MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

LENS

This Friday, the International Olympic Committee will decide which sport — golf or rugby — to add to the 2016 Games.

The prospectof Olympic golfraised some con-troversy. To some, golf is the very im-age of exclusivity:wealthy business-men and politi-cians hitting a white ball around

hectares of land that may have morebeneficial uses to society — say, a na-

ture preserve or low-income housing.One could argue that golf, as a

pastime where vast resources are reserved for a privileged few, is un-ethical. Or, as President Hugo Chávez called it in an August televisionbroadcast, a “bourgeois sport.”

“There are sports and there are sports,” Mr. Chavez said, according to the Simon Romero of The New YorkTimes. “Do you mean to tell me this isa people’s sport? It is not.”

Mr. Chávez cited the example of a course in Maracay; he thought30 hectares set aside for golf could be better used to build housing for poor people living in the city’s manyslums. Officials have moved to shutdown that golf course and another,

Mr. Romero wrote.Golf courses can also encroach

on natural habitats. In Scotland, the American real estate developerDonald Trump drew the ire of envi-ronmentalists when he proposed a566-hectare, $1.58 billion golf resort,which would use part of a nature re-serve and a stretch of sand dunes. TheScottish government approved theplan last November.

“It appears that the desires of one high-profile overseas investor who refused to compromise one inch havebeen allowed to override the legal protection of this important site,” said the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds after the decision, according to The Times. “We and thousands of oth-

er objectors consider this is too high a price to pay for the claimed economicbenefits from this development.”

Randy Cohen, who writes an eth-ics column for The Times, wrote on a Times blog that compared with other sports, the culture of golf is “moreredolent of a gated community thanamiable international populism.” Heargued that golf went against the uni-fying spirit of the Olympics.

Frank Thomas, a former techni-cal director of the United States GolfAssociation, argued in The Times’sRoom for Debate blog that golf hadplenty of merit as an Olympic sport.“There is a better balance betweenone’s physical and mental skills in golfthan in almost any other sport in the

Olympics,” he wrote.He said the Olympics could help

promote it to the masses.“What is the objective and motiva-

tion for doing this?” he wrote. “Is itto: enhance the entertainment value of the Olympics; better expose golfto the world; be more inclusive of athletes of different race and gender; determine which nation has the best golf teams rather than individualgolfers; allow golf to be included inthe distribution of government funds afforded all Olympic sports and thus help foster the growth of the game in-ternationally especially in emerging nations?

“A response might be,” he contin-ued, “all of the above.”

Seeing Golf as a People’s Sport

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

All those gadgets tap

into the power grid.III VI VIIIWORLD TRENDS

Smuggling Europe’s

trash to poorer places.

ARTS & STYLES

A golden silk spun by

a rare type of spider.

INTELLIGENCE: Social Democrats on the wane. Page II.

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON

THE SPECTER OF terrorism still

haunts the United States after

9/11. Agents from the Federal Bu-

reau of Investigation were recently work-

ing double time to unravel the alarming

case of a Denver airport shuttle driver

accused of training with explosives in

Pakistan and buying bomb-making

chemicals. In Dallas, a young Jordanian

was charged with trying to blow up a

skyscraper; in Springfield, Illinois, a

prison parolee was arrested for trying to

attack the local federal building; and a

new audiotape, reportedly from Osama

bin Laden, warns that anti-American

attacks will not stop unless the United

States ends the wars in Iraq and Afghani-

stan. Meanwhile, the Obama administra-

tion struggled to decide whether sending

many more troops to Afghanistan would

be the best way to forestall a future at-

tack.

But important as they were, those news

reports masked a surprising and perhaps

heartening long-term trend: Many stu-

dents of terrorism believe that in impor-

tant ways, Al Qaeda and its ideology of

global jihad are in a pronounced decline

— with its central leadership thrown off

balance as operatives are increasingly

picked off by missiles and manhunts and,

more important, with its tactics discred-

ited in public opinion across the Muslim

world.

“Al Qaeda is losing its moral argument

about the killing of innocent civilians,”

said Emile A. Nakhleh, who headed the

Central Intelligence Agency’s strategic

analysis program on political Islam until

2006. “They’re finding it harder to recruit.

LEFTERIS PITARKIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Many students of terrorism believe that the killings of civilians in bombings has alienated many Muslims. London commuters looked at the scene of a bus explosion in 2005.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Signs That Al Qaeda’s Appeal Is on the Decline

Con tin ued on Page IV

Rethinking What to Fear

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009

WARSAW — When President Obama recently announced that he was canceling plans to place missile interceptors in Poland, aggrieved Poles, who wanted them partly

because Russians didn’t, noted the date, September 17. It was the 70th anni-versary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

As Roger Cohen wrote in The International HeraldTribune, it was “the rough equivalentfor the Poles of their announcing con-cessions to a U.S. foe on 9/11.”

It’s nearly impossible not to run into some ghosts of the past here,even if you’re just a cultural tourist.The other day I went looking for what still exists of Chopin’s trail. Next yearis the bicentennial of Chopin’s birth.Concerts, congresses and the famous Chopin piano competition, held here every five years, are all planned for the spring, along with the opening of a refurbished Chopin museum next to the Warsaw Conservatory, where he studied.

“Chopin is our symbol and tourist product but more than that,” saidAlbert Grudzinski, deputy directorof the Chopin Institute, who oversees the competition, “even during Com-munist times culture was what kept people together here. It was our win-dow to the world.”

And it’s the reverse, too, a windowonto Poland from the outside. War-saw is where Chopin spent roughly half his life. He moved to the city from the countryside as an infant when his father, Nicolas, started teaching French at the Warsaw Lyceum, then established himself as a homegrown prodigy at the keyboard and as a

composer.But the Warsaw he knew turned

to rubble and was only partly re-built. Paris has Chopin’s grave. InLondon a plaque marks the townhouse where he spent a few miser-able weeks, ill and huddled in his overcoat in front of a fire, fromwhich he briefly roused himself forwhat would be his last public perfor-mance, a benefit for the Friends ofPoland in 1848.

Warsaw, on the other hand, has sur-prisingly little that is authentic leftof its most famous artist. Looking for where he grew up reveals not manyoriginal sites from his past but a pa-limpsest of ruin and memory.

Wojciech Mlotkowski, a young Polish tour guide, was standing in Pil-sudski Square carrying a hand-held GPS program of Chopin landmarks around the city.

“This is where Chopin first lived inWarsaw,” he said, sweeping his hand

across a broad stone plaza, occupiedonly by a Tomb of the Unknown Sol-dier. The Saxon Palace used to behere, Mr. Mlotkowski said. When the Nazis occupied Poland, they renamed this Adolf Hitler Platz, then blew upthe palace and most of the rest of the city in response to the Warsaw Up-rising in 1944. The tomb is nearly all that survived from what had been the palace arcade.

A few blocks away a small sign ad-vertised Chopin’s salon in the Czapski Palace. Like the rest of this part of thecity, the palace is a postwar recon-struction. The building Chopin knewwas flattened by the Germans.

At least Chopin left his heart inWarsaw. Sheila Cleary, a tourist from Wicklow, Ireland, was looking for itat the Holy Cross Church the other morning. After Chopin died in Paris,his sister brought his heart back here, as he wished. It was interred inthe church. A music-loving Germangeneral — a notorious war criminal, as it happened — helped save it whenthe Nazis leveled the church after the uprising.

“I wanted to find something,” Ms.Cleary said.

MICHAEL

KIMMELMAN

ESSAY

ONLINE: CHOPIN’S WARSAW

A slide show of images, and links to anaudio tour and a map:nytimes.com/music

SearchingFor Chopin,

FindingPoland’s Past

PIOTR MALECKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

About all

that remains

of Chopin in

Warsaw is his

heart, which

is interred in

the Holy Cross

Church.

A Gossamer Silk, From Spiders Spun

A Library Without Shelves

By RANDY KENNEDY

For anyone considering going intothe business of manufacturing tra-ditional textiles using the filamentsextracted from the spinnerets of thegolden orb spider of Madagascar, hereare a few guidelines to keep in mind:

The largest spiders, the females, cangrow to about the size of a small adult human hand.

Only the females produce the silk,which is renowned for both its striking saffron color and its tensile strength(five to six times stronger than steelby weight). They are notoriously can-nibalistic and if left totheir own devices willreduce the entire silk as-sembly line to arachnidcarnage.

They don’t seem towant to work in the win-ter, and when it rains toomuch, their silk becomes viscous and cannot be used.

And if the spiders in the factory be-gin to disappear mysteriously, it mightbe because, in Madagascar, one of thepoorest countries in the world, it is be-lieved by some that eating these spi-ders, fried, is good for the throat or justgood eating.

“There was, shall we say, a fairlysteep learning curve,” said SimonPeers, a British art historian andtextile expert who has lived in Mada-gascar for two decades. Five yearsago Mr. Peers and Nicholas Godley,an American fashion designer alsoliving on the island, began a partner-

ship to do what no one had tried formore than 100 years: to harness spi-ders to make silk in the same way thatsilkworm cocoons have been used for thousands of years.

Recently at the American Museumof Natural History in New York, twowomen carefully pulled back a plastic covering to show what Mr. Peers and Mr. Godley — along with more than a million spiders and a dexterous teamof intrepid Malagasy spider handlers— had accomplished. It is a 3.4-meter-long, brilliantly golden-hued cloth,the first recorded example of a hand-

woven brocaded textile made entirely from the silk of spiders, according toexperts at the Museum of Natural His-tory, where it will be on display for six months in the Grand Gallery.

Mr. Peers has worked for years to re-vive the weaving traditions for which Madagascar was once famous, andpieces made under his direction havefound their way into the collections of the British Museum and the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art in New York, amongothers.

In the late 1890s in Madagascar,where fishermen had long used spi-

der silk for rudimentary nets andline, a French technical-school offi-cial mounted another spider project,this time extracting the silk directlyfrom living spiders to be twisted into threads. He was said to have harvest-ed enough to fashion the hangings for abed that was exhibited in 1900 in Paris,though the hangings no longer exist.

“And that,” Mr. Peers said, “wasmore or less the summit of everyone’seffort to that point — until we took it upagain, like mad men.”

Mr. Peers, 51, and Mr. Godley, 40,say they hope that the textile, which

cost more than half a million dollarsto make, ends up being acquired by a public institution and displayed. (Itis on loan to the American Museumof Natural History.) “I hate sounding pretentious, but what we wanted to dohere was produce something that was a work of art,” Godley said.

Mr. Godley said that he and Mr.Peers harbored few illusions, at least so far, about making a business of their gossamer obsession.

“If we were doing all of this to makemoney,” he said, “I could think ofmuch, much easier ways to do it.”

By RANDY KENNEDY

The Hispanic Society of America,the lonely gem of a museum in up-per Manhattan, is usually visited— when visited at all — for the col-lection of world-class Goya, El Grecoand Velázquez paintings amassedthere by its founder, the railroad heirand scholar Archer Milton Hunting-ton.

But the society also possesses one of the world’s best libraries of mate-rial relating to Spain, Portugal and the Americas.

The collection — letters, novels,maps, sailing charts, marriagecontracts (including one from 1476for Ferdinand and Isabella’s eldestdaughter), catechisms, scientifictreatises and other documents dat-ing back as far as the 12th century — fills a huge floor in the museum.

When the French artist Domi-nique Gonzalez-Foerster visitedthese basement stacks for the firsttime two years ago, the impression that came over her immediately was“this Citizen Kane, Xanadu feeling,” she said in a telephone interviewfrom Paris, where she lives andworks part of the year. Sitting in the stacks, she began to envision a kind of parallel library.

And with help over the last fewmonths from a team of painters andthe society’s librarians, she created one. “Chronotopes & dioramas,” an

exhibition by Ms. Gonzalez-Foerst-er that is part of the Dia Art Foun-dation’s temporary partnershipwith the Hispanic Society, recentlyopened in a space next to the soci-ety.

The work presents a meticulously fashioned fantasy of a library inwhich shelves have become obso-lete, and books, like examples ofliving creatures, are displayed in il-lusionistic dioramas evoking thoseof the American Museum of Natural History.

Though Ms. Gonzalez-Foerster,44, was born in Strasbourg and edu-cated in Grenoble, she has long been fascinated with South Americanculture, particularly the tropical-modernist mélange of Brazil, where she spends half of each year..

In her work, books have longbeen important conceptually andas a kind of raw material, “almostlike bricks” as she describes them,though bricks that seem almost sen-tient in the postmodern way of textliberated from its author. “With a li-brary,” she said, “you slowly build a biography for yourself.”

Daniel Birnbaum, the artistic di-rector of this year’s Venice Biennale, wrote that what she was primarilyafter, in his view, was to create “an atmosphere that draws out the mel-ancholy inherent in objects in theworld.”

LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

At The Hispanic Society of America in New York, a painter places

books in a diorama by the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.

FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES; INSET, SIMON PEERS

The silk of the

Madagascar

golden orb spider

is stronger than

steel. Nicholas

Godley, near

right, and Simon

Peers used

the silk of more

than a million

spiders to

make a 3.4-meter-

long cloth.

Repubblica NewYork

E D U C AT I O N

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009 VII

By ERIC DASH

BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania —Midway through one of his under-graduate seminars on mergers andacquisitions at Lehigh’s businessschool, John R. Chrin reached a topic he knew intimately.

As his students dissected thecase study, “Investment Bankingin 2008: A Brave New World,” Mr.Chrin couldn’t help adding his per-sonal twist to the discussion of BearStearns’s collapse.

“I remember sitting there with thefinance chief and the C.E.O., AlanSchwartz,” he said. “They could not open for business on that Monday. That’s why the government was sohopeful for someone to do a deal.”

Last year, Mr. Chrin was a senior investment banker at JPMorganChase, advising his boss, Jamie Di-mon, the chief executive, on the dar-ing takeover of Bear. Today, he has the ear of 25 deal-makers in training in Finance 372, an hourlong courseeach Thursday that mixes the basicsof mergers and acquisitions with war stories from the financial crisis.

“It’s an opportunity to recharge,give back and bring a little bit of what I have learned,” said Mr. Chrin, per-haps the only professor at LehighUniversity, in Bethlehem, Pennsylva-nia, who comes to class in a bespoke navy blue pinstriped suit. It is a lot of work, he said, comparing the class to preparing for a board meeting with 25directors.

Mr. Chrin, Lehigh’s global financial services executive in residence, is oneof a handful of top deal-makers who have recently traded the boardroomfor the classroom: Gregory Fleming,

Merrill Lynch’s former president, isco-teaching a course on the causes of the financial crisis at his alma mater,Yale Law School; Thomas Russo, Le-hman Brothers’ former chief legal of-ficer, taught a class on crisis decision-making at Columbia Business Schoolin New York.

Universities have long brought inbusiness leaders to inject real-worldknow-how into their lesson plans. Butthey have redoubled that effort amidthe fallout from the financial crisis.

At the Wharton School, in Phila-delphia, students and professorsarranged a series of “24-hour teach-ins” over the last year, and during thespring semester brought Wall Streetalumni to campus each week for aclass on the crisis. This fall, Dart-mouth University in New Hampshireintroduced a 14-person economicsseminar on crisis economics, co-taught with Michael G. Stockman, a former Wall Street risk manager.

Meanwhile, business school deansare trying harder to reach out to cor-porate leaders and alumni to givetheir students a hand in one of thetoughest job markets for Wall Street in years by broadening their networkof contacts. Faculty members are re-lying on practitioners to keep theirresearch current on fast-movingpolicy topics, like financial regula-tory reform, and bring business case studies to life.

Jeffrey Garten, the former dean of

the School of Man-agement at Yale, saidbringing in more ex-perts from business and government wascrucial to helping

financial leaders of the future avoid past mistakes. “There is a crying needfor more understanding,” he said.

That is one reason Mr. Chrin, who graduated from Lehigh with an engi-neering degree in 1985, came back tocampus as a teaching fellow this fall.

Mr. Chrin hopes that students willgain a better understanding of invest-ment banking. For one of their final grades, students will have the option of analyzing major issues in the BearStearns sale. “If they want to do that one, that’s fine,” he said. “I have alittle more experience on that.”

Of course, life inside academia is in-structive, too. Mr. Chrin said his time on campus had made him “way more empathetic to how people can get re-ally angry with the outright levels ofpay” on Wall Street. He would not dis-cuss his salary other than to acknowl-edge that he had taken a substantial pay cut.

Next semester, Mr. Chrin said hewould also teach a freshman course on business ethics and may assistwith faculty research.

In the meantime, Mr. Chrin has toldstudents that he will be as available tothem as he once was to top clients. Hedid not announce regular office hourson the first day of class. Instead, he gave out his phone number.

“I’m a banker, so feel free to callme,” Josefa Palma, one of Mr. Chrin’sstudents, said he told the class. “I’llalways have my cellphone.”

By TAMAR LEWIN

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or sup-planted altogether by lessons assem-bled from the wealth of free course-ware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

“Kids are wired differently thesedays,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chieftechnology officer for the CalcasieuParish school system in Lake Charles,Louisiana. “They’re digitally nimble.They multitask, transpose and extrap-olate. And they think of knowledge asinfinite.

“They don’t engage with textbooksthat are finite, linear and rote. Teach-ers need digital resources to find thosedocuments, those blogs, those wikisthat get them beyond the plain vanillacurriculum in the textbooks.”

In California, Governor ArnoldSchwarzenegger this summer an-nounced an initiative that would re-place some high school science andmath texts with free, “open source”digital versions. With California’s dif-ficult financial situation, the governorhopes free textbooks could save hun-dreds of millions of dollars a year.

Many superintendents are enthusi-astic. “In five years, I think the major-ity of students will be using digital text-books,” said William M. Habermehl,superintendent of the 500,000-studentOrange County schools in California.

But the digital future is not quite on the horizon in most classrooms. Forone thing, there is still a large digital divide. Not every student has access toa computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few dis-tricts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widenthe gap between rich and poor.

Many educators expect that digital textbooks and online courses will startsmall, perhaps for those who want to study a subject they cannot fit intotheir class schedule.

Whenever it comes, the online on-slaught poses a real threat to tradi-tional textbook publishers.

Most of the digital texts submitted for review in California came from anonprofit group, CK-12 Foundation,that develops free “flexbooks” that canbe customized to meet state standards,and added to by teachers. Its physicsflexbook, a Web-based, open-contentcompilation, was introduced in Vir-ginia in March.

“The good part of our flexbooks isthat they can be anything you want,”said Neeru Khosla, a founder of thegroup. “You can use them online, you can download them onto a disk, you canprint them, you can customize them, you can embed video. When people getover the mind-set issue, they’ll see thatthere’s no reason to pay $100 a pop for a textbook, when you can have the con-tent you want free.”

Around the world, hundreds of uni-versities, including M.I.T. and KingFahd University of Petroleum andMinerals in Saudi Arabia, now useand share open-source courses. Con-nexions, a Rice University nonprofit organization in Houston devoted toopen-source learning, submitted analgebra text to California.

But given the economy, many educa-tors and technology experts agree thatthe kindergarten through 12th gradedigital revolution may be further off.

“There’s a lot of stalled purchasing and decision making right now,” saidMark Schneiderman, director of fed-eral education policy at the Software & Information Industry Association.“But it’s going to happen.”

By CELIA W. DUGGER

KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Se-niors here at Kwamfundo high school protested outside the staff room lastyear because their accounting teacherchronically failed to show up for class.With looming national examinationsthat would determine whether theywere bound for a university or jobless-ness, they demanded a replacement.

“We kept waiting, and there wasno action,” said Masixole Mabetshe, who failed the exams and is now out ofwork .

The principal of the school, Monge-zeleli Bonani, said in an interview thatthere was little he could do but givethe teacher a warning. Finally the stu-dents’ frustration turned riotous. Theythrew bricks, punched two teachersand stabbed one in the head with scis-sors, witnesses said.

The traumatized school’s passingrate on the national exams known asthe matric tumbled to just 44 percent.

Thousands of schools across South Africa are bursting with students who dream of being the accountants, engi-neers and doctors this country desper-ately needs, but the education system is often failing the very children de-pending on it most to escape poverty.

Post-apartheid South Africa is atgrave risk of producing what one com-mentator has called another lost gen-eration, entrenching the racial andclass divide rather than bridging it.

“If you are in a township school, you don’t have much chance,” said GraemeBloch, an education researcher at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. “That’s the hidden curriculum — that inequality continues, that white kids doreasonably and black kids don’t really stand a chance unless they can get intoa formerly white school or the smallnumber of black schools that work.”

A youth movement seeking equalityin education is gaining energy. In CapeTown recently, thousands of students

from township schools marched to CityHall, asking for libraries.

South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, bluntly stated that the “won-derful policies” of the governmentled by his party, the African NationalCongress, since the end of apartheid 15 years ago, “have not essentially led to the delivery of quality education forthe poorest of the poor.”

Scoring at BottomDespite increases in education

spending since apartheid ended, SouthAfrican children consistently scoreat or near bottom on international

achievement tests, even measuredagainst far poorer African countries.

And the wrenching achievement gapbetween black and white students per-sists. Here in the Western Cape, only 2 out of 1,000 sixth graders in predomi-nantly black schools passed a mathe-matics test at grade level in 2005, com-pared with almost 2 out of 3 children inschools once reserved for whites that are now integrated, but generally inmore affluent neighborhoods.

South Africa’s schools are still strug-gling with the legacy of the apartheid era, when the government establisheda separate “Bantu” education sys-

tem that deliberately sought to makeblacks subservient laborers.

Discipline for TeachersMost teachers in South Africa’s

schools today got inferior educations under the Bantu system, and this has seriously impaired their ability toteach the next generation, analystssay. But South Africa’s schools alsohave problems for which history can-not be blamed, including teacher ab-senteeism, researchers say.

As South Africa has invested heavilyin making the system fairer, the gov-erning party made some serious mis-

takes, experts say. Teacher collegeswere closed down, and the teachers’union too often protected its members at the expense of pupils, critics say.

Teacher vacancies commonly gounfilled for months, said Angie Mot-shekga, the education minister. Prin-cipals cannot select the teachers intheir schools or discipline them forabsenteeism. Ms. Motshekga said she had Mr. Zuma’s backing to give princi-pals greater authority, and would alsoseek to change the law so the educa-tion department could pick principalsdirectly — and hold them accountable.

Here in the Western Cape, the prov-ince is considering monitoring teach-ers’ attendance by having them send text messages or e-mail messages toconfirm they are present. “We’ve got to get discipline back in schools,’’ saidDonald Grant, the provincial educa-tion minister.

Hungry for KnowledgeDespite last year’s violent episode,

students at Kwamfundo SecondarySchool seem to feel genuine affection for their school and speak of their hun-ger for knowledge.

Even when they realized the scienceteacher was absent one recent firstperiod, the student body presidentand his sidekick, a radiantly optimis-tic AIDS orphan, rose to lead a reviewsession on evolution.

Later that day, Arthur Mgqweto,a math teacher, strode into class. Heteaches more than 200 students each day for a salary of $15,000 a year.

Mr. Mgqweto grew up in the coun-tryside during the apartheid years,ashamed to go to school because hehad no shoes. He finished high school in his 30s. His only son was stabbed to death at age 21 in a nearby township.

“I always explain to them, life is veryhard,” he said. “They must get educat-ed so they can take care of their fami-lies when they grow old.”

Students in South Africa Fall Prey to the Legacy of Apartheid

TIM SHAFFER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

JOAO SILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

South Africa’s schools are racked with problems like teacher absenteeism. When a teacher does not show

up for class, students in Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, step up to lead the lessons.

Bankers Share War Stories On Campus

Classrooms and TextbooksAre Shifting to Digital

John R. Chrin,

who was involved

in a failed

takeover deal of

Bear Stearns, now

teaches finance at

his alma mater.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY

VI MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009

The confusion of shopping for wineoften leaves many desperately need-ing a drink.

But mobile software developershave begun aiming at oenophiles,

and in so doing, theyhave established oneof the more usefulcategories of wirelessapplications, knownas apps.

Appropriatelyenough, choosing the right one canbe puzzling and tedious. Some of therefined entries in the current vintageinclude Cor.kz ($4), Wine Enthusi-ast Guide ($5), Nat Decants Food &Wine Matcher ($3) and Pair It! ($3).

Before digging into the details,though, consider the overall value ofthese services for a moment. Let’ssay you’re at your favorite wine shopwith about 15 minutes to spare, andyou want a bottle that will impressyour dinner guests without goingbroke.

The shop owner is busy. Ratherthan waiting, you can now just reachfor the sommelier in your cellphone.

From there you have a couple ofoptions. Some apps, like Wine En-thusiast, let you find the most highlyrated wines at specific price levels,so you can quickly browse the store— or, if you’re in a restaurant, thewine list — for matches.

If you have Cor.kz or, to a lesserextent, Nat Decants, you can reversethe process, and look through thewine list or shelves until you find apromising label. Then it’s a matter ofdoing a quick check on its rating.

The second approach has limits,simply because it takes too long to

type in, say, “2003 Hochheimer Köni-gin Victoriaberg Riesling Beerenau-slese,’’ to say nothing of the timeit might take to click through theratings and then move onto anotherbottle.

Smartphone mavens are alreadywondering why you can’t just use thephone’s camera to scan the bottle’sbar code and have the app displaythe wine’s rating? In the comingweeks, you’ll be able to get fairlyclose to that bit of high-tech wineheaven, thanks to a new feature fromCor.kz.

But first, more about the core

features of this app, whichwill soon be available toBlackBerry users and own-ers of Android devices likeT-Mobile’s MyTouch 3G.

Cor.kz stands on the shoul-ders of an Internet giant,CellarTracker.com, whichhouses more than a millionreviews by roughly 82,000wine aficionados. Cor.kz canalso help users manage theirwine cellar inventory, but it is perhaps best used by thosewho just want to buy moreintelligently.

Type in the name of thewine you are considering — Del Dotto, say — and Cor.kzretrieves everything in Cel-larTracker’s data base about

the wine.This can be a blessing and a curse.

Wines from Del Dotto, a small butmuch-beloved vintner in Napa Val-ley, California, yield 581 tastingnotes. If you type something morespecific into your iPhone, like “2005Del Dotto Cabernet,’’ Cor.kz returns95 matches.

Some of these results include anumerical rating. To save yourselfwasted clicks, choose those listings.The rating represents the averagefrom CellarTracker’s reviewers, andthose entries will also include de-tailed reviews and retail prices.

The bar code scanning feature,cool as it sounds, will have handi-caps. Wine makers often use thesame bar code for every vintage,and some makers allow distributorsto paste different bar codes on thebottles. Still, with this method, us-ers should at least be able to retrievea short list of bottles from which tochoose.

Plugged-In Age Stokes Hunger for Electricity

With Cor.kz, you can

impress dinner guests

without spending a

lot by sifting through

thousands of wines.

REVIEW

BOBTEDESCHI

Applications forsmartphones can get a wine’s rating.

Sommelier In Your

Cellphone

In Search of the Lost GadgetBy DAVID SEGAL

For decades, when an item was lostor stolen, a consumer went through three stages of grief: anger, mourn-ing and acceptance.

Then came the Digital Age andwith it, gadgets that manufacturers can keep tabs on — and even profitfrom — when they wind up in thehands of someone who has found or poached them. Which, in turn, has led to a fourth stage of gadget-relatedgrief: rage.

Specifically, rage at the gadgetmakers, which often know exactly who has a missingor stolen device,because in many in-stances it has been registered to a new user.

But many techcompanies will notdisclose informa-tion about the newowners of missingdevices unless apolice officer callswith a search war-rant. Even a requestto simply shut downservice is typicallyrefused.

The problem hasreached new heightswith the Kindle read-er from Amazon.

Samuel Borgeseis still irate aboutthe response fromAmazon when he recently lost hisKindle. After leaving it on a plane, hecanceled his account so that nobodycould charge books to his credit card.Then he asked Amazon to put the se-rial number of his wayward device ona kind of do-not-register list.

Amazon’s policy is that it will helplocate a missing Kindle only if the company is contacted by a police offi-

cer bearing a subpoena. Mr. Borgese,who lives in Manhattan, began to seeulterior motives when he twice sente-mail messages to Amazon seekingan address to send a police report andgot no reply.

“I finally concluded,” Mr. Borgesesaid, “that Amazon knew the devicewas being used and preferred to sellcontent to anyone who possessed thedevice, rather than assist in return-ing it to its rightful owner.”

Drew Herdener, an Amazonspokesman, said only that the compa-ny acted in accordance with the law

and cooperated withlaw enforcement of-ficials. .

SiriusXM Radioalso says it needs to see a subpoena froma police officer beforeit will deactivate orhand over informa-tion about missingradios.

IPhone ownershave a number ofoptions to searchfor their handsets,including featuresthat use GPS tech-nology to send outvirtual semaphores.But if someone can shut down or elude those systems, andif the phone’s secu-rity identity module— also known as the

SIM card — is replaced, it can be usedby its new owner to make calls.

The approach of American tech-nology companies is not shared bysome of their counterparts abroad. InEngland, the major cellphone playerskeep a centralized black list for mobilephone serial numbers, allowing con-sumers to flag lost or stolen phones sothey cannot be re-registered.

By JAD MOUAWAD

and KATE GALBRAITH

With two laptop-loving children and a Jack Russell terrier hemmed in by anelectric fence, Peter Troast figured his household used a lot of power. Just how much did not really hit him until thenight the family turned off the over-head lights at their home in Maine andbegan hunting gadgets that glowed inthe dark.

“It was amazing to see all theselights blinking,” Mr. Troast said.

As goes the Troast household, sogoes the planet.

Electricity use from power-hungrygadgets is rising fast all over the world.

Flat-panel televisions have turned out to be bigger power users than somerefrigerators.

The proliferation of personal com-puters, iPods, cellphones, game con-soles and all the rest amounts to thefastest-growing source of power de-mand in the world. Consumer elec-tronics now represent 15 percent ofglobal household power demand, and that is expected to triple over the nexttwo decades, according to the Interna-tional Energy Agency.

To satisfy the United States’ demandfrom gadgets will require building the equivalent of 560 coal-fired powerplants, or 230 nuclear plants, accord-

ing to the agency.Most energy experts see only one

solution: mandatory efficiency rulesspecifying how much power devicesmay use.

Appliances like refrigerators arecovered by such rules in the UnitedStates. But efforts to cover consumer electronics like televisions and game consoles have been derailed by manu-facturers worried about higher costs.

Part of the problem is that manymodern gadgets cannot entirely beturned off; even when not in use, theydraw electricity while they await asignal from a remote control or wait torecord a television program.

“We have entered this new erawhere essentially everything is on all the time,” said Alan Meier, a seniorscientist at the Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory in California anda leading expert on energy efficiency.

People can, of course, reduce thiswaste — but to do so takes a single-minded person.

Mr. Troast, who sells energy effi-ciency equipment, was not put off bythe idea of hunting behind cabinets to find every power supply and gadget,like those cable boxes, Web routers or computers that glowed in the dark.

The Troasts cut their monthly en-ergy use by around 16 percent, partlyby plugging their computers and en-tertainment devices into smart power strips. The strips turn off when theelectronics are not in use.

While Mr. Troast’s experience dem-onstrates that consumers can limit thepower wasted by inactive devices, an-other problem is not as easily solved: many products now require largeamounts of power to run.

The biggest offender is the flat-screen television. As liquid crystal dis-

plays and plasma technologies replacecathode ray tubes, and as screen sizes increase, new televisions need morepower than older models do.

Another power drain is the videogame console. Noah Horowitz, at the Natural Resources Defense Coun-cil, calculated that gaming consoles,like the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, now use about the same amountof electricity each year as San Diego, the ninth-largest city in the UnitedStates.

Mandatory efficiency standards for electronic devices would force manu-facturers to redesign their products orto add components that better control power use. Many manufacturers fight

such mandates because they wouldincrease costs, and they also claim themandates would stifle innovation.

“Mandates ignore the fundamental nature of the industry that innovatesdue to consumer demand and techno-logical developments, not regulations,”said Douglas Johnson, the senior direc-tor of technology policy at the Consum-er Electronics Association.

Estimates vary regarding howmuch a mandatory efficiency programfor gadgets would cost consumers. For some changes, like making sure de-vices draw minimal power in standby mode, experts say the cost may beonly a few extra cents. At the otherextreme, the most energy-efficientof today’s televisions can cost $100

more than the least energy-efficient.(That expense would be partly offset over time, of course, by lower powerneeds.)

Even now, when both the Obamaadministration and Congress are fo-cused on energy problems, no legisla-tion is moving forward to confront the issue. Experts like Dan W. Reicher,who directs Google’s energy efforts,argue that the United States must do better, setting an example for the rest of the world.

“If we can’t improve the efficiencyof simple appliances and get them into greater use,” Mr. Reicher said, “it’shard to believe that we’ll succeed withdifficult things like cleaning up coal-fired power plants.”

JOEL PAGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The demand for gadgets in the United States may require more efficient use of electricity. Peter Troast’s

family cut their monthly energy use by 16 percent partly by plugging gadgets into smart power strips.

LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Samuel Borgese is

angry he got not help

recovering his Kindle.

Many large TVs use more power thanrefrigerators.

Repubblica NewYork

M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009 V

Learning how to both give andreceive criticism is tricky. If we hearany comments that are less thanpositive as an attack, then we dis-card anything useful that the critichas to say. But taking all criticism

seriously, no matterhow unhelpful, isn’t beneficial, either.

“Most people say feedback is important,but the hidden mes-sage is, ‘as long as it’s

good,’ ” said Robert Brooks, an as-sistant clinical professor of psychol-ogy at Harvard Medical School.

Although it may seem easier togive criticism than to take it, that’snot always the case. Leon F. Selt-zer, a clinical psychologist who has written extensively on this subject,differentiates between criticism and feedback. In a blog he writes for Psy-chology Today, he notes that:

• Criticism is judgmental and ac-cusatory. It can involve labeling, lec-turing, moralizing and even ridicul-ing. Feedback focuses on providing concrete information to motivate the recipient to reconsider behavior.

• Criticism involves making nega-tive assumptions about the other person’s motives. Feedback reactsnot to intent but the actual result of the behavior.

• Criticism, poorly given, often in-cludes commands and ultimatums,making the recipient feel defensive and angry, and undermines any ben-efits. Feedback, on the other hand,

looks less at how the person shouldchange, but tries to prompt discus-sion about the benefits of change.

This last point is one that Dar-ren Gurney, a high school teacher in New Rochelle, New York, has thought a lot about. He also coaches high school and college baseballteams and runs a summer baseballcamp. He has found that one of the most effective ways to criticize a player is not to tell him what he didwrong, but ask him to analyze what he thinks he could have done better.

“Listening skills are the most underrated skills,” Mr. Gurney said. When coaching, he says, he asks

players to break down three things that went wrong that day and how to improve them. “It transcends the playing fields to life skills,” he said.

And although it may seem obvi-ous, Dr. Brooks said, people takecriticism a lot better if their boss (or spouse or parent) isn’t too stingywith positive feedback.

Shinobu Kitayama, a professor of psychology at the University ofMichigan, identified clear differ-

ences, for example, in the reaction to criticism in the American and Japa-nese cultures.

“In general, it seems as if criticism is very hard to take in contemporaryAmerican culture,” Professor Ki-tayama said. “It’s seen as a threat or an attack on self-esteem or as violat-ing social rules. In Japanese culture,self-esteem is important, but more important is improving yourself.”

In a large study of Japanese and American Olympic athletes, which Professor Kitayama co-wrote, Japa-nese athletes and commentators were twice as likely as Americans to criticize their performance or makenegative comments about it.

“Americans say about fourpositive comments to one negativecomment, while the Japanese tendto equally balance positive and negative comments,” said Hazel R.Markus, a professor of psychologyat Stanford and another co-author.This and other studies, she said, indi-cate that failure feedback is motivat-ing for Japanese while success feed-back is motivating for Americans.

Experts say that when hearing criticism the important thing is to listen. Don’t go on the defensive, but don’t assume the critic is right. Al-though it’s not always easy, try to de-termine which information is valu-able and relevant and which isn’t.

While your first instinct may be to argue or apologize and quickly leave the room, stay and calmly ask ques-tions to clarify the situation.

By PETER S. GOODMAN

Among the possible casualties of theGreat Recession are the gauges thateconomists have traditionally reliedupon to assess societal well-being.

In a provocative new study, a pair of Nobel prize-winning economists, Jo-seph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, urgethe adoption of new assessment tools that incorporate a broader concernfor human welfare than just economicgrowth. By their reckoning, much ofthe contemporary economic disaster owes to the misbegotten assumptionthat policy makers simply had to focus on nurturing growth, trusting that thiswould maximize prosperity for all.

“What you measure affects whatyou do,” Mr. Stiglitz said as he dis-cussed the study before a gatheringof journalists in New York on Septem-ber 22. “If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.”

According to the report, much ofthe world has long been ruled by anunhealthy fixation on swelling thegross domestic product, or the quan-tity of goods and services an economy produces. The report is more critique than prescription. It elucidates in gen-eral terms why leaning exclusively on growth as an economic philosophymay yield unhappiness, and it sug-gests that the incomes of typical peo-ple should be weighed more heavilythan the production of whole societies.But it sidesteps the difficult details of placing a cost on a ton of pollution or a waylaid career, leaving a great mass of policy choices for others to resolve.

The report was ordered by PresidentNicolas Sarkozy of France, whose dis-satisfaction with the available tools of economic assessment prompted himto create the Commission on the Mea-surement of Economic Performanceand Social Progress. The officialFrench statistics agency is working toadopt the report’s recommendations.

Whatever one’s views on the mer-its of European economic policy, thecrisis over the last year is promptinga re-examination of how economistsmeasure vital signs.

By most assessments, the Americaneconomy is now growing again. Manyexperts expect a 3 percent annualizedrate of expansion from July throughSeptember. As a technical matter, the recession appears to be over. Yet theunemployment rate sits at 9.7 percentand will probably climb higher. In mil-lions of households still grappling with

joblessness and debt, signs of health asmeasured by the traditional indicators seem disconnected from daily life.

This was the sort of contradictionMr. Sarkozy sought to unravel whenhe created the commission. To headthe panel, he picked Mr. Stiglitz, aformer World Bank chief economistwhose best-selling books amount toan indictment of the Washington-ledmodel of global economic integration.

The resulting report amounts to atreatise on the inadequacy of G.D.P.growth as an indication of overalleconomic health. It cites the example of increased driving, which weighs inas a positive within the framework of economic growth, as it requires great-er production of gasoline and cars,yet fails to account for the leisure and work time squandered in traffic jams, and the environmental costs of pollut-ants unleashed on the atmosphere.

During the real estate bubble that

preceded the financial crisis, the focus on economic growth helped encour-age overbuilding and investment inreal estate. Credit enabled spending, and spending translated into fastergrowth — an outcome that was con-sidered intrinsically good, no matterhow long it might last or the convul-sions that would accompany the end of easy money.

Instead of centering assessmentson the goods and services an economy produces, policy makers would do bet-ter to focus on the material well-being of typical people by measuring incomeand consumption, along with the avail-ability of health care and education,the report concludes.

“We looked to G.D.P. as a measureof how well we were doing, and thatdoesn’t tell us whether it’s sustain-able,” Mr. Stiglitz said at the briefing.“Your measure of output is grossly dis-torted by the failure of our accounting system. What began as a measure ofmarket performance has increasinglybecome a measure of social perfor-mance, and that’s wrong.”

By SHARON LaFRANIERE

and JOHN GROBLER

WINDHOEK, Namibia — It is notevery day that global leaders set foot in this southern African nation ofgravel roads, towering sand dunes and a mere two million people. So whenPresident Hu Jintao of China arrived here in February 2007 with a 130-per-son delegation in tow, it clearly was notjust a social visit.

And in fact, China soon granted Na-mibia a big low-interest loan, whichNamibia tapped to buy $55.3 millionworth of Chinese-made cargo scan-ners to deter smugglers. It was a neat illustration, Chinese officials said, ofhow doing good in Namibia could dowell for China, too.

Or so it seemed until Namibiacharged that the state-controlled com-pany selected by China to provide the scanners — a company until recently run by President Hu’s son — had facili-tated the deal with millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. And China wasuncooperative when Namibian inves-tigators asked for help looking into the matter.

Now the scanners seem to illustrate something else: the aura of secrecyand back-room deals that has clouded China’s use of billions of dollars inforeign aid to court the developingworld.

Leaders of developing nations haveembraced China’s offers of easy cred-it, without Western-style demands for political or economic reform. The re-sults can be clearly seen in new roads,power plants, and telecommunica-tions networks across the African con-tinent — more than 200 projects since 2001, many financed with preferentialloans from the Chinese government’sExim Bank.

Increasingly, though, experts argue that China’s aid requires the recipient play by its rules: The money must beused to buy goods or services fromcompanies, many of them state-con-trolled, that Chinese officials select.

“China is using this financing to buythe loyalty of the political elite,” saidHarry Roque, a University of the Phil-ippines law professor who is challeng-ing the legality of Chinese-financedprojects in the Philippines. “It is avery effective tool of soft diplomacy.But it is bad for the citizens who haveto repay these loans for graft-riddencontracts.”

Some developing nations insist on

independently comparing prices be-fore accepting China’s largesse. Oth-ers do not bother. “Very often theyare getting something they wouldn’tbe able to get without China’s financ-ing,” said Chris Alden, a specialist on China-African relations with the Lon-don School of Economics and Political Science.

Officially, China’s directive to itscompanies is to act ethically overseas. But China has no specific law against bribing foreign officials. And the gov-ernment seems none too eager to in-vestigate or punish companies it se-

lects if they turn out to have engaged in questionable practices overseas.

In January, for example, the World Bank barred four state-controlledChinese companies from competingfor its work after an investigationshowed that they tried to rig bids forbank projects in the Philippines. Buttwo of those companies remain on the Chinese Commerce Ministry’s list ofapproved foreign aid contractors, ac-cording to its Web site.

The Namibia controversy is espe-cially delicate because until late lastyear, the contractor’s president was

Mr. Hu’s son, Hu Haifeng. The youngerMr. Hu is now Communist Party sec-retary of an umbrella company thatincludes Nuctech and dozens of other companies.

Nuctech has denied any wrongdoingin court papers filed here in Windhoek.A spokeswoman said the company hadno comment because the matter wasunresolved. China’s Commerce Min-istry and other government agencies did not respond to repeated requestsfor comment.

As soon as allegations against thecompany surfaced this summer,China’s censors swung into action,blocking all mention of the scandalin the Chinese news media and on the Internet.

“This is a signal to everyone to backoff,” said Russell Leigh Moses, ananalyst of Chinese politics in Beijing.“Everyone goes into default mode, be-cause once you get the ball rolling, no one knows where it will stop. No onewants their rice bowl broken.”

As China Offers Aid in Africa, Accusations of Corruption Follow

JOHN GROBLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

MINH UONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES

ESSAY

ALINATUGEND

The Difference Between Feedback and Criticism

Many people wantto hear feedback, but only if it’s positive.

Economic indicatorsseem disconnected from daily life.

Emphasis on Growth Is Said to Be Misguided

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels, and Carlos H. Conde from Manila. Jonathan Ansfield con-tributed research from Beijing.

Tekla Lameck, right, a Namibian

public service comissioner,

has been charged with taking

kickbacks in 2007 from a

Chinese contractor.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009

Question: How much confidence do you have in Osama bin Laden to do the right thing regarding world affairs?

Percentage of Muslim respondents who answered “a lot” or “some” confidence:

Surveys were nationwide except in Pakistan, where polling was not conducted in some sparsely populated, embattled areas.

*Israel data for 2009 only.

Question: Are suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets justified to defend Islam from its enemies?

Percentage of Muslim respondents who answered “often” or “sometimes” justified:

Muslim Support for Bin Laden and Suicide Bombing

10

20

30

40

50

60

70% %

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

’092003

15 Egypt

43 Nigeria

4 Turkey

38 Lebanon

68 Palestinian territories

12 Jordan

5 Pakistan 7 Israel*

13 Indonesia

’092002

Source: Pew Research Center THE NEW YORK TIMES

23 Egypt

54 Nigeria

2 Turkey

4 Lebanon

16 Israel

28 Jordan

18 Pakistan

25 Indonesia

52 Palestinian territories

They’re finding it harder to raise money.”

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A.officer and forensic psychiatrist, counted 10 serious plots with Western targets, successful and unsuccessful, that could be linked to Al Qaeda or itsallies in 2004, a peak he believes was motivated by the American-led inva-sion of Iraq the year before. In 2008, he said, there were just three.

Dr. Sageman has been in the fore-front of those who argue that the cen-trally led Al Qaeda responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks is giving way to a generation of dispersed, as-piring terrorists linked largely by theInternet — who still pose a danger, but of a lesser degree.

“I said two years ago it was a dimin-ishing problem, and everything I’veseen since then has confirmed it,” Dr. Sageman said of what counterterror-ism specialists call Al Qaeda Central.

Audrey Kurth Cronin, a profes-sor at the National War College inWashington, cites the arcs of previ-

ous violent extremist groups, from the Russian People’s Will to the Irish Republican Army, that she studied for her new book, “How Terrorism Ends.”

“I think Al Qaeda is in the process of imploding,” she said. “This is not necessarily the end. But the trends are in a good direction.”

Yet the question of how much com-fort to take from such an assessment,and whether it should change Ameri-can counterterrorism policy, remains unanswered. Even counterterrorism officials who agree that Al Qaeda is on the wane, for example, say the organization might well regroup ifleft unmolested in a lawless region inPakistan, Afghanistan or Somalia.

Nevertheless, some government officials do take quiet, if wary, satis-faction in two developments that they say underlie the broad belief that AlQaeda is on a downhill slope. One isthe success of military Special Opera-tions units, the C.I.A. and allies in kill-ing prominent terrorists.

Three days apart in mid-September,American special forces in Somalia

firing from helicopters killed Saleh AliSaleh Nabhan, a leader of a Somalianorganization, Al Shabab, which is alliedwith Al Qaeda, and the police in Indone-sia killed the most-wanted terrorist inSoutheast Asia, Noordin MuhammadTop, in an assault on a house in Java.

In Pakistan, missile strikes fromC.I.A. drone aircraft have taken asteady toll on Al Qaeda and its Talibanallies since the Bush administrationaccelerated these attacks last year, apolicy reinforced by President Obama.

The constant threat of attack fromthe air also makes it far harder for terrorists to move, communicate, and plan, counterterrorism officials say.

The second trend is older and prob-ably more critical. The celebration inmany Muslim countries that followedthe September 11, 2001, attacks has given way to broad disillusionment with mass killing and the ideology be-hind it, according to a number of polls.

Between 2002 and 2009, the view thatsuicide bombings are “often or some-times justified” has declined, accord-ing to the Pew Global Attitudes Project,from 43 percent to 12 percent in Jordan;from 26 percent to 13 percent in Indone-sia; and from 33 percent to 5 percent inPakistan. Positive ratings for Osamabin Laden have fallen by half or more inmost of the countries Pew polled.

Peter Mandaville, a professor of government and Islamic studies at George Mason University in Virginia, says a series of public recantationsby prominent Islamist scholars and militants in recent years have had aneffect. But the biggest catalyst has been bombings close to home.

“Right after 9/11, people thought,wow, America is not invincible,” Mr.Mandaville said. “It was a strikeagainst the U.S., and they were for it.”But when large numbers of innocentMuslims fell victim to attacks, “itbecame more and more difficult toromanticize Al Qaeda as fighting theglobal hegemons.”

In addition, Al Qaeda, for all its talkof global religious war, offered no practical solutions for local problems: unemployment, poverty, official cor-ruption and poor education.

Even those who are convinced AlQaeda is growing weaker offer a cau-tious prognosis about what that might mean. They say that what is growing less likely is an attack on Americansoil with a toll equal to or greater thanthat of 9/11.

Dr. Sageman said the United States should approach the ongoing threat not with hysteria, but with a careful analysis of the motives and patterns of people drawn into violent plotting.

“Terrorism,” he added, “is here tostay.”

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Fromthe gates of Villa Somalia, the hilltop presidential palace, this ruin of a cityalmost looks peaceful.

After nearly two decades of civilwar, few cars remain in the city and relatively few people, because hun-dreds of thousands have recentlyfled. It is surreally quiet, except forthe occasional crack of a high-pow-ered rifle.

President Sheik Sharif SheikAhmed sits behind his desk in a pin-striped suit, prayer hat and designer glasses. He is ringed by enemies and guarded around the clock by Ugan-dan soldiers. For the rare occasions he leaves the palace, they drive him to the airport in an armored person-nel carrier.

But for the first time in decades — including 21 years of dictatorship andthe 18 years of chaos that followed— Somalia’s leader has both wide-spread grass-roots support insidethe country and extensive help from

outside nations, analysts and manySomalis say.

“This government faced obstacles that were unparalleled,” said SheikSharif, a former high school teacher,who became president in February.

Much of the world is counting onSheik Sharif to tackle piracy and beat back the spread of militant Islam,two Somali problems that have flaredinto major geopolitical ones. But his armed forces are unreliable. Manyof his commanders still have ties tothe Shabab, the Islamist insurgentsworking with Al Qaeda to overthrow Sheik Sharif’s government,.

If not for the 5,000 African Uniontroops guarding the port, airport andVilla Somalia, many Somalis believeSheik Sharif’s government wouldquickly fall. “It wouldn’t be days,”said Asha A. Abdalla, a member ofParliament. “It would be hours.”

Sheik Sharif, 43, is accustomed tocarrying a compass, not a gun. Studi-ous and reserved, he has found some-thing that resembles Somalia’s politi-

cal center, a blend of moderate andmore strident Islamic beliefs, withthe emphasis on religion, not clan.

But the clock is ticking. Villa Soma-lia may be safe, but the rest of Moga-dishu, the capital, is a death trapof assassinations, land mines andsenseless violence.

“This is really about hearts andminds,” said Ahmed Abdisalam, adeputy prime minister in the last So-mali government. “This governmentneeds to get to the public. If they havethe public with them, the Shababwon’t be able to survive.”

NEWS ANALYSIS

Signs That Al Qaeda’s Appeal Is on the Decline

From Page I

C.I.A. missile strikes have taken a toll on AlQaeda and the Taliban.

In Desperate Somalia, New Cause for Hope

President Sheik Sharif Sheik

Ahmed may offer Somalia a

chance for stability.

By LYDIA POLGREENand SOUAD MEKHENNET

KARACHI, Pakistan — Tenmonths after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based mili-tants, the group that carried out the assault remains largely intact anddetermined to strike India again, ac-cording to current and former mem-bers of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba,and a range of intelligence officials.

Despite pledges from Pakistan todismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a hand-ful of operatives, Lashkar has per-sisted, even flourished, since 10 re-cruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai, India’s financialcapital, last November.

Indian and Pakistani dossiers onthe Mumbai investigations, copiesof which were obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed picture ofthe operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan. It includes fourhouses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port citythat were used to prepare the at-tacks.

Among the organizers, the Paki-stani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic phar-macist, who arranged back accountsand secured supplies. A formal trial began September 26 in Pakistan for him and six others, though Indianauthorities say the prosecution stops

well short of top Lashkar leaders.Indeed, Lashkar’s broader net-

work endures, and can be mobilized quickly for spectacular attacks withrelatively few resources, according toa dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officialsfrom the United States, Europe, Indiaand Pakistan.

Pakistan’s chief spy agency, theInter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., helped create Lashkar two decades

ago to challenge Indian control inKashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict be-tween the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Pakistani officials say that after9/11 they broke their contacts withthe group. No credible evidence has emerged of Pakistani governmentinvolvement in the Mumbai attacks,according to an American law en-forcement official.

But a senior American intelligenceofficial said the I.S.I. is believed to

maintain ties with Lashkar. FourLashkar members, interviewed in-dividually, said only a thin distanceseparated Lashkar and the I.S.I.,bridged by former I.S.I. and militaryofficials.

Some said that retired army andI.S.I. officials trained Lashkar re-cruits as late as last year. “Somepeople of the I.S.I. knew about theplan and closed their eyes,” said one senior Lashkar operative in Karachi who said he had met some of the gun-men before they left for the Mumbaiassault, though he did not know whattheir mission would be.

The intelligence officials inter-viewed insisted on anonymity whilediscussing classified information.The current and former Lashkar mil-itants did not want their names used for fear of antagonizing others in thegroup or Pakistani authorities.

If there is one thing intelligenceagencies on both sides of the border agree on, it is that the consequences of a new attack by Lashkar could bedevastating.

“We do fear that if something likeMumbai happens in India again,there might be a military reactionfrom the Indian side and it could trig-ger into a war,” said one senior intel-ligence official in Pakistan. “Rightnow we cannot guarantee that it willnot happen again, because we do nothave any control over it.”

Pakistani Militants Remain a Threat

Lashkar-e-Taiba may have grown since thesiege of Mumbai.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

There is fear that another attack like the one in Mumbai last November could spark a broader conflict.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009 III

Session topics will include:

Luxury Goes Techno

Virtual Flagships

Lux Online

Watch Wizardry

Fashion in Cyberspace

Smart Fabrics

Human Hands Fight Back!

Speakers will include:

Hugo Boss AG CEO – Claus-Dietrich Lahrs

Bottega Veneta Creative Director – Tomas Maier

Burberry Creative Director – Christopher Bailey

Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A.

Executive Director & Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, President – Alain Dominique Perrin

Chloé CEO – Ralph Toledano

Claudia Schiffer

Charme Investments CEO & Poltrona Frau GroupVice President – Matteo Cordero di Montezemolo

Alfred Dunhill Ltd.

Chief Executive – Christopher M. Colfer withCreative Director – Kim Jones

GUCCI Creative Director – Frida Giannini

PUMA AG Chairman & CEO – Jochen Zeitz

Prada SA Prada Transformer Project Director – Tomaso Galli, withOffice for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

Vertu President – Perry Oosting

Mercedes-Benz Cars

Vice President Brand Communication – Anders Sundt Jensen

Vertu President – Perry Oosting

Hewlett-Packard Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing – Satjiv Chahil

Luxottica Group S.p.A. CEO – Andrea Guerra

Moncler CEO – Remo Ruffini

NET-A-PORTER.COM Founder & Chairman – Natalie Massenet

London College of Fashion Principal Lecturer – Tim Jackson

Luxe Corp. Executive Director & Founder – Uché Okonkwo

Timex Goup, B.V. President & CEO – Hans-Kristian Hoejsgaard

Urwerk S.A. Founding Partner & Chief Watchmaker – Felix Baumgartner

Dazed & Confused Group Editorial Director – Jefferson Hack

MB&F Founder & CEO – Maximilian Büsser Fashionair.com Founder – Sojin Lee

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By ANDREW MARTIN

The world recently celebrated the life and achievements of NormanBorlaug, the Iowa-born plant scientist who created high-yielding wheat va-rieties to stave off famine.

Dr. Borlaug, who died at age 95 on September 12, led the so-called Green Revolution that created bumper crops in once impoverished countrieslike Mexico, India and Pakistan. Inlauding Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, the United Nations’ World Food Pro-gram said he had saved more lives than any man in history.

Despite his accomplishments, more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one bil-lion people this year for the first time,according to the United Nations.

How can so many people be hungrywhen farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?

The answers are complex and in-volve everything from American farmpolitics and African corruption to war,poverty, climate change and drought,which is now the single most commoncause of food shortages on the planet.

But David Beckmann, president of the antihunger group Bread for the World, pointed to the root cause of the problem — “a lack of give a damn.”

“It’s mainly neglect,” he said. “Po-litical neglect.”

The yield gains of the last half-cen-tury, both in the developed and devel-oping world, led to grain surpluses andlow prices, creating a sense of compla-cency about agriculture and hunger.

“There was an attitude followingthe Green Revolution that the problemwas solved,” said Gary H. Toennies-

sen of the Rockefeller Foundation,which focuses on global problems.

So much grain was being producedso cheaply that Western leaders en-couraged poor nations to buy grain on the world market rather than grow itthemselves. Surplus was shipped to poor countries as food aid. But that aid system has often been ineffective

in alleviating hunger in a timely wayand in addressing broader agricul-ture problems facing impoverishedcountries. Support for agriculturalresearch in developing countries was also cut back for other priorities.

The result? While the food supply grew faster than the world’s popula-tion from 1970 to 1990, as the Green

Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Pro-ductivity gains in agriculture haveslowed, and since 1990, the growthrate of food production has fallen be-low population growth.

The consequences have been par-ticularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa, where the gains of the Green Revolu-

tion have been difficult to replicate.Among other problems, irrigation — which was key to the Green Revolu-tion — is relatively scarce in Africa.

Few paid attention to these prob-lems until last year, when a confluenceof events caused food prices to spike torecord levels. Riots erupted in manynations, and even American consum-ers felt pinched as prices soared.

Prices have come down in the Unit-ed States, but the situation in Africaremains dismal due to an exploding

population and now, a severe drought that threatens millions. The World Food Program says it is criticallyshort of funds.

Dr. Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, under-stood well the limitations of the Green Revolution’s success. After receiv-ing the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, he noted that the “battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people isfar from won.”

“World peace will not be built onempty stomachs or human misery,” hesaid. “It is within America’s technicaland financial power to help end thishuman tragedy and injustice, if we setour hearts and minds to the task.”

A billion peoplein the world don’t have enough to eat.

NEWS ANALYSIS

So Much Food. So Much Hunger.

Smugglers Discover Gold in TrashBy ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — When two inspectors swung open the doors of a batteredred shipping container here, they confronteda graveyard of Europe’s electronic waste —old wires, electricity meters, circuit boards —mixed with remnants of cardboard and plastic.

“This is supposed to be going to China, but itisn’t going anywhere,” said Arno Vink, an in-spector from the Dutch environment ministrywho impounded the container because of Eu-rope’s strict new laws that place restrictions on all types of waste exports, from dirty pipes tobroken computers to household trash.

Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing internationalbusiness, as companiestry to minimize the costsof new environmentallaws, like those here,that tax waste or re-quire that it be recycledor otherwise disposed ofin an environmentallyresponsible way.

Rotterdam, the busi-est port in Europe, hasunwittingly becomeEurope’s main externalgarbage chute, a gate-way for trash bound for places like China, Indo-nesia, India and Africa. There, electronic waste and construction debriscontaining toxic chemicals are often dismantledby children at great cost to their health. Other garbage that is supposed to be recycled accord-ing to European law may be simply burned or leftto rot, polluting air and water and releasing theheat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

While much of the international waste trade islegal, sent to qualified overseas recyclers, a big chunk is not. For a price, underground traders make Europe’s waste disappear overseas.

After Europe first mandated recycling elec-tronics like televisions and computers, 2 million to 3 million metric tons of electronic waste was turned in last year, far less than the approxi-mately 5 million metric tons anticipated. Much of the rest was probably exported illegally, ac-cording to the European Environment Agency.

Paper, plastic and metal trash exportedfrom Europe rose tenfold from 1995 to 2007,

the agency says, with 20 million containers ofwaste now shipped each year either legally or illegally. Half of that passes through this hugeport, where trucks and ships exchange goodsaround the clock.

In the United States, more states are passinglaws that require recycling of goods like electron-ics. But because the United States places fewerrestrictions on trash exports and monitors themless than Europe, that increasing volume is flow-ing relatively freely overseas, mostly legally,experts say. Up to 100 containers of waste fromthe United States and Canada arrive each day,according to environmental groups and local au-thorities in Hong Kong.

“Now we are collect-ing far more, but theycan’t prevent it from go-ing offshore. People talkabout ‘leakage,’ but it’sreally a hemorrhage,”said Jim Puckett, direc-tor of the Basel ActionNetwork, a Seattle-based environmentalnonprofit that trackswaste exported fromthe United States.

The temptation to ex-port waste is great be-cause recycling proper-ly at home is expensive:Because of Europe’snew environmental

laws, it is four times as expensive to incineratetrash in the Netherlands as to put it — illegally — on a boat to China. And the vast containerships that arrive in Europe and North America from Asia filled with cheap garments and elec-trical goods now have a profitable return cargo:garbage like steel cables, circuit boards and left-overs from last night’s pasta meal.

“The traffic in waste exports has becomeenormous,” said Christian Fischer, chief con-sultant on waste to the European Environment Agency, which released its first study on thetopic this year, “but we need much better infor-mation about it.”

Rotterdam uses X-rays and computer analysisof shipping documents to pick out suspicious con-tainers. But other countries need to do more, saidAlbert Klingenberg of the Dutch environment ministry, adding: “When they can’t get it out inRotterdam, they go to Antwerp or Hamburg.”

LYNSEY ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Drought is one cause of food shortages in Africa. Sudanese refugees unload bags of food in Chad.

MICHEL DE GROOT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A lot of Europe’s waste, costly to

dispose of at home, is exported

illegally. Inspectors in Rotterdam.

Repubblica NewYork

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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y

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China and U.S. Must LeadOn Climate Change

BERLIN

Let us mourn a great European po-litical party. Founded in 1869, Germa-ny’s Social Democrats (S.P.D.) havelong played a pivotal role in nationalpolitics and symbolized the compro-mise between capital and labor evi-dent in the German “social-market”economy. Today the S.P.D. faces anexistential crisis.

I say that not because I believe that social democracy is about to disappear in Germany — Europe’s biggest econo-my and the world’s largest exporter — but because the September 27 election demonstrated that the end of the coldwar and Germany’s division left theS.P.D. bereft and directionless. It can no longer survive in its current form.

To see the Social Democrats’ voteshare plunge to 23 percent, its worstshowing since World War II and more than 11 percentage points below its 2005score, was to witness the unraveling ofone of the two great “people’s parties”that provided the foundation of post-war German stability. The other, the Christian Democratic Union of Chan-cellor Angela Merkel, has navigatedGerman unity with greater skill.

It is easy enough to point to S.P.D.leadership problems. Frank-WalterSteinmeier always looked like a bu-reaucrat masquerading as a politi-cian. He improved as the campaignprogressed, but when I saw the at-tendance at the party’s final rally inBerlin — about 500 listless people — I knew the game was up.

That unhappy game began long be-fore Steinmeier took over. It goes backto German unification when the endof East Germany ushered into the ex-panded Republic millions of Germans raised on the socialism of the Sovietsatellite state. These newcomers nev-er found a home in the S.P.D. Rather, the old Socialist Unity Party of EastGermany gradually morphed intoDie Linke, or The Left. This party, led by Oskar Lafontaine, a charismaticdefector from the S.P.D., has success-fully melded the nostalgic sympathies

of the defunct communist state withhard-left sentiment in the West to forma populist tax-the-rich, anti-NATO,pacifist, pro-worker platform.

Die Linke took 11.9 percent of thevote, becoming the fourth largestparty in Germany ahead of the Greens.In so doing, it demonstrated the nowdevastating divisions of left-of-center sentiment in Germany and revealedthe price the Social Democrats paidfor their business-friendly, pro-marketstance in recent years. By joining the“Grand Coalition” with the C.D.U. thathas governed Germany for the pastfour years, the S.P.D. completed the

hollowing-out of its identity.It’s time for the S.P.D. and the Left

party to horse-trade. They need aneventual merger or a compromise thatformalizes S.P.D. acceptance of theLeft as a possible government partner.The two parties have already workedtogether in local government — wherethe Left has shown pragmatism atsome remove from its loony-left slo-gans — but the S.P.D. has refused sucha partnership at the national level.

That refusal has roots in poisonous history. Rosa Luxemburg split from the Social Democrats to form the Com-munist Party before being murdered in1919 under an S.P.D. chancellor. AfterWorld War II, the Soviets forced SocialDemocrats in the East into a merger with the communists. Suspicion be-tween the parties is rife. But it must beovercome. The good thing about the birth of a center-right German govern-ment is that it clarifies camps and offersthe S.P.D. a chance to reimagine itselfin opposition. No democracy benefitsfrom an absence of real choice. Likeother center-left European parties, in-cluding those in France and Italy, the Social Democrats need nothing short of reinvention.

There’s a history to compromise on the left. When the Greens emerged,they were pacifist, anti-NATO and the rest. But they renounced their moreextremist positions to enter govern-ment. A deal between the S.P.D. andthe Left is possible. Without it, theS.P.D. may go the way of another once-great governing party that did notsurvive the end of the cold war: Italy’s Christian Democrats.

Of more than 100 world leaderswho gathered September 22 at theUnited Nations for a summit meet-ing on climate change, two matteredmost: Barack Obama and China’spresident, Hu Jintao. Together their countries produce 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.Together they can lead the way toan effective global response to thisclear global threat. Or together theycan mess things up royally.

In less than three months, negotia-tions will begin in Copenhagen for anagreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The hope is the talks willproduce commitments from eachnation that, collectively, would keep temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. That willrequire deep cuts in emissions — asmuch as 80 percent among industri-alized nations — by midcentury.

While Europe and the UnitedStates disagree over how quickly de-veloped countries should move, theirdifferences pale in comparison to thehistorical divide between developed and developing nations, which haveargued that the industrialized Westshould bear most of the burden. For its part, the West has argued thatcountries like China and India aregrowing so fast that they can no lon-ger remain on the sidelines, as theydid in Kyoto.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Hu did not

bridge that gap, but their govern-ments are listening more carefullyto one another. China is no longerpretending that it is a backwardcountry whose need for economicgrowth relieves it of any obligationto control emissions. The UnitedStates is acknowledging its respon-sibility to help the poorest and most vulnerable nations reduce emissionswithout sacrificing growth.

Still, the two leaders have a con-siderable distance to go.

For Mr. Hu, this means becomingmuch more specific about his pledg-es. On September 22, he promised toreduce the rate of growth in carbondioxide emissions between now and2020 by a “notable margin’’ — atwhich point, he implied, China wouldseek to reduce them in absoluteterms. This vague formulation is un-likely to pass muster in Copenhagen.

Mr. Obama made much of the regu-latory steps he had taken or planned to take to control emissions, and the investments he had made in cleaner technologies. Legislation, however,remains essential to America’sclaim to leadership.

For years, China and the UnitedStates have used each other’s inac-tion to shirk their responsibility.Both leaders agreed that it is pasttime for this dance to end. Thoughmuch more will be required to pro-duce a credible, comprehensiveagreement, that is progress.

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E SINTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN

A German Party in Turmoil

Center-left parties inEurope are in need of a transformation.

The most intriguing, and possiblymost fateful, news of recent weeksmay have been tucked into a blog atABCNews.com. It reported that thenew “must-read book’’ for PresidentObama’s war team is “Lessons inDisaster’’ by Gordon M. Goldstein,a foreign-policy scholar who had col-laborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national securityadviser, on writing a Robert McNa-mara-style mea culpa about his role asan architect of the Vietnam War.

Bundy left his memoir unfinishedat his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book,drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and new research, is full of fresh informa-tion on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons

FRANK RICH

Obama at the Precipice

Send comments tointelligence@nytimes.com.

in Disaster’’ caused a modest stirwhen published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for allAmericans.’’ The reviewer was, ofall people, the diplomat Richard Hol-brooke, whose career began in Viet-nam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisisby the new Obama administration.

Holbrooke’s verdict on “Lessonsin Disaster’’ was not only correct but more prescient than even he couldhave imagined. This book’s intimateaccount of White House decision-mak-ing is almost literally being replayedin Washington (with Holbrooke him-self as a principal actor) as the newpresident sets a course for the war inAfghanistan. The time for all Ameri-cans to catch up with this extraordi-nary cautionary tale is now.

Analogies between Vietnam andAfghanistan are popular these days.Some are wrong, inexact or specula-tive. We don’t know whether Afghani-stan would be a quagmire, let alonethat it could remotely bulk up to thewar in Vietnam, which, at its peak, in-volved 535,000 American troops. Butwhat happened after L.B.J. Ameri-canized the war in 1965 is Vietnam’sapocalyptic climax. What’s mostrelevant to our moment is the war’sand Goldstein’s first chapter, set in1961. That’s where we see the hawkish young President Kennedy wrestlingwith Vietnam during his first months in office.

The remarkable parallels to 2009became clear recently, when theObama administration’s internalconflicts about Afghanistan spilledonto the front page. On September 21, The Washington Post published Bob Woodward’s account of a confidential

assessment by the top United Statesand NATO commander in Afghani-stan, General Stanley A. McChrystal, warning that there could be “mission failure’’ if more troops aren’t added inthe next 12 months. Two days later, inthe Times, White House officials im-plicitly pushed back against the leakof McChrystal’s report by saying thatthe president is “exploring alterna-tives to a major troop increase in Af-ghanistan.’’

As Goldstein said to me, it’s “eerie’’how closely even these political ma-neuvers track those of a half-centuryago, when J.F.K. was weighing wheth-

er to send combat troops to Vietnam.Military leaders lobbied for their

new mission by planting leaks inthe press. Kennedy fired backby authorizing his own leaks,which, like Obama’s, indicatedhis reservations about whether

American combat forces couldturn a counterinsurgency strat-

egy into a winnable war.Within Kennedy’s administration,

most supported the Joint Chiefs’ re-peated call for combat troops, includ-ing the secretaries of defense (Mc-Namara) and state (Dean Rusk) and

General Maxwell Taylor, the presi-dent’s special military adviser.

The highest-ranking dissenterwas George Ball, the under-secretary of state. Mindful ofthe French folly in Vietnam,he predicted that “within fiveyears we’ll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and

never find them again.’’ In the current administration’s internal

Afghanistan debate, Goldstein ob-serves, Joe Biden uncannily echoes Ball’s role.Though Kennedy was outnumbered

in his own White House, he ultimately refused to authorize combat troops.He instead limited America’s militaryrole to advisory missions. That policy, set in November 1961, would only be re-versed, to tragic ends, after his death.As Goldstein crystallizes the overalllesson of J.F.K.’s lonely call on Viet-nam strategy: “Counselors advise but presidents decide.’’

Obama finds himself at that samelonely decision point now. Thoughhe came to the presidency declaringAfghanistan a “war of necessity,’’circumstances have changed. Whilethe Taliban thrive there, Al Qaeda’s

ground zero is next door in nuclear-armed Pakistan. The blatantly cor-rupt, and arguably stolen, Afghani-stan election ended any pretense that Hamid Karzai is a credible counter to the Taliban or a legitimate partner for America in a counterinsurgency proj-ect of enormous risk and cost.

And much as Vietnam could not besecured over the centuries by China,France, Japan or the United States,so Afghanistan has been a notorious graveyard for the ambitions of Alex-ander the Great, the British and the So-viets. Most worrisome, in Goldstein’sview, is the notion that a recycling of America’s failed “clear and hold’’ strat-egy in Vietnam could work in Afghani-stan. How can American forces protectthe population, let alone help build a functioning nation, in a tribal narco-state consisting of some 40,000 mostlyrural villages over a vast area?

Already hawks are arguing that any deviation from McChrystal’s combat-troop requests is tantamount to sur-render and “immediate withdrawal.’’But that all-in or all-out argument, afixture of the Iraq debate, is just asfalse a choice here. Obama is not con-templating either surrender to terror-ists or withdrawal from Afghanistan.One prime alternative is the counter-terrorism plan championed by Biden.As The Times reported, it would scale back American forces in Afghanistan to “focus more on rooting out Al Qaedathere and in Pakistan.’’

Obama’s decision, whichever it is,will demand all the wisdom and po-litical courage he can muster. He willhave to finally ask recession-batteredAmericans what his predecessor nev-er did: How much — and what — are you willing to sacrifice in blood andtreasure for the mission?

BARRY BLITT

Repubblica NewYork