Wednesday, February 23, 2011
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THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Commentary
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A15
The Inquirer and Philly.com have launched a 45-week project to inspire Philadelphians to suggest great ideas for the city and region. In our “One Great Idea” project, we’re asking well-known and less-known people of our region to tell us their single great idea to change Philadelphia. These video interviews will run on Philly.com each Tuesday and on The Inquirer’s Wednesday commentary pages. Post comments, vote on this idea, or share your own great idea at www.philly.com/OneGreatIdea, or write to inquirer.letters@phillynews.com.
Commuters
negotiate the snow-covered steps of a rail station in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning. MATT ROURKE/ Associated Press
Weather advisory: Try getting over it
Philadelphians need to chill out about winter. By Nate House
F
rom conversations at work, at the bar down the street, and with neighbors scraping the ice off their cars, I gather that Philadelphians are sick of the cold and snow. As I write, it’s 26 degrees outside, one of my cars won’t start, and my shorthaired dog won’t get out of bed. Forty-four inches of snow have fallen this winter, and ice storms have wreaked havoc with traffic, pedestrians, and trees, one of which now leans against my house. At first, sledding at the Walnut Lane Golf Club eased the burden. But that, too, has become a kind of winter chore. So I e-mailed my friend in Colorado to tell him about the ice age that has overtaken the Philadelphia region. “Cold schmold!” was his response. “40 below this morning. Pipes froze.” Then I saw pictures of Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, where cars were suspended in time like frozen mastodons. One recent storm closed bridges in New York City, canceled a fifth of the nation’s flights, and buried Oklahoma. Philadelphia started to look and feel like Key West. As a city, we can handle homicides, losing sports teams, corrupt politicians, failing schools, and a reputation that doesn’t exactly put us in the same category as New York, Paris, and Rome. But the one thing Philadelphians can’t seem to handle is snow. As soon as the first flake fell this season, I remem’ber sitting in traffic for more than an hour just trying to get from one side of the city to the other. It was as if that single flake had paralyzed the part of the brain that tells us to move forward. We feel the need to protect our shoveled
parking spots with lawn chairs, trash cans, stolen bright-orange highway cones, and 9mm handguns. The Philadelphia Parking Authority offers discounts in an effort to keep us off the roads during snow emergencies. In a nutshell, we are not winter people. Even though Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow this month, indicating an early spring, meteorologists disagree. More snow, ice, and mayhem are on the way, and with them, a local accumulation of impatience, frustration, and claustrophobia. Last year set records for snowfall in the region, and this year could come close. So instead of bemoaning nor’easters, “thunder snow,” and ice storms, I say we’d better get used it. I’m not saying we have to don Elmer Fudd hats and talk like we’re from Bar Harbor. But a little resilience — a little acceptance of what is, after all, only winter — would help us get through this thing that happens every year. Instead of cursing the “white stuff” and cold, we should be grateful that it lets us spend more time indoors with kids who have the day off from school. We should remind ourselves that, only six months ago, we were cursing the oppressive heat of summer. This doesn’t have to be another winter of our discontent in Philadelphia. Winter here is a lot easier to handle than it is in many other parts of the country. So are summer, fall, and spring. We don’t have many mudslides, tornados, or hurricanes. This winter, let’s be thankful that most of the catastrophes facing this city can be fixed.
Larry Farnese State senator His One Great Idea: Bring back the city’s mounted police. “Bring back the mounted police force to the Philadelphia Police Department. ... Everyone I have always talked to said that [seeing] the mounted unit is one of their fondest times in the city. ... Having those horses walk around Broad Street and throughout the city really brings a real sense of what our city is like. We are a real people city. “And the data shows that for every mounted police officer, they can do the work of 20 on foot. ... “When we have parades, or when the Phillies win the next World Series, or when our Eagles win the Super Bowl, we [will] have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people coming down Broad Street. You [could] have a lot of these horses running around, being able to disperse a crowd very quickly, very efficiently, being able to see what’s going on. “It’s also a great public and community ... outreach project. A lot
Response to Last Week’s Idea Would a website making the city’s use of tax dollars more transparent lead to smarter spending of those dollars? Yes 64.9% No 15.6% Maybe 14.7% Not sure 4.9% of the police officers told us, in all their years of serving the public, not one time did anybody come up and touch and pet their police car. “It’s a win for public safety, it’s a win for the community, and it’s a win for economic development in the city of Philadelphia — the three core components that we need to continue to move forward. The mounted police force hits them all, right on target.”
Engineering
Nate House is a writer who lives in Mount Airy. He can be reached at nhouse308@hotmail.com.
Protests have al-Qaeda sidelined
By Marisa L. Porges
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s popular protests spread through the Middle East and North Africa, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have largely been a nonfactor. For years, the terrorist group urged Muslims to wage war against insufficiently Islamic regimes and advocated governance by sharia law. But over the past few weeks, as the region’s political future was being decided, al-Qaeda remained largely silent. Its leaders ceded the rhetorical ground to the secular, liberal activists leading protests in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere. That’s remarkable given that rhetoric and messaging have been such a central part of al-Qaeda’s strategy to date. Take, for example, the video released last week by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s secondin-command and an Egyptian. The 34-minute clip was the organization’s first statement since the revolution began in Egypt, and, oddly, it made no mention of the protests there or of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Instead, al-Zawahiri bemoaned the state of his home country, calling it a “deviation from Islam” and cautioning against secular, democratic rule. The message was ill-timed, misdirected, and uninspired. Al-Qaeda affiliates and supporters in the region have done a similarly poor job of taking advantage of the growing crises. Early this month, the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda front organization in that country, issued a statement weakly supporting Egypt’s revolution, warning against “the tricks of un-Islamic ideologies” and calling for Egyptians to embrace jihad and demand a new government ruled by Islamic law. Meanwhile, the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb called for regime change in Tunisia and Algeria, urging other Muslims to follow suit in hopes of spreading sharia law throughout the region. These statements appear to have been too little, too late. They came weeks after the uprisings began, and they went largely unnoticed by the media and, more importantly, by many in al-Qaeda’s core audience. That includes the very individuals who are a driving force in the current protests: young, unemployed Arab men, who are considered especially vulnerable to al-Qaeda’s radicalization and recruitment efforts. Al-Qaeda has become a passive observer, riding the bench during the biggest game of the decade. Does this mean a strategic shift is under way in the al-Qaeda leadership? Not likely. There’s no indication that the group’s senior leaders are adjusting their tactics. Does it mean they feel threatened by the political movements sweeping the region? Perhaps for the moment, since the largely peaceful revolutions call into question al-Qaeda’s core asser-
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HATEM MOUSSA/ Associated Press
Protesting Palestinians step on a poster of Moammar Gadhafi during a march in solidarity with Libyans on Tuesday.
tion: that political reform requires violent jihad. But it remains to be seen whether the protests usher in more secular, democratic governments or regimes that are amenable to al-Qaeda. In the meantime, the United States should focus on keeping al-Qaeda out of the game. U.S. officials should remain committed to supporting political reforms in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and beyond, even though the outcome could be unsettling to Western political sensibilities. That may mean encouraging moderate Muslims to point out where al-Qaeda has been proven wrong and downplaying any of its future attempts to influence events. It remains to be seen whether al-Qaeda will reassert itself and affect the outcome of the protests or, more likely, try to take credit for whatever happens. We should anticipate more posturing not just from al-Zawahiri, who promised more commentaries, but from affiliates such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has a history of tailoring propaganda to address political issues and gain support in Yemen. Regardless, it’s becoming clear that a transformation of the region is under way, and al-Qaeda isn’t part of it. We should do what we can to keep it that way. Marisa L. Porges is an associate fellow at the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence and a former U.S. government counterterrorism-policy adviser. She can be reached at mlporges@gmail.com.
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