There has been virtually no winter in southern Germany this year – last year there was snow on the ground from late November to mid-March – but a hurricane thundered in yesterday across western Europe. As the wind blew everything unchained around the garden of the palace of the Bavarian kings, a Shakesperean drama played out its final act in the seat of government at the edge of the Hofgarten in the wings of the old War Museum. Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber, 14 years in power, announced that he would resign all his posts as of Sept. 30, 2007.
For Stoiber, at 65, it was a tragic end to a life-long career that had brought him within a very few votes of becoming German Kanzler in 2002. The way it played out demonstrated the wide gulf that separates the Protestant north of Germany, with its power centre in bankrupt Berlin, and the Catholic south, with its baroque splendour in booming Munich. In 2005, Stoiber actually set up shop in the grand coalition government ruled by Angela Merkel, where he offered to play the role of a kind of super minister. When Merkel offered him quite a bit less than that, he fled back to Munich to resume his position as Bavarian premier, much to the despair of many of his party colleagues. When the Süddeutsche Zeitung speculated that the Bavarians would never forgive “einen feigen Hund” (a cowardly dog) for cohabiting with the despised Prussians before fleeing back to safe home territory without a fight, the storm flags were flying, and the prognosis was correct.
But Stoiber didn’t give up, and his (angry) potential successors all swore they were loyal and would not be candidates if he ran again in 2008, as he said he would. Behind the scenes, however, the knives were out, and the mortal blow came, appropriately enough, from an unknown female backbencher in his own party who accused him of sending spies on her trail.
Yesterday, in the midst of the hurricane, it was all too much, and Stoiber gave up. But in many ways he may have also won. The leftist Süddeutsche, a permanent thorn in the side of Stoiber’s conservative CSU party, concluded in its lead editorial this morning, that all in all Stoiber had been a good premier of Bavaria – somethung that had never crossed its mind previously – and that it was sort of sad that he had been brought down both by his own weakness in going, however briefly, to Berlin, and by his inablility to realize that the red-haired backbencher from Franconia, who “loves to hear her own voice and see her own photographs” had made a charge he had to take seriously. Small failures in a major political figure, one would think, but maybe that’s what Shakespeare is all about.
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Thomas In Wonderland
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.â€
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.â€
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
U.S. Public Diplomacy: Skating on Thin Ice
There has been a surge (pardon the term) in discussion about the need for a stronger, more effective U.S. public diplomacy program, particularly in the Middle East but not restricted to that part of the world. By all accounts the worldview of the U.S. is at an all time low and recent attempts to improve international opinion on the U.S. have been feeble at best.
So the American media hype over Michelle Kwan going to China as a public diplomacy ambassador has to be viewed as what it appears to be: American public diplomacy directed toward America. Ms. Kwan is, by all reports, a delightful, smart young woman. But what does it do in the grand scheme of things to send a champion ice skater to China to fly our flag? Are we saying that in America a woman of Chinese descent can become a champion? Soon enough the Chinese will produce their own. What this story does is make us feel good about ourselves.
Recognizing the difficulty in mounting an effective public diplomacy program during a period of seriously flawed foreign policy, it is nonetheless past time for the U.S. to develop a coherent, substantive long-term program aimed at improving understanding of the positive parts of American life, including our tolerance for other cultures. Sending world class athletes abroad is not bad, it is simply too meager.
The State of U.S. Broadcasting to Iran
International broadcasting, a major component of America’s public diplomacy program, has fallen on hard times. This is due partly to major misunderstandings about the nature and value of surrogate broadcasting versus a recent emphasis on building listenership numbers by following a strategy of “dumbing down†the content, most notably in major changes made to Radio Free Europe’s Persian broadcast service and Iraq broadcast service. These services were originally funded by the Congress in the late nineties to provide the kind of surrogate broadcasts that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty provided to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc during the Cold War: programming of domestic and international news and analysis, cultural developments and interviews and panel discussions with émigrés.
However, early in this decade the Broadcasting Board of Governors were sold on the concept of building an audience of the young by providing a kind of “radio liteâ€: rock and roll music and brief, light news updates. A serious discussion of the weakness of this approach has recently begun in Washington.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey testified on the Iran broadcasts to the House Committee for Foreign Affairs on January 11, that: “We should … engage in ways similar to those techniques we used in the 1980’s to engage with the Polish people and Solidarity — by communicating directly, now via the Web and modern communications technology, with Iranian student groups, labor unions, and other potential sources of resistance. … We should abandon the approaches of Radio Farda and the Farsi Service of VOA and return to the approach that served us so well in the Cold War. Ion Pacepa, the most senior Soviet Bloc intelligence officer to defect during the Cold War (when he was Acting Director of Romanian Intelligence) recently wrote that two missiles brought down the Soviet Union: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Our current broadcasting does not inform Iranians about what is happening in Iran, as RFE and RL did about matters in the Bloc.â€
Earlier, Enders Wimbush, a former Director of Radio Liberty published a lengthy article on the need to change the current approach in the December 18 issue of the Weekly Standard; a follow-up discussion by Edward Kaufman, a member of the Board and Wimbush followed in the January 15 issue of the Weekly Standard. Both are worth reading for insight into the issue
Brooks and Will Strikeout for Bush
George Will and David Brooks are the establishment defenders of Bush’s Iraqi Follies but do so in a way to make Bush proud of them – dishonestly. Both are working to shift attention from the men (and women) who have scripted, directed and produced the Follies to the poor souls who will, in the end, have to pick up the pieces.
Their argument goes something like this: “President Bush has made some mistakes in managing the Iraq War but he has now produced a new strategy and critics have offered no alternative.” In a discussion with Mark Shields and Jim Lehrer last week, Brooks made that argument while Shields reminded him that Bush had developed no actually new strategy and that there were, after all, several alternatives out there any one of which would reduce the damage being done to the U.S.’s national interest by Bush’s failed policies in Iraq.
Alternatives include those developed by the Iraq Study Group, the concept of partition in Iraq, the concept of gradual U.S. withdrawal and redeployment outside of Iraq, the concept of simply beginning to leave and allowing the various players to sort it out. None of these approaches is perfect – indeed there is no perfect solution to the mess Bush has created. But at some point stopping the flow of American blood and money in a doomed-to-fail attempt to salvage Bush’s reputation will happen – the question now is when.
Brooks and Will both admit that there is little hope that Bush’s “new strategy” will work but, like Bush, are simply unwilling to consider the alternatives that they will not even admit exist.
Bush, Iran, Diplomacy and War
Last April in an exchange with a friend I wrote about the possible role of diplomacy in the Bush Universe. I post it now as Bush appears to be embarking on a widening of his Iraq fiasco; much of what was said in April seems worth considering nine months later:
“In general I think diplomacy trumps war almost every time. There are no guarantees in diplomacy but neither are there any in war that I am aware of, but the search for common ground – or at least a modus vivendi – is to me worth a better effort than this administration (and I suppose earlier ones) has put forth. But this administration has a special place in the Land of Oz, crippled by its blind arrogance of (illusionary) power. And yes I would say the same about N. Korea. I think we have refused to talk to either country directly because they are “evil†and we are “good†– and we have therefore a self-induced consequence. And it is the consequence that the administration wants so it can change the world to fit its picture of what reality should be. Iraq is the current best example of the results of this kind of thinking.
I think the N. Korean situation is in some ways more complicated. We did a deal with them in which we and the S. Koreans and the Japanese would build nuclear energy plants in return for their not building nuclear weapons. It was, according to the diplomat who was given the unenviable task of managing that agreement – an “orphan†from the start. The U.S. (particularly the Congress – not the smartest lamps in the light store) never really made a serious effort to fulfill their part of the deal and when The Glorious Leader wanted to talk directly to the U.S. there was simply no way anyone could do that and retain domestic political support.
I don’t know whether direct negotiations would have or could have led to different scenarios – but then neither does anyone since it was never tried. I trust Iran and N. Korea about as much as I would trust Cheney/Bush if I were an Iranian given our Iraq adventure….
Would the world be a better place if Iran and N. Korea did not ever have nuclear weapons? Of course. But is it worth going to what amounts to war to stop it without attempting to negotiate? In my view, “no”. We could kiss S. Korea goodbye and we could kiss any hopes for peace on any level in the Middle East goodbye.
Also – I am not sure that the IAEA is as guilty of incompetence on the Iran issue as some say – they were aware as far back as 1996 that Iran was screwing around with nuclear stuff and Blix reported that concern. And it does not help IAEA with policing the nonproliferation pact when Bush plays it fast and loose with India, Brazil etc. We discussed this earlier and I remain concerned on the existential issue – if we give permission to India then we give it to others (in the existential sense – we lose the moral edge).
Of course we cannot blame Bush for every bad thing that happens – but I blame him for the mess in Iraq – we were better off with Saddam in power in a secular country with no WMD than we are now – it has cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives (many thousands if we want to include Iraqis), has diverted our attention from the important work at hand and has made it easier for the likes of Iran to screw around with us.
I think this is a disaster that has no foreseeable end. It is a mess and the U.S. has played the major role in making it worse than it needed to be. As to whether anything else would have worked better – we will never know.â€
April 18, 2006
Watching the oil gauge
Crude prices dropped 4% in the hours after Bush announced that US ground forces would counter the Shiite militias and the US Navy would be stationing an additional carrier battle group off Iran (Surging total force numbers way beyond 20K or don’t sailors count?).
Given that the war premium in the oil price could be expected to escalate with the war’s escalation, a price REDUCTION might seem puzzling. Or not. It looks as if the Saudis are flooding the market to limit Tehran’s revenues. Saudi Sunnis want to contain Persian Shiites and destabilize Iran’s domestic politics. Or did the Saudis opened the oil spigot merely as a thank-you gesture for Bush’s tilt towards the Iraqi Sunnis?
Are we hearing the opening economic shots in a regional sectarian war? A war we are supposedly “surging” to forestall?
For BUSH, All The World’s a Stage
Three events in the last 24 hours suggest that Bush’s struggle to save his presidency from history’s dustbin is heading toward some kind of a military intervention aimed at Iran. Bush threatened Iran in his speech last night; today U.S. forces in Iraq raided an Iranian government office in Irbil, and today in Washington Secretary Rice refused to rule out military operations against Iran while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Having lied to get us into Iraq there is little question that he would lie to get us into Iran if he thought it might save his deeply diminished reputation. While the governor of Kurdistan and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, expressed their “disturbance and condemnation” over the predawn operation and urged the US military to release individuals arrested during the raid, this is likely to mean nothing to Bush who has transformed himself into a cross between Lady MacBeth and Falstaff when what we need is a Henry the Fifth.
Also fitting into this pattern of fantasy face-saving, it is apparent that the blame for failure in Iraq is being not so subtly shifted to the Iraqis who did not actually invite us in, who did not ask to have their infrastructure destroyed, who did not ask to be transformed from a secular to a Muslim fundamentalist society, who did not ask for its borders to be opened to Al Quada operatives, and who did not ask for American troops to occupy their country. They want us out and the American people want us out. The administration retains its dogged stupidity and arrogance in the face of advice from military leaders, analysts, world leaders and the American people. Go figure.
BUSH’s SURGE
There is so much that could be said about the latest Bush “plan†for Iraq but it is almost impossible to consider wasting time expounding so much on the obvious. Below are some excerpts from emails sent among some of the politicsandpress regulars. While these are random and somewhat disconnected it is just not worthwhile to develop a coherent response to the pile of nonsense served up by Bush last night.
1. This one showed up from New Zealand several hours before the speech but after the details had been reported:
GENTS : I say cut and run and quit arguing about surges. I am not being partisan. Strategically it makes sense to me to get out, let the region descend into the fratricide it needs to get out of its system. As long as we are there we are supporting the perception that it is a clash of West vs Islam which is bullshit. The West is way over being about religion. Let the region see that their problems are of their own making and that they can’t rely on selling their resources to feed their religious habit; they have to work and make a life. Anyway,if we’re not there they can attend to their own homemade hell. PLUS oil will go to $100 and we will then HAVE to cut consumption and find better, safer fuels. Cut and run. That’s the ticket.
2. From after the speech also from kiwiland: Watched Bush and the responses. Sick. There is so much differentiated push-back that there is no effective opposition. Obama got’s his plan coming but it isn’t Teddy’s; Edwards has his; Durbin gives the reaction speech but then Pelosi and Reid even nuance that.
… O’Maliki won’t be able to resist sodder-man’s militia; Saudis etc will be tempted to help the Sunnis b4 long….. The presidential race virtually assures there will be no meaningful w/drawal b4 elections.
3. From Washington DC: Listened to the Man myself last night too. He said absolutely nothing to convince any reasonable person that his SURGE was going to accomplish anything other than kill more troops. Caught David Brooks prior to the wizard’s appearance [well, not the wizard actually – the guy in front of the curtain – the wizard is behind the curtain] saying that we don’t have any choice but to add the troops and give it six months. Six months – Brooks is an idiot too. And who should the idiot name for praise in his speech last night, alone of the 535 members of Congress, but one Joe Lieberman. And Reid is saying, well, we’ll have to see. …
4. From Massachusetts: Ken Adelman was on NPR this morning while I was driving to the dump and I felt like ripping out my radio and chucking in with the trash.
The message is partly: “If we leave, the Middle East will become unstable†. What planet are they living on? The middle East and Gulf region MIGHT become UNSATABLE?? Maintaining some semblance of stability in the region was historically our strategic policy – until Dubya invaded. We now have a war in which we are fulfilling the interests of Iran and Syria – our actual “enemies”. Creating a Shiite state leaves the Saudis with no choice but to fund the Sunnis. Al Queda had no operational ability in Iraq pre-invasion; they are now using it as a terrific recruiting and training ground. Iraq used to be a secular state; it will now become a fundamentalist Muslim state. Turkey now also has interests which we have screwed with, and apparently throwing our support to the Shiites screws the Kurds – again. I don’t even think that Israel gains from this mess – even though it is likely that the neocons who masterminded this did it for Israeli reasons. As long as we send troops there we have no hope of getting serious negotiations going within the region and instability – which we have mightily increased will be the rule for a long long time.
It is hard to think of a more disastrous administration than this one In the history of America. Two more years is too long a time to wait for the Congress to find its backbone.
Russia, Germany, energy
If you live east of Estonia, Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria, a new kind of iron curtain went up on your borders on January 1, 2007. Bulgaria and Rumania joined the European Union, despite many doubts in western Europe about the real state of their economies and of their willingness to fight corruption. Suddenly citizens of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were the frontuer states on the wrong side of the borderless united Europe. There are many questions about just how united this Europe is, but one thing is sure. If you have a passport from the new states carved out of the Soviet Union (with the exception of the three small Baltic states), you have been excluded from the promised land, and will face daunting bureaucratic hurdles to even enter it temporarily.
But there is something that comes out of Russia, passes through Belarus or Ukraine, and becomes essential when it reaches the European Union – natural gas delivered from Russian wells through Russian-controlled pipelines . It may have seemed easy to naively dismiss Russia as a chaotic paper dragon not so long ago, albeit with nuclear weapons, but Europe is busy learning that it better think twice before putting that in the context of the energy that keeps houses warm in the winter. Last year, Germany was like Siberia for months, and this year Russia has reminded everyone that it controls the switches that determine the price the customer has to pay to keep cozy. Both Belarus and Ukraine thought they had privileged discount positions because of the Slavic brotherhood, but this year they have both learned what the price is for the special deal. And Germany and its smaller neighbours wonder when it might be their turn to discover just what it means to be competely dependant on Russian pricing, good will, and reliability.