The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.
By Jeff
Here is a kind of scary excerpt from a George Bush interview with German TV:
Q Do you think there’s a point where you’d say only a military option is a possibility for us?
THE PRESIDENT: I would never say that. I would say that we would always try to try diplomacy first. In other words, I — I’ve committed our troops into harm’s way twice, and it’s not a pleasant experience because I understand the consequences firsthand.
Firsthand???? When and where was that? Cheerleading for Yale at Harvard?
By Jeff
President Bush continues to wallow in the consequences of his own arrogant miscalculations. The situation America finds itself in can be traced to his and Cheney’s so-called tough guy approach to the world, as evidenced in the insane war in Iraq. Among what “Shock and Awe†and “Mission Accomplished†missed were the ripple effect consequences that followed and that continue to arrive.
Turkey asked that the U.S. avoid invading Iraq for reasons of its own security and their recognition of the likely bloodbath to follow, but agreed to work with the U.S. in providing staging areas for U.S. troops. At the same time it warned of the potential difficulties with the Kurds, a warning of which the U.S. apparently took no note. So having considerable responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis AND the increased power and influence of Iran in the region (incl. Iraq) the U.S. now has the problem of a possible micro war between two of its allies – the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks. Bush is saying that he will help Turkey flush out the PKK (Kurdish rebels) but that is clearly an empty promise given our incompetence and unwillingness to put the thumbs to the Iraqi Kurds, who will at least passively support the PKK. It is a dog’s breakfast.
Pakistan has been presented as the bulwark of our “war on terrorism†which is beginning to sound a bit like the help that our friends in Saudi Arabia have given us leading up to and following 9/11. Pakistan is a nuclear power led by a dictator who views himself as the country’s savior while the majority of his citizens seek the democracy that Bush has presented as his foreign policy’s grandest wish. We continue to provide massive defense aid to Pakistan while it allows al Quada to operate more or less unfettered within its borders, the Taliban to operate out of its borders into Afghanistan and its peoples’ dream for democracy to wither and die. It is impossible to know what would happen in Pakistan without Musharraf but the best long-term hope is for a true democracy to develop while finding a way to ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear arms remain out of the hands of extremists. So, does the U.S. continue to support Musharaf or pull the plug and risk democracy? There are echoes of what the U.S. did in Iran by shoring up the Shah, providing massive military aid, turning our eyes from the Shah’s human rights abuses and getting pretty much what we deserved – a belligerent Iran with whom we continue to squander diplomatic possibilities to a point where it might be too late. Another dog’s breakfast cooked up by this administration.
Afghanistan is the place that might have been a success for the administration but that too is being pissed away largely because of our Iraq folly. Pakistan passively provides cover for the Taliban which continues to operate at considerable strength in the South and increased strength elsewhere in Afghanistan while most of the U.S.’s troops are spinning their wheels helping to build a stronger Iraq which will probably eventually ally politically with Iran. Were it not for the Canadians, the British and the Dutch, Afghanistan might very well be lost already (no thanks to the Germans, French, Spaniards and Italians who hide their troops in the relative safety of the North). Defense Secretary Gates commented on this as recently as 25 October speaking to a group of unimpressed European generals:
”A handful of allies are paying the price and bearing the burdens,” he said in remarks that were notably critical of European governments. He spoke hours after leaving a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Netherlands, where he pressed for more troops for Afghanistan. There were no promises. ”If an alliance of the world’s greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security,” he told the European generals, ”then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old trans-Atlantic security project itself,” meaning NATO, which was created in 1949. His remarks drew little reaction from the generals, who applauded politely when he finished.†– AP
Clearly the U.S. will need to step up its commitment to Afghanistan but cannot do so as long as it is mired in an endless war in Iraq – that is, as long as G. Bush is president and no one with Rudy Giuliani’s views is elected in his place.
That leaves every president’s greatest challenge – the Middle East. Bush has all but ignored the Middle East for seven years – barring the talk of a “roadmap to peace†(remember that one?), his refusal to accept that the democratic election in Palestine was valid because the people elected the wrong guys, and of course his support for Israel’s disastrous bombing of Lebanon. Secretary Rice is now spending more time in the Middle East than in Washington and according to David Brooks in the NY Times – not exactly an objective observer – she is putting together an anti-Iran alliance, which would include Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinians and the U.S. He goes on to say that:
“It’s slightly unfortunate that the peace process itself is hollow. …But that void can be filled in later. The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.â€
This alliance will then face off against the alliance that will include Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and – in all probability – Iraq. This is a hope and a wish but certainly not a foreign policy based on reality.
1/20/09 – that is the key date – the time when sophisticated, intelligent people can begin to dig us out of Bush’s Perfect Storm created from a rare combination of American incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, and naiveté.
By Jeff
Bob and Doug MacKenzie have posted below on the recent anti-immigrant riots in Switzerland and while they cover Europe very well indeed, they do not address the situation in their Friendly Neighbor to the South.
The endless U.S. presidential campaign has been mostly charted as a horse race with the touts focusing largely on trivialities – Hillary’s cleavage, Hillary’s cackle, Edwards’ haircut, Romney’s †my gosh and golly†vernacular, Hucklebee’s folk songs, Giuliani’s family problems, how much money each has raised, etc. But while the Democrats focus largely on Iraq and healthcare the Republican candidates are beginning to sound a bit like the American equivalent of the European far-right. There is something about scaring the bejesus out of everybody that appeals to them and with 9/11 apparently losing some of its scare appeal they have discovered the undocumented workers who pick grapes, mow lawns, wash dishes, drive taxis, etc. as this year’s group to fear.
The United States flirted with a solution when a bipartisan immigration bill, supported by President Bush, almost passed the Congress but the bill became a target for most of the Republican candidates and they continue to suck on that teat as they drum up not-so-new passions against their latest scapegoat – the illegal immigrant. But none of them seem to have a reasonable solution – although some are better than others. The basic message is that these people are breaking our laws and we need to throw all 11 million of them out of the country and never mind whatever contribution individuals might have made – in some cases for many years – paying taxes, doing hard work for low wages, etc.
As the campaign heats up there is considerable potential for campaigns to flirt with a subtle form of racism which may very well make the U.S. a soulmate of Switzerland and Austria. And as with almost every issue of any significance in the U.S. it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a serious discussion about the real problems and practicalities involved in immigration policy with discussion moving to mindless shouting matches with bogus statistics and rants of “no amnestyâ€, “ they are taking our jobsâ€, “they want their children to go to our schoolsâ€, ad nauseum.
By Jeff
The visit to New York of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has highlighted America’s paranoid fear of a third-rate clown from a second-tier power. Having placed Iran within his Axis of Evil, President Bush now must deal with the fact that his invasion of Iraq handed Iran the strategic gift of unparalleled influence in the likely Iraq of the future (for a detailed analysis of why this is so, see Peter Galbraith’s The Victor in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books).
While the United States begins the long and painful process of coming to grips with the Iraq reality of – at best – stalemate and at worst – defeat, it has proven all too tempting to lay the blame as far away from the White House as possible. And what better place than Tehran? Ergo, the ongoing stories of weapons being smuggled into Iraq from Iran, ignoring the unpleasant fact that the U.S. has basically armed both sides of a civil war in which its own soldiers and marines are caught in the middle. The American press dutifully reports every account of Iranian weapons found in Iraq, joins in the jingoistic threats of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and ignores the unpleasant reality that the vast majority of deaths in Iraq can be traced to Sunnis and Shiites killing each other and even some of their own – frequently with American weaponry.
The recent Israeli flyover of Syria led to hints of North Korean-Syrian cooperation on nuclear weapons development; hints given the same credibility the press gave Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the same time the Cheney wing of the administration sees an opportunity to scuttle the talks with North Korea, something they have tried to do from the beginning of those negotiations. All of which begs the question: what is Bush planning for his swan song?
One possibility is for Bush to continue to pressure for more sanctions on Iran; another would be open direct negotiations with Iran and yet another would be to initiate bombing attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. At this point it seems the first of these options has been chosen, the second is almost surely not going to happen but the third option remains viable. President Bush is not known for his subtlety of mind – indeed his behavior suggests an impatience with those who disagree with him and a schoolyard bully’s tendency to use others to fight his battles for him – in this case it could be his own Air Force and/or the Israeli Air Force. A bombing attack on Iran would feed some of his more vocal neo-con supporters and leave one more mess for his successor to clean up.
An analyst friend theorized this week that perhaps the best solution to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran would be to do what was done to the Soviet Union in the Cold War: serve notice that a nuclear attack on any country by Iran would be met with subsequent annihilation of the Iranian nation and its people. Détente was never a perfect solution – but it worked for 50 years against a foe a whole lot tougher than Iran and it could possibly put an end to foolish posturing by American politicians and media editorialists.
By Jeff
President Bush, his GOP Congressional supporters, and a large proportion of the American news media have cooperated in pulling off the great Petraeus shell game. It goes something like this: you start with 130,000 troops in a failed occupation in Iraq and make a case for a short-term surge of an additional 30,000 troops to provide time for the Iraqis to put together a strong central government with all factions in Iraq sharing power. You report in six months that the surge has been successful and that you expect to begin withdrawing from Iraq in a year or so by removing 30,000 troops. So, of course, we are right back where we started and – at this writing – no closer to a strong government in Iraq than we were a year ago. But the withdrawal of 30,000 troops is an illusion. The U.S. military has simply run out of available troops and 30,000 would need to be removed regardless.
Putting the surge into context requires understanding that there remains no end game strategy from Bush; that the U.S. military is in a highly weakened state with generals predicting problems responding to additional threats; that the violence in Iraq remains high and is mostly not connected Al Queda; that 2 and a half million Iraqis (largely the middle class professionals) have left the country; that the British pulling their troops out of Basra is already leading to increased sectarian violence there; that the cost to the United States will soon be over a trillion dollars; that the war in Afghanistan is suffering due to our inability to supply adequate troops there: that Iran remains the likely big winner in Iraq because of Bush’s inability to even consider the real consequences of his fiasco; that much of the billions spent on reconstruction in Iraq has been wasted on shoddy construction or simply stolen by corrupt contractors; that soon the American military death toll will be over 4,000 and the number of wounded over 30,000; that hundreds of thousands Iraqis have been killed in the aftermath of the invasion; that the basic infrastructure in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam; and that no longer does anyone use the word “victory†when discussing the future of our efforts in Iraq. It would be impossible to make up a perfect storm of ignorance and arrogance to match what the Bush presidency has done in Iraq.
As for General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, it is, in my view, wrong to fault them for trying to make the best of the rotten hand dealt to them. They were careful to avoid making the kind of stupid boasts that regularly come from their President – “bring it onâ€, “mission accomplishedâ€, “we’re kickin ass in Iraq”. etc. – and while they put the best face they could on the situation, the blame must be laid at the President’s desk – with the complicity of the American electorate who elected him not once, but – for God’s sake – twice!
By Jeff
It is hard to imagine a two-year campaign for the presidency that could be more tedious and less substantive than the one we are being given. It is hard to know whether this is mostly due to the dismal candidates or to the American press that manages to find almost nothing of substance to report. We have had reports on John Edwards’ $400 haircut, Hillary Clinton’s showing a shadow of cleavage on the Senate floor, Barack Obama’s basketball days in Hawaii, Mitt Romney’s “golly gee whiz†vernacular, Rudy Giuliani’s kids’ likely voting, Bill Richardson’s politically incorrect comment that people are gay because of “choiceâ€, Clinton’s letters to an old college boyfriend, etc.
When Romney “won†the so-called Ames, Iowa straw ballot he was applauded for having organized a successful “walking around money†campaign in which he literally bought the election. The second place finisher, Mike Huckabee, was elevated to a serious campaigner by virtue of his “folksy humor†– sort of a Latter Day Will Rogers to Romney’s Latter Day Saint. But the fundamental fact is that Romney won by giving people the money to go and vote and then feeding them and Huckabee came in second because he was basically the only other serious candidate to show up.
The big news yesterday and today is that a Republican Senator was arrested for doing something distasteful in an airport men’s room. This on the second anniversary of the Katrina recovery fiasco, and on the day that President Bush is seeking an additional $50M to drag out his Iraq fiasco with not a glimmer of a long-term strategy. As for the candidates, presumably the Republicans will take aim at the sinful Senator while supporting the President’s request for good money after bad and ignoring the victims of Katrina. The Democrats will continue to split hairs of difference among themselves and to cater to a variety of narrow interest groups. President Bush will continue to seek out meetings of veterans groups to drum up support for his war and the rest of us will simply wait for the serious campaign to start…assuming it will.
By Jeff
The United States’ public diplomacy program is a shadow of its former self. The days of American libraries abroad, widespread student exchange programs, strong surrogate broadcasting programs, and support of cultural exchanges are long over and we are now reduced to sending athletes abroad and beaming trashy American rock into countries that are desperate for objective reporting and analysis.
Ice skater Michelle Kwan was the first of Secretary Rice’s athlete-ambassadors for public diplomacy and has now been followed by baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. Radio Farda continues its tragically misguided pop music broadcasts into Iran eschewing the hard news and analysis formerly broadcast by its predecessor, Radio Azadi.  The assumption seems to be that the attention span and interests of the reform-minded elites in countries like Iran and China are similar to the interests and tastes of the urban American teenager.
Selling America to the world is a near impossible task in the current environment. The Iraq invasion is a huge part of the problem, but torture as an intelligence tool, the Abu Ghraib scandal, support of Israel during its disastrous bombing of Lebanon, ignoring the threat of global warming, walking away from multilateral treaties, trashing the UN, snatching people off the streets of some of our European allies for CIA-supported torture in foreign countries – the list is seemingly endless.
Making a silk purse of mutual international understanding and support out of the sow’s ear of the Bush foreign policy is a task way beyond world champion figure skaters and iron man baseball players.
By Jeff
Bob and Doug McKenzie are on assignment in the Arctic, traveling with Prime Minister Harper who visited the Arctic to plant the Maple Leaf to lay claim to its rich mineral deposits for Canada. This trip was in response to Russian President Putin’s sneak attack last week with two miniature submarines planting the Russian flag somewhere beneath the North Pole. These moves are partially in response to global warming which is melting the Arctic ice cap in direct defiance to U.S. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who claims global warming is a fraudulent tool manufactured by the infidels (e.g. Democrats and non-Christians).
As described in the NY Times, the race for mineral rights in the Arctic looms as a possible Worldwide Cold War as the Danes race to the region to map their own claims that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland, making it a geological extension of the Arctic island.
Norway and the U.S. also make claims to rights in the area but the U.S. is apparently banking on winning the Iraq War sometime in the next century and stealing all of their oil to power the next generation of Hummers. Talk of moving Vice President Cheney’s office to the Arctic was squelched by White House sources, as “wishful thinking by the American peopleâ€.
The world watches these developments with anxious concern mixed with admiration for the audacity of Canada as it takes on the Russian Bear while the U.S. waits to move in after the dirty work is done.
In other news President George W. Bush refused to add 5 cents to the federal tax on gasoline saying it “would be prematureâ€, and that “ we will cross that bridge when we have the funds to fix it.â€
By Jeff
As Congress rushed toward its August vacation it took the time to pass a far-reaching bill which allows the intelligence services to wiretap at will with no credible oversight. This is disturbing on a number of levels: it effectively ignores our constitutional rights to privacy; it eliminates effective judicial oversight of such operations; and assigns review to Alberto Gonzales, of all people. It is one more step on a slippery slope made dangerously so by the fear mongering of Bush.
But what is simply appalling is the bill’s provision of this kind of power to intelligence organizations that have consistently failed – in almost comic and cosmic ways – to fulfill their mission. Movies and books manage to suggest that our safety as a nation has depended on the brave, smart men and women who have run our agents, tortured enemy agents, analyzed secret messages, etc. Simply not true. The United States intelligence services have a record of almost blinding incompetence. With thanks to Tim Weiner’s book, “Legacy of Ashes†and reviews of same book by Evan Thomas and David Wise of the Washington Post, here is a list of some of the major (and sometimes entertaining) screw-ups of the CIA:
Failed to predict Soviet Union’s atomic bomb in 1949
In the 1950’s the CIA and British intelligence collaboration on Operation Gold, a tunnel into East Berlin that allowed listening to the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin. It was a terrific coup except that the Soviets knew about the tunnel before it was completed via George Blake, a British intelligence officer working for the Soviets.
Also in the fifties, the CIA arranged for the overthrow of Guatemala’s elected government (named “Operation Successâ€) to protect the interests of United Fruit. Dictators’ death squads executed an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans in following years.
In 1953 the CIA and he British worked to remove the Prime Minister of Iran from Office to protect the interests of British and American oil companies. The Shah became the ruler, instituted a new secret police (the SAVAK) and pissed off enough of his countrymen to help produce the Islamic Revolution.
The CIA failed to predict the Islamic Revolution.
The CIA did not predict popular uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1950’s
The CIA did not predict the invasion of S. Korea in 1953
The CIA-run1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was a classic example of incompetence.
The CIA’s ridiculous attempts at executing Castro with the help of the mafia in the early 60’s.
The CIA did not predict installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962
The CIA’s support of a coup by the Baath party in Iraq in 1963, which led to Saddam Hussein coming to power.
The large-scale American escalation in Vietnam facilitated by the intelligence community’s manufacture of evidence of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin attack in 1964.
Richard Helms doing the bidding of Richard Nixon and subsequent presidents in exaggerating the capabilities of the Soviet Union to further the presidents’ political needs.
The CIA did not predict the Arab-Israeli War in 1973
The CIA did not predict the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979
The CIA did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, largely because it had no credible Russian spies after the CIA mole Aldrich Ames had betrayed them all
In 1994, the Guatemalan military worked with the CIA to bug the bedroom of Marilyn McAfee, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. She was recorded cooing endearments to “Murphy†and subsequently accused by the CIA station chief of having a lesbian affair with her secretary. Alas, “Murphy†was her pet poodle.
The CIA did not predict India’s explosion of atomic bomb in 1998
The CIA did not predict the attack of 9/11.
George Tenet’s 2003 “slam dunk†on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
These are the people for whom we are giving away our constitutional rights. Where is George Smiley when we need him?
By Jeff
It is possible to believe that the U.S. is no longer selling arms to Iran, but it turns out that would be a belief and not a fact. The AP reports in the Boston Globe today that the General Accounting Office has announced that the Pentagon has sold over 1400 parts for F-14 fighter jets to the public since announcing that they would no longer be sold. Turns out that Iran is the only country still flying that plane and has been desperate for parts to keep them in the air. The fact Iran’s F-14s planes originally came from the U.S. only enriches the irony.