Politics and Press

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

U.S. Foreign Policy

Iran: Opportunity Knocks

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The Bush administration has had almost a week to respond since the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) publicly announced the unanimous agreement among 16 intelligence agencies that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Obviously, officials in the administration had seen this coming for some time – minimally since August. To date, the administration’s response has been a desperate attempt to pretend that nothing has changed, that Iran remains as dangerous as ever, and that U.S. policy must remain the same.

It is curious that the administration has found a way to negotiate with North Korea with considerable success to date but cannot bring itself to address across-the–board issues with Iran, a country with considerably more freedom than N. Korea and among many of its young, a genuine interest in – if not sympathy with – the United States.

The NIE provides an opportunity for the Bush administration to move toward a robust diplomatic effort with Iran without losing face – except with the hardest of the neocons. Russia’s and China’s opposition to increased sanctions make it difficult to envision total success via sanctions and threats and while diplomacy can be difficult and has no guarantee of success, an opportunity missed would be an opportunity lost.

President Bush has just over a year of his presidency left to leave a legacy beyond the disasters in Iraq and the U.S. economy.  Diplomatic advances in North Korea AND Iran give him what may be his last opportunity to salvage his record. But so far his response to the NIE provides little optimism.

U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Impossible Dream?

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There has been a surge of interest in public diplomacy in the aftermath of Karen Hughes’ resigning her position as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. While she received some positive attention for having received increased funding for her program, the overwhelming consensus is that she had failed to make even a small dent in the United States’ negative image around the world. While this is seen as especially the case in the Moslem world, it is clear that the problem also exists among our former friends in W. Europe. Why and how this has happened turns out to be a fairly simple question – we achieved our current reputation the old-fashioned way; we earned it.

Hughes made the fundamental mistake of believing that she could sell America on the basis of empty slogans that flew in the face of the reality of the unnecessary, disastrous Iraq War, the ongoing use of torture, the public display of despicable behavior at Abu Ghraib, the ignoring of the Geneva conventions, holding hundreds of uncharged prisoners for years at Guantanamo, kidnapping suspects to countries like Syria where they could be tortured for months before determining whether they are guilty – or even whether they were who the U.S. thought they were; hiring mercenaries to shoot innocent civilians in Iraq with complete immunity; our blind support of Israel’s disastrous attack on Lebanon; and ad infinitum. The U.S. has not been an easy sell since 2003 and the international support and goodwill that flowed to the U.S. after 9/11 has been totally lost.

While it is clear that the U.S. deserves credit for much of its foreign aid programs it is equally clear that the country will not get that credit as long as it sullies itself by wallowing in the muck of the current administration’s fear-driven foreign policy. Responsible Republicans like Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel understand this – very few other Republican politicians do, including the current group campaigning for president (other than splinter candidate Ron Paul). The current weakness of the United States allows Bush soul mate Vladimir Putin to run roughshod over civil liberties and human rights with no credible response available to the U.S. It allows terrorist organizations to promote support by pointing at the behavior of the U.S. It allows Hamas to win democratic elections by providing social, educational and health support to Palestinians while the U.S. continues to arm Israel.

The “moral edge” that the U.S. historically deserved is gone; for any public diplomacy program to succeed the country needs to regain that edge and that does not seem to be possible in the immediate or foreseeable future.

Bush’s Foreign Policy: The Perfect Storm

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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.”

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.

US grabs for Canadian water

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As November ends, the Canadian dollar (the loony) is worth $1.05 US, the highest value it has reached since Canadian troops overwhelmed Washington in 1812. And there is no end in sight as oil prices continue to rise – Canada’s economic trump card as its immense oil reserves become more and more desirable and profitable – and the US economy continues to fall. Impossible super-low mortgage rates in the US, unknown in Canada, have now sent the housing market down south crashing as rates suddenly doubled, and the war in iraq keeps growing as an economic disaster, as well as a moral and military one. The MacKenzie clan had been expecting the US to counter-attack in an attempt to regain some of the prestige that has been lost to a neighbouring economy that had a currency worth $.62 US cents a couple of years ago that has since risen by more than 40%.
But when the attack came it had an unexpected goal, not a grab for oil, but for water. That in itself is unsurprising as Canada’s massive reserves of fresh water must look extraordinarily tempting to the residents of places like southern California, doomed to be threatened by drought and fire. But it was not the fire departments of Orange County that acted but the Disney corporation, attempting to buck up the spirits of the reeling superpower. In its just released video about the wonders of America – which means the United states in Disneytalk – it included that great US icon, Niagara Falls, but avoided the drab US side and showed Horseshoe Falls, or Canadian Falls as it is also known, in all its thunderous glory. Unfortunately this wonder is entirely on Canadian territory, and the Disneyfolk had to apologize, saying it had used mislabeled archival footage, which the MacKenzie clan took with a large gulp of maple syrup. In any case, the Disney Empire promised to correct this misinformation as soon as it had finished having its desired effect

Desperate Acts of a Desperate Man? Bush and Iran

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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.

The loony brings down the eagle

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For the first time in more than thirty years, the Canadian dollar is worth as much as the US dollar, and many economists predict that Canada’s booming economy, particularly in the energy and commodities area, will now cause a surge that leaves the greenback in its dust. Any economist who suggested this half a dozen years go, when the loony was worth $.62, would have been considered a loony in reality, and it’s hard to remember a more startling reversal of economic fortune in such a short time in the western world. The reasons are easy enough to see in retrospect, although the speed of change stuns everyone, and should cause the Yanks to consider carefully the financial implications of the seemingly bottomless debts that George Bush’s military follies will leave for whoever is unlucky enough to have to deal with the consequences.
Meanwhile Canada has during the same period managed to beef up its military presence to the point that it is now being courted, even begged, by such supposed powers as France and Germany to continue, along with the Dutch, to do the real fighting in Afghanistan, since the European heavyweights prefer to cheerlead from the sidelines. Six years go it would have seemed as loony to predict that the Canadian dollar would surpass the greenback in value in 2008 as it would have been to suggest that the European military bigwigs would soon be pleading with Canada to do their fighting for them. But then who could possibly have imagined that at the end of the same period, thousands of Mexican emigrants to the US would stream across the border in places like Windsor, Ontario and claim refugee status in Canada. Wonder what will have happened six years from now.

The Failure of Bush’s Surge

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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 on”, “mission accomplished”, “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!

Public Diplomacy: Sow’s Ear to Silk Purse??

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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.

Canada Takes on Russia: Cold War II?

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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 people”.

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 premature”, and that “ we will cross that bridge when we have the funds to fix it.”

Intelligence Services???

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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 Success”) 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?