After the collapse of its coalition cabinet, the Netherlands is set to withdraw its 2,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. That decision is an embarrassment to the Netherlands, to NATO, and to Washington at a moment when President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy faces a crucial test.
NATO members should be looking for ways to add troops and military and police trainers in Afghanistan. The withdrawal will be a blow to the Afghan province of Oruzgan, where most of the Dutch troops have been stationed since 2006 and have earned a reputation as good fighters, sensitive to local needs and concerns.
It is possible, though unlikely, that the next Dutch government could change its mind after elections this June. For now, Washington, other NATO partners and the Dutch need to reflect on how this happened and how to contain the damage.
(…)
We fear the Dutch decision could provide cover for wavering politicians elsewhere — Germany, for example, or Canada, which is now scheduled to pull out its troops at the end of 2011.
Europe’s leaders need to tell themselves — and their voters — the truth. The war in Afghanistan is not just about America’s security. It, too, is about denying sanctuaries to Al Qaeda, which has also carried out deadly terrorist attacks in Europe. NATO is stronger when it stands together. The Netherlands weakens itself and all of its allies by choosing to stand alone.
De PrivacyBarometer is een site waar er in Nederland te weinig van zijn: een die gedetailleerd stemmingen over wetsvoorstellen in de Tweede Kamer bijhoudt, in dit geval over privacy-gerelateerde onderwerpen, en overzichten levert hoe de situatie er per dossier en per partij voorstaat. Op deze manier wordt een onafhankelijk afrekenen door de burger van politieke partijen, zonder intermediaire organen als de media of partijen zelf, mogelijk.
Van alle partijen trekt het CDA zich het minste aan van de privacy van burgers. Er is geen voorstel of wet geweest die de privacy raakt, waar het CDA niet voor was. Ook de PvdA breekt de privacy af, maar dat ligt wel min of meer in de lijn der verwachtingen, omdat deze partij van nature de burgers tegen “al het onheil” wil beschermen, en dat kan nu éénmaal niet zonder controle-maatregelen. Van de ‘liberale’ partijen heeft met name de VVD niet veel met privacy, maar ook D66 scoort slecht. Waar het CDA ronduit zegt dat ze privacy niet zo belangrijk vindt, doet met name D66 voorkomen alsof ze hard voor de privacy opkomt, terwijl dat niet uit hun stemgedrag blijkt.
Meer, onder andere losse voorstellen en proefballonnen, hier.
D66 is de partij die er prat op gaat de privacy van de Nederlandse burger te willen beschermen. Hun daadwerkelijke track record is echter heel wat minder gunstig – alhoewel nog altijd veel geruststellender dan die van het CDA.
D66 belijdt de bescherming van de privacy met name met het woord, maar niet met daden.
Meer, onder andere losse voorstellen en proefballonnen, waar de partij beter in scoort, hier. D66 was in ieder geval nog wel tegen het biometrisch paspoort en het opslaan van vingerafdrukken in een landelijke database.
De voortdurende inperking van burgerrechten, waaronder het recht op privacy, onder het mom van de strijd tegen terrorisme en criminaliteit, is wat mij betreft één van de belangrijkste ontwikkelingen in ontwikkelde democratieën in de recente geschiedenis. Check de barometer, en see for yourself op welke partij jij wilt stemmen met de aankomende verkiezingen.
In the past forty years, the Republican Party has become increasingly conservative – if you can call a party that is largely based on fundamentalist Christianism, an espousal of unitary executive power and torture “conservative”. Currently, the Obama landslide notwithstanding, the GOP is doing very well in the polls, and is bound to retake the Congress at the end of this year. The primary candidate for leadership of their party, and possibly the presidency, is a woman who really defies all boundaries in conservative radicalism, wallowing in a Biblical appeal of martyrdom, premillennial dispensationalism and an utterly hollow free market, small state “agenda” – Sarah Palin.
The demographics, nevertheless, are against this type of conservatism. In every survey, it turns out that the youngest generation of voters to enter the political arena – the so-called “Millennial Generation”, born roughly between 1980 and 1995 – are very much predisposed against the kind of politics that the GOP espouses. This can be seen, for example, in the overwhelming support for gay marriage amongst the younger cohorts of American voters. Millennials tend to be progressive on a range of social, cultural and political issues. What’s more, among every age group younger than 65, the Republican Party trails behind. So the question is: when are these dynamics actually going to affect the GOP?
Pew released a survey on Thursday showing that Millennials have soured a bit on Democrats in the last year. Despite this, they remain the one age group with 50%+ Democratic party ID and the one age group in which 50%+ say they will vote Democratic this fall. The percentage of self-identifying conservatives among Millennials is basically equal with that of self-identifying liberals (28% vs. 29%). The youngest generation of voters is unusually ill-disposed towards movement conservatism of the sort on display at CPAC, which is the event Gardiner hails not only as proof that conservatism is the future but as an “intellectually vibrant” gathering.
Gardiner can believe what he wants, but the evidence we have available right now suggests that conservatism is losing, indeed has already lost, most of the next generation, and that conservatism as we know it today is going to keep losing ground in the future. It is possible that something could happen in the next few years that could change that significantly, but typically once a cohort attaches itself to one party or the other its later voting habits become fairly predictable. The generation that came of age during the Bush years and overwhelmingly backed Obama is not going to become receptive to movement conservatism.
On average, Millennials’ underlying social and political views put them well to the left of their elders. If you dig into the full report, you will see that the recent Republican resurgence owes almost everything to the dramatic shift among members of the so-called “Silent Generation,” whose voting preferences on the generic ballot have gone from being 49-41 Democrat in 2006 to 48-39 Republican for 2010. There have been small shifts in other age groups toward the Republicans, but by far it is the alienation of voters aged 65-82 that has been most damaging to the Democrats’ political strength*. As we all know, these are the voters who are far more likely to turn out than Millennials, which is why Democratic prospects for this election seem as bad as they do even though the Pew survey says that Democrats lead on the generic ballot in every other age group. Among Boomers, Democrats lead 46-42, and among Gen Xers they barely lead 45-44. In other words, the main reason why the GOP is enjoying any sort of political recovery is that many elderly voters have changed their partisan preferences since the last midterm. Republicans remain behind among all voters younger than 65. That does not seem to herald the future revival of movement conservatism of the sort Gardiner is so embarrassingly praising.
Ik heb al van begin af aan duidelijk gemaakt dat ik niets heb, dat de VVD niets heeft, tegen de islam. Het gaat niet om een religie. In tegenstelling tot Pim Fortuyn, die oproept tot een kruistocht, of wat is het, een koude oorlog tegen de islam, wat een verwerpelijke opmerking is, omdat hij daarmee alle moslims op één hoop gooit, heb ik van begin af aan gezegd ‘De islam, daar is niets mis mee’, dat is een te respecteren godsdienst.
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