Editor's Cut

The Courage of Natalya Estemirova

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In October 2007, Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova wrote for us about the assassination of the crusading investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Today, Estemirova was assassinated.
Her body, dumped near the capital city of Ingushetia, was discovered with two close-range bullet wounds in the head.

A woman who courageously investigated kidnappings, killings and other rights abuses in Chechnya, a single mother in her early 40s, a leading member of the esteemed human rights group Memorial, Estemirova received the first annual award from the international human rights group RAW in WAR (Reach all Women in War) in October 2007.

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July 15, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Last week The Nation, and our friends at Campus Progress, hosted the Fourth Annual National Youth Student Journalism conference, a gathering of students and award-winning journalists. Much of the conversation focused on the survival of journalism. But more than any panel, it was the old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of Michael Tracey, a 20-year-old conference attendee from West Caldwell, New Jersey, that made the case for continued faith in journalism and reporting.

Tracey found himself face to face with former President Bill Clinton at the Campus Progress National Conference, held the day before our student symposium. With an opportunity in front of him, Tracey did what any good, veteran journalist would do. He spoke up and asked a good question. Did the former President personally support same sex marriage? With a brief "Yeah" from President Clinton, Tracey had a big story: Bill Clinton supports same-sex marriage. The story has been leading The Nation's website, and picked up everywhere from Politico and the San Francisco Chronicle to Queerty, Towleroad and a host of gay-focused blogs.

It was dogged, tireless reporting by A.C. Thompson that pushed another story forward this week, as local television stations into New Orleans launched an investigation into alleged vigilante shootings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, prodded by Thompson's report from The Nation in December. Thompson, now reporting for the non-profit Pro Publica, filed a followup on his investigation: Television news reports are uncovering new evidence in the case, building on Thompson's original reporting and keeping the pressure on local law enforcement. The TV reports, and Thompson's continuing work, hold out the promise of justice for victims of these disturbing incidents.

Three more items to note in this week's Around the Nation:

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July 15, 2009

Criticism of Afghan War is on Rise in Britain

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In a brilliant essay in a recent issue of the London Review of Books ("The Irresistible Illusion, July 9), Rory Stewart, the Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard, writes that "Afghanistan..is the graveyard of predictions." I'd add that is is also the graveyard of empires. Stewart is critical of President Obama's "new policy," which he explains "has a very narrow focus--counter-terrorism--and a very broad definition of how to achieve it: no less than the fixing of the Afghan state."

Alternatives, for the moment, have been excluded. Yet too few are asking the tough questions that need to be asked about how we might better provide security -- in the region and for the US -- through a non-military regional strategy to stabilize Afghanistan. Why are too few pointing out that it is crazy to pour billions into a war whose mission we're still unable to clearly define when the U.S. economy is in crisis and millions (here and globally) face joblessness?

While the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal, champions a 21st century counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, few in Congress have bothered to question the Administration about the fact that while this COIN strategy calls for a ratio of 80 percent political and 20 percent military, 90 percent of the recent war supplemental goes towards military expenses. And just last week, according to the Washington Post, McCrystal concluded that Afghan security forces will have to expand far beyond currently planned levels. Such an expansion would require additional billions beyond the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years; it will also mean the deployment of 1000s of more US troops as trainers and advisers.

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July 12, 2009

Real Health, Real Reform

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

With both the House and Senate looking to pass health care bills prior to the summer recess which begins August 8, now is the moment of truth for Democrats: will they offer a real public plan option to compete with private plans and drive down costs? Or will they cater to the healthcare industry which is now spending $1.4 million per day on lobbyists to protect their profits?

Throughout this debate, one Senator who has been willing to tell it like it is, with the people's interest at heart, is Bernie Sanders. This week he will publish The Health Care Crisis: Letters from Vermont and America--a collection of healthcare stories sent to him from across the nation.

"In early June we sent out a letter to our email list--and we said two things," Sen. Sanders told me in an interview this week. "Number one, please sign a petition calling for a single-payer system; and two, give us some of your experiences with the private health insurance and your experience in terms of health care in general. Well, in a few weeks, we got 40,000 signatures on a single-payer petition. But, as important, we received well over 4,000 responses--from Vermont and all over the country--people telling us what's going on in their lives with regard to healthcare."

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July 8, 2009

Obama's Eloquent Moscow Speech

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

On the second day of a highly anticipated US-Russian summit meeting, after reaching a preliminary agreement to cut each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons by one third, and laying the groundwork for a successor to the 1991 START treaty which expires in December, Presidents Obama and Medvedev also made it clear they seek deeper cuts in their nuclear arsenals and will lead an international effort for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

The preliminary agreement on a new arms control agreement is good news. The young Presidents' stated Intentions to make deeper cuts in their obsolete and expensive Cold War arsenals is even better news. But in order for the Obama administration to truly "reset" US-Russia relations -- as it has expressly said it wants to do -- it will need to jettison Cold War institutions like missile defense and NATO.

In his eloquent speech at Moscow's New Economic School, Obama grappled with those fundamental security issues, yet elided clear answers as to their future. What was most hopeful was how the "Commander-in-Speech" worked to "reset" the tone of US-Russian relations -- reaching out to national sensibilities and assuring his Russian audience: "Let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia." He declared that "it is not for me to define Russia's national interests." Obama went on to point to "a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition." And his invocation of the US-Russian alliance during World War II -- he quoted President John Kennedy's lines that "no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War" -- was humane and shrewd. World War II remains the only truly unifying experience bequeathed to Russians of all generations. Moreover, many resent that the the US appears to have forgotten their vast contribution to that victory. (Watch a Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks film or TV series: it's as if the US won the war virtually on its own.)

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July 5, 2009

Rediscovering Secular America

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists -- or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview -- have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness -- and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment -- a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.

"We have generally been a pariah group in America," says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. "Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there's almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch."

Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for a meeting in May it marked a stark departure from recent history.

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July 3, 2009

Obama in Moscow

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

On Monday, President Obama heads to Moscow for two days of talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He also plans to meet with Russian opposition leaders and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and deliver what White House officials are billing as his third major foreign policy address--after his April arms control speech in Prague and his address in Cairo to the Muslim World. And today the White House confirmed that Obama will give an interview to Russia's leading opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

This is very good news.

In April, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave his very first print interview to Novaya and its courageous editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov. The view inside Russia at the time was that Medvedev's interview gave the paper protection at a time when the economic and human rights situation in Russia is, at best, unstable.

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July 2, 2009

Time to End False Bipartisanship

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

God I hope David Broder is wrong. "The President has told visitors," the Washington Post columnist wrote last week, "that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52-48." The good news is that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is now talking about how bipartisanship may need to be redefined downward if the Democrats are going to pass meaningful healthcare reform. In a meeting with journalists last week, Emanuel proposed that healthcare legislation could be bipartisan without Republican votes. "There will be ideas from both parties, and individuals from both parties, in the final product," he said. "Whether the Republicans decide to vote for things they promoted will be up to them." ( David Axelrod seconded the emotion in his appearance on ABC's "This Week.")

The trick now is to ensure that "centrist" Democrats (who, as Paul Krugman notes, "are in fact way out in right field") pay more attention to the broad majority favoring a strong public option than to the wads of dough lavished on them by big Pharma and insurance lobbyists. As Joe Conason put it in his invaluable New York Observer column, "If Congress fails to enact healthcare reform this year---or it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the 'public option'---then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption." Blame could well be registered in ugly midterm election results in 2010.

It's time to part ways with obstructionist Republicans and pass a strong healthcare bill with a majority vote, which is possible if efforts cease to get a handful of Republicans to cross over. Redefining bipartisanship at a time when the GOP has become a male, pale and stale party committed to deficit demagoguery and fearmongering is the common sense and, I'd even argue, pragmatic course. Instead of wasting time on recalcitrant GOP holdouts, do what Drew Westen, author of the terrific book "The Political Brain," advises to pass meaningful healthcare change: "Focus on principles, tell compelling stories, move people emotionally and send clear messages."

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June 28, 2009

Obama: Refocus and Reset

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

At a moment when the President is more popular than most of his signature policies, when weak-kneed Democrats threaten to bolt on healthcare reform and hypocritical legislators have turned Iran's election into a political football with little regard for the ramifications of their rhetoric for Iranian protesters, Obama worked hard to use his fourth press conference to refocus and reset the political debate.

Keeping his cool (even while sparring with a handful of snarky reporters), Obama displayed moral realism and principled respect for the courage, dignity and sovereignty of the Iranian people. He did what Iranian expert Trita Parsi advised: condemn violence, without picking sides.

In his opening remarks, Obama did sound a more impassioned note than at any time since the Iranian election in deploring the violence in the streets of Tehran. "The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions." Yet Obama was careful to continue, " I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's affairs..... The Iranian people can speak for themselves." He referred again to Dr. Martin Luther King's powerful words, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," to affirm the belief--as he did in his magnificent Cairo Speech-- that "suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.....those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."

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June 23, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

As I write today, turmoil and violence continue to roil Iran. Our Contributing Editor Robert Dreyfuss was on the ground in Tehran in the days before and after the election. He left Iran but is following the crackdown and protests; you can track breaking news at his blog The Dreyfuss Report, and see our slideshow, Iran on the Edge, for images from Tehran.

In other news from The Nation this week: Federal authorities in New Orleans have launched an investigation into the mysterious death of Henry Glover, a New Orleans resident who was found burned to death in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Glover's death went unsolved for over three years, until an expose by reporter A.C. Thompson in The Nation last December (supported by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute) raised serious questions about the incident and the role of New Orleans law enforcement. Six months after Thompson's cover story, new witnesses have come forward and a federal grand jury is hearing testimony from police officers and eye witnesses.

The debate over health care is heating up. Over the weekend we launched the first in a summer-long online debate series with National Review, with our Washington DC Editor Chris Hayes and the Review's Reihan Salam debating whether or not health care is a human right.

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June 23, 2009