I have copious notes from several of the speakers, but you may as well just watch it! It's well worth your time.

But here's an accounting anyway. Maybe it'll whet your whistle enough to make you want to watch.

One of the overriding themes of many of the speakers is that

"DEMOCRACY MEANS PEACE" is a myth.

Steve Clemons kicked off the program by covering the history of the conference. This is the 4th year. It's supposed to be a public discussion about issues of vital importance and he hopes the President will do that tomorrow. (He seemed to imply that was unlikely.)

This year's program, unlike previous years, focuses completely on foreign policy.

There are two tables of students from American U. They stood up and were recognized. Also, there was a little boy--about 8--whose name was Oak, at least that's what it sounded like. He was wearing a cute little black and white suit. Steve made him stand up on his chair so we could all clap for him. He was quite a ham. (Personal note--I turned around at least two hours into the program and the kid was still hanging in there. If only our nation's adults were that attentive!)

Steve thanked the Rockefeller Foundation for sponsoring the event.
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John O'Sullivan was the first speaker. Steve introduced him as "everyone's favorite conservative." Well, the person on my left (reggiesmom's friend) had to hold me down during John's speech. And the person on my right (Ellen) had to put up with comments like, "Do all conservatives lie?" I guess I'm not as tolerant of differing points of view as I like to think I am.

John's opinion is that American foreign policy is based on 4 bold concepts:

1) Pre-emption (he pointed out that it always sort of was just more so now; "diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments")

2) Skeptical attitude toward multilateralism

3) Not always possible to rely on existing alliances (the mission defines the coalition; the coalition does NOT define the mission)

4) Long term strategy of democracy promotion and nation building is required to win the WOT. We have to "drain the swamp" that breeds the terrorists. (At this point, Ellen commented that DC was a swamp.)

He then went on to describe how those 4 concepts are working out. (This is where I nearly needed to be restrained.)

1) Pre-emption. On the question of Iran, so far diplomacy has failed. And that has resulted in Iranians getting nukes. The election of the new president of Iran and his willingness to wipe Israel off the map has alarmed Europeans. America has been shrewd to ask the Europeans to handle that diplomacy. (It was all my tablemates could do to stop me from getting up and screaming, "Yeah, well how's that pre-emption strategy working for you in Iraq?" Sure, talk about Iran where there are no results yet. Just ignore the pathetic failure in Iraq!!!")

2) Skeptical attitude--suddenly doesn't appear so unreasonable after oil for food scandal which undermined the UN as a moral arbiter. Progress (or lack thereof) of Kyoto has served to make the US case better. Signers have failed to meet their goals. At the same time, the US is tackling global warming by other methods. (I think this is when the rope came out to tie me to my chair and the napkin was forced into my mouth and someone said, "Maria, they're FILMING this!!!")

3) Coalition of the willing. This received a big boost from all the help we gave to the tsunami victims. And there's the Proliferation Security Agreement. (At this point, I was whipped. I could do nothing but make gutteral noises and hop around in my chair.)

4) Democracy promotion and nation building. (Hey, he was actually kind of honest on this one. Perhaps this is why Steve said he was his favorite conservative.) Such activities are frought with difficulty and peril. It's going to take a long time. Do Americans have the staying power? Iraqi people want democracy. Once democracy is detattached from a permanent American occupation, then it will become more popular in Iraq. Bush's policy is having positive results but serious setbacks. He's inclined to think that democracy dawning in other countries in the region is not significant. However, he views the PLA election as a benefit in disguise because the people voted out corruption.

All this occurs against an interesting background considering the rise of India and China. He says we'll be surprised to see them sharing in these 4 attitudes as these 4 attitudes are bound to be exhibited by countries with power. The most important question for the future will be to see how the US and Europe remain as powerful allies. If we don't, the world will have a scary resemblence to Europe in 1914.

More later. Cats are insisting on being fed....

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Next up was Steve Clemons himself. Gee, I seemed to agree with him on many more points!

He talked about transformational diplomacy. After WWII, Dulles worried that Japan would slip back into China. We gave Japan unparalleled access t US markets. The US market became a sanctuary for Japan. We broke up the aristocratic estates in Japan. Many many many people in Japan benefitted financial from the redistribution of wealth. It's interesting to contrast this with what we're doing in Iraq. Who are the winners in Iraq?

Steve says that John O'Sullivan sees the glass as 3/4 full but he sees it as 1/2 empty and leaking.

We took our eye off the bin Laden ball. He's a student of Scowcroft: yes we can knowck out an army, but the effort to secure the resulting country is very hard. Wouldn't it have been better to de-capitate Iraq--take out Hussein without having a war. We were working on that but Chalabi tipped him off.

This was one of Steve's points throughout the morning: Til now there's been an American mystique. Nobody knew our limits. Now they know we're strained. They've seen our limits. The American mystique has been punctured. Washington hasn't realized this yet. Our enemies are moving their agendas. We didn't achieve our objectives in Latin America. We didn't achieve our objectives in China either. These trends should alarm us as a nation. The world is seeing our weaknesses (they realize we're not all-powerful; that our power does have limits.) What's goin on with the Proliferation Security Agreement in North Korea looks identical to what we were trying to do 4 years ago.

We are worse off than we were. But there are some personalities in the administration that want to get America back on track.

1) We need to get America back in the global game. Need to cultivate regional nodes -- China, Iran, Brazil.

2) Need to get back into restoring alliances. Rice wants to get back into discussions about international law. But Cheney is is hostile to this move.

3) We need a global middle class; need to get back into business of showing its not winner take all; all these positive trappings of a middle class.

4) We need a great Middle East project. We need a transformational diplomacy to take asirations of young people in areas of instability. What is driving the grievances? That audience is out there for us to appeal to. We need proactive trust building not fear building.

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HON. WENDY SHERMAN
(since she was rm's favorite, I'll put my favorite quotes from her up next)

Americans' fear may overcome their hope.

Wendy referred to herself as a practician. On the other hand, the Bush Admin's foreign policy is all theory without even much thought.

We haven't had an attack on US soil since 2001, but in 2005, attacks were up 51% from 2004. (Earlier we heard that they'd tripled from 2001-2003). How can we consider this winning the GWOT? We've not be involved in diplomacy in the last 5 years. We have no diplomatic boots on the ground. As a former part of the Clinton Admin, she regrets not having done more.

On women's rights, she quotes from her education as a social worker: Begin where the client is, not where you are. And she has this quote from Saudi women about pushing driving too fast (take it slow as people are ready): Get us to the end of the road, not end the road before we get there.

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CLYDE PRESTOWITZ Clyde served as counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration.

He started with a very cute story about skiing with his adult son--a software developer. On the lift, his son asked him if he'd like to "co-invest" with him on a business venture. Clyde said he knew that meant they'd be using his money-LOL! Anyway, his son wanted him to invest in a snow removal business in Lake Tahoe. Clyde said he didn't understand. His son was a techie. The future was in technology. Why was he interested in snow removal. The answer: Dad, they can't move the snow to India.

Clyde went on to explain that America is the only net consumer in the world. We leveraged up to our eyeballs (OK, that's my phrase...) If only we could convince Americans to continue growing their debt (at some phenomenal rate which I didn't write down) and if only we could convince China to continue saving to pay for our spending, it would all work out. LOL!

The American Economy is on life support. This is not a sustainable system.

He offers two thoughts for fixing our system:

1) The lack of savings and debt are relatively trivial problems. We have the lowest tax rates around. It shouldn't be difficult for the US to reduce the buget and create incentives for savings.

2) We've got to refocus on technology. He took a 200mph train across Korea, through mountains. The ride was perfectly smooth. He wanted to sleep, but the annoying jerk in the next seat over wouldn't get off the cell phone! Then he realized, they were GOING THROUGH MOUNTAINS and the guy didn't once lose his phone reception. The guy finally got off the phone and Clyde thought, gee, now I can sleep. But no such luck. The guy swiveled his cell phone around and started watching TV! With perfect reception! Through the tunnels!!! 10 years ago, Korea was way behind us in their communications infrastructure. And look at them now.

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SHERLE SCHWENNINGER
Sherle complained that he came so late in the program that everybody already said everything he was going to say. But he had these ideas about what needs to happen:

1) Consumer boom in Asia. We need to convince Asians to spend their money!

2) Investment boom in the US. We need to invest in alternative energies. There will be money in this and we are positioned to get there.

3) Create a job boom in the Middle East.
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ANOTOL LIEVEN
Islamic success in elections does not mean terrorism success. Nevertheless, it is not a good sign for American influence.

The Bush administration has an Orwellian contradiction. They claim to want to spread democracy, but they have a contempt for the majority's opinion in other countries.

Democracy is desirable as a goal and long-term strategy; it is not a solution to short-term problems. In fact, in the short-term it's likely to act against us (I guess as people have the freedom to hate us.)

The Bush admin did no serious analysis of the Muslim world. They have a completely false analogy between WOT and the cold war. But the people in the cold war had a desire to escape from Russia. The people in the WOT have the desire to escape from us.

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Well, that's about all I have that's even close to worth reporting on, especially since you can just watch it! And I highly recommend watching it.