Before we dive in, I’d like to provide a word of caution to my more conservative readers. The following piece will be a lot more critical of the Bush administration than I usually am on this site. As the piece unfold, you will realize why I consider what is probably the defining event of my generation to be a list of missteps, miscues, and missed opportunities.

We will never forget

It’s hard to believe, now four years later that the nation swore that it would never forget what happened on that day. Beyond New York and Washington DC, however, it seems that people have moved on. I was even told to do so, during a conversation with people outside of the strike zones. It’s easy for people who only witnessed the matter on television to do so; It’s a little harder for people who witnessed it first hand; It’s even more difficult for those who lost friends in it; And I cannot even start to imagine how difficult it would be for those who lost family members in it. Some of us have not forgotten and it is our burden to bring it back, at least once a year, dredge up the dust and see how well we are doing in our recovery.

Since then, we’ve seen the largest reorganization of government, with an intent to prepare it for a major crisis, and its first test with the disaster in New Orleans; we’ve seen two wars, one with the intent to bring culprits to justice, the other with unclear objectives; we’ve seen the first steps of a reconstruction that may or may not be going slower than expected; and we’ve seen government work on financial appropriations that seemed to go anywhere but on the areas that need it.

… and so, we pick up the pieces and do the evaluation, and the assessment is, when faced with core facts, sadly inappropriate for an event in which over 2,000 people lost their lives. Let’s dig in on the details…

Disaster preparedness

As a result of the 9/11 disaster, the U.S. government reorganized itself to be more prepared for when future disasters struck. A new department, named the Department of Homeland Security was tasked with the responsibility of coordinating any effort relating to disasters, man-made or other, happening on U.S. soil.

The first major test came not from a man-made event but from hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and, if the event of the last couple of weeks are showcasing how successful or unsuccessful the department of homeland security was at protecting the homeland, I feel a little less secure now than I did on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

I will leave it to others to dig into whether the levies were under disrepair due to poor money allocation but it is without a doubt that the scenario of one of those levies breaking and flooding all of New Orleans was one that DHS should have prepared for. As opposed to the morning on September 11th, 2001, this last disaster was one where the general public was aware that it was coming. In fact, in the days leading up to the hurricane, breathless reports on most of the 24-hour TV news network talked about how the levies in New Orleans were a potential risk if the hurricane were to hit the city. Worries about a potential flood were so high, the government asked for a massive evacuation of New Orleans prior to the hurricane, and yet it did not provide buses or other modes of transportations to help those who did not have transportation get out of the area.

Katrina did not hit New Orleans head on (that distinction went to Gulfport, Mississippi, which is now what one could only call a former city, the destruction of the area being so complete that it is difficult to imagine a city once existed there) and yet, it was seriously damaged. Katrina was known of several days in advance, and yet government trucks with supplies did not roll into the city until a few days after the disaster. Images of people stranded in the Superdome made their way to the airwaves, and yet the head of FEMA and DHS did not seem to know there were people there until four days later.

If this is the kind of response the U.S. government now has to disasters, please give us back the pre-9/11 response scenario. At least, on that day, police and fire officers were there within minutes, FEMA was there within hours, and people were helped within a day or so.

Some will say that the response was different because this was an “act of God” but one could warrant that the only distinction that exists between an act of God and an act of man is that God gave us warning. Had a terrorist group decided to blow up one or more of those levies in New Orleans, I believe the response would not have been any better.

I now worry more than I did in the days prior to 9/11 and it is not because I fear terrorist more (having lived in France in the 80s, the age of terrorism is one I grew up in) but it is because I fear that our preparedness to a major disaster, whether it is a terrorist one or an act of God, is worse today than it was on the morning of 9/11. If a terror group where to attack the subway tunnels in New York city (let’s assume they’d blow up a bomb in one of the underwater tunnels, combining the horrors of 9/11 with those of Katrina), or if a major earthquake were to struck California (Los Angeles or San Francisco in particular), I fear that the U.S. government in un-ready in accomplishing the first duty of any government: protecting its people.

The Hunt for Bin Laden

If the government is not ready in dealing with a crisis after the fact, let’s look at what it is doing to deal with the people that are responsible, when a crisis is man-made. After 9/11, we were promised that those who were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center would be brought to justice. The main culprit, we were told, was a man by the name of Osama Bin Laden, who heads a group called Al Caeda. Based in Afghanistan, the group is a coalition of several terrorist groups around the world and has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be responsible for the horrific act in New York.

Four years later, Osama Bin Laden is still free, supposedly somewhere in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, based on what I’ve read of expert accounts in several newspapers. And four years later, Al Caeda’s capabilities do not seem to have diminished much. In fact, they seem to be on a new roll: recently, they claimed responsibilities for bombing in Madrid, Spain, and London, UK.

The U.S. did accomplish the toppling of the Taliban, which was the Afghan government hosting terrorists. However, it seems that the new government is having problem trying to regain control of the country. Some areas in Afghanistan are ruled by warlords, some of whom have aligned themselves with the Taliban, and democratically elected leaders are murdered on a regular bases by forces friendly to or associated with the Taliban. In other words, Afghanistan is a country that is teetering on the edge of a civil war, with a few American troops left behind (a substantial portion of the US troops on the ground were relocated to Iraq after that conflict started) attempting to keep the whole country from imploding.

Meanwhile, Bin Laden is taking advantage of the confusion and the rough terrain (the south of the country is very mountainous, making it difficult to do a successful man-hunt) to hide and continue directing global terror efforts via frequently leaked audio or videotapes bringing encouragement to his supporters. His demonization may have been forgotten in the United States but it has not been forgotten by US-opponents who are now seeing him as a rallying point, thus strengthening his power globally, and increasing the ranks of Al Caeda. As a hunt, it has been a major failure and as a fight against terrorism, it has been a disaster.

War in Iraq

So instead of trying to locate Bin Laden, the U.S. leadership has been trying to shift the fighting ground, first by talking up a presumed link between Iraq and the terrorists that struck the world trade center (several government investigations later, the existence of such link has been refuted time and time again by commissions appointed by the same president who has led the administration’s effort at creating the link in the first place.) That supposed link and the subsequent inference by members of the Bush administration that we had to invade Iraq before we ended up seeing “a mushroom cloud over an American city” led to a conflict that lowered the reputation of the United States around the world (a day after the WTC was destroyed, French president Jacques Chirac declared “Today, we are all Americans” a couple of years later, France has become one of the biggest opponents to the Iraqi conflict.)

While the U.S. administration was building up its case to invade Iraq, millions of people in the US and abroad made the counter-case: that, while Saddam Hussein was a horrible individual, he was a despot under control, weighted down by years of U.N. sanctions and that what would follow his removal would be potential anarchy in a country that controls almost 20 percent of the world’s oil reserve. The case was also made that an invasion of Iraq would be costly in terms of invaders’ blood and that it would probably help strengthen, not weaken, terrorists as it gave them something to point to the evilness of the west.

Sadly, the invasion of Iraq went through, with the United States and United Kingdom leading the charge, and few others following. The first days looked very good as the forces met with very little resistance, making it into Baghdad within days, capturing Hussein within months and looking as if all the nay-sayers had been wrong…

… but time has told another story. While the initial success of the invasion of Iraq could have been cause for praise, the following years have been a long descent into hell with many of the worst predictions made by opponents of the invasion turning from conjecture to truth. At the current time, American troops have suffered over 2,000 casualties with more coming every day; tension between Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites are increasing to the point where the country may soon be facing civil war… and Al Caeda has been using the invasion as not only a recruiting tool (claiming that the imperialism of the west is the reason for their fight, a big of circular logic on its own as it was not the reason they gave for 9/11) but also as a training ground in urban warfare for their future recruits.

Much as the cold-war Afghani proxy fight between Russians and Americans had been a training ground for the Bin Laden generation of terrorists, Iraq is turning out a new generation not only of insurgents but also of future carriers of atrocities.

The new argument coming from the administration is that it is better to take the fight to the terrorist than it is to have them to it to us. This argument, which is how Saudi Arabia has managed to be an exporter of terror by removing its more extreme elements to foreign places like Afghanistan, is starting to show wear and tear. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they have recently seen attacks against foreigners in their own country. In the case of the West, London and Madrid stand as painful reminder that the fight is not just located in Iraq but is metastizing into a cancer that infiltrates every society. It may not have happened in the United States since 9/11 (and thank god for that) but I fear that it is only a question of time before they strike again.

As a tool in the war on terror (a term recently replaced by “struggle against violent extremists” or SAVE, an acronym which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable), the Iraqi conflict has been a disaster and one can only hope that the situation will not get any worse than it is now.

Financial Appropriation

Considering the different failures at the federal level, one hopes that more is happening at the local level and that the federal government has been doing a good job at providing cities and states with what they need to defend themselves against terrorist attacks.

From a New York standpoint, things haven’t been particularly rosy. New York City may have been the primary target on September 11th, 2001; the New York area may have a population of 20 millions people (8 millions in the city ), representing roughly 10 percent of the US population but Congress decided to use a different formula to calculate financial appropriations of counter-terrorist funds. As a result, places like Montana or Wyoming find themselves with per capita appropriations that are several multiple larger than the per capita appropriations the New York area (or for that matter, any other major Metropolitan area) does.

But the real irony is that the city ends up giving the federal government more of that money than any other area. In other words, if there were no federal allocation of money for terrorism, New York City would find itself with more money to fight terrorism than it is under the present case.

And, considering the recent disaster in New Orleans, there is another sad fact to take into account: when the Department of Homeland Security was created, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was folded into it. As more allocations were made to fighting terrorists, some of the money was taken from dealing with other issues. Some of the money that was taken away was money to deal with ensuring that some of the infrastructure was kept in good shape. As hurricanes and earthquakes took a back sit to fighting terrorists, repairing levees in order for them to be able to survive during a natural disaster became less important. The images of the last couple of weeks are a painful reminder of the cost of such calculation.

Reconstruction Confusion

Four years later, there is, however, one bit of good news: at ground zero, a new building is rising… but not the one you’d expect. World Trade Center 7, which burned down a few hours after the hours collapsed, is rising anew above ground zero. It represents a beacon of hope for all New Yorkers who went through that horrible day.

Sadly, the rest of reconstruction at ground zero has been pretty horrible, with petty fights breaking out between the different individuals and agencies involved in said reconstruction. The result is that, four years after the towers went down, there is still a large hole not only in our hearts but also in the New York grounds. Inspired architecture was promised, then dismissed as concerns about security took hold. Instead, we may soon see what may either be the most beautiful bunker or one of the most awful towers to grace the New York City skyline. As a symbol of rebirth, it will be one brought force by fear and anxiety, not by the optimism and hopefulness that once were the hallmark of this country.

… and four years after our world changed, that is a damn shame.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 9–11 at 4. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Before the convention

For New Yorkers, the Republican effort started becoming visible weeks ago, as police tightened up the area. Living only a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, where conventioneers gathered, I started to realize with some level of concern that this convention had the potential of being a major annoyance. Rumors were flying high of the potential of some public transportation being shut down and, in the absence of actual information from the city (since none of the plans beyond street closures were revealed until the last minute), most New Yorkers made do with rumors.

Feeling that I needed to take a break and figuring that this might be a good time to skip town, I started planning on taking time off from work for convention week several months in advance. It then hit me that the mass hysteria stirred up by some of the more extreme newspaper (The NY Post, for example) was just media people playing around with facts that had little grounding in reality. Besides, having been through town on 9/11 and then again during last year’s blackout, I figured that New Yorkers had the guts and resolve to face any challenge. Combined with the lure of being close to a hot story, this left me with the decision to stick around.

The next question became how to best experience this. Of course, I knew that I had little chance to get into the convention itself but its perimeter seemed to offer a million interesting stories. With hundreds of thousands of protesters at the ready, it seemed to me that a potentially huge story could be developing outside the convention center, directly on the streets of Manhattan.

The First Amendment

One of the reason I love living in the United States is its constitution and attached bill of rights. Go read it, if you haven’t already. It’s quite a combo and of course, coming out of journalism, I fell deeply enamored with the first amendment and its protection of the press. However, re-reading it recently, I became more keenly aware of its other parts:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These considerations, in an age of increasing uncertainty in the balance of civil liberties versus security, have led me to be a contributor to the American Civil Liberties Union, a group that works hard to ensure that the government lives by this promise.

As a contributor, I get to receive the newsletter for the local New York chapter and had recently learned from it that there would be a storefront established during the Republican convention as part of a wider campaign to protect the rights of protesters. This seemed like a great fit for me and I walked in there on the Saturday prior to the convention, asking if they needed volunteers. They did and I signed up to start on the following Monday, the first day of the convention.

Protesting

I am not a radical leftist. Nor am I on the right. The best way I could possibly describe myself on the political spectrum would probably be extreme centrist. I believe almost religiously in the genius of capitalism. That belief is only trumped by my belief in what I would call “Capital D Democracy”: A government of the people, by the people and for the people. Coming from Europe, I may have a different view from most Americans when it comes to social issues. I strongly believe that anyone should have access to free health care and free high grade education. Because those sit at the core of my political belief, and because I grew up politically through the Bush father administration, followed by the Clinton administration, I would probably qualify as a fairly conservative (small d) democrat in the United States.

Over the past couple of years, I must say that I’ve drifted a little further into that camp, as a direct result of what I’ve experienced and what I read. As everyone knows, September 11th was a horrible day, when many of us lost friends in the Twin Towers. Looking back at that time, I still feel that the Bush administration did a great job by going into Afghanistan to dislocate the Taliban, which had been a long-time supporter of Al-Qaeda. I know that it must have been hard to do so, as no president really wants to put soldiers in harm’s way. The Afghani mission was an important one and one that still needs more support than it gets.

However, as many New Yorkers, I felt blindsided when the administration decided to start making the case for going into Iraq. I had read a fair amount about Iraq and the middle east region in general. As far as I could tell from all the newspapers and magazine reports I was reading, Sadam Hussein was a megalomaniac who would do anything to hold on to power. After being rebuffed from Kuwait by an international coalition led by Bush pere, he had focused inland, using chemical weapons against the Kurds in order to avoid having them overthrow him. For the following decade, the United Stations enforced sanctions that contained him while looking for more information about what types of weapons he had. He kept stonewalling them on two major issues: chemical and nuclear weapons. I personally believe that this was a tactical moved aimed at dealing with internal Iraqi issues: By stonewalling the UN, he ensured that questions would be raised as to how many of those weapons he could have. If word that he held chemical weapons came back into Iraq, along with the remembrance of what he did to Kurds, people would be afraid to attempt an uprising. Similarly, if word was spread that he had a nuclear program, Iran might stay more quiet.

In fall 2002, then CIA-director Tenet testified before Congress about the Iraqi thread. His belief at the time (or at least what he told senators) was that involving ourselves in Iraq would only increase the terrorist threat. Having lived through 9/11, the words increase and threat were not the ones I wanted to hear. At the time, reports from the United States and Europe also pointed out that there was no credible reports of evidence linking Iraq and Al-Qaeda. This was all public information available in late 2002 (I do read a lot on the Internet, not only by using RSS feeds but also visiting the web sites of several news sources in the United States, United Kingdom, and France). This led me to believe that the Iraqi threat was being overstated. However, trying to keep an open mind, I listen to arguments from the administration and, for every point they would make, there would be tens of rebuttal points coming from European publications.

I started to feel that people living in the US were being bamboozled so I started listening more closely to the people advocating peace. I did not agree with all of them (I believe war is sometimes necessary) but I did agree with them that this threatened conflict (at the time, the war had not started) was one that was unnecessary. I joined demonstrations, I met smart people there. Over time, I became more acquainted with the issues surrounding them. While I disagreed with the most extremist elements, I believed in their rights to free speech.

Last year on February 15, a huge march was impeded by the police, which would not let people get to the proper location of the rally and where policemen would provide misleading information to people who were trying to legally join the march. The tactics prompted an ACLU lawsuit which resulted in orders by the court for the police to alter their practices. Knowing this, I still approached the largest protest set for August 29th with a little apprehension.

It turned out that I didn’t need to. The police worked hard to keep the peace while respecting the rights of protester. Countless times, I saw police officers doing their job as they should, ensuring that things would work out and that protesters could stay safe. With half a million people taking to the streets of Manhattan and a police contingent that numbered in the thousands, it turned out to be a really great event and made me feel better about the week that was to come up. All the tension that had existed prior to the protests starting seemed to dissipate and free speech was respected, just as the founding fathers would have it.

With protesters as far as the eyes could see (45 blocks of solidly packed people were taken over by the protest), my wife and I joined the 1000 coffins group, which honored the memory of fallen American soldiers in Iraq, all the while making a powerful statement on the impact of this war on our troops.

At the end of the protest route, I had the chance to witness a crowd of hundreds of people folding American flags in a way that was both respectful and legal.

The New York Observer

On Monday, after some basic training on what to do and what to watch for, I made my first foray in the field. The police presence was strong at every event but, for the most parts, things would run OK during daylight. Once night fell, however, it seemed that the police turned into Mr. Hyde, arresting peaceful protesters rather quickly and working in an intimidating fashion otherwise. Many of the clashes I personally witnessed were at night, probably as much the result of exhaustion (I don’t know how long the police shifts were but it seems that nerves were more frayed towards the end of the day, leading me to conclude that some of the officers may have been tired).

Much of what a legal observer does is very similar to what a journalist does. Largely, the job of a journalist in the field is to sit around the location of an event and talk to people, hoping to get some juicy bit. Often, it’s just sitting around waiting for something to happen. In the case of legal monitors, the situation is similar; you sit (or stand) around, checking whether fencing is locked or not, and eventually post yourself in a location where it is likely that something would happen. You then idle around that location until something happens, and then start taking notes, observing whether policemen are doing their job properly and calling in to the main office if infractions are very serious and could lead to further trouble. Your job is, however, not as a participant but an observer.

Occasionally, you cross the line into a more active role, at the request of one of the two actors (protesters or cops) asking you to step in. For example, I was asked by a cop if I could work as a liaison to help relay an inquiry to the leader of a protest group. After putting the top officer in charge on the scene with the lead organizer in touch with each other, I watched the interaction to ensure that the police was not trying to abuse its power. The discussion between the two people was tense but cordial and an agreement was quickly struck, leading to an eventual change of location for the protester so they would not block regular pedestrian traffic and a pull-back from the police force so they would not seem as intimidating to protesters. This was an example of the two groups working together properly.

While police and protesters danced around each others, with legal monitors and observers like myself checking the scene out, other people seemed intent on disturbing this tight choreography. At ground zero, a woman looked at my ACLU T-shirt and exclaimed “the ACLU, those free speech Nazis” (emphasis is mine).

However, at times, there were failures. I witnessed such a failure at ground zero on Tuesday when police worked with a group called the War Resisters League decided to start a march from ground zero to Madison Square Garden. The police worked out what seemed like an agreement to let protesters go through their march without a permit and then, a few minutes later, changed its mind and arrested a number of people. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of such incident can be considered fairly worrisome and a true threat to democracy.

Republicans in the Square, Dancers in Elephant country

Fortunately, the real spirit of democracy could also be felt this week and it came for a bi-partisan effort to work together. On Tuesday night, a group of about half a dozen Republicans skipped their attendance at the convention and headed down to Union Square, where many of the protesters were gathering. A dizzying array of discussions ensued as people from the complete political spectrum engage in debate for most of the evening. Groups gathered to listen in, sometimes throwing extra discussion points into the flow. Conversations covered such a wide range of issues such as the recent success/failure of the war in Iraq, the economy, educational reform, job programs, environmental issues, general foreign policy, etc… Kudos to those republicans for having the guts to enter their enemies’ territory and be willing to engage into longer discussion on policy matters. If such thing were happening more frequently, we would be better off as a country.

Sadly, however, the current tenor of the political dialogue seem to be far from such matters. When discussion surrounding candidates are limited to “George Bush is a baby-killer” or “John Kerry is a flip-flopper”, the system needs fixing and it is incumbent on everyone to get involved in creating that fix. There are approximately two months between now and the US presidential election so I would urge all my readers in the United States to do the following: find someone you disagree with politically, and agree to go out to lunch at least once a week to discuss political matters. Similarly, put pressure on politicians to discuss issues of substance. Whether John Kerry should have received two or three purple hearts in Vietnam, or whether George Bush did not tend to his national guards duties during the same era will have little relevance on the future of the country. What does, however, is how they see the future of the country. There are substantial differences in how the different candidates view the world. Dig in, get informed, and go out and get other people to do the same. It’s part of the homework required to make a democracy work.

And remember that it can all be fun. While there is some homework, there are occasional recesses and sometimes some out and out silliness. John Perry Barlow put together some Dance Flash Mobs which were quite a blast to follow. Imagine a basic street crowd. People are walking around, traffic is busy. All of sudden, someone turns on a boom box. Three quarters of the crowd start swerving, slowly; building, building, and then, all of the sudden, it’s a street party, with 15 to 20 people out in the street, dancing their hearts out. One has to admit that it is a very effective form of protest. A sudden derivation from the norm by a large group of “normal looking” people can create quite a disconnect. If you’re a New Yorker, you find such variations generally amusing, part of the great thing about living in the city. Based on my observation at one of the event, that may not be the case if you’re from out of town. They’re is something a little crazy that feel a little threatening. Your reality gets shaken for a moment, you pause, not sure of how to react and by the time you realize what happened, the crowd has moved on.

Protest Tech

Of course, I couldn’t resist going a whole post without sticking in some thoughts on technology. For the most part, technology at these events was more interesting because of its pervasiveness, rather than any single technologies being of interest. I’ve learned that the police did use some cameras with head mounted displays for monitoring but I do see any. What I did see, however, was heavy use of technologies like text-messaging and push-to-talk telephones to coordinate protest efforts. It’s interesting to me that those are now part of the protester’s arsenal as they provide with quick ways to deploy small to medium sized groups across a grid. When flash mobs happened last year as a summer diversion, I did not imagine the potential they could have in the political world. Witnessing events this week, I’ve come to realize that flash mobs can have a tremendous power in reshaping political dialogue by quickly creating and disbanding protest groups. This will probably be a challenge for law enforcement officials wanting to control such thing as they might have difficulties to locate such events in the future. One could consider those to be essentially guerrilla tactics empowered by technology and they can represent of fairly powerful component of new protests.

The other bit of surprise, to me, was to importance blogs have taken for some people. At one of the events, I was chatting with one of the observers, waiting for a group of conspiracy theorist (yes, their theories are protected by the first amendment too) to wrap up their protest so I could move on to something more interesting. Some guy seemed to be getting a lot of media so I asked the observer if he knew what the deal was with that guy. “He’s a major star. You should check out his website at…” I don’t remember the guys name but did check out his site. Basically, it was a badly designed conspiracy theory site run by a guy who seems to have his own online streaming show. When upper middle class people (the observer is actually a lawyer for a big firm) look at people as big stars because they have a website and a radio stream, you know the Internet has become pretty pervasive.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Conventional Wisdom: The RNC Hits New York. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Beyond giving money, blood and supplies, I’ve been talking to people about what to do to avoid a repeat of those events. While I usually cover technology in this newsletter, I believe that the following is important because it does require technology but also goes beyond that. Here are my thoughts on how we might be able to eradicate terrorism in the long run.

Why did it happen?

Like many, I’ve been left to wonder why terrorism happens. Is it because of our lifestyle? Is it because they consider us “corrupt”? Is it because we are different? Or is international terrorism inherent to globalization?

As it stands, I’ve concluded that the best way to fight terrorism is to force people to question the motives of madmen like Osama Bin Laden. How do you do this? By giving people support. By helping raise them out of poverty. By showing them that we are not barbarians. By showing them that our system can work for them. By showing them that we are tolerant and that our cherished freedoms are something we are willing to share.

A war on poverty

As a result, I am presenting a plan to eradicate terrorism by waging war on global poverty. It is not an easy fight. It is not one that is possible to win overnight. It is not a fight that will result in a better way of life for us. But it is a fight that will lower the chance of another terrorist attack. After all, it is easier to reason with a person who has something to lose than it is to do with a madman.

Compulsory Social Duty

The first step in fighting the war against poverty would be through the establishment of a social duty corp. Similar in nature to the American Peace Corps, this group would be built out of engineers, educators, doctors, lawyers, financiers, construction workers, etc, all jobs that are essential to the building of a capitalist society and of democracies.

This duty would be for a period of two years, preferably right after college. People dropping out of high school would have to join this service immediately. The only dispensation that would exist for this program would be to join the military.

The goal of this army would be to build an economy within underdeveloped countries and transfer that knowledge to local people. The idea here is to start working as a force for change, helping develop an internal economic system and work on the establishment of democracies around the world.

This army of good will would be a global force, and would get in a country at the invitation of the existing people or after agreement of the majority of U.N. members. The work period of those people would be divided into two parts: the first one would be one of education, before getting straight to work. Through that education work, one would be taught some rudiments related to customs, language, and general culture within the country.

During the initial month of a new member’s initiation, that training would represent a 7 days work-week. During the next two months, everyone would work on the front lines to help with feeding the hungry, and polish off some of the lessons learned in class with some real street training.

After that initial quarter, the trainee would be pointed to a work area, based on their skills. Lawyers would work with the local authorities on establishing legal frameworks for the country. Financiers would work on establishing and regulating financial transactions for new local businesses. Teachers would teach schools and recruit from the other groups to establish curriculae in business, political science, law, medicine, etc… Doctors would run hospitals. Electricians, building workers, etc… would work on establishing an infrastructure to allow all this to happen.

Each member would be shadowed by a local person and work on transferring their skills to that person. It would work, in a way, as a sponsor model. During that period, workers would also be hosted in the equivalent of dorms, where half the people would be natives and half would be coming from the outside.

One could decide to continue beyond their tour of duty and in exchange, would receive benefits similar to those in the military.

This force would be supported by the military to ensure their security.

The technology

Of course, this effort should take advantage of advances in technology. Since September 11th, some groups have organized great web sites to manage volunteers in the New York area. A similar effort could be put in place for the effort I’m describing. Using best of breed Internet and intranet technology, we could develop some tools to help manage this effort and reduce redundancies. However, technological efforts in underdeveloped countries are not something that is as easy to do as it is in developed ones.

For starters, there is no infrastructure to speak of: a lot of places have no electricity, no running water, no roads, and no phones. In order to use technology in those efforts, new infrastructure would have to be built. In the initial phase of the effort, these infrastructure would not exist.

As a result, the development of irrigation systems, electrical supplies, and telecommunication supplies would have to be high on the list (but still below some even more basic needs like food and vaccination.)

In a way, the underdeveloped countries that would be the focus of this effort could become the launching pad for a number of new infrastructure, primarily wireless ones to overcome some of the heavier costs of installing a lot of copper or fiber optic cables in areas where such solutions could not survive harsh weather (tropical and desert countries) or where other forces of nature are at hand (mountains, heavy forests).

In terms of electrical supplies, we could look at clean technologies like solar power or wind power, which could help generate electricity in remote areas without having to develop national grids. In terms of telephony, wireless solutions could also help overcome obstacles. Water supplies, however, would probably have to be taken care of using the old fashioned way (big pipes) and we might want to look at the convenience of digging up multiuse canals that would allow to not only distribute water but also pass on information through fiber-optics channels.

The one percent solution

The war on poverty is one that will take money and manpower. In order to raise money, I suggest the possibility of raising a tax of up to one percent on the top median of net worth in developed countries. As a result, a large amount of money would be raised in the developed world to create a global fund to eradicate poverty.

That money would not be sent directly to the country as hard currency but would be dealt out as supplies and as a way to pay for the effort. Only a small part of the money should go to paying for general administration of this program.

Other forms of payment

Currently, in parts of the western world, entires crops are destroyed to sustain global prices on food goods. Instead of destroying those goods, they should be shipped away as part of this global effort to end poverty.

Companies would also be able to distribute inventory of technology needed for this effort in exchange for some tax advantage. Using web technology, a list of needed supplies would be available over the web at all time and be updated in real-time. A new donation would be routed using such system and once the donation has reached its destination, it would disappear from the database.

Using a system similar to the ones used by FedEx and UPS, companies would be able to track their shipment all the way to its destination (all shipping costs would have to be incurred by the company and it would be fully tax deductible). They would also have access to a company account, which would list the goods they had sent, their value, the price of shipping, and other goods they could provide along the same line (for example, if a company sends out a million miles of fiber optic cables and there’s a need for a million more, a request would pop up on their personalized screen.)

Using such a system, companies could decide what they need to donate, when they need to donate it, and see how much benefit they will get out of their donation.

What makes a developed country?

When I talk about developed country, I am talking about countries which have an economy that is sufficient to supply its residents with jobs, food, and shelter. It is an economy that either is rich enough for everyone to get an opportunity, or one that is rich enough to maintain a strong social net.

Eventually, the success of these operations will be measured by how many new developed countries are created.

Why do this?

It seems ridiculous to ask for an effort like this. After all, why should we care? Well, for starters, let’s look at the Manhattan skyline. See anything missing? My point is simple, if we work to help people around the world develop systems that allow them to rebuild their country, restore their dignity, and allow them to become self-sufficient, they will not look to destroy us. For historical precedents, take a look at the Marshall Plan after World War II and see how Germany and Japan are now strong democratic and capitalistic society with no intent to bomb the U.S. They are now players because we all worked together to rebuild them. Let’s do the same for the rest of the world.

The other advantage is that it will foster more understanding among nations. Once you’ve traveled to a foreign country and have been exposed to its culture, you become a more open person. It’s that simple: reaching out to other people is opening your eyes to a new world of possibilities.

What next?

I am forwarding this concept to a number of politicians in the hope that one of them will consider it a possibility and may look into fleshing it out more.

I do realize there are a number of holes to be filled up and I hope you will join the conversation and help me fill them up. Together, we can all make a difference, and maybe, just maybe, the events of September 11th will be seen as the starting point of a new world, one where the world went through hell and came out stronger. It is my hope that together, we will do that.

As a side note, I started thinking about this and discussing it with a number of people after the attack and before we started to bomb Afghanistan. I don’t know if the war will change the dynamics (the original name for this newsletter was a Marshall plan without the war) but I dare hope that we will all come out of this OK.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Rebuilding. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.