Arianna Huffington led off the week of panels at the SeaChange Ideas Forum at the Starz Green Room in Denver during the week of August 25 - 28th. Huffington moderated the panel "Who's Driving Whom: The Blogosphere vs. Mainstream," with panelists Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, Digby founder of Hullabaloo, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post's "The Fix" and Greg Maffei, President of Liberty Media. Alter, senior editor and political columnist for Newsweek, laughed when he said that without the journalists the bloggers would have to get out of their pajamas! Huffington explained that there is plenty of opportunity for bloggers and journalists to work together.
Tuesday's AM panel, "Counter Terrorism: Non-Military Strategies for Global Conflict," even astounded president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, moderator Walter Isaacson. Isaacson founded the very popular Ideas Festival in Aspen -- as hot a ticket as the New Yorker Festival -- which is coming up October 5th. Ed O'Connell and Reuben Brigety were the panelists. Ed is a senior analyst for the RAND Corporation. Together with Dr. Cheryl Bernard, a social scientist, he co-heads the Alternative Strategy Initiative -- RAND he says is putting some meat to the bones of their new motto, "staying ahead of the curve." The other brilliant panelist, Brigety, is director of Sustainable Security Program at the Center for American Progress. Brigety remarked, "Humanity is a weapon of war. The Defense Department needs to seize the importance of non-military instruments." Brigety said he underwent a conversion to the primacy of non-military solutions based on his engagement with young people, women's groups and media producers afer extensive on the ground experience in Iraq and the Middle East over the last five years.
O'Connell, a compelling character who rides a yellow Harley Davidson, was formerly a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force. He explained the dangers of recent "over-acculturation" and how extremists exploit the unfortunate American tendency to latch onto the ideas of whatever 'expert' gets to the blackboard first and whatever local figure has insinuated himself to government policymakers.
O'Connell said, "By engaging Syrian media progressives we found some of the most powerful anti-extremist media programming in the world in what the U.S. had up until recently regarded as a terrorist state. I was in a hotel room in Syria in 2005 and viewed a Syrian soap opera, 'Al Hur Al Ayn.' Where the Sopranos focused on the corrosive aspect of crime on a family and a neighborhood, this series focused on the corrosive aspect of extremism on a family and a neighborhood. I am particularly encouraged to see that General David Petraeus had the foresight to make Syrian engagement a hallmark of his new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq."
Why do newly recycled catch phrases and concepts like "building partnership capacity" and "sustainable security" have to be broadened to include discussion of engaging women's civil society groups, youth and media progressives in the developing world? "It is arrogant to think the United States is going to come to a region and have a monopoly on ideas. Often these ideas have already been developed and are being implemented by local people in the region or troubled state . . . below the radar of our military and foreign policy organs. Through our work on the ground in Iraq we discovered an innovative program developed by a brave young lady there who had developed a concept he called 'theater resistance.' This young Iraqi woman would respond by deploying a theater troupe to areas that had recently been bombed by backlighting the bombed out area and immediately putting on an arts festival, effectively stating, "we are not going to let the extremists change our way of life."
O'Connell discussed with Isaacson and Brigety the wasteful spending of government agencies looking for technical solutions where art and science should have been applied. For example, suicide bombings in Iraq. He addressed the danger of the use by some in the military of as "selective metrics" in the roadside bomb war, which he characterized as quite different than the suicide bomber war against the Iraqi population. In this regard he gave Petraeus high marks for "refusing to put lipstick on a pig" as part of his new guidance.
A recent U.S. administration program, "MINERVA," dedicated to developing social science research was a good start, O'Connell said. He suggested that this and other US government research programs would get more 'bang for the buck' supporting approaches like his: finding and facilitating moderates and progressives to help each other -- than the de jour 'human terrain' approach of the moment.
O'Connell showed a short film of a recent conference he and Cheryl Benard held in Sulemaniya, Iraq. "Women as Agents for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation" and how over a three day period women from southern Iraq -- who may have been more conservative than their counterparts -- moved from a hostile stance to becoming active participants in the debate to leading panel discussions on the final day. He warned that with the Taliban's resurgence, women were in danger of 'disappearing' in Afghanistan as they had until recently in Iraq.
"I certainly learned a lot about counterterrorism from these guys," said Isaacson. "A perfect team for the Aspen Ideas Festival 09."