I just had my 30 minutes of fame (or at least one of them) and, like most of us, found it more disorienting than expected.
About a month ago I first started talking about the failure of the Bush administration to deal with the actual people who attacked us: al-Qaeda. In every way Bush and the Republicans have dropped the ball and in some ways have been dropping the ball for years, ignoring and even enabling the rise of an international, Muslim fundamentalist movement that could form what I call the new Caliphate. One version of this piece, on Political Cortex was noticed by BBC news and I was asked to be on their "Have your Say" radio program.
Just finished a fascinating, about half hour experience discussing with some Somalis on the ground, a couple of experts and me talking about the fall of Mogadishu to Islamists. Sadly I feel I came off fairly uninteresting. I think I did get my point across that America had a chance to be a positive influence in Somalia, but we instead left it to the warlords and so allowed another Afghanistan to form. Now it looks like Somalia is forming its version of the Taliban, though the Islamists claim otherwise. Hopefully I also got across my point that the Republicans are largely responsible for this stupid failure on America's part.
But, amid disjointed threads of conversation among some seven people coming from around the world, I think my voice was unremarkable. I think each of us who participated, some pro-Islamists, some anti-Islamists, no one really saying America is doing a good job, all were intelligent and articulate as far as it went. But although the moderator was good, it seemed from my end that no real coheant dialogue was established. Perhaps we all listened to eachother too much and didn't jump in enough. Or maybe our points of view were coming from too distant backgrounds. But I think my 30 minutes of fame went more with a whimper than a bang...though at least I didn't come off like too much of a fool.
But what is great about this is that those of us who take the time to blog are being noticed, even if we don't always follow up well verbally.
