I am and have been a student of foreign policy over the course of my life.  Each generation has had its own view of, take on, and distillation of this subject.  It has seen each generation leave its own stamp on the subject, sometime for the better, and sometimes not.  Almost every derivation of the subject has seen some version of implementation, all with vary degrees of success.

I will say that American policy is at its best when it is based upon our guiding principles.  And by that I do not mean the 'foreign policy that yields lower prices for Americans' formula.  This formula leads Americans to believe they are the center of the world, and what is good for us, is also good for the rest of the world, which is patently false.  I mean a foreign policy that is based upon the ideas and ideals upon which our nation was founded.  Anything less than that is not leading with the values that drive American exceptionalism.

A foreign policy driven by the views that wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." is what we need.  We need to make clear that we as a nation are for human rights the world over.  We need to make clear that we support all efforts for people suffering under tyranny to breathe free. We need to make clear our desire that all people have a chance to seek to redress their grievances fairly before their government, without fear for life and limb reprisals from said government.  We need to establish firmly a foreign policy based solely on our desire to see despotic regimes to fade into history, and be cast upon the ask heap of failed government systems.  


Our policy should be for freedom everywhere.  We should be for freedom of speech everywhere. We should be for freedom of assembly everywhere.  We should be for freedom of worship (or not) everywhere.  We should be for participatory democratic forms the world over.  We should insist that all governments be composed entirely of the will of the people across the globe, and that those governments be subject to that will at regular intervals.


This is likely to be a hazardous policy fraught with bumpy transitions and unforeseen challenges. However, in doing so we redeem the values that generation before us fought to establish.  Only in doing so do we uphold the values that we claim to cling to.  Only in doing so do we redeem the primal purpose for our founding.  Only in doing so do we show ourselves to be a firmly committed country to the cause of liberty of all.  Anything less is a waste of effort.  Anything less is not worth being spoken, much less written down, enacted into law, and enforced.

By Way of a recap on the recent events in Syria....  Assad's government has been on the defensive for much of the last six months.  The rebel forces appear to be gaining strength and momentum.  Government forces are facing desertions and defections in droves.

The Anti-Assad forces recently launched a battle for Damascus or at least the suburbs.  Assad's troops have been unable to win this fight.  Thus far they have been unable to blunt this thrust, unable to dislodge the rebels from the areas they have won.  The rebels appear to firmly control the areas they occupy.  The rebels have even countered Assad's only advantage, air power with the acquisition of surplus Soviet era surface to air missiles.

Enter last week, Assad's army was unable to make any headway against the rebel forces.  It appears someone in the regime authorized the use of weapons of mass destruction.  Someone launched a massive chemical weapon attack into one of the rebel held areas outside of Damascus.  The casualties both civilian and fighter were substantial.  The overall military impact of this attack is unclear, because the WMD attack was not followed up with a sustained ground attack.

Allow me to be clear, this is not the first alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army.  The record on this includes a long list of allegations.  To this date,  it is not clear if any of these allegations have been proven.  This most recent allegation is being vigorously investigated.

If it proves true, which given all the indication so far it will be, then it appears that the Syrian civil war has entered a new phase.  The tone and tenor of the war has shifted to a desperate one for Assad's regime.  Only a tyrant unable to put down this rebellion by conventional means would open Pandora's box in such a fashion.  Only a small minded thug would cheat like this.  Only a person bent on staying in power at all costs even if staying in power solely through fear was the only avenue would do this.

Many would see this event as bad news.  I am not one of those people.  For me, this means that the end game for this civil war is at hand.  This belief is not on the basis that a 'red line' has been crossed and the west is likely to more actively engage this situation.  It is on the bases that our strategy of support and engagement to date is working.  The Syrian army cannot win this fight through conventional force of arms.  Their opponents are now at least their equal.  The army must now use tactics that the entire world has turned their back on and find thoroughly repugnant.

Almost every nation in the world has condemned this most recent act of barbarism.  The court of public opinion has rendered its verdict on the Assad regime.  It has been weighed on the scales of justice and found wanting.  This is good news for the Syrian people.

That doesn't mean this war will end tomorrow.  The people of the western democracies are war weary.  They don't want to put soldiers on the ground to affect the outcome of this civil war.  The recent vote in the UK House of Commons is testament to this.  The polling that appeared in Le Monde and the editorials that accompanied it confirmed this.

Rightly or wrongly, this opinion, this is actually another piece of good news.  The Syrian rebels will have the opportunity to win this fight for themselves.  History will record that a ragged band of rebels, few in number, and poorly organized faced off against one of the best equipped and best organized land armies of the middle east and beat them.  The will record an impressive triumph for themselves.

The path of engagement for the US is pretty clear.  We should remove the WMD stockpiles and the weapons systems that deliver them from the field.  Whether that is solely with a series of surgical cruise missile strikes or a sustained bombing campaign is a dealer's choice option.  It we do this and can get agreement on a 'no fly zone' over Syria, while ramping up weapons shipments to the rebels, the Assad regime will crumble in a matter of months.

There are risks to be sure.  Russian and Iran have an interest in keeping Assad in power.  This will require a lot of deft skill in many realms and spheres of influence.  We need to make it clear to all involved that a signatory to the chemical weapons ban doesn't get to turn around use these weapons.  Russia will have to be persuaded to forgo its arms sales to Syria.  The task is a hard one, but our diplomatic corps needs to put on its big boy pants and get to work earning its paychecks.

The issue with Iran is a much thornier one.  Tehran has spent billions in hard currency propping up Damascus in the last two years.  Their preference for the Assad regime is clear.  That doesn't mean that their opinion cannot be changed.  It can.  That doesn't mean we should let them off the hook to do so.  Rather it means we should couple their continued support for Damascus with further action from the security council for more sanctions, tighter sanctions, and a possible full ban on all oil exports from Iran.  It is definitely possible that this stick and bigger stick approach will work.

To my fellow conservative allies allow me to say this, get out of the way.  Allow the executive branch to do what's necessary here.  These events are part of a process that is positively reshaping a region that was once known for tyrants and dictators.  Congress should advise the executive, but it should stop there.  The actions that need to be taken here belong solely to the executive branch.  Let them do what it required here.  The next generation will thank us.

Allow me to explain what I mean.  For most of my life we accepted the villain we knew over the messy transition to freedom for millions of people across the globe.  There were even those that were my teachers in my youth that taught the some people were not capable of freedom.  There are even some I know that still espouse this view.  I have always found this perspective to be the height of turgid intellectual effluence and twaddle.

This view does not square with JFK's inaugural address, 'pay any price, bear any burden' philosophy.  It does not find support with Truman's support for emerging democracies the world over.  And it does not find congruence with the values we claim to cling to.

We should support the efforts of the teeming masses to breathe freely everywhere.  We should be for human rights everywhere.  We should without question or hesitation aid any in their fight against tyranny.  In doing so we pay forward the assistance we were provided in our own struggle against tyranny.  In doing so the argument of our nation as 'the great Satan' becomes a tired and invalid proposition.  If new democracies owe a significant portion of their existence to our support material and otherwise, it makes finding foot soldiers for terror to be an infinitely harder task.

If the Arab Spring continues, more nations will cease to be run by tin horn dictators and dictatorial despots.  Imagine a middle east ruled completely by democratic governments with free and fair elections.  Imagine a middle east in which the governments exist at the will of their populations, and are composed of those chosen by the will of the electorate.  Imagine a middle east where freedom of speech and freedom of assemble were the norm, not the exception.

If the Assad regime is driven from power to either a cell in the Hague or a long overdue appointment with a firing squad, that will go a long way to cementing this as a permanent transition, and not a spring time fluke.  If Syria transitions, the middle east becomes a bit safer.  The key players in the terror trade will be without a primary state sponsor.  Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and others will find material support harder to come by.  Lebanon might actually stand a real chance at stability and peace.  The peace process in Israel might actually get somewhere for a change.

Yes Iran remains a problem even if Syria falls.  But that is tomorrow's problem.  The progress will be undeniable.  Tunisia, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria solidly no longer run by fear and tyranny.  And yes all are works in progress, but imagine where this started out two years ago.  Imagine where this could be two years from now.  Iran cannot hold back a tide this powerful for long in the face of this evidence.

This positive vision of a peaceful middle east is compelling.  It is worth committing ourselves to.  The risks are huge, but the cost for not acting is worse.  There is a window in which this world known mostly for terror, torment, and tyranny can be transliterated into something new.  It can set aside the past and freedom can ring from Tunis to Tehran.

POSTSCRIPT:  There are those that believe a darker agenda is at work here.  They fret that the Arab spring is the work of those seeking a 'greater caliphate'.  They are urging us not to support those seeking freedom for those in the middle east.  The problem with this view is that the primary players in this agenda all owe allegiance to Tehran.  And Tehran is currently seeking to keep Syria firmly in Assad's hands.  This view is disingenuously near sighted and myopic.  Not support people seeking freedom, because of one small group's future plans should not be how foreign policy is conducted now of ever.  Assisting the urge of residents around the world to be free should be what our nation is all about.

The American power grid is an outgrowth of a competitive war of titanic proportions between two vastly different visions for delivering electrical power.  The war was initially between two men of genius caliber intellect.  It quickly grew beyond them to those that supported them, and beyond.  The visionary wunderkinds were Thomas Edison and Nickola Tesla.

The war between these two men was the stuff of legend.  Their competing visions for electrical power boiled down the DC model promoted by Edison and the AC model promoted by Tesla.  Both models were radically different from each other.  The struggle for supremacy of the electrical distribution hegemony brought out the best and the worst in both men and their corporate backers.

Much has been said and written about this period of strife.  The purpose of this piece is however not to chronicle in detail this period.  Rather it is my purpose to ask a simple question.  In the decades since this struggle was concluded and Tesla's AC model won, we have seen the task as building a grid of electrical distribution and making that grid as efficient as possible.  All the effort has been place on managing the grid.  And we have settled into a world of balkanized oligarch's ruling regionalized monopolies that have a stranglehold on the consumer.

My question is this, What's next?  Where is the effort for innovation in the world of power generation?  The battle for creation of new methods and new processes seems to have ended when the battle between Edison and Tesla concluded.  Sure we have experimented new technologies and we have created more efficient methods of delivering power.  The revolutionary time of Edison and Tesla seems to be gone.

There don't appear to be any great thinkers working on the question of what's next.  There don't appear to be men and women on the stature of their progenitors of the grid efforting this issue.  A dearth of fundamental basic research is where we find ourselves.  Researchers don't seem to be interested in revolutionizing the situation.  They seem be content to put their efforts into innovating the status quo.  Essentially making the mouse trap a more effective, not in reviewing if the mouse trap is needed at all is where we reside.

The status quo is untenable.  Our civilization is struggling under an archaic model that is verging close to a century in age.  And while the grid's impressive size and scope in the first world, it is a staggering problem for the developing world.  As nations attempt to make the herculean leaps that first world nations made a century ago, their population sizes and the grids and power plant necessary to support them are becoming environmentally challenging.

Take the athletes that competed in the Beijing Olympiad for example.  Across the glod they spent a minimal amount of time there, because of poor air quality.  As pollution goes, China's environmental situation is bad verging worse.  Even with the efforts to clean things up for the Olympics, it was a difficult situation.  As other nations of China's size attempt to make their leaps the global impact is likely to be disastrous.

I am not a doom and gloom let's all return to the 17th century agrarian life, sort of person.  Nor am I suggesting radical change for the overall individual electrical consumer.  what I am saying is that our civilization needs the next gargantuan innovation that fundamentally alters the electrical model.  Our world is waiting with baited breath for that which comes next.

The world needs a cheap, clean, and low impact, user friendly invention that shifts away from the grid delivery model, that while necessary in the past, can no longer be relied upon.  Some suggest solar and wind are the way forward and there are benefits to this suggestion.  It does however fail the test I laid out for what is needed and are both useless in poor weather conditions or times of zero wind.

Some suggest that nuclear power offers the best way forward.  It also fails the test I laid out.  Furthermore the recent earthquake in Japan demonstrates that even when the best and brightest build these plants to the highest standards, they are still horrendously risky endeavors.  These plants are also among the most costly ways to produce energy.  Also even with more than half a century of experience with this power type, we do not have a functional solution for how to handle the waste they produce.

Each other method currently deployed carries with it risk.  They all have ecological costs and human health risks attached to them.  None have zero environmental impact.  No have zero risks to human health.  All are products of the last race for innovation and power production.

What we need is something that is fundamentally new.  We need something sets the consumer free from their corporate masters, that attempts to enslave them.  We need something that renders obsolete the old model and ushers in the next age of human development and progress.  Anything less is not what's next, and it is by extension that which already is.  And as such is an effort to arrange the Titanic's deck chairs for the best viewing angle of the eventual calamity that will claim us all.

We need a revolution, not to change which company bills the consumer.  Rather a revolution that sets us all and our world free.  We owe the next generation nothing less.

Many people have been jumping and down of late about Fox News.  They argue vehemently about bias, half-truths, and distortions.  On some level, they do have a point.  And there was a time in my life when this sort of thing would have gotten me worked up.  For good or for ill, that time in my life has passed.  I suppose its what happens when you live enough life to have seen these cycles run their course numerous times.

The truth, as I see it, boils down like this...  There is not a single media outlet that does not exercise some degree of editorial discretion.  And there is not one that doesn't allow the outside views of the editors, producers, and ownership from finding its way into print copy, or onto air transmission.  The news media is not innocent on this issue, and never has been.  And rarely back in the day, when Walter Cronkite signed off with, "And that's that way it was..." was it ever totally true.

Bias is just a simple fact of the 24hour news cycle that's been created, and every owner of these outlets from Ted Turner, to Les Monves, to Rupert Murdoch, and beyond are all guilty of engaging in it.  Its a fact of life in our post-modern world, and we should get used to it.  We should become more informed, and more saavy consumers of news from the outlets we chose to consume news from.  We should spend time weighing the opinions we hear against those from other sources.  Anything less is just wanton stupidity.

We live in a free society that allows anyone to say just about anything.  Its the beauty of the republic we reside in.  Its the wonder of our democracy.  Its the freedom that multitudes of people fight and die to get here to partake in every day.  The United States does not have an official state news media like say Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, or North Korea.  We don't have to accept the version of events, or the spin on the truth being presented to us.  Its our virtuous right, its our glorious priviledge, its downright American in every sense of the word.