It has recently been brought to my attention that as someone in their mid-twenties I am a member of what has been referred to as the millennial generation. We are a group of people who were raised in years of economic prosperity and tech bubbles, only to have our world views rocked by the tragic events of 9/11. We spent our college years being lied to about why the nation needed to go to war in Iraq, and we sat in shock as over 4,000 men and women our own age lost their lives in two wars. Finally, once we reached maturity and entered the workforce, we experienced first-hand the result of a previous generation overcome with greed, a generation that had had complete and undying faith in the infallible nature of the capitalist marketplace.

Some pundits have suggested that the millennial generation is set to become one of the most isolationist and financially cautious generations that America has ever produced. However, upon hearing this I suddenly remember that the people making such claims are in fact members of the very generation whose sheer ineptitude resulted in the very conditions that were supposed to have gotten me so depressed and jaded in the first place. To those who have already preemptively given up on us millennials I say to you why don't you forget about retiring and instead start earning again to pay China back for all that money you all so wisely borrowed from them. In the meantime we up-and-comers will attempt to shift through the ashes of our once economically strong and internationally respected country.

I contend that the events on 9/11 have had the exact opposite effects of isolationism. We millennials may just have easily been called the first globalized generation as we saw first hand the effect that 19 Arab hijackers, disgruntled with foreign policies we had never heard of, could have on all of our lives. Since that day the number of students studying Arabic and Middle Eastern culture has sky rocketed across American campuses. I recently met the daughter of a New York City firefighter from Queens who had just returned from studying in Cairo. When I asked her why she chose to study Arabic she told me that after her father saw the towers fall in person he was determined to have his kids understand how such a thing could have happened.

Yes, our generation is going to be much more skeptical of politicians as a result of having been flat out lied to and manipulated by the Bush administration over the Iraq War. But is skepticism when it comes to ones elected officials ever really a bad thing? One thing I will say though is that the only way to truly keep one's government in check is to have a population willing to educate themselves on the issues. I appeal to all of my fellow twenty somethings to abandon all of the pied pipers parading their uneducated opinions across cable tv and recognize what our parents have not, that not everything calling itself news is really news. Would you watch FOX if it was renamed APE (American Propaganda/Entertainment)? I didnt think so. We must all recognize the fact that there is a difference between being informed and being educated. Watching the "news" endlessly all day might give you insight into what is happening in the world, but these shows will rarely tell you WHY they are happening. Those answers can simply only come from reading and independent investigation.

Our generation has the hard task of having to understand a very complicated world in its entirety. The policymakers of tomorrow will need to have the foresight to understand what unrest in places like Kazakhstan is going to do to the global energy markets and in turn how this will effect Saudi Arabia's relationship with its Arab neighbors. Previous generations of leaders felt secure that all they needed to leave college knowing about was the Soviet Union and the policy of deterrence. Maybe some of them even learned Russian in an attempt to be the best. Fast forward to today where members of the millennial generation are fighting to win a war in Afghanistan, a country where five languages are spoken and two (Dari and Pashtu) are vital to successfully completing the mission.

A final thought on whether the millennial generation is more or less likely to engage in military operations abroad in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The next generation of military leadership that have just begun to take the reigns are the men and women who have spent the last nine years making their bones effectively making strategies like Counterinsurgency work. They see the importance of getting involved in countries like Yemen before they become safe havens for terrorists. Will be be doing nation building along the lines of Afghanistan and Iraq? Certainly not, but that does not mean that we will not seek to have a presence. If anything, it was the previous generation of cold warriors in the military who were so scarred by their experience in Vietnam that kept us from getting involved in places likes Afghanistan before they became a problem.

The road ahead will not be an easy one for the millennial generation, but I am secure in the fact that the series of blunders that we have been witness to over the past decade will serve to make us, the next generation of leaders, more cognoscente of the world in which we live. While we may not be as optimistic about the future as the baby boomers who came before us, I truly believe that it is the realism of the millennial generation that will one day return America to the pinnacle of international esteem.

To my esteemed colleague, Jeff Schneider:

You wrote that the news of a vote in Sadr City to determine which candidate the Sadrist MPs would support was a positive development.  I respectfully disagree.  Or, if you prefer the immortal words of Dan Aykroyd, Jeff, you ignorant slut.

First of all, these "elections" are entirely unmonitored.  As the New York Times reported,

There were no lists of eligible voters, no one was required to show identification and apparently there was no way to prevent people from voting more than once...
Zaman Jabar, 30, who helped organize the process, said traditional election standards like registering voters and requiring identification were not necessary.
“We know all the voters in our sector here,” he said. “All of them are our people.”

Forgive me for being dubious that Mr. Jabar knows every resident in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.  The situation cries out for fraud.  I don't think al-Maliki or Allawi are able to overrun the polling places with their supporters to sway the results, but I do believe that the lack of formal accounting mechanisms will allow Muqtada al-Sadr to declare his support for which candidate he decides.

In short, the entire "election" is a sham, and the end result will be the same - whichever party does the best job bribing Sadr will get his support.  And the bribing has already begun.  Juan Cole relays the news that al-Maliki already began releasing Sadrist political prisoners.

Furthermore, Sunni-Shia divisions are driving this process, not democracy. 

The headline from Sadr City, March 10, 2004:

Militants take control of huge Baghdad slum / Sadr City locked up by gunmen loyal to rebel Muslim cleric

The headline today?

Iraq's Sadrists hold vote for prime minister choice

What a difference an effective COIN operation makes.

Sadr City, the Shia dominated slums of Baghdad -- long oppressed, forgotten, and marginalized under the Ba'athist regime of Sadam Hussein, was once the most dangerous area of Baghdad. The powerful, yet irregular mehdi army, under the command of Muqtada al-Sadr, once rejected the new Iraqi government -- and American forces -- to the last. They attacked armed patrols and civil servants alike, and directly opposed the central government of post-invasion Iraq.

Today, the story is very different:

(Reuters) - Supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stood in long lines on Friday to vote their choice for prime minister of Iraq in a two-day referendum that carried no government sanction or legal weight.

The unusual plebiscite is organized by Sadr's political movement, which won about 40 seats in a March 7 parliamentary election and stands to play a kingmaker role in the next government, was intended to determine the public favorite for prime minister after squabbling among election winners.

The background?

(more after the jump)

Banning candidates in elections is a bad idea. Period. If anyone is going to decide who should be accepted or rejected in the electoral process, it should be voters. That’s the point of an election.

With the recent announcement that Iraq's electoral commission intends to ban even more candidates from running in the nation's March parliamentary elections, the US is understandably peeved. The idea that "the only solution is political" has become a bit of a buzz-phrase, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. A purely military solution is simply not feasible - just killing everyone isn't going to work in Iraq.
Since a military solution in Iraq is a non-starter, that leaves a political solution as the only available option. For a political solution to work, incentives must be provided for one’s opponents to participate in society – the economy, the media, and the political process. These incentives include amnesty for low-level opponents, guarantees against reprisals, jobs, education, and other opportunities to participate. Not letting your opponents participate in elections is, to put it mildly, quite counterproductive to these policies.

When candidates are banned from political office, even for well-justified and ostensibly legal reasons, it only gives the public more reason to doubt the political process. And the public, in this case, is usually right. Governments ban candidates for office when they present a threat to the incumbent’s rule – we see this clearly in Iran. Banning candidates in Iraq, undoubtedly a more permissive political environment than Iran, only does needless damage to the perception of democracy.

Ironically, although we are seeing backsliding in Iraq on this issue, in Afghanistan the approach is almost the opposite. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words from today’s London conference illustrate this point precisely:

“Many low- and mid-level Taliban are driven to extremism more by economic opportunity or local politics than by ideology. With the right incentives, they can become part of Afghan democracy.”

Presumably, providing incentives to the Taliban in order to reintegrate them into Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy would not include banning them from public office.

Although the US is not yet publicly 100% on board with accommodating the Taliban, it would appear that they are moving in that direction. Even in the face of the slow pace of the US policy adjustment, the Karzai Administration is moving at full speed in the direction of reconciliation and reintegration.

This is the right approach. Getting extremist groups to participate in the political process should be the ultimate goal of the US in both Iraq and Afghanistan. If the ideas and ideologies of the US and these countries’ western-backed governments are better than those of their opponents (and I believe they are), then let them stand on their merits and be judged by the public.

Ultimately, it is a lot better for electoral opponents and parliamentary opposition members to argue and yell than it is for them to shoot at each other. Although meant for a different context, Winston Churchill’s words come to mind: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. “General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO’s forces in Afghanistan, probably said it best: “I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome."

You have to let your opponents run for office if you want them to participate in the political process. That’s how democracy works.