Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Jeff

Arms to the Poor: From Krupp to Bush

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The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against is alive and well – even if their products are sometimes shoddy and ineffective. The arms business has become one of America’s great exports as it arms countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. These days it is reminiscent of the Krupp family business which discovered that it was possible to sell arms to just about anyone in the 19th century, leading to their selling arms and defenses to both sides during World War I. And of course the company was instrumental in arming the German armies during WW II, making huge amounts of profit and paying little in labor since the government kindly supplied them with slave labor. I suppose it is something of a come down for the family now to be selling coffee grinders and espresso machines.

But not to worry, there are plenty of companies willing and able to take on the challenge of arming the world. And while it can be argued that everyone does it, the United States remains in first place in maintaining its post WW-II leadership in finding ways to arm countries or selected rebels around the world. The rationale for doing this is not always clear and is usually done for transitory reasons, and not infrequently with mixed consequences.

The U.S. government and arms manufacturers armed Iran under the Shah and of course saw those armaments fall into the hands of the revolution. Adding insult to injury, the Reagan administration provided arms to Iran as part of its Iran-Contra policy/scandal. (The income from these sales of weapons to Iran under Reagan were then used to provide arms to the Contras in Nicaragua). At around the same time the U.S. provided arms to Saddam Hussein in an effort to support its war against Iran. More recently the U.S. provided arms support to the forces of Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The list goes on and the positive consequences have mostly fallen to the American companies that are heirs to the Krupp value system – and the politicians whose campaigns are funded by the arms manufacturers. In any case the arms provided to Iran, Saddam Hussein, and bin Laden have all been used against our national interest at one time or another.

Now we have the latest proposed handout to the arms companies. Having totally screwed up Iraq and most of the Gulf region with Bush’s fiasco, we are searching for ways to cut our losses and one way is to bribe Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain with upwards of $20 billion in sales to this group of gulf states and some $30B of new sales to Israel. All of this is in addition to whatever arms remain in Iraq after a war that is now estimated to cost over a trillion dollars. The hope and the wish seem to be that all these new weapons in the region will keep our Iraq adventure from becoming the beginning of a monstrous disaster in the region. Also that these countries will all work to keep Iran at bay.

One of the clever strategies of the family Krupp was to sell defensive armor to one side and then stronger weapons to the other and then the first side would need even stronger defensive armor, and the cycle would continue. With all of the new weapons around the world it is clear that the U.S. will need to improve its weaponry and defenses and so the Krupp strategy is alive and well and the cycle can continue.

Socialism, U.S. Style

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Bill, a friend of this Blog, writes the following after mistakenly turning on the “O’Reilly Factor”:

My Economics Professor at Rutgers once commented that in America, it was “socialism for the rich and the corporations but capitalism for the rest of us”. Nothing has changed; recently Bill O’Reilly was bashing universal healthcare as socialism. Yet when we socialize the cost to general electric for polluting a river, or Halliburton for delivering shoddy work in Iraq, or farmers for not growing crops, or Big Pharma for taking drug designs from the NIH – not a word is spoken. But the Bill O’Reillys of the world continue to pull out the same tired, cheap and shallow arguments. Just amazing that they do it and that people continue to tune them in.

The Campaign: Style Over Substance

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“Democracy is coming

To the USA”- Leonard Cohen

If the summer seems longer and hotter than usual, requiring huge intakes of adult beverages, you may have been following the presidential campaign too closely. The latest example of vacuity pretending to be seriousness is the introduction of YouTube into the debates. This has led to news outlets throughout the country devoting large amounts of airtime and ink to the fact that there are “real people” (as opposed to journalists who apparently are not “real”) with “real questions” in the country and isn’t it wonderful that technology allows them to ask the questions in styles waaaay more interesting than the straight-forward question.

The day after the Democrats answered questions from “real people” including a man disguised as a snowman, PBS’s Lehrer Report devoted ca. 20 minutes to a discussion of how the use of YouTube made for a much more personal relationship between the voters and their would-be Kings or Queen. On this and other TV news programs there is almost no discussion of the issues that could resemble intelligent analysis. The focus remains on style and ephemeral issues like the cost of candidates’ haircuts, the size of one’s war chest, whether a particular religion is good or bad for a candidate, and whether they have crafted their standard responses cleverly enough to avoid being pinned down to a real commitment. For analysis stations go to either the same tired talking heads or in a fit of derring-do go to the tried and true Man in the Street technique in which all sides of an issue are given equal time – Sally Mae discusses why we need to stay in EyeRaq and Doug makes the case for leaving.

It is indeed turning out to be a Long, Hot Summer. Now back to the fridge for some relief.

The Candidates and Iraq: Avoiding Reality

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A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post recognizes what should by now be obvious to any serious candidate for the presidency: by any reasonable definition the Iraq War is lost. The decision to invade was based on a combination of ignorance, arrogance and deception; the waging of the war was naïve and simple-minded, and the management of the follow-up has been nothing short of a disaster. The surge is most recently defined by General Petraeus as a ten-year effort; that is a time line the American people will not accept. Nor will they accept the Bush/Cheney concept of a new “Korea-type” 50 year involvement. The American people have determined that it is not in the national interest and they are – finally – smarter than their leaders.

So, what is going on with the primary campaigns among both Republicans and Democrats? It seems obvious that the major foreign policy challenge facing America is first, how to extricate itself from Bush’s Iraq fiasco and second, and perhaps more important, to begin to define an appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East and Gulf region post-Iraq. But the campaign rhetoric is largely confined to how long to stay in Iraq, how many troops to leave behind, can Americans face the fact of defeat, and isn’t it about time the Iraqis cleaned up the mess we made.

No one can know what will happen when U.S. troops leave Iraq but we can certainly predict what will happen if we stay because it is happening already – more American deaths, more Iraqi deaths, throwing good American after bad, more Iraqis leaving their country, and a terrific training and recruiting ground for Al Queda.

But to read the press and listen to media news one would think that staying in Iraq was an actual option. It is not and the more time spent pretending otherwise is time lost to the serious effort needed to redefine America’s role in the world in a way that reflects both reality and America’s real national interest. This public discussion needs to begin now and needs to be led by those who would be our next president.

Mitt Romney: All Suit, No Man??

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His no-hair-out-of-place look has led some to refer to Mitt Romney as “Governor Perfect”. But former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has not-so-subtly shifted positions from middle of the road to far right on abortion, stem cell research, gun control, civil unions for gay couples, homosexual adoption, and birth control privacy laws, among others. He has added support for the Iraq adventure to his current repertoire as he courts the right wing of the GOP for primary votes and it is apparent that he will do almost anything, take on any view and change any opinion, to reach the White House.

What would candidate Romney look like in a general election when the extreme right has less influence and any GOP candidate must gain support from independents? He has said that his positions have “evolved” since he left the governorship of Massachusetts and it is probable that they will evolve backwards as time and events demand. He is one more in a long (and growing) line of presidential candidates with no central core of beliefs and should have a large sign on the back of his suit: “Voter Beware”.

In 1968 George Romney, Mitt’s father, was a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and discovered very late in the game that supporting the Vietnam War was a loser of an issue so he changed his mind, claiming that he had been “brainwashed” by the military (Gene McCarthy commented that a “light rinse would of sufficed”).

Seems like the Romney genes are intact, but going through life on a haircut and a smile do not make for a good president. Now it is up to the American press to put on their big-boy pants and start dealing with issues and the political history of all the candidates and forget about suits, haircuts, slick commercials, and canned responses aimed at narrow interest groups.

Lonesome George: The Last Cowboy

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George Bush has morphed into President Pariah, rattling around the world with no one giving him respect.  Republican senators treat him like a leper; German citizens riot in the streets; Italian courts sue his CIA for criminal activity; old soulmate Putin calls him names; Poodle Blair is whining his way into early retirement; Newt Gingrich is all over his record; and Colin Powell criticizes him on a regular basis.

He is the first sitting American president to visit Albania where he received the adulation of a nation that owes its freedom to Bill Clinton, but never mind – adulation is adulation. He steered clear of Iraq on this latest trip.

But now this Lone Ranger is left only with Alberto Gonzales as his Tonto and Joe Lieberman as the hind end of his Silver. There is a reason for the preponderance of new bumper stickers reading: “1/20/09”, the date the Last Cowboy rides off into the sunset.

The Iraq Solution: Let’s Give Them Guns!

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As evidence of the likely failure of the surge strategy in Iraq begins to surface the U.S. is reported to be moving toward a strategy of arming Sunnis so they can defend themselves against Al Queda. It is an almost breathlessly desperate idea, forged in the failure of a four-year disaster and reminiscent of the arms we provided to the Taliban in Afghanistan while they were fighting the Russians. While there are many lessons available from that adventure perhaps the best one would be that the weapons ended up with the forces of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. We all  remember them.

A lengthy piece in the NY Times describes some of the risks:

“But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq’s army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.”

So, we invade Iraq for whatever reason is the current rationale, accomplish the mission in weeks but forget to deal with the aftermath. Four years later the winners appear to be the Shias which creates a little problem with our Sunni friends in Saudi Arabia and Jordan but is welcomed by our ‘enemies” in Iran and Syria. Arms would be provided only to those Sunnis promising not to use them against their Shia neighbors and only against Al Queda. It is understandable that failure can produce desperate measures but will the U.S. really do something this risky?

Al Hurra: Fair and Balanced News?

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Al Hurra is America’s Arabic language TV station and it is performing with typical Bush administration competence. Intended to bring trustworthy news to the Arab world as an antidote to anti-American media in the region and by so doing, to serve as a tool of American foreign policy, the station has managed to turn itself into a propaganda conduit for the other side.

In an incredibly naïve strategy to build credibility among potential viewers the station has – on several occasions – broadcast speeches, rants, and statements from leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, many of which have been rabidly anti-American and all intended to present reality through the prism of terrorist rationales.

Al Hurra has been a disaster since its inception and bringing in Larry Register last fall from – of all places, CNN – to run the operation has proven to be a major mistake. CNN is – like most of the major broadcast news media – committed to pretending to be objective by giving time to even the most ridiculous points of view on major issues.  It fills time and God knows we would not want a news organization to accept facts as they are and simply report them. So we have endless programs with all sorts of weird views presented because – well, someone believes them and we need to give them a chance to peddle their snake oil.

Apparently Register thought it important to provide a soapbox for some of the most destructive characters in the Middle East as proof of our “objectivity”.  This is reminiscent of the decision VOA made after the attacks of 9/11 to broadcast – in its entirely and without challenge – a mind-bending speech by Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban.

Should American international broadcasting ignore the statements of leaders of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban? Of course not, but the way to do that is to invite them on to either be interviewed by a tough, knowledgeable interviewer or invite them to participate in a round table with a variety of points of view represented. They would in all likelihood decline the invitation but then that refusal can be reported.

Finally, for those moderate voices in the Arab world – those seeking peaceful change in the region – the broadcast of unchallenged speeches from leaders of terrorist groups for them simply destroys the credibility that Al Hurra needs to be effective. Imagine Radio Liberty broadcasting Stalin’s speeches during the Cold War. Their audience would no longer trust them and no longer listen to them.

The Arab world’s moderates and reformers are the ones that we most need to support and Al Hurra, if managed well, could provide some of that support by broadcasting honest news without pandering to the fringe elements. The expected resignation of Larry Register in the next week or so is a good first step.

Does the Primary System Work?

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The recent presidential primary debates have made it clear that both major political parties will be selecting their candidates on the basis of limited purity rather than substance. For the Republican Party it is immigration that is pulling the candidates to the right. For the Democratic Party, withdrawal from Iraq pulls the candidates to the left. Perhaps this is for the best but it seems reasonable to wonder whether there might be a better way to select the two finalists in the process soon to be known as American Political Idol.

The fact that primaries are decided by narrow slices of both parties and that the press plays up one or two issues means that substantive discussion of a wide range of critical issues gets deferred until at least after the primaries and perhaps even after the election. The immigration debate will continue but will never lead to throwing 11 million immigrants out of America – cannot be done and should not be done, regardless of political rhetoric. And while the Iraq invasion was a horrible mistake the reality is that extricating America from that mistake will take time and will require a rethinking of America’s role in that part of the world.

The real loss in the primary race is that one or both parties are largely ignoring major issues that require attention. These include: the cost and availability of health care; the substantive quality of education beyond simply standardized testing; the need to repair the image of America throughout the world; the need for substantive environmental controls; the widening gap between the haves and have-nots; the long-term effect of huge deficits on future generations – the list goes on. But so far the emphases in this election are identified by focus groups in a limited number of primary states and the reporting of the press, which tends to reinforce the numbing vacuity of presidential hopefuls mouthing tired repetitions of unrealistic slogans on self-identified hot button issues.

Attack on the Mackenzie Brothers

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An email from a Prague-based American journalist has raised several
issues regarding the Mackenzie Brothers comments in their blog posting, “The New Europe takes Shape”

That email is below – followed by the Mackenzie Brother’s response.

“Who the hell are the Mackenzie Brothers? Make sure someone buys them a spell checker for Christmas, and a German-English dictionary on their name day, would ya? I guess I can overlook the typos and
misspellings, but tell them that the German word “Tone” means “tone,”
not “notes,” which is “notizen.” What Dummkopfs. And when they write
this:

“Putin and Merkel speak German together and don’t need an interpreter.
In the past they have gotten along much better than any important
European leader…”

Which makes me wonder how much they’re following European politics.
For one thing, Merkel and Putin have never gotten along well at all.
And the second statement, that they got along more than any other
European leaders is really silly. I mean, Schroeder and Putin had to
break off their talks once every hour so they could go bang each
other. Schroeder and Chirac were nearly as close. And Blair got along
very, very well with Berlusconi; and, Silvio and Putin continue to be
incredibly close. All of those relationships are far, far closer than
the very cold connection that Merkel and Putin have.”

Returning from their annual pilgrimage to Munich’s Biergartens,
the Mackenzie Brothers respond:

“Fortunately the Mackenzies spent their youths in Bavarian lumber
camps, but, ok let’s see what the Cassell’s dictionary lists under Ton
(plural Töne, there is no German word Tone – or Dummkopfs). Ah, hah –
“Sound”, “note”, now there’s a surprise. However I’m glad your pal
points out that the correct back translation of “notes” would be
“Notizen (or rather notizen)”. This reminds me of the immortal Sarah
Bink’s translation of Heine’s Lorelei “und ruhig fliesst der Rhein” –
“and quietly flows the clean”. As for the second part, it would have
been more compelling if he had quoted the entire sentence, not just
the first half, which says something completely different from what he
seems to think it says. Is this the level of analysts working in the
Prague organization or doesn’t he know English or German?

In any case this blog of the Mackenzies has also drawn some sparkling
criticism, like the following;

Yes Mackenzies, only in France is there a monastery for water skiing
and a monastery for virtue. But don’t worry, it’s not just France.
The whole world’s gone to hell since the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

Preacher Roe

Such commentary does keep us on our toes and my brother Doug promises
to make a last minute spell check before pushing that old submit
button.”