Politics and Press

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

Jeff

German Realpolitik Redux

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An earlier posting to this blog reviewed the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who was kidnapped by CIA agents and spirited off to Syria for five month interrogation at the end of which the CIA had learned that he had been a salesman in Bavaria – whoops. Munich prosecutors then indicted the CIA operatives and Munich’s liberal paper the Sueddeutsche Zeitung commented, “The great ally is not allowed to simply send its thugs out into Europe’s streets.”

Our friends the MacKenzie brothers commented that the German Foreign Minister was unlikely to press the issue with his American counterpart since realpolitik bothers the Germans – a view which seemed right to this writer.

In today’s Washington Post, Craig Whitlock provides a different slant that indicates that realpolitik might just be alive and well in certain circles within Germany. It turns out that German intelligence agents were directly involved in the rendition of another German citizen, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who had been involved in the Hamburg cell that planned the 9/11 attack. He is being held in Syria and the German role has created a political, if not moral, dilemma for a country that publicly tends to resist realpolitik while privately behaving like one of the boys.

The Decomposition of Henry Kissinger

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Earlier this week Henry Kissinger appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss Bush-Cheney’s Iraq policy. I finally got around to viewing a video of his appearance and it was bizarre – a scene of his mumbling, rambling and seemingly sucking up to everyone on the committee as he appeared to agree with almost any suggestion made by any Senator. The scene’s believability might actually have benefited from visits by his old pals Jill St. John, Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet.

I got very worried for Iraq’s neighboring countries when he announced the probability of a secret peace plan, remembering what his secret plan for Vietnam did for Cambodia. But then he mumbled something about not really knowing that there was a plan, only that:

“I am convinced, but I cannot base it on any necessary evidence right now that the president will want to move toward a bipartisan consensus”.

Jesus – what the hell does that mean?

He meandered along through testimony that ignored much of the reality of current policy in Iraq and moved toward a numbing kind of equivalent to: “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” analysis. There was something for everyone. Is there a secret peace plan in the Bush administration?   He did not know for sure, but it seemed like they must be moving in that direction. Is the President’s planned “surge” likely to be effective? He opined that if it worked it would serve the interests of reconciliation.  Etc. ad nauseum.

What was striking was the inability of anyone in the room to make any sense.  While perhaps easy to ignore the babblings of a man who has outlasted whatever usefulness he might have had (and that latter is up for debate) it is neither easy nor pleasant to watch a room full of Senators trying to get the old guy to give them what each of them wants and at the end of the day not knowing whether they got it.

We are told that Kissinger has been advising Bush on Iraq policy and that is totally believable given this performance and the state of the Iraq war.

New Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President

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The Board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has selected Jeffrey Gedmin as RFE/RL’s new president. Since 2001 Gedmin has served as Director of the Aspen institute in Berlin and prior to that served for five years as Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative.

Looking at his background and some recent writings Gedmin appears to be a strong choice for what is a challenging position. His work is cut out for him. Radio Liberty’s Russian Broadcast Service has had some difficulties with President Putin’s government and to his credit Gedmin has been critical of the undemocratic (and worse) directions that Putin has taken Russia. In so doing he has taken a stronger stance for freedom and democracy in Russia than the U.S. government. Also, the Radio’s successful Persian Service was turned into a shadow of itself a few years ago when the Board of Broadcast Governors forced it to join with VOA’s service and to move from providing substantive news, analysis and culture aimed at Iran’s influential elites to a popular music format aimed at people with little influence and perhaps even interest in the issues of freedom and democracy within Iran. Given the current state of Iran-U.S. relations this is an issue that Gedmin might usefully put at the top of his “to do” list.

Bush and the Germans; Rendition and Iraq

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The German judiciary is looking to indict several CIA operatives for their kidnapping of a German-Lebanese citizen suspected of terrorist activities. He was sent to a prison in Afghanistan where he was questioned and – according to him tortured – for five months before being told that “whoops – we got the wrong guy” and sent home.

There are some interesting insights into the CIA program and the run-up to the Iraq invasion in an interview of the former chief of the CIA’s Europe Division (Tyler Drumheller) on the website of the German news weekly, Der Spiegel. Drumheller is the author of On the Brink, a memoir of his time in the CIA. A few quotes from the interview are below. The full interview can be read here.

Drumheller: It was Vice President Dick Cheney who talked about the “dark side” we have to turn on. When he spoke those words, he was articulating a policy that amounted to “go out and get them.” His remarks were evidence of the underlying approach of the administration, which was basically to turn the military and the agency loose and let them pay for the consequences of any unfortunate — or illegal — occurrences.

Drumheller: …I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. …

SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. …

Drumheller: … Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. … Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time. … The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn’t go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.

SPIEGEL: …it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell’s presentation — and nobody had told him about the doubts.

Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech.


An American Original, Molly Ivins: RIP

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Molly Ivins died yesterday after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Thinking about the mainstream press with its suck-up approach to authority and its inability to write with true wit, her death is a giant loss. Who else would report on a Pat Buchanan screed on America’s “culture wars” by commenting that “it probably sounded better in its original German”. And is there another former NY Times reporter who lost his or her job by referring to a community chicken killing as a “gang pluck”?

Her reporting on Texas politics was legendary and prepared her well for the odious task of reporting on the Dubya Bush presidency, a task that allowed her to be one of a small number of journalists who saw through all the smoke and mirrors that has given us the Iraq fiasco.

A few choice quotes published in the Houston Chronicle follow:

“If you think his daddy had trouble with ‘the vision thing,’ wait’ll you meet this one,” Ivins on George W. Bush in “The Progressive,” June 1999.

“If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili,” on Bill Clinton, from the introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

“The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,” from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

“….our very own dreaded [Texas] Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they’ll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot,” from a December 2000 column.

Gullible’s Travels: David Brooks’ Trip to Reality

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Bush-Cheney’s Iraq adventure has provided David Brooks a terrific opportunity for what self-help gurus would call “personal growth and development”. It has been a strange trip in which Brooks has had to finally realize that his emperor has no clothes and that those Democratic leaders who had no alternatives actually had – and he had somehow missed them.

On Nov 2, 2006 in the NY Times Brooks had this to say:

“Partitioning the country would be traumatic, so after the election it probably makes sense to make one last effort to hold the place together. Fire Donald Rumsfeld to signal a break with the past. Alter troop rotations so that 30,000 more troops are policing Baghdad.”

On Jan. 7, 2007, it was:

“The record shows that in sufficient numbers and with sufficient staying power, U.S. troops can suppress violence. Perhaps more U.S. troops can create a climate in which decentralized arrangements can evolve.

We can’t turn back time. But if the disintegration of Iraqi society would be a political and humanitarian disaster, perhaps we should finally commit military resources, and create a political strategy, commensurate with the task of salvaging something.”

On Jan 11, he began totally to lose it:

‘If the Democrats don’t like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame. There were millions of disaffected Republicans and independents ready to coalesce around some alternative way forward, but the Democrats never came up with anything remotely serious.”

On Jan. 25, he came to grips with the reality that, “yes Virginia. There are alternative plans out there – some even formulated by Democratic leaders and analysts”:

“I for one have become disillusioned with dreams of transforming Iraqi society from the top down. But it’s not too late to steer the situation in a less bad direction…
for a ”soft partition” of Iraq in order to bring political institutions into accord with the social facts — a central government to handle oil revenues and manage the currency, etc., but a country divided into separate sectarian areas to reduce contact and conflict. When the various groups in Bosnia finally separated, it became possible to negotiate a cold (if miserable) peace.

Soft partition has been advocated in different ways by Joe Biden and Les Gelb, by Michael O’Hanlon and Edward Joseph, by Pauline Baker at the Fund for Peace, and in a more extreme version, by Peter Galbraith.”

Yes David, there are and have been for some time, alternatives to your Bush-Cheney approach. Glad to have you climbing on board. Better late then never I guess.

In his last NY Times column he threatens new insights to be delivered from the mount on Sunday on the NY Times Op-Ed page. As Bush-Cheney would no doubt agree: “ God help us all”.

EL-BARADEI VS. BUSH-CHENEY

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One of the key ingredients to Bush-Cheney’s**, successful selling of the Iraq invasion was its PR campaign aimed at belittling Hans Blix on the weapons of mass destruction issue. As we know Bush lied and Blix turned out to be both honorable and correct. But Bush-Cheney was intent on invading and invade we did. The cost of that decision has been enormous and continues to grow as Bush-Cheney flounders around looking for a way out and perhaps finding Iran.

Blix’s successor as Head of the International Atomic Energy Commission is Muhammad el-Baradei and yesterday he spoke out strongly at the World Economic Forum in Davos, warning the West, and particularly Bush-Cheney, that attempting to bomb Iran’s nuclear capability would be unjustified at this point, probably counter–productive and a catastrophe.

Golnaz Esfandiari, an Iranian émigré journalist, has written a solid review of the situation for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s website. It places el-Baradei’s comments in a broader context than that which Americans normally get from their press (and politicians) and describes a fairly broad international consensus that an attack by either Bush-Cheney or Israel could be catastrophic, and that as in the Iraq invasion in 2003, there is insufficient evidence to support military action.

We shall see – cornered beasts do desperate things.

**Note: In this context Bush-Cheney is seen as a kind of Chimaera – the two-headed beast of mythology

A FAIR AND UNBALANCED EDUCATION

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In case you wondered, the Apocalypse is clearly upon us.  The evidence for this came to light in a suburb of Seattle where a teacher almost got away with showing her class the Al Gore movie about global warming without also bringing the Christian evangelical message about climate change to the class. Luckily one parent intervened and the School Board came to its senses, preparing to put a disciplinary letter in the teacher’s personnel file, placing a moratorium on the showing of the film in any of its schools and ordering future viewings to include evidence from those who do not believe that humans play a role in global warming.

What are those views? Well, according to the Washington Post the complaining parent identifies himself as: “a  43-year-old computer consultant [and] evangelical Christian who … believes that a warming planet is “one of the signs” of Jesus Christ’s imminent return for Judgment Day.” Al Gore against the bible?  The battle of the ages.  Another citizen, a self identified PhD scientist suggests studying the “recent findings by the Russian Sciences Academy Observatory predicting global cooling beginning in 2012.”

Hmmm. Who to believe? God’s Word? Russians? Al Gore?

The Press: Illuminator Or Racetrack Tout

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As we begin the bizarre process of choosing the next leader of the free world the press is approaching the process as a horserace. This allows them to be handicappers, or odds-makers, or anointers of the chosen. The way in which candidates are covered, the attention they receive, and why, gives the press a lot of power over the process and past experience is worrisome.

So when Hillary announces, it is front-page news about her “chances” as a women and her need to avoid taking any meaningful stands that might possibly be held against her later.

Dennis Kucinich announces and it is the proverbial tree falling in the forest – no one hears it because the press has determined that he could not possibly be a serious candidate – probably because four years ago he among all the others was the one who said invading Iraq was nuts – a total loser of a campaign issue.

Bill Richardson throws his sombrero into the ring and the story in the Boston Globe is  illustrated with a huge photo of Hillary talking to a group of children and a tiny headshot photo of Richardson.

Obama announces and it was as if Jesus himself had come down off the cross to make everything all right again and possibly driving Hillary out of the Garden of Eden (whoops – wrong Testament).

Much the same goes on for the Republicans with McCain picked by the press to get the nomination because Giuliani is too liberal, Romney is a Mormon, Brownback is too conservative, etc.

The press is likely to treat this horserace the way it treats them all: as exercises in tactics in which the main substance turns out to be the way the press itself presents the candidates and their campaigns and who has the most effective campaign ads, in which lies and money are the main ingredients for success.  The beat reporters will suck up their candidates to get “access” and puff will reign

The 2000 and 2004 campaigns were examples of a press largely doing everything possible to avoid serious discussion of serious issues, focusing instead on describing the candidates’ eating habits, travel travails, wardrobe, cash flow and campaign ads.  We have serious long-term issues facing the country and the day-to-day coverage of the race is not starting out well with its emphasis on whether the candidates can successfully avoid taking tough stands on issues and therefore avoid offending major blocs of voters.

Thomas In Wonderland

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My local rag runs a syndicated weekly column by Thomas Sowell and I always look forward to reading it for the insight it provides into the diehard neocon mind.  Today’s is a gem.

From its title – “As in Vietnam, the Media May Cost us Victory” – I knew where this was going and also knew that the fun would be in the trip, not the destination – which is somewhere south of the Cuckoo’s Nest. Here are some quotes:

“American troops scored a big victory on the battlefield in 1968 that was presented in the American media as a big defeat – and that began the political unraveling of that war….

Most of today’s media, led by The New York Times, have been even more blatantly one-sided in their reporting. Everyone I have heard from in person who has been in Iraq paints a far different picture from that of the gloom and doom of the media.,,,

The success or failure of the troop surge in Iraq may depend far more on whether those troops will again be hamstrung by politically restrictive rules of engagement than on how many troops there are.”

Sowell then proceeds to explain that not only are the media to blame for the mess in Iraq, BUT – the Iraqis must share that blame:

“Our choice may become whether we are prepared to sacrifice more American lives in order to prop up the al-Maliki government or whether we are prepared to sacrifice the al-Maliki government in order to restore law and order in Iraq.

That government is a product of our “nation-building” under the banner of a democracy for which Iraq may not have been ready.”

It is simply impossible to understand why any sane editor would run such utter nonsense.  I assume it is a cheap way to feed the animals