Politics and Press

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

Jeff

The War on Drugs: Nonsense and Insensibilities

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A short item in the NY Times today tells of a Canadian psychotherapist who was stopped at the border by U.S. immigration officials who searched his name on the Internet and learned that he had written in an academic journal about his experiences with psychedelic drugs in the  1960’s. The article continues:

He was asked by a border guard whether he was the author of the article and whether it was true. Yes, he replied. And yes.

Mr. Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and, after signing a statement conceding the long-ago drug use, sent home.

Mike Milne, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency in Seattle, said he could not discuss individual cases for reasons of privacy. But the law is clear, Mr. Milne said. People who have used drugs are not welcome here.

“If you are or have been a drug user,” he said, “that’s one of the many things that can make you inadmissible to the United States.”

Since the psychotherapist gave up drugs in 1974 he could hardly be deemed any more of a threat than – oh let’s say, the border guard who did a random and arbitrary internet search and added one more nail in the twin coffins of a sane immigration policy and an effective war on terror.

The good news is that this raises the possibility of extraditing known cocaine user George W. Bush to whoever would take him – maybe Iraq? Not Canada certainly.

IRAQ UPDATE: Good Money After Bad

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As we enter the fifth year of the Bush Iraq Fiasco, there continue to be amazing stories of rampant corruption, mind-boggling incompetence and a pig-headed obstinate inability to face reality.

The country has been entertained for five months as President Bush resists the congressional majority’s calls for “deadlines” in its funding bill for Iraq. Refusing to accept the inevitable, Bush continues to dream of an as yet undefined “victory” in Iraq while the Congress searches for a veto proof funding bill that will set a timetable for the U.S. to begin to move troops out of Iraq.

The latest move in this political dance macabre is away from “deadlines” to “benchmarks” – apparently a less inflammatory word for Bush but still not acceptable if there are any specific dates applied. This in spite of – or maybe because of – a lack of evidence that the “surge” will be effective in anything other than raising the American death toll while merely delaying the inevitable.

However, one group that is moving toward deadlines is the Iraq Parliament, with a majority of its members signing on to the principle of deadlines for American troops to leave – but agreeing with the American view that the withdrawal should not be precipitous and should be timed to the readiness of Iraqi troops to maintain security. While this might not satisfy either Bush or the Congress, (it is, after all, their country) they are moving toward reality at a faster pace than Bush. Meanwhile the death toll mounts, ca. 100 Americans per month and ca. 100 Iraqis a day.

Another development in Iraq is reminiscent of Paul Wolfowitz’s comment in 2003 that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of reconstruction after a brief victorious battle. That has turned out to be as good an idea as Wolfowitz’s handing his girlfriend a $60G raise and foisting her on the State Department. Turns out that having paid for destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure we are now paying for its reconstruction as well and it is not going well. Iraq oil production is not close to the predicted levels and the NY Times reports today that a draft report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office describes a situation in which from $5 to $15 million a day of Iraqi oil is disappearing – either through government corruption, smugglers or – worse yet – insurgent theft. The latter translates into an oil production program that in effect is bankrolling the insurgents who are killing American troops.

The press cannot seem to come to grips with all of this – choosing to argue about the when and how of withdrawal without ever coming out and saying that withdrawal is inevitable. Defeat is in the air and is a tough pill for politicians and bloviating journalists to swallow with their pride in their throat. It looks an awful lot as though the day is coming and it would seem to be a good idea to start thinking about the future and how we can undo the damage of the miserable mistakes made by Bush and his band of fools. Bush predicted a new world after Iraq and he is going to get it and would be well advised to start thinking about how to interact with that new world.

Finally, it seemed somehow appropriate to have Dick Cheney threatening Iran on a aircraft carrier deck just four years after Bush got into his costume and declared “mission accomplished” – also on a carrier deck. Fact is that Cheney and Bush are in many ways headed for the kind of irrelevance that Tony Blair faced and at least had the sense to resign from office.

Censoring the Troops

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Two recent news items indicate the lack of respect this administration holds for the soldiers and marines it sends to Iraq to fight and sometimes to die for the Bush-Cheney Fiasco.

While much of the American press remains huddled in the Green Zone, blogs managed by U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been interesting and useful sources of information for those wishing to understand what life is like for them. While some blogs – or at least some entries on some blogs – have been critical of American strategies and tactics (and rightly so), most have been attempts to communicate reality to readers back home and to share thoughts among themselves.  And there is evidence that the blogs have provided a morale lift for the troops. But, alas, the was is not going so well and since “war is hell” is more than just a slogan the Defense Department has determined that all blogs must be approved by commanding officers.  That is, each entry must be approved. What insulting arrogance!

At almost the same time, a Defense Department official announced this week that servicemen and women below a certain rank would not be allowed to testify before Congressional committees.  Never mind that this regulation will probably not stand (assuming the Congress locates its backbone). It is just one more indication of how this administration really feels about its troops. Insufficient armor, insufficient numbers, lousy medical care at home, extended tours, an incoherent strategy, reduced VA funding and now, an attempt to shut them up.

Rice’s Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iran

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A few years ago, after reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Seymour Hersh commented that he viewed Condoleezza Rice as the most incompetent of all National Security Advisors in the history of that position. Obviously there was competition for that title (e.g. H. Kissinger) but new evidence indicates that Ms. Rice has taken her incompetence to new levels as Secretary of State.

The United States has been funding efforts to support a movement toward democratization in Iran for many years. Radio Azadi was started by Radio Free Europe in that late 90s and it became a successful broadcaster of solid news, analysis and culture into Iran with a significant audience among the elites in the reform movement. This effort was emasculated shortly after the Bush election when it was changed to Radio Farda, and turned into a broadcaster of American rock and roll. This was representative of the dumbing down of American culture and was based on the belief that a larger audience of teenagers listening to music was somehow more important than an audience of mature members of the reform movement listening to serious and credible news.

Add to that the recent report that the U.S. has committed $75 million to promote democracy in Iran and that Secretary Rice has announced this to some fanfare in the U.S. and considerable angst in Iran. The problem is not that the money is being spent – it is that Ms. Rice was not smart enough to understand that by announcing it – in the context of Bush’s “axis of evil” and “regime change” blathering – she would put all possible recipients of support from the U.S. in jeopardy. It is the kind of program that you play close to the chest with the hope that your support can facilitate reformers in their pro-democracy efforts. Rice’s play for publicity has had the opposite effect with Iranian intellectuals, writers, journalists, human rights activists, etc. in increased jeopardy.

According to a Washington Post piece on April 28:

“…The money is a persistent focus during interrogations, say Iranians who have been questioned or detained. “If you look at the crackdown on non-government organizations and human rights defenders over the past six months, one common facet is that they were all suspected of receiving foreign funds,” said Zahir Janmohamed, Amnesty International USA’s advocacy director for the Middle East. “It’s not just the funding but the rhetoric around the funding about ‘regime change’ and the ‘axis of evil.’ ”

The National Iranian American Council said it had warned the State Department “that the mere idea of sending money with this language would make the work of pro-democracy activists in Iran all the more difficult. It has turned out to be worse than what many people feared. The mere fact that the United States has been talking about using NGOs has made Iran’s thriving civil society a main suspect of trying to do change inside Iran,” said the council president, Trita Parsi….”

The Return of the Evil Empire?

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There were many factors that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, including a nutty economic system made even nuttier by corruption and incompetence among the leadership. But more important to many was the brutality of a regime that allowed very little in the way of what we consider commonplace freedoms. Perhaps chief among these was freedom of the press,

Throughout the Cold War America’s Radio Liberty served as a surrogate Russian radio station, providing news, analysis and cultural programs that – for over forty years – made Radio Liberty the most responsible source available in Russia for both domestic and international news. The Russian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) suffered a serious blow in 1993 when freshman senator Russell Feingold made a strong effort to close the radios because “the Cold War was over”. Feingold lacked any real understanding of international broadcasting and the role it has always played as a tool of foreign policy and a mode of public diplomacy and so the Radios survived in a much-diminished status with a budget reduced by 70% and the Russian broadcast service took much of the hit.

Well yes, the cold War is over but what do we have in its place? A Russia in which journalists critical of the government are routinely murdered, a TV and radio scene in which all the important networks are state-run, and a population more interested in consumer goods than civil liberties.

Over the weekend it was reported that state-run radio in Russia has been handed a new set of rules – 50% of news about Russia must be “positive”, there is to be absolutely no mention of opponents to the government by name, and the United States is to be labeled the “enemy”. So we are back to the 70’s and early 80’s with no more “Glasnost” and a powerful former KGB director as president – with the possibility on the horizon of a change in Russian laws that would provide the opportunity for President Putin to continue in office beyond his term.

It is well past time for a renewal of our commitment to an active public diplomacy that includes provision of serious news and analysis to those citizens of Russia (and other countries) that hunger for the truth. Feingold never understood the importance of that effort and did serious damage to our public diplomacy effort.

Campaign Update: The Press

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My intention had been to describe my utter despair over the levels to which the American press can sink in discussing a major political campaign. Like, for instance, for Leader Of The Most Powerful Nation In The World.  But Matt Taibbi has done it for me and better than me in a recent Rolling Stone.  A small quote will give a sense of his take on it and you can read the whole piece by going to the Rolling Stone website.

Like Seinfeld, the presidential campaign is essentially a “show about nothing,” a prolonged prime-time character-driven drama crafted around a series of fake conflicts that always get resolved by the end of the program, in this case November 2008. Marcia and Greg make driving-test bet in segment one; Marcia imagines instructor in underwear in middle segments; Marcia and Greg’s bet ends in a tie, family loves each other again. In the old days the presidential show’s writers tended to use actual political issues (Georgie and Hube argue about Vietnam!) as the starting points for their dramatic conflicts — a natural artistic strategy, given that the subject matter was a real election in a giant country teeming with ugly social and economic problems — but in the last few cycles the networks seem to have figured out that you can shoot even a whole season of a presidential race without including any of the boring political shit.

The End of Bush Imperialism?

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Is the Bush presidency headed for that special closet, once reserved for Richard Nixon? The signs say “yes”. Bush travels the back alleys of American politics, speaking to veterans organizations, groups of soldiers and their families, those Republican Congressmen and women who will still be seen in public with him, the occasional trade organization and of course, the Poodles – formerly known as the White House Press Corps.

The video clips of the Poodles dancing and singing with Bush and Karl Rove at the White House Press Club dinner were emblematic of the long standing problem of the press throwing away their honor and integrity for “access” to people who mislead and lie to them to get their version of the news in front of readers and viewers.

Senator McCain continues to support the Bush war and has picked up the president’s theme that anyone who votes not to allow more American soldiers to die for his fiasco is – well, hurting their chances of dying for his fiasco. And Bush continues to ignore the will of the American people in pledging to do more of what has not worked in order to avoid being in office when the inevitable occurs. The hypocrisy and cynicism of his and McCain’s stance is mind-boggling. But not surprising, given who they are.

Well, the party is winding down.  The issue of ending our occupation of Iraq is no longer whether, but when, and the press in catching up with the American people in understanding this. Time Magazine, of all things, has announced: An Administration’s Epic Collapse. Leaving only places like the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, John McCain’s website and the dependably neocon opinion journals to support a presidency damaged beyond repair.

But there are almost two years of this presidency for us to survive and a cornered Bush who feels he is not sufficiently respected can be dangerous.  It is time for serious Republican leaders -  especially those in the Senate – to help rein in this train wreck of a  Presidency before it goes completely off the track.

And, Another Miracle

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Followng the news that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has cancelled out of his scheduled April state dinner with President Bush, we read now that King Abdullah of Jordan – another old  friend of the United States  has decided he cannot possibly make a planned trip to Washington – and a state dinner – in September.

It seems the chicken-hawks have come home to roost. Bush’s Iraq adventure is continuing to offend old friends while creating new enemies.

Bush’s Newest Miracle

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Having changed major parts of the constitution into near-meaningless paragraphs, turned the U.S. military into a shadow of its former self, reduced the Iraqi population in Iraq by an estimated 20 percent, turned a budget surplus into a record-breaking deficit, Bush had at least one more miracle left in his bag of tricks.

In 2000, the Washington Times published a glowing report on the strength of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.  It began:

“For more than 60 years, Saudi Arabia and the United States have enjoyed a strong relationship based upon mutual respect and common interests….
This special relationship dates to the early 1900s, when King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, the founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was impressed by President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the self-determination of nations. Over time, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has reflected President Wilson’s ideals of independence, justice and peace.”

The strong relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family has been well documented and the mutuality of the U.S. Saudi relationship has been clear.  The Saudis have kept the oil coming, maintained a moderate stance in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, and allowed – until recently – large U.S. military bases on their soil. In return the U.S. has provided for the defense of Saudi Arabia, assisted in the development of their oil fields and, perhaps most important, provided a huge market thirsty for Saudi oil. The friendship endured in spite of the extreme fundamentalism of the Saudi brand of Islam and the fact that the majority of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi born and bred.

The second President Bush has apparently destroyed a 65-year-old relationship in just the four years from 2003 to the present. A miracle. Who would have thought that it could be done and would be done by a Bush.  Yesterday at the meeting of the Arab League, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia said that the U.S. occupation in Iraq was “illegal” and called for the end of the international boycott of the Palestinian government, Earlier this year, the Saudis helped negotiate agreement between the two major Palestinian factions and met with the President of Iran; two actions apparently designed to announce their independence from American hegemony.

So our relationship with Saudi Arabia is moving toward becoming one more casualty of the Bush Fiasco.  Ironically, the Bush foreign policy, pushed so hard by neocon supporters of Israel, could add to the threat to Israel – a stronger Iran, a more unified Arab world, a weakened America, a less supportive Western Europe. It is also apparently increasing the power of al Queda by increasing hatred of America in the Arab world, and providing a recruiting and training ground for jihadists.

Since blood is thicker than patriotism, old man Bush has kept his silence but he must wonder how the hell he could have sired this guy.

Shock and Awe or Humiliation and Shame?

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Until recently, there has been little focus on the costs to the citizens of Iraq of Bush’s War. The American mainstream press has largely chosen to look at the Iraq war through the prism of U.S. politics – that is, who voted for it and who did not; who will vote for withdrawal of U.S. troops and who will not; how can funding be stopped without those who vote for it being accused of “not supporting the troops”; what percent of the American people support the war; when will the Iraqis clean up the mess we produced? Etc. ad nauseum. It is, for them, mostly all about America.

What are the trade-offs for the Iraqis? The estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths range from a low of 60,000 to as high as ten times that number. Estimates of Iraqi refugees are in the 2-3 million range – most internal as the various religious sects band together in limited geographic areas, but over a million in Jordan, Syria and Iran. The Kurdish region of Iraq – the most developed, stable and modern – now has some 100,000 refugees from the rest of Iraq with nowhere to put them and minimal humanitarian aid from the U.S. The fact that the U.S. has accepted only a few hundred Iraqi refugees is a disgraceful indictment of the American government that created this horror show. A previously secular society with the highest literacy rate in the region, and equal rights for women is becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state with all that that will mean for whoever is left living there.

In return for this “investment” the Iraqi people are rid of Saddam Hussein, one of the nastiest dictators of the past thirty years. But now having determined that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, the Iraqi people are asking themselves whether it has been worth the costs. Their answer is “no”. The euphoria of U.S. troops marching into Baghdad has been replaced with the reality of the mind-numbing incompetence of the U.S. in creating chaos with no way out – for the U.S. or for the Iraqi people.

A powerful description of what we have done to those Iraqi people who have been our allies, appears in this week’s New Yorker, in George Packer’s article, Betrayed, in which he comments that:

“The arc from hope to betrayal that traverses the Iraq war is nowhere more vivid than in the lives of these Iraqis [i.e. Iraqis who worked for the U.S. forces as interpreters, etc.]. America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat.”

It is tempting to quote Packer’s piece extensively, but it needs to be read in its entirety to capture the full dimension of our shame and guilt in this political and human disaster. One small part of the article discusses the likelihood or possibilities of large numbers of the millions of Iraqi refugees being welcomed into the U.S. – that is, the country that turned them into refugees. We are reminded of what President Gerald Ford once said about his decision to admit a hundred and thirty thousand Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon: “To do less would have added moral shame to humiliation.” The United States has welcomed between 200 and 300 Iraqis to date.

According to Packer, Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, and a longtime State Department professional, when asked about the likelihood of the U.S. doing much more, commented that:

“I guarantee you no one’s thinking about it now, because it’s so fatalistic and you’d be considered sort of a traitor to the President’s policy,” he said. “I don’t see us taking them in this time, because, notwithstanding what we may owe people, you’re not going to bring in large numbers of Arabs to the United States, given the fact that for the last six years the President has scared the pants off the American public with fears of Islamic terrorism.”