though is the entirely visceral, euphorically emotive and almost tribal “he’s one of us” support from the elite for the President-elect. Reactions that run against the supposedly cerebral and “reality based” pretensions of empiricism and skepticism for which they make a claim but seldom practice because most of them are highly-trained, vertical thinking, experts.

No sooner had Mark commented on the selection of so many academic elites to roles in government, than he posted this, The Chicago Way is Incompatible with Gravitas.

I think most people familiar with Illinois politics expected that eventually some kind of Chicago landmine was going to go off under President-elect Barack Obama - it’s just that few people expected it might happen before the 20th of January.

www.stratfor.com files another report on the Next Steps in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis.

It begins:

In an interview published this Sunday in The New York Times, we laid out a potential scenario for the current Indo-Pakistani crisis. We began with an Indian strike on Pakistan, precipitating a withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the Afghan border, resulting in intensified Taliban activity along the border and a deterioration in the U.S. position in Afghanistan, all culminating in an emboldened Iran.

The scenario is not unlikely, assuming India chooses to strike.Our argument that India is likely to strike focused, among other points, on the weakness of the current Indian government and how it is likely to fall under pressure from the opposition and the public if it does not act decisively. An unnamed Turkish diplomat involved in trying to mediate the dispute has argued that saving a government is not a good reason to go to war. That is a good argument, except that in this case, not saving the government is unlikely to prevent a war, either.

Related to a post last month, What the ----- People! part of which, was about the Taliban ambushing a supply convoy in the Kyber Pass and stealing humvees destined for NATO forces in Afghanistan. I thought that embarrassment would spur commanders to improve their supply chain security. But I was wrong.

Now, two reports of attacks on the supply chain reflect out far out of sync things have gotten in Pakistan.

Trucks Torched at Pakistan Terminal Used for NATO - Associated Press

And the ink was not even dry on the story above when this report "hits the fan."

Second Attack on NATO Trucks in Peshawar - The Times

Suspected Islamist militants in northern Pakistan set fire to 100 vehicles and other supplies for US and Nato forces in Afghanistan in the early hours of yesterday morning in the second such raid in as many days.

Witnesses and local officials said that several militants attacked a freight terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar, setting fire to several dozen containers and military vehicles.

“The militants came just past midnight, firing in the air, sprinkled petrol on containers and then set them on fire,” said Mohammad Zaman, a guard at the terminal on the Peshawar ring road. “They told us they would not harm us but they asked us not to work for the Americans,” he said.

Some local officials said that about 50 containers were destroyed, while others said the attackers set nearly 100 vehicles alight including Jeeps and 20 supply trucks.

Finally, this story from Louisiana. A state that a few decades ago has a reputation for political corruption and segregationist policies. This story mirrors the recent election of Barak Obama and Governor Bobby Jindal. The United States is a nation of immigrants who become Americans with each wave adding to our strength and innovation.

GOP Finds an Unlikely New Hero in Louisiana (By Paul Kane)

Less than 24 hours after his upset defeat of a longtime Democratic congressman from New Orleans, Anh "Joseph" Cao found the weight of the entire Republican Party resting on his diminutive shoulders.

Cao, 41, ran as a reform-minded conservative against Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), a nine-term incumbent who won reelection in 2006 despite widespread publicity about the FBI finding $90,000 in his freezer during a 2005 raid on his home. Cao, the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress, plans to take a victory lap through Washington this week.

America's Future

American Faces

New Citizens

Van Tran, California Assemblyman

Route of Human Expansion

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This Sunday was a time for catch up for me. I just finished voting via absentee ballot and in an unrelated task, sent in my DNA sample to the Genographic project sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

.Then I read Tom Barnett's column and I though how it related to the two tasks above.

Thomas Barnett leads off this Sunday with a optimist column that should give every American a greater understanding of our role in the world.

He begins:

As our financial crisis unfolds, Americans suffer a serious bout of existential ennui. Unsure of whom we are or our global role anymore, our self-doubt scares the world in near-equal measure. Predictably, both skeptics at home and challengers abroad tell us that we must get used to this post-American world. My advice is to resist these sirens' song.
From the perspective of grand strategy, such pessimism is unwarranted: just as our international liberal trade order -- known now as globalization -- encompasses the near-totality of the planet, vastly outreaching all previous attempts to establish a global order and doing so in a manner that both enriches and empowers individuals, too many Americans feel alienated from this world so clearly of our creation.

Dr. Frankenstein should recognize in this alleged monster the sum of his ambitions.

....As such, the proximate causes of our angst are readily identified: we've taken in a record number of immigrants in recent years, giving us a relatively high percentage of foreign-born residents, and we're suffering a magnificent economic correction. In the past when such conditions have met, we've isolated ourselves from a "chaotic" world, painfully attempting to transform our decidedly blended identity into one uniformly organic -- as in, "real" Americans.

Read the whole column:

Post-Caucasian world hardly post-American world

In my own local area, the changes that Tom Barnett describes has taken major purchase. For example, Vietnamese Americans, in the span of a generation are entering politics and assimilating at a rate almost unseen in our history. Orange County, California, bastion of conservative politics and the butt of jokes about it's perceived WASPist demographics, is now seeing the inclusion of Asian Americans in positions ranging from school boards, councilpersons, county supervisors, to the state legislature. Vietnamese American politicians are coming of age in Westminster ... This is just a micro look at what is happening and will happen across our land.

Like Tom's column points out with this excerpt:

...America has always been a land to which strangers came for re-invention, for we choose our family instead of merely accepting what tradition mandates. We have abandoned homelands and clans, married outside of race and class, and swapped religions with a unique urgency. The chance to be born again is the quintessential American right -- the pursuit of happiness individually defined.

I have written several posts defining my own experiences with the world, beginning with my service in Vietnam over 40 years ago, and re-examined during my passage to my current avocation. That conclusion is the importance of recognizing our strength as a country is in our ability to assimilate almost everyone into a nation of volunteers. A Resilient Nation.

If anyone needs further convincing of the fact that we are all cousins, you are invited to take the challenge and sign up for the National Geographic Genographic project. The great advantage is as American Cousins we have chosen on our own to be a family. And for those who are dissatisfied with the family and want to leave, unlike some places the express freedom of choice in America, allows the option to move. Although, it is better to stay and try and effect change in an environment that allows for change.

It is simple, and worth the fee to trace your genetic family tree back to it's source in Africa over 60,000 years ago. For those who are hesitant to accept this for creationism reasons, consider this. According to the data collected thus far, all people living today can be traced back to a single surviving genetic marker mother who lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago. Those whose roots can be traced back to other parts of the globe can trace their tree back to a single women and man living in Africa about 60,000 years ago. Don't take my word for it. I urge you to visit the link above and if you feel the need to know, plunk down the fee and swab your cheeks, send in the sample and await the results. It will be a fascinating journey!

A Salad Bowl Won't Assimilate

regentsprep.org

A few months ago I wrote a post entitled A Resilient Nation. The basic theme of the post was that the United States most stable asset was it's values. Those values came by the ability to assimilate almost everyone, regardless of their origin and creed, into having shared core values that are the basis for our country being successful. Those values are rooted in education, and trust in the law to protect individual rights.

An article by Lawrence Harrison in the Christian Science Monitor gave me pause to consider. Entitled The End of Multiculturalism, Harrison points out that the United States must retain it's title of a melting pot in order to remain vibrant. He writes:

Culture isn't about genes or race; it's about values, beliefs, and attitudes. Culture matters because it influences a society's receptivity to democracy, justice, entrepreneurship, and free-market institutions.........

He Adds:

A key component of a successful democratic transition is trust, a particularly important cultural factor for social justice and prosperity. Trust in others reduces the cost of economic transactions, and democratic stability depends on it.

Harrison goes on to point out that the recent explosion in uncontrolled immigration and the over emphasis on multiculturalism has led to the United States becoming a salad bowl of individual parts, each with it's own flavor and unable to mix. His recommendations are:

We must calibrate the flow of immigrants into the US to the needs of the economy, mindful that immigration has adversely affected low-income American citizens, disproportionately African-American and Hispanic, as Barbara Jordan stressed as chair of the 1990s Immigration Reform Commission. But the flow must also be calibrated to the country's capacity to assure acculturation of the immigrants.......

As with immigration flows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an extensive program of activities designed to facilitate acculturation, including mastery of English, should be mounted.

Lawrence Harrison's article seem to overlook the fact that many others who immigrate here seem to assimilate quite well. These people are from the countries across the planet who have come here, brought their beliefs and traditions, and assimilated by learning the language and the culture. I have written about them several times on this blog.

On a supportive note, his article calls attention to many of the things that John Kao's Innovation Nation here and Frans Johansson 's Medici Effect write, are required for the United States to retain it's innovative position in the World.

Immigration+Diversity+Assimulation=Innovation

Several of my posts have been about the future. Studying history, is useful in gaining a threshold from which to offer ideas for the future. Much of the world has spent the last milinium working out the rule-sets that have led to the lowest levels of poverty and violence in the history of the world. This level is still not acceptable to reasonable and caring people. But, I sense a new awareness is springing forth from this nation. The past decades have seen the largest precentage of foreign born citizens in the United States in one hundred years. What does this mean for the United States?

Tom Barnett has a post today, pointing out that immigration has gone global,Heightened immigration is a global phenomenon. He goes on to ask.

Key question posed for demographically moribund Old Core states: do you encourage integration or just circulation? Make them citizens or keep them guest workers? We seem to focus on citizenry, the Middle East on guest workers, and Europe seems somewhere in between on the subject, yes?

Picking up on this question, the United States has always opted for assimulating immigrants and making them citizens.One hundred years ago, strict immigration quotas were imposed and the flow was cut to a trickle in order to process and assimulate the millions of new citizens. Historians will argue that it was either pure nativism, or common sense to stem the tide. Those new citizens went on to help build the American Century. Now as the grandchildren of those immigrants and those who proceeded them by centuries begin to retire and die, the need for an infusion of legal immigrants becomes all to apparent.

I recently read John Kao's book Innovation Nation, (Kao’s site is here) he addresses the need for the United States to regain it's role as the most innovative nation on earth. Another book crossed my path this week that fueled some thought about how this all comes together.

Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect has it availible for download on his web site for free, http://www.themedicieffect.com/. I took advantage of this fine offer and found the book dovetails nicely into ideas that John Kao writes about. It also speaks to some of the same issues addressed in the post by Tom Barnett.

Immigration leads to diversity by causing intersections of ideas to cross when different cultures meet on a middle ground. Johansson writes that stepping into those intersections is where the fusion of ideas occur. He writes of four things that will break down one's associative barriers, and by following at least one of them, will lead into an intersection of innovation.

➣ Exposed themselves to a range of cultures
➣ Learned differently
➣ Reversed their assumptions
➣ Took on multiple perspectives

The above is a snapshot of what has been occuring in the United States and much of the world for the past century. When a country avoids that intersection, out of fear or tribal prejudices, it will being to fade and loose ground to places where the above conditions are fertile. Today, there are over 38 million foreign born legal residences or citizens in the United States. Their children are growing up to be Americans with all the values we hold dear.

Anyone who has read my blog in any detail, will understand that I am of the much maligned "Boomer" generation and grew up with most of the notions that are characteristic of that cohort group. For much of my life I was the average over-consuming self indulgent boomer. Then I stepped into an intersection, when I met my wife, and came to know and love her family and the people of China. Later I really jumped into the intersection when I returned to school and conected with a new cohort group, made up of the children of people born in countries that I had only dreamed about. My interest expanded, from thinking just about U.S. history to include the history of the World. The ideas that fuel my thoughts now come at me like wheel-spokes, converging in an intersection of ideas. I am now enriched with new concepts, and I will spend the rest of my days exploring and sharing them with all who will listen.

This intersection of ideas transends to the political arena. I think a lot of the appeal that Barak Obama has for young people of all stripes, is that he is a product of the intersection of cultures, which allowed him to learn differently, and gain multiply prespectives. I do not agree with most of his positions, but the fact that we all take him seriously, and show him respect, is a testament to the strength of our system to grow by assimulation, which will lead to innovations.

Today's blog is somewhat comtemplative for me. I am humbled with the pride of knowing so many who are poised to make a difference in the future. These people know who they are, I have written about several of them here, and others who have read this blog and sent me personal comments are no less well thought of, readers of this site will come to know of your talents in future posts.

A Resilient Nation

I was going to write about another of my blog links today. But an article posted by Steve DeAngelis on his Enterprise Resilience Blog caught my attention. It is a plea for America not to give up on Globalization. He writes that he was moved to speak out after reading a recent article by New York Times columnist David Brooks. At the bottom, I have linked the post by Steve and within his post is a link to Brook's article.

As I wrote earlier, Steve has a great talent to digest an article and add comments that inspire the reader to see the future with the same optimism that he possesses. He echos Brooks concern that America is losing that optimism because today's politicians are allowing it to happen by pandering to the fear of change. Both Steve and David Brooks agree that as long as the people of the U.S. remain open to change they will continue to grow and prosper.

I was struck by something that Brooks wrote referring to; "America's most stable of assets; it's values." What he meant was the ability to assimilate almost everyone who comes here. He pointed out that over 20 million legal immigrants have come to our shores in the past quarter century. Those new citizens and their children, are infused with the same American values that every new wave of citizens has embraced for the past two hundred plus years. In previous posts I have referred to first wave of Southeast Asians who came to find refuge over 30 years ago. After the Fall of South Vietnam in 1975, more than 125,000 Vietnamese were admitted as refugees. Soon the citizens of other Asians nations whom before 1975, had experienced very low immigration quotas, were welcomed to join our nation. They were followed by people from former East Bloc countries and even the former Soviet Union.

There are several young people I know who are the children of this new wave of citizens. Each one is ingrained with the values that David Brooks and Steve DeAngelis wrote about. The first, is a young woman whose parents escaped Pol Pot's Killing Fields in Cambodia, to a refugee camp in Thailand and after a long struggle, gained access to the United States. She is possibly the most focused person I have ever known. She is a university student, who daily drives 40 miles to attend class, then 20 miles to a job, then 40 miles back home to study til the early hours of the morning. She collects quotations to inspire and stimulate her thinking. She even has a reference to metacognition, (thinking about thinking)' on her My Space headline. Her goal is international business or government service. Even with all this, she finds the time to raise money for cancer and AIDS research.

Another, is the oldest in a single parent family, although an adult, she lives at home to help her mom raise her siblings. She also is one of the most focused and driven people I've ever met. If your immediate image is of a modest demure Asian girl, be prepared for a shock. This young woman has the business acumen of Donald Trump, and the poise and beauty to be a candidate for America's Next Top Model. She is a full-time student in her university, majoring in finance, and works evenings to help support the family. She maintains a very high grade point average and at work, has earned the respect of all who know her for her attention to detail, work ethic and positive attitude.

My final but not least example is a young man whose father served time in a re-education camp in Vietnam for being in the defeated military. Upon release, he immigrated to the U.S., started a successful business and raised a family. His son graduated with honors from a top university, and was made to work to contribute to his own tuition in order to appreciate the value of work ethics. This young man is bright beyond his years. At the first opportunity the company he had worked for part-time, hired him upon graduation. They saw the potential in his character and the skills he brings to the workplace. His future with this Fortune 500 lodging company, or any other company he may chose to work for, is bright.

I know that reading this you would think that these first generation Americans are only exhibiting the stereotypical Asian habits of studying hard and honoring their parents. That conclusion is only half-right. They also have the quiescently American traits that come from freedom of expression and opportunity. Believe me when I tell you these three, study hard, work hard, and party like rock-stars. They have the social skills that allow them to exceed in a competitive society. These traits are the result of that greatest of American assets; assimilation, creating a new breed of Americans, with the same spirit that made this country what it is today.
These young people I've written about parent's came from Vietnam and Cambodia, chances are they would not be here adding the resilient fabric of this nation, if history had not turned out as it did in 1975. When I began this blog, I opened by writing about my difficulty in reconciling my time in Vietnam. Today, I am so proud to know these young people. They serve as an inspiration to me to encourage them, and anyone else of their generation who are looking forward to a future worth creating, instead of "watching the wake" as Steve DeAngelis and his colleague Tom Barnett warn us about.

Read more:
Don't give up on Globalization