Whereupon Dr. Ernie and Pundita struggle to define China's system of government.....
October 24
"Hi, Pundita, re your essay Another kind of darkness, I particularly liked this image:
"What rules in China doesn't have a neat label. It's imprecise to call it gangsterism or totalitarianism, nor can it be labeled mercantilism or communism. It's the worst of everything about every bad system of government, glopped together."
Perhaps we should start calling it "glopism." [Here is my definition]:
"When corrupt government colludes with thuggish businesses and organized criminals to perpetuate a vicious circle of economic, political, and social destruction at the expense of those too ignorant to understand, too weak to resist, or too law-abiding to fight back."
Is that pretty much what you meant?
Dr. Ernie in California"
Dear Dr. Ernie:
Pundita likes the term "glopism" -- but how to apply it with precision to China's government? Without precision, a term is useless for building up a body of knowledge. I venture that your description is too narrow because a corrupt government is not necessarily a military dictatorship.
China is a military dictatorship behind the mask of the Chinese Communist Party. China's government is also corrupt -- but so is India's. The same can be said for numerous others. However, India and many other corrupt governments are not a military dictatorship.
Another problem with defining glopism: there can be a corrupt military dictatorship that does not enslave the population for the express purpose of making their workers competitive in certain areas of business. China's government, on the other hand, does engage in this practice. A crash course in how it works:
If China's government decides they need X number of say, software or electrical engineers in order to be competitive in a certain area of global trade, they 'order up' those workers by imposing the necessary specialized education on the needed number of Chinese.
The penalty for refusing to major in a particular subject and specialize in a particular profession or business? The same penalty that was imposed on Taishi villagers who wanted to vote out their corrupt chief; really unpleasant things, which can include imprisonment of one's family.
So today's China has a method of governing that has more in common with the rule of the pharaohs than with capitalism. Thus, the Pundita essay titled Pharaoh. I pointed out that apologists for China ignore that individual workers in democracies are not in competition with individual Chinese workers for jobs.
They are in competition with China's government, which is another way of saying they are competing with China's military. Individual workers in democracies are playing against a stacked deck when it comes to competing with China's workers for jobs in the globalized marketplace.
How do you define the pharaoh aspect of China's government? I guess you could simply call it "Massah" or "slave management" but there are other elements as well:
There is also an element of feudalism; the government views landholders as serfs who do not have rights to their property. This element is still mixed with communist doctrine. Then there is an element of capitalism and one that can be described as mercantilistic. And let's not leave out the oligarchical element.
And we shouldn't overlook bao jia; although the system helped unify Chinese under a central authority thousands of years ago, it was greatly abused in modern times. I've written about bao jia before. Because I can't stress enough how important it is for Westerners (this to include the US Department of State) to learn about bao jia, I'm putting up another post on it.
Because of bao jia, I don't think one can't lump Chinese and Indian government and other Asian governments together when talking about "Asian gangsterism." Bao jia might not be a unique governing system, but the extent to which it conditioned thinking might be unique to the Chinese. It's a question that should be explored by a scholar -- if it hasn't been to this date.
So what are we looking at here, Dr. Ernie? It's the worst elements of every kind of bad government the human race produced. Then why is China's government still standing? The answer is that they're not; they're being carried by the advanced democracies, in the same way the oil kingdoms of the Middle East have been carried. The result in the Middle East? Practices that should have died out in the last century among Arabs and Persians are alive and well and lobbing suicide bombers at us.
Same happened to China's bao jia system. In much the same manner that British colonialism propped up the maharaja system of government in India, the West and in particular the American government propped up bao jia in China.
With regard to China, during the latter half of the last century the advanced democracies followed in the footsteps of the European colonialists. The colonizers came upon societies that were unfit to sustain a big population. Instead of modernizing the societies, the colonialists used their modern techniques to manage them.
The upshot? Ancient methods of government were preserved in amber. This made the governments incapable of ministering to burgeoning populations in the 20th century, which leapfrogged in number thanks greatly to antibiotics, vaccinations, crop pesticides, etc. Result when the colonizers pulled out? Disaster after disaster.
History repeated itself when the NATO governments saw China as a useful wedge against the Soviet Union. The upshot was a mess. But what do the Western apologists call this mess? "China's Confucian-style government." Not only is that view uninformed, it's an awful insult. Confucius would roll in his grave if he saw the government in today's China.
I think it will eventually dawn on China's leaders that democracy is not really an option once the population gets into the mega numbers. You either democratize or die out -- unless you are being carried.
However, withered legs have their downside, as Chinese familiar with their imperial history know. Eventually the cult of the emperor in China meant that the ruler was deemed too sacred to walk. Thus, his leg muscles withered because he was carried everywhere. That made him completely dependent on the Mandarins who ministered to him.
That's an unwise situation for a billion people to land themselves in. So, if you were a deeply cynical person such as Pundita, you might find yourself asking whether apologies for China's government actually represent satisfaction with the status quo, which is a China dependent on being carried by the most developed nations.
Of course, we might be able to hang onto your description by terming it something other than glopism. Come to think of it, "creepy" might be a better fit for the criteria you've defined.
In this way, we could preserve the purity of the glop term for referring to modern China's government, and use "creepy" to refer to governments that merely mix corruption and organized crime.
Friday, November 11
Thursday, November 10
Introduction to a guest contribution
Readers who have been with Pundita's blog since May are familiar with reader "Liz," who made her first appearance as a contributor during exchanges about the security situation at the Mexican border.
Her initial letter made it clear that she was knowledgeable about disaster planning but from a later exchange I learned that her specific area of expertise is cyber security; also that she was the author of a 2002 book on the topic, Planning for Survivable Networks.
She asked me not to publish her real name. As the months went by I was so impressed with her observations on a range of issues that I felt bad I couldn't give them proper accreditation. Also, I encouraged her to return to writing if she could squeeze out time from her work schedule.
Last week she sent an essay titled, The Worst of All Possibilities; it struck me as the perfect companion piece to Harvest for the World, which I planned to be the last 'daily' post for the Pundita blog. However, I made a strong case that she allow me to give the essay proper accreditation. She agreed, and thus I can finally reveal that Liz is Annlee A. Hines.
In Harvest for the World I return to a major Pundita theme, which is that democracy is the only form of government suitable for the age of human megapopulations. The Worst of all Possibilities zeroes in on the kind of thinking in Western democratic government that answers totalitarian aggression with appeasement, and which finds rationales for tolerating despotic government.
Until the advanced democracies abandon that thinking at the policy level, emerging democracies will continue to struggle uphill against forces that would return them to government that represents the worst of all possibilities.
Annlee points out that sustaining more than lip service to democracy depends on strength of character and acknowledging the limits of risk aversion. Her essay addresses themes that are vital for the American public, academia and policymakers to confront, so I hope she will continue to publish essays on the theme -- and under her own name. Now, I am happy to present Annlee's essay, and with thanks for her contribution....
Her initial letter made it clear that she was knowledgeable about disaster planning but from a later exchange I learned that her specific area of expertise is cyber security; also that she was the author of a 2002 book on the topic, Planning for Survivable Networks.
She asked me not to publish her real name. As the months went by I was so impressed with her observations on a range of issues that I felt bad I couldn't give them proper accreditation. Also, I encouraged her to return to writing if she could squeeze out time from her work schedule.
Last week she sent an essay titled, The Worst of All Possibilities; it struck me as the perfect companion piece to Harvest for the World, which I planned to be the last 'daily' post for the Pundita blog. However, I made a strong case that she allow me to give the essay proper accreditation. She agreed, and thus I can finally reveal that Liz is Annlee A. Hines.
In Harvest for the World I return to a major Pundita theme, which is that democracy is the only form of government suitable for the age of human megapopulations. The Worst of all Possibilities zeroes in on the kind of thinking in Western democratic government that answers totalitarian aggression with appeasement, and which finds rationales for tolerating despotic government.
Until the advanced democracies abandon that thinking at the policy level, emerging democracies will continue to struggle uphill against forces that would return them to government that represents the worst of all possibilities.
Annlee points out that sustaining more than lip service to democracy depends on strength of character and acknowledging the limits of risk aversion. Her essay addresses themes that are vital for the American public, academia and policymakers to confront, so I hope she will continue to publish essays on the theme -- and under her own name. Now, I am happy to present Annlee's essay, and with thanks for her contribution....
The Worst of All Possibilities
This essay is a guest contribution by Annlee A. Hines
I love long distance contests. They’re about endurance rather than speed, and speed is just not my forte. I recall an interview with Boris Becker, where the journalist asked him about the number of five-set matches he’s won in his career, and he said that the fifth set had nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with will.
I remember another interview, with Pam Reed, who had won the previous two years’ Badwater Ultra (setting the course record in 2002; the race is Death Valley to Mt. Whitney, 135 miles) and would finish fourth in the current year’s race, which they were chronicling.
Diane Sawyer asked that early-forties woman why ultras were so often won by people in their 50s and even 60s. Reed replied that she thought maybe it was because ultras require patience, and the young have little patience for much of anything.
I do my distance training on an elliptical, having beaten up my joints refereeing too many soccer games on very hard ground. I still love the game, and would play and officiate again if I had less good sense. But I know that there will be consequences for my body, and I’m old enough to appreciate that there’s only so much medicine can do to mend the damage. I’m an engineer by trade, so I understand a patched system is never as strong or as capable as the original. So I spectate, and I appreciate.
One of the skills of a good soccer player is heading the ball, yet it’s something most non-players, especially parents, wince at. The key is going to meet the ball, heading it, not letting it simply hit your head. It really does hurt far less that way, but it requires an effort of will to learn that through your own experience. However, once the initial fear of discomfort, even pain, is overcome, you can do remarkable things meeting the ball with your head on your terms.
Unfortunately, we have far more spectators than players in this universe. We prize rule of law, and (I believe) rightfully so. But a comment made about the overemphasis on law made me think: lawyers, by training, want to minimize, if not outright eliminate, risk for their clients.
Sometimes, like the soccer player meeting the ball rather than avoiding it, we ought to mitigate risk rather than minimize it. But only those who are, or have been, players understand that.
Those who have only been spectators see only the risk and want it eliminated. Being spectators, they don’t understand that it can never be eliminated.
How much of our conflicts about the direction America should take are like that disconnect between the players and the spectators? How much is about the desire by those who are not actually responsible -- and thus, have nothing to lose by being wrong -- to have perfection, a total elimination of risk, a situation of not one mistake being made?
Those who are, or have been, players know that what you see from the sidelines is a wholly different perspective from what you see on the field; the angles of view are simply too divergent to see the same situation in the same way.
Further, the player is right there in the middle of it; he or she must make a choice and live with the consequences. The spectator can critique the consequences of someone else’s choice and even replay the contest, thanks to modern technology, pointing out how the player should have seen this and done that.
The players may have a chance later to review but are too busy dealing with the consequences of their choices, and the choices of the other players, to kibitz during the heat of contest.
And only the player really understands that the outcome of the game is a result of the choices made by all the players in the game, our side and their side, too. That applies to war as well; as the military often says, the enemy gets a vote, too; he makes choices that impact what choices we should make (among the choices now available to us because of his choices and our past choices, and so on).
The Duke of Wellington purportedly said, “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
And General Douglas MacArthur, who had served as the Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) before serving as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area in World War II, said, “On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days and other fields will bear the fruits of victory.”
MacArthur's observation was part of his basis for requiring of every cadet a rigorous physical education and participation in athletics, a requirement which still stands.
How have we forgotten this?
That brings me to Winston Churchill. For how many years was he a voice in the political wilderness, a man of will and endurance, a man whose ideas were scorned as simplistic?
His stance was not nuanced enough, I suppose -- a criticism from the spectators who hadn’t done a tenth of what he had across locations in the British Empire. Churchill was a player rather than a spectator.
In the time of their greatest hour of need the British turned again for leadership to a player rather than a spectator. Yet it was not until Britain was shoved into a desperate fight for survival did it recognize and fully admit that need. Until then, Churchill was too politically incorrect to tolerate.
I doubt I would have had his patience and his willingness to wait, to remain in the political game despite his lousy score for so long. Yet defending democracy over the long haul makes it incumbent upon us to have the will, the endurance, the patience to remain players in the game.
The stakes are fully as high now as they were in the 1930s -- and at times, we are still voices in the political wilderness because the old appeasement crowd has not been swept out entirely, especially, as Pundita reminds us, from Foggy Bottom.
We may take breaks, we may rest at half-time, yet it needs to be a half-time of our choosing and no one else’s. We must stay in the game or we shall cede the field. When we cede the field to the appeasers it’s only a question of “How long?” before they cede the entire match to the enemy. In seeking to avoid the worst they lead us to the worst of all possibilities.
The enemies we face today, whether Islamic fascists or transnational organized crime syndicates, despise the very things that define democracies, and so we are truly in a fight for our survival. Winston Churchill had some advice in 1941 about how we should wage such a fight:
“Never give in -- never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
I love long distance contests. They’re about endurance rather than speed, and speed is just not my forte. I recall an interview with Boris Becker, where the journalist asked him about the number of five-set matches he’s won in his career, and he said that the fifth set had nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with will.
I remember another interview, with Pam Reed, who had won the previous two years’ Badwater Ultra (setting the course record in 2002; the race is Death Valley to Mt. Whitney, 135 miles) and would finish fourth in the current year’s race, which they were chronicling.
Diane Sawyer asked that early-forties woman why ultras were so often won by people in their 50s and even 60s. Reed replied that she thought maybe it was because ultras require patience, and the young have little patience for much of anything.
I do my distance training on an elliptical, having beaten up my joints refereeing too many soccer games on very hard ground. I still love the game, and would play and officiate again if I had less good sense. But I know that there will be consequences for my body, and I’m old enough to appreciate that there’s only so much medicine can do to mend the damage. I’m an engineer by trade, so I understand a patched system is never as strong or as capable as the original. So I spectate, and I appreciate.
One of the skills of a good soccer player is heading the ball, yet it’s something most non-players, especially parents, wince at. The key is going to meet the ball, heading it, not letting it simply hit your head. It really does hurt far less that way, but it requires an effort of will to learn that through your own experience. However, once the initial fear of discomfort, even pain, is overcome, you can do remarkable things meeting the ball with your head on your terms.
Unfortunately, we have far more spectators than players in this universe. We prize rule of law, and (I believe) rightfully so. But a comment made about the overemphasis on law made me think: lawyers, by training, want to minimize, if not outright eliminate, risk for their clients.
Sometimes, like the soccer player meeting the ball rather than avoiding it, we ought to mitigate risk rather than minimize it. But only those who are, or have been, players understand that.
Those who have only been spectators see only the risk and want it eliminated. Being spectators, they don’t understand that it can never be eliminated.
How much of our conflicts about the direction America should take are like that disconnect between the players and the spectators? How much is about the desire by those who are not actually responsible -- and thus, have nothing to lose by being wrong -- to have perfection, a total elimination of risk, a situation of not one mistake being made?
Those who are, or have been, players know that what you see from the sidelines is a wholly different perspective from what you see on the field; the angles of view are simply too divergent to see the same situation in the same way.
Further, the player is right there in the middle of it; he or she must make a choice and live with the consequences. The spectator can critique the consequences of someone else’s choice and even replay the contest, thanks to modern technology, pointing out how the player should have seen this and done that.
The players may have a chance later to review but are too busy dealing with the consequences of their choices, and the choices of the other players, to kibitz during the heat of contest.
And only the player really understands that the outcome of the game is a result of the choices made by all the players in the game, our side and their side, too. That applies to war as well; as the military often says, the enemy gets a vote, too; he makes choices that impact what choices we should make (among the choices now available to us because of his choices and our past choices, and so on).
The Duke of Wellington purportedly said, “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
And General Douglas MacArthur, who had served as the Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) before serving as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area in World War II, said, “On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days and other fields will bear the fruits of victory.”
MacArthur's observation was part of his basis for requiring of every cadet a rigorous physical education and participation in athletics, a requirement which still stands.
How have we forgotten this?
That brings me to Winston Churchill. For how many years was he a voice in the political wilderness, a man of will and endurance, a man whose ideas were scorned as simplistic?
His stance was not nuanced enough, I suppose -- a criticism from the spectators who hadn’t done a tenth of what he had across locations in the British Empire. Churchill was a player rather than a spectator.
In the time of their greatest hour of need the British turned again for leadership to a player rather than a spectator. Yet it was not until Britain was shoved into a desperate fight for survival did it recognize and fully admit that need. Until then, Churchill was too politically incorrect to tolerate.
I doubt I would have had his patience and his willingness to wait, to remain in the political game despite his lousy score for so long. Yet defending democracy over the long haul makes it incumbent upon us to have the will, the endurance, the patience to remain players in the game.
The stakes are fully as high now as they were in the 1930s -- and at times, we are still voices in the political wilderness because the old appeasement crowd has not been swept out entirely, especially, as Pundita reminds us, from Foggy Bottom.
We may take breaks, we may rest at half-time, yet it needs to be a half-time of our choosing and no one else’s. We must stay in the game or we shall cede the field. When we cede the field to the appeasers it’s only a question of “How long?” before they cede the entire match to the enemy. In seeking to avoid the worst they lead us to the worst of all possibilities.
The enemies we face today, whether Islamic fascists or transnational organized crime syndicates, despise the very things that define democracies, and so we are truly in a fight for our survival. Winston Churchill had some advice in 1941 about how we should wage such a fight:
“Never give in -- never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Wednesday, November 9
Limitations of US news media: why it's hard to make sense of world affairs
(This writing incorporates excerpts from 11/8 and 11/15 essays, both of which I've deleted.)
Three posts yesterday -- two based largely on segments from John Batchelor's Monday show and one based on a CBS report. John's reporting and analysis are of such consistently high quality that I'm ashamed to say I've come to take it for granted -- whereas I burble praise when a mainstream media reporter does a good job.
Of course that's because the bar is set so low with the mainstream that it really stands out when a reporter leaps above the bar. Yet there are many good reporters working in the mainstream, as Batchelor's show demonstrates. Many of his correspondents are moonlighting from major press and electronic media outlets.
So the raw material is out there for making great American journalism. What seems to be lacking is vision at the management and editorial/production levels.
Data is just that until it's understood; only then does it become intel. It's not just the war news that is hard to follow; it's the complexity of globalized era. The Cold War was easy for journalists because the Iron and Bamboo curtains greatly limited the amount of information they needed to process. And the Middle East was behind a virtual Sand Curtain. And Latin America was behind a Banana Curtain. And Africa was behind, well -- Dark Continent Curtain.
In short, there were very few chess pieces on the news board -- even after America became a superpower. Today, news producers/press editors are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of newsworthy events, so they have retreated to a completely irrelevant decision tree for analyzing which news gets featured. The major part of what drives decision making is economics: it costs megabucks to maintain world-class foreign bureaus, and megabucks to hire good analysts.
Another part of the problem relates to psycho-epistemology. The picture-driven, event-driven TV medium is the worst for building a coherent understanding of events. Even the talk driven news shows such as PBS NewsHour are at the mercy of the traditional way of analyzing news, which I term Bunching:
A bunch of Talking Heads arises out of nowhere to discourse authoritatively about a news event, They are replaced the next night by another bunch when another news event rises. Then, poof! the bunch is replaced by another bunch the next night, discoursing with equal authority on another news event that has arisen.
The upshot is a crazy-quilt jumble of facts and opinion that only news junkies and wonks can fit into a coherent picture of world events. Result: the general public fogs out. People need coherence before they need facts. Above all, they need meaning: Why should I pay attention to this?
One of my essays The Seven O'Clock Intelligence Briefing analyzes what the public would need to know, in order to understand the Ukraine presidential election.
My point was that without providing adequate background to a situation and connecting it with American interests, it is hard for the public to discern the truth of matters, hard to distinguish which news stories carry true weight.
Paid agendists, propagandists, and influence agents are the cats among the pigeons; they are skilled at manipulating the public's (and journalists') poor grasp of world events. The best defense is a better informed public.
I could write volumes on this topic but my point is that Pundita blog strives to explain the relevance of complex situations to a general reader; in particular, how certain situations (e.g., corruption and development banking) feed into the War on Terror and Bush's democracy doctrine.
In summary, it ain't enuf to know the facts on the ground; one must connect their meaning with a larger picture, one that a general readership can grasp. This is if news organizations in the 21st century are to keep the public well informed. Given the close connection between democracy and an informed public, communication is a very important issue. Political bias is really the least of the problem.
In the end it's just a bunch of people and their actions we're discussing. If we never forget that, we can always find our way to a clear explanation about matters of state. Such matters are no harder to understand than the progress of a sports team or the plot of a soap opera. However, both are serials, which means the fans build up an understanding over time. As I pointed out in the Seven O'Clock essay, it is supposed to be the job of the news media to help the public build up an understanding of the events they hurl into the news reports. They've done a lousy job.
This said, I don't think the static medium of television or even the printed medium is the best way to learn about issues related to major news stories. Because learning is an interactive process I consider the Socratic method -- a dialogue between teacher and student -- the very best way to learn. This is because the student's questions drive the teacher's replies and reveal what the student does not know about a topic. The teacher can help fill in the blanks and correct misunderstandings on the spot.
So I think the blogosphere/Internet chat room, which allows for rapid feedback, and talk radio, and which allows for caller feedback, are better media for getting background on the news, at least until TV becomes interactive.
I note that John Batchelor does not accept calls during his radio show but he gets around that limitation through dialogues with his guests. Clearly, he goes into his subjects very well informed but he will take the role of the student and ask the kind of questions that his audience would ask.
I know from my year of blogging how easy it is to assume too much about a general reader's grasp of a subject. Early on I threw too much at the reader in one of my essays, Democracy Stage Show Kit, because I made reference to concepts that would only be readily familiar to people working in development areas.
That led to misunderstanding and away from my central point. My first reaction boiled down to, "I can't go back to Square One; I'm not a teacher."
It took a few essays but I managed to clarify. The experience brought home to me that an interactive element is key to making sense out of news events. That's why I recommend people start foreign policy discussion clubs.
Three posts yesterday -- two based largely on segments from John Batchelor's Monday show and one based on a CBS report. John's reporting and analysis are of such consistently high quality that I'm ashamed to say I've come to take it for granted -- whereas I burble praise when a mainstream media reporter does a good job.
Of course that's because the bar is set so low with the mainstream that it really stands out when a reporter leaps above the bar. Yet there are many good reporters working in the mainstream, as Batchelor's show demonstrates. Many of his correspondents are moonlighting from major press and electronic media outlets.
So the raw material is out there for making great American journalism. What seems to be lacking is vision at the management and editorial/production levels.
Data is just that until it's understood; only then does it become intel. It's not just the war news that is hard to follow; it's the complexity of globalized era. The Cold War was easy for journalists because the Iron and Bamboo curtains greatly limited the amount of information they needed to process. And the Middle East was behind a virtual Sand Curtain. And Latin America was behind a Banana Curtain. And Africa was behind, well -- Dark Continent Curtain.
In short, there were very few chess pieces on the news board -- even after America became a superpower. Today, news producers/press editors are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of newsworthy events, so they have retreated to a completely irrelevant decision tree for analyzing which news gets featured. The major part of what drives decision making is economics: it costs megabucks to maintain world-class foreign bureaus, and megabucks to hire good analysts.
Another part of the problem relates to psycho-epistemology. The picture-driven, event-driven TV medium is the worst for building a coherent understanding of events. Even the talk driven news shows such as PBS NewsHour are at the mercy of the traditional way of analyzing news, which I term Bunching:
A bunch of Talking Heads arises out of nowhere to discourse authoritatively about a news event, They are replaced the next night by another bunch when another news event rises. Then, poof! the bunch is replaced by another bunch the next night, discoursing with equal authority on another news event that has arisen.
The upshot is a crazy-quilt jumble of facts and opinion that only news junkies and wonks can fit into a coherent picture of world events. Result: the general public fogs out. People need coherence before they need facts. Above all, they need meaning: Why should I pay attention to this?
One of my essays The Seven O'Clock Intelligence Briefing analyzes what the public would need to know, in order to understand the Ukraine presidential election.
My point was that without providing adequate background to a situation and connecting it with American interests, it is hard for the public to discern the truth of matters, hard to distinguish which news stories carry true weight.
Paid agendists, propagandists, and influence agents are the cats among the pigeons; they are skilled at manipulating the public's (and journalists') poor grasp of world events. The best defense is a better informed public.
I could write volumes on this topic but my point is that Pundita blog strives to explain the relevance of complex situations to a general reader; in particular, how certain situations (e.g., corruption and development banking) feed into the War on Terror and Bush's democracy doctrine.
In summary, it ain't enuf to know the facts on the ground; one must connect their meaning with a larger picture, one that a general readership can grasp. This is if news organizations in the 21st century are to keep the public well informed. Given the close connection between democracy and an informed public, communication is a very important issue. Political bias is really the least of the problem.
In the end it's just a bunch of people and their actions we're discussing. If we never forget that, we can always find our way to a clear explanation about matters of state. Such matters are no harder to understand than the progress of a sports team or the plot of a soap opera. However, both are serials, which means the fans build up an understanding over time. As I pointed out in the Seven O'Clock essay, it is supposed to be the job of the news media to help the public build up an understanding of the events they hurl into the news reports. They've done a lousy job.
This said, I don't think the static medium of television or even the printed medium is the best way to learn about issues related to major news stories. Because learning is an interactive process I consider the Socratic method -- a dialogue between teacher and student -- the very best way to learn. This is because the student's questions drive the teacher's replies and reveal what the student does not know about a topic. The teacher can help fill in the blanks and correct misunderstandings on the spot.
So I think the blogosphere/Internet chat room, which allows for rapid feedback, and talk radio, and which allows for caller feedback, are better media for getting background on the news, at least until TV becomes interactive.
I note that John Batchelor does not accept calls during his radio show but he gets around that limitation through dialogues with his guests. Clearly, he goes into his subjects very well informed but he will take the role of the student and ask the kind of questions that his audience would ask.
I know from my year of blogging how easy it is to assume too much about a general reader's grasp of a subject. Early on I threw too much at the reader in one of my essays, Democracy Stage Show Kit, because I made reference to concepts that would only be readily familiar to people working in development areas.
That led to misunderstanding and away from my central point. My first reaction boiled down to, "I can't go back to Square One; I'm not a teacher."
It took a few essays but I managed to clarify. The experience brought home to me that an interactive element is key to making sense out of news events. That's why I recommend people start foreign policy discussion clubs.
Tuesday, November 8
Pakistan quake's high-elevation suvivors: it's down now to mules and prayer
"The Energizer people should have picked these mules -- not some bunny."
CBS News reporter Mark Phillips is no spring chicken. So, bless his heart for climbing up the Hindu Kush to report on efforts to get relief supplies to Pakistan's earthquake survivors in the remotest regions.
The situation for the survivors is very grim. Helicopters can't land in many of the places, so it's up to the mule trains but with winter closing fast, time is running out. If you're a praying sort I hope you'll pray for those fiercely independent mountain people. Especially pray for God to talk sense into them.
They need to descend to lower altitudes if they are to survive the winter but they have resisted efforts to persuade them to come down from the mountains. They ask where they should go to, because the towns at the lower elevations were also wiped out by the quake.
At least they would have a chance to survive this winter if they came down. What they're going to do when the mules are blocked by 15 feet of snow, I don't know. All I know is that it will be too late by then for them to change their minds.
Those mountain tribes in that part of the world are so old -- older than Islam, older than Christianity and Judaism, older than the Hindu gods. That they should die out like this, freezing to death, breaks my heart.
Last night's televised version of Mark's report omits his personal observations, so I reprint them here. Click on this CBS link for the pictures and video of the report.
A Not-So-Short Walk In Hindu Kush
Nov. 7, 2005
Reporter's Notebook written by
CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
Somewhere around the 4,000-ft. mark, funny things start happening to your eyes. Spots seem to appear on the extreme edge of your field of vision. Loose, basketball-sized boulders on the trail seem to move as you try to step around them. But this isn't a pleasure stroll in which you can stop to admire the view and catch your breath.
This is a mercy mission. And while it may be a physical challenge for a soft, city-living correspondent, to the men and mules of the 72nd Animal Transport Battalion of the Pakistan Army, it's a day at the office. What really bothered me is that none of them even broke a sweat. And while I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, at the 5,000-ft. mark they broke into song ... and kept climbing.
There are areas in the earthquake zone that are simply inaccessible by any other means. High up in the mountains there are villages to which no roads lead -- or if there were roads, those roads are gone. Even single-file tracks have been obliterated by landslides. And in those villages -- or what's left of them -- there are severely injured people. And hungry people. And people without shelter. And winter is coming.
Some of these places are way up there, above 5,000, 7,000, even 9,000 feet. Some cling so precariously to the steep pitched mountainsides there is no place a helicopter could land. Mule trains are the only way.
So every day at dawn the soldiers of the 72nd A.T. stack sacks of flour, sugar, tea and pile tins of cooking oil on the backs of their mules and start the climb. Several hours and several thousand vertical feet later, they off-load these supplies in the villages and head back down. Then they do it again.
Often the trail they took yesterday isn't there today, covered over with new rock slides. With their hands, the mule handlers heave boulders out of the way to clear a new path. You can hear the shifted rocks cracking for what seems like miles as they smack their way down the slopes below.
The animal transport battalions of the Pakistan Army have a long, proud history. In the decades of hostility between Pakistan and India over the disputed province of Kashmir, the mule trains were the only means of fortifying the high Himalayan passes. They'd carry heavy guns and shells into areas unreachable with normal military transport. Sometimes, if the area was considered too dangerous for humans, the mules would be sent along the trails alone.
You may have heard about stubborn mules. These aren't. The train I was with had to climb up 60-degree, loose-boulder fields, had to wade through angry, roiling, rocky streams, had to stagger through slides of shifting shale and never once did an animal refuse. And always up and up and up. The Energizer people should have picked these mules -- not some bunny.
The Pakistani government is trying to convince the quake survivors in the villages to come down to the valleys where aid is more easily distributed. But the major towns, all of them severely damaged by the quake, are already thronged with displaced people from the hills, not to mention their own surviving populations.
Many of the tent cities that have formed are little more than squalid camps with no running water or sanitation. Disease warnings are already being issued by world health authorities.
"I'd rather die up here," is a phrase I heard more than once in the mountain villages.
The problem is, in a word, winter. Sometime in the middle of next month it will set in with a vengeance. Temperatures, already freezing at night will drop and stay dropped. Blizzards will whip up snow drifts ten feet deep. The tents the mule trains are carrying seem inadequate. Yet large portions of the village populations see a winter in the hills as a lesser evil than the threat and crowding of the towns. Some are building crude lean-tos out of scavenged material from the demolished buildings. But even then, they say, they'll have to shovel snow off the roofs night and day to keep them from caving in.
In the village of Sat Bani, our destination, 60 people were killed in the quake. Not a single building is standing. Several hundred souls — some survivors from Sat Bani, some who have come from villages even higher up — wait. The mule trains arrive every few days trying to bring up enough supplies to last through the winter but everybody knows when the snows come in a few weeks, even the mules won't be able to get through.
We leave the village a while after the mule train has departed. They don't dally to talk to people. One of the villagers insists on escorting us down the tricky passage just below the settlement so we don't get lost. As we part he shakes our hands and offers some advice. "Be careful," he says. "These mountains are very dangerous."
By Mark Phillips
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CBS News reporter Mark Phillips is no spring chicken. So, bless his heart for climbing up the Hindu Kush to report on efforts to get relief supplies to Pakistan's earthquake survivors in the remotest regions.
The situation for the survivors is very grim. Helicopters can't land in many of the places, so it's up to the mule trains but with winter closing fast, time is running out. If you're a praying sort I hope you'll pray for those fiercely independent mountain people. Especially pray for God to talk sense into them.
They need to descend to lower altitudes if they are to survive the winter but they have resisted efforts to persuade them to come down from the mountains. They ask where they should go to, because the towns at the lower elevations were also wiped out by the quake.
At least they would have a chance to survive this winter if they came down. What they're going to do when the mules are blocked by 15 feet of snow, I don't know. All I know is that it will be too late by then for them to change their minds.
Those mountain tribes in that part of the world are so old -- older than Islam, older than Christianity and Judaism, older than the Hindu gods. That they should die out like this, freezing to death, breaks my heart.
Last night's televised version of Mark's report omits his personal observations, so I reprint them here. Click on this CBS link for the pictures and video of the report.
A Not-So-Short Walk In Hindu Kush
Nov. 7, 2005
Reporter's Notebook written by
CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
Somewhere around the 4,000-ft. mark, funny things start happening to your eyes. Spots seem to appear on the extreme edge of your field of vision. Loose, basketball-sized boulders on the trail seem to move as you try to step around them. But this isn't a pleasure stroll in which you can stop to admire the view and catch your breath.
This is a mercy mission. And while it may be a physical challenge for a soft, city-living correspondent, to the men and mules of the 72nd Animal Transport Battalion of the Pakistan Army, it's a day at the office. What really bothered me is that none of them even broke a sweat. And while I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, at the 5,000-ft. mark they broke into song ... and kept climbing.
There are areas in the earthquake zone that are simply inaccessible by any other means. High up in the mountains there are villages to which no roads lead -- or if there were roads, those roads are gone. Even single-file tracks have been obliterated by landslides. And in those villages -- or what's left of them -- there are severely injured people. And hungry people. And people without shelter. And winter is coming.
Some of these places are way up there, above 5,000, 7,000, even 9,000 feet. Some cling so precariously to the steep pitched mountainsides there is no place a helicopter could land. Mule trains are the only way.
So every day at dawn the soldiers of the 72nd A.T. stack sacks of flour, sugar, tea and pile tins of cooking oil on the backs of their mules and start the climb. Several hours and several thousand vertical feet later, they off-load these supplies in the villages and head back down. Then they do it again.
Often the trail they took yesterday isn't there today, covered over with new rock slides. With their hands, the mule handlers heave boulders out of the way to clear a new path. You can hear the shifted rocks cracking for what seems like miles as they smack their way down the slopes below.
The animal transport battalions of the Pakistan Army have a long, proud history. In the decades of hostility between Pakistan and India over the disputed province of Kashmir, the mule trains were the only means of fortifying the high Himalayan passes. They'd carry heavy guns and shells into areas unreachable with normal military transport. Sometimes, if the area was considered too dangerous for humans, the mules would be sent along the trails alone.
You may have heard about stubborn mules. These aren't. The train I was with had to climb up 60-degree, loose-boulder fields, had to wade through angry, roiling, rocky streams, had to stagger through slides of shifting shale and never once did an animal refuse. And always up and up and up. The Energizer people should have picked these mules -- not some bunny.
The Pakistani government is trying to convince the quake survivors in the villages to come down to the valleys where aid is more easily distributed. But the major towns, all of them severely damaged by the quake, are already thronged with displaced people from the hills, not to mention their own surviving populations.
Many of the tent cities that have formed are little more than squalid camps with no running water or sanitation. Disease warnings are already being issued by world health authorities.
"I'd rather die up here," is a phrase I heard more than once in the mountain villages.
The problem is, in a word, winter. Sometime in the middle of next month it will set in with a vengeance. Temperatures, already freezing at night will drop and stay dropped. Blizzards will whip up snow drifts ten feet deep. The tents the mule trains are carrying seem inadequate. Yet large portions of the village populations see a winter in the hills as a lesser evil than the threat and crowding of the towns. Some are building crude lean-tos out of scavenged material from the demolished buildings. But even then, they say, they'll have to shovel snow off the roofs night and day to keep them from caving in.
In the village of Sat Bani, our destination, 60 people were killed in the quake. Not a single building is standing. Several hundred souls — some survivors from Sat Bani, some who have come from villages even higher up — wait. The mule trains arrive every few days trying to bring up enough supplies to last through the winter but everybody knows when the snows come in a few weeks, even the mules won't be able to get through.
We leave the village a while after the mule train has departed. They don't dally to talk to people. One of the villagers insists on escorting us down the tricky passage just below the settlement so we don't get lost. As we part he shakes our hands and offers some advice. "Be careful," he says. "These mountains are very dangerous."
By Mark Phillips
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, November 7
Somewhat contradictory views of Muslim rioters in France
Comments by guests on John Batchelor show tonight about riots in France:
John Terrett (British correspondent)
The situation had been building for years and it finally boiled over.
Reza Bayegan (Iranian expat living in Paris for six years)
Most rioters are Sunnis 2nd generation North African or Sub-Saharan Africans. So most are French citizens. They are not really in bad [economic] shape when compared to other countries; they are getting free health care and free education.
Rioters are alienated from their parents and the Muslim religious authority -- alieniated from authority in general.
Reza told Batchelor that he has not found that he's been discriminated against by the French in all his years of living there and has not experienced any kind of retaliation from French non-Muslims since rioting began.
John Loftus
There are huge sections cities/towns in France where the African-Arab population is segregated from the French popluation -- where the people don't speak French and where the police never go. The police hadn't stepped foot in the town for years where the two boys were electrocuted. They showed up only on strong report of crime taking place.
[French authorities] are invoking a 1955 Algerian law to declare military authority over the rioters, which is the worst thing they can do.
Francis Fukuyama
Pundita always fogs out while listening to Fukuyama. He something to the effect that Muslim youth in Europe are suffering from alienation. Batchelor's website carries Fukiyama's written pronouncement on the riots.
Martin Arnold (Financial Times reporter) living in Paris.
French ruling class threatened by rioters. Ruling class is white, male, educated in France's best universities; many are public servants. There is not a single ethnic person serving in France's legislative body.
* * * * * * * * *
From various MSM TV reports tonight
Police closing down internet sites that are networking hubs for rioters; e.g., telling where to meet to stage riots.
(Vanity Fair editor living in Paris interviewed on CBS nightly news):
The Muslims in France speak of America with admiration, saying that in America the Muslims are free to attend whatever schools they want, in America Muslim women are free to wear headscarves.
French police saying that many of the youths seem to be part of criminal gangs.
* * * * * * * * *
Pundita notes:
Regarding the last comment above: I can't help but recalling that the Thai police/military kept saying the same thing for years about increasing violence in Muslim south. By the time they acknowledged that it was not just criminal gangs -- that there was a jihadi terrorist element -- it was too late to deal with the situation without setting off a minor bloodbath.
I hate to disagree with my favorite British news analyst but I remain suspicious about the timing of the boiling over of angst. As John Terrett observes, the situation has been going on for years -- decades. Yet by amazing coincidence the situation boiled over at just the time the EU3 leaders collectively showed real starch in their spine with regard to Syria and Iran.
Nicolas Sarkozy's awful slurs, which many have blamed for feeding the anger of the rioters, are nothing new. He's been playing to France's hard right. What's new is Jacques Chirac's willingness to go along with the original wording of UN Resolution 1636 on Syria, which was even tougher than the slightly watered-down version hammered out last weekend.
What's new is the tough language about Iran used by Britain's foreign office head, Jack Straw.
What's new is Tony Blair's public accusation that Iran is behind al Qaeda terrorist activity in Iraq.
In short, during the past month there has been a sea change in the attitudes of the European Union leaders, which has alarmed Syria's President Assad, who carries water for Iran's regime. The change has also alarmed al Qaeda's leaders and Iran's dictators.
The situation is ripe for a big al Qaeda terrorist attack in West Europe, which still has many undetected Qaeda sleeper cells. So when the riots broke out in France I was relieved to see they were spontaneous and seemingly not instigated by Qaeda. There is plenty for France's poorest to riot about. And Sarkozy's infamous contempt for France's African-Arab immigrant population clearly poured oil on the flames.
Then a passage in an article Dan Riehl sent along this weekend gave me a start:
The rioters were using an urban battle tactic that was refined in 2003-2004, in Thailand, by a Qaeda-linked Muslim terror group. The tactic is hit-and-run attacks on motor scooters against police and military troops. The Thai military and police were sitting ducks until they adjusted their tactics.
I told myself that the adoption of the same tactic by the rioters was simply a logical development; after all, many of the poor can't afford cars in Europe and scooters are a widespread mode of transport. But I was concerned enough to mention the Thai tactic in an email to Dan.
Then, within hours I was reading news wires that mentioned the growing coordination of the attacks across Europe. Again, this is not necessarily connected to Qaeda and can be seen as a logical development.
However, it is an unavoidable fact that all this spontaneous, logical development of the "riot" tactics has come on the heels of the UN situation I mentioned in my post today. My concern is that spontaneous grief and rage among the poorest Muslim immigrants has provided Qaeda -- and Iran's regime -- the perfect opportunity to warn Chirac and other West European leaders to back away from their tough stand on Assad's regime.
In any case, I think it's fair to assume that by now, Qaeda is providing technical assistance, tactical advice and money to the aggrieved rioters.
None of this contradicts the points that Terrett, Loftus and several commentators have brought out since the riots began. West Europeans need to confront the simple fact that ghettos are not a good thing. Reportedly Chirac has privately acknowledged the ghettoization of the vast majority of France's 5 million Muslim immigrants. (See Nov 7 Guardian.)
John Terrett (British correspondent)
The situation had been building for years and it finally boiled over.
Reza Bayegan (Iranian expat living in Paris for six years)
Most rioters are Sunnis 2nd generation North African or Sub-Saharan Africans. So most are French citizens. They are not really in bad [economic] shape when compared to other countries; they are getting free health care and free education.
Rioters are alienated from their parents and the Muslim religious authority -- alieniated from authority in general.
Reza told Batchelor that he has not found that he's been discriminated against by the French in all his years of living there and has not experienced any kind of retaliation from French non-Muslims since rioting began.
John Loftus
There are huge sections cities/towns in France where the African-Arab population is segregated from the French popluation -- where the people don't speak French and where the police never go. The police hadn't stepped foot in the town for years where the two boys were electrocuted. They showed up only on strong report of crime taking place.
[French authorities] are invoking a 1955 Algerian law to declare military authority over the rioters, which is the worst thing they can do.
Francis Fukuyama
Pundita always fogs out while listening to Fukuyama. He something to the effect that Muslim youth in Europe are suffering from alienation. Batchelor's website carries Fukiyama's written pronouncement on the riots.
Martin Arnold (Financial Times reporter) living in Paris.
French ruling class threatened by rioters. Ruling class is white, male, educated in France's best universities; many are public servants. There is not a single ethnic person serving in France's legislative body.
* * * * * * * * *
From various MSM TV reports tonight
Police closing down internet sites that are networking hubs for rioters; e.g., telling where to meet to stage riots.
(Vanity Fair editor living in Paris interviewed on CBS nightly news):
The Muslims in France speak of America with admiration, saying that in America the Muslims are free to attend whatever schools they want, in America Muslim women are free to wear headscarves.
French police saying that many of the youths seem to be part of criminal gangs.
* * * * * * * * *
Pundita notes:
Regarding the last comment above: I can't help but recalling that the Thai police/military kept saying the same thing for years about increasing violence in Muslim south. By the time they acknowledged that it was not just criminal gangs -- that there was a jihadi terrorist element -- it was too late to deal with the situation without setting off a minor bloodbath.
I hate to disagree with my favorite British news analyst but I remain suspicious about the timing of the boiling over of angst. As John Terrett observes, the situation has been going on for years -- decades. Yet by amazing coincidence the situation boiled over at just the time the EU3 leaders collectively showed real starch in their spine with regard to Syria and Iran.
Nicolas Sarkozy's awful slurs, which many have blamed for feeding the anger of the rioters, are nothing new. He's been playing to France's hard right. What's new is Jacques Chirac's willingness to go along with the original wording of UN Resolution 1636 on Syria, which was even tougher than the slightly watered-down version hammered out last weekend.
What's new is the tough language about Iran used by Britain's foreign office head, Jack Straw.
What's new is Tony Blair's public accusation that Iran is behind al Qaeda terrorist activity in Iraq.
In short, during the past month there has been a sea change in the attitudes of the European Union leaders, which has alarmed Syria's President Assad, who carries water for Iran's regime. The change has also alarmed al Qaeda's leaders and Iran's dictators.
The situation is ripe for a big al Qaeda terrorist attack in West Europe, which still has many undetected Qaeda sleeper cells. So when the riots broke out in France I was relieved to see they were spontaneous and seemingly not instigated by Qaeda. There is plenty for France's poorest to riot about. And Sarkozy's infamous contempt for France's African-Arab immigrant population clearly poured oil on the flames.
Then a passage in an article Dan Riehl sent along this weekend gave me a start:
The rioters were using an urban battle tactic that was refined in 2003-2004, in Thailand, by a Qaeda-linked Muslim terror group. The tactic is hit-and-run attacks on motor scooters against police and military troops. The Thai military and police were sitting ducks until they adjusted their tactics.
I told myself that the adoption of the same tactic by the rioters was simply a logical development; after all, many of the poor can't afford cars in Europe and scooters are a widespread mode of transport. But I was concerned enough to mention the Thai tactic in an email to Dan.
Then, within hours I was reading news wires that mentioned the growing coordination of the attacks across Europe. Again, this is not necessarily connected to Qaeda and can be seen as a logical development.
However, it is an unavoidable fact that all this spontaneous, logical development of the "riot" tactics has come on the heels of the UN situation I mentioned in my post today. My concern is that spontaneous grief and rage among the poorest Muslim immigrants has provided Qaeda -- and Iran's regime -- the perfect opportunity to warn Chirac and other West European leaders to back away from their tough stand on Assad's regime.
In any case, I think it's fair to assume that by now, Qaeda is providing technical assistance, tactical advice and money to the aggrieved rioters.
None of this contradicts the points that Terrett, Loftus and several commentators have brought out since the riots began. West Europeans need to confront the simple fact that ghettos are not a good thing. Reportedly Chirac has privately acknowledged the ghettoization of the vast majority of France's 5 million Muslim immigrants. (See Nov 7 Guardian.)
Bre'r Joe Wilson and B'rer Jacques Chirac
"Trying to determine how much French foreign policy in Africa was affected by the French desire to obtain uranium is a difficult task. There was no recorded decision by the French leaders who formed the French African policy that can be related to uranium extraction rates. Instead the historical facts, rhetoric, and events and their outcomes must be investigated. By examining the history relating France to its former African colonies, one can only surmise how much French foreign policy was influenced by the uranium needs of the country. ..."
Section XI -- The French Desire for Uranium
by Nicholas Pederson
Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000
In brief, Vallely said that Wilson bragged to him in 2002 that his wife worked for the CIA, and Wilson is calling him a liar.
To orient yourself to how that latest salvo fits into the hideously complex Wilson-Plame Affair, which is part of Washington's epoch-making Beltway Wars, skip down to my Saturday entry highlighting John Batchelor's blog on the topic then skim the WND story linked above.
As to what any of this has to do with the "crazy report," as Ms. Plame reportedly termed it, which sent her hubby off to investigate whether Saddam was trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger --
Pundita has a theory: Mr Wilson and Ms Plame eventually figured out they were duped fair and square and Mr Wilson foolishly lost his temper about this. Wounded professional pride and all that; experienced ambassadors consider themselves nobody's fool.
See, the crazy report happened to be true. Now watch carefully don't blink: Because most of Niger's uranium mines and Niger itself are controlled by a French consortium, if you say that Niger's government negotiated with Saddam's about yellowcake -- that is as much saying America's NATO ally France broke any number of international agreements.
The problem for the Bush administration (and Tony Blair) was that catching France red-handed and stopping France were two different things.
Enter Dick Cheney and George Tenet, both on very good terms with President Bush, and who shared his determination to do something about the total lack of cooperation from Jacques Chirac's government.
To follow this next part it helps if you remember President Bush's daddy headed the CIA and that starting from his first day in office, Bush 43 actually read all the intelligence reports on his desk every morning.
Here we must draw a curtain but in due time Ambassador Wilson was told to see what he could dig up about the Niger yellowcake business. Right there he must have known something was screwy if he accepted the instructions at face value:
"Walk into a den of thieves and ask if they've heard about any bank robberies recently."
That's what Wilson's instructions boiled down to. So from the gitgo the CIA knew he would bring home nothing. And Wilson knew he would bring home nothing. If he had just left it at that, but he couldn't. That's because he was a flaming Liberal who couldn't stand the Bush administration and was very much against the Iraq invasion.
Thus, Wilson was provoked to dash off an op-ed piece for The New York Times after Bush quoted from a forged document to warn that Saddam had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger.
A furor followed. And so it came to pass that the Bush administration then had no choice but to ask George Tenet to please declassify highly sensitive data. The data indicated that the Niger yellowcake information Bush quoted was correct, even though the particular source he quoted was bad.
Once the data were declassified and broadcast a very strange thing happened. Despite their criticism of the Iraq invasion, Chirac's government transformed into a veritable fountainhead of helpfulness in the US war on terror.
France gave (and continues to give) the US military big help in French regions of Africa -- fighting terrorists alongside US forces in Sahel and other places -- and tremendous help with interdictions of terrorist ships at sea. And, one might infer, they keep a closer watch on Niger's dealings with despots wanting to buy uranium.
But something went horribly wrong, as so often happens in war. Mr Wilson might have been philosophical about being used as a pawn but he drew the line at an attack on his wife. As to why anyone in the White House would go after his wife while the White House was basking in a huge wartime coup is beyond Pundita.
And it was a coup -- and a diplomatic success. There was no way Chirac's government could cry "Foul" about the release of that intelligence. Clearly, Bush had no choice given that he'd quoted from a forged document. (A forgery so poorly done, I might add, that a 12 year old with Internet access could see through it.)
How to put this delicately...everyone's ass on our side of the Pond was covered; the same for MI6, which if I recall handed the CIA the forged document that Bush quoted from. Nobody could be accused of making an effort to embarrass France's government.
Then why did some idiots in the White House go after Mrs Wilson? Mr Wilson could huff and puff all he wanted against the Iraq invasion; the declassified intelligence showed that indeed, there had been negotiations on the part of Saddam's government to purchase Niger yellowcake.
The only answer I can muster is that in war the best you can hope for is that you'll make fewer mistakes than the enemy. Yet going after Valerie Plame was a very costly mistake.
If you tell me that my theory is on the moon, Pundita will just continue to sit up here on the moon and let you stay down there on earth watching B'rer Wilson get revenge. At least my vantage point allows me to keep an eye on the French.
Speaking of which, it's really helpful toward understanding the French if you read through the intelligence report I linked to above. The sections are short and clearly written. You might want to go directly to Section II France and Nuclear Energy. Unless you're already an expert on the topic I bet your jaw will drop at least once while reading. And note they've been a lot smarter than the US about energy matters.
Is there any way, any way at all at this late stage, to head off the worst of Mr Wilson's ire? Well, one has to consider the skills of an ambassador who spent much of his career dealing with despots and crooks.
The negotiation skills one gains under such conditions are not terribly unlike those shown by Bre'r Rabbit in Tales of Uncle Remus, which are rooted in the trickster lore of West African folk tales.
One should also recall Joe Wilson's courage -- one might even say reckless courage. He sheltered more than 100 Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein went after them, and he mocked Hussein's threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. Those acts endeared him to President Bush's father.
So the Bush administration might want to consider the famous encounter between Bre'r Fox and Bre'r Rabbit and ponder deeply. A public apology to Valerie Plame might help even if they have to swallow hard to do it.
Section XI -- The French Desire for Uranium
by Nicholas Pederson
Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000
...Den Brer Fox sez to Brer Rabbit, sezee, "Who ax you fer ter come en strike up a quaintence wid dish yer tar-baby? En who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in de roun worril. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat tar-baby widout waintin fer enny invite," sez Brer Fox, sezee.Well, I see Ambassador Joseph Wilson is threatening to sue Fox news analyst Major General Paul Vallely for libel and slander, and also sue World Net Daily for carrying a story about what Gen. Vallely told John Batchelor's radio audience about what Wilson told Vallely about Wilson's wife.
"En dar you is, en dar you'll stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires her up, cuz I'm gwinteter bobbycue you dis day, sho," sez Brer Fox, sezee.
Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty humble: "I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox," sezee, "Jes so's you don't fling me in dat briar-patch. Roast me, Brer Fox," sezee, "But don't fling me in dat briar-patch." ...
In brief, Vallely said that Wilson bragged to him in 2002 that his wife worked for the CIA, and Wilson is calling him a liar.
To orient yourself to how that latest salvo fits into the hideously complex Wilson-Plame Affair, which is part of Washington's epoch-making Beltway Wars, skip down to my Saturday entry highlighting John Batchelor's blog on the topic then skim the WND story linked above.
As to what any of this has to do with the "crazy report," as Ms. Plame reportedly termed it, which sent her hubby off to investigate whether Saddam was trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger --
Pundita has a theory: Mr Wilson and Ms Plame eventually figured out they were duped fair and square and Mr Wilson foolishly lost his temper about this. Wounded professional pride and all that; experienced ambassadors consider themselves nobody's fool.
See, the crazy report happened to be true. Now watch carefully don't blink: Because most of Niger's uranium mines and Niger itself are controlled by a French consortium, if you say that Niger's government negotiated with Saddam's about yellowcake -- that is as much saying America's NATO ally France broke any number of international agreements.
The problem for the Bush administration (and Tony Blair) was that catching France red-handed and stopping France were two different things.
Enter Dick Cheney and George Tenet, both on very good terms with President Bush, and who shared his determination to do something about the total lack of cooperation from Jacques Chirac's government.
To follow this next part it helps if you remember President Bush's daddy headed the CIA and that starting from his first day in office, Bush 43 actually read all the intelligence reports on his desk every morning.
Here we must draw a curtain but in due time Ambassador Wilson was told to see what he could dig up about the Niger yellowcake business. Right there he must have known something was screwy if he accepted the instructions at face value:
"Walk into a den of thieves and ask if they've heard about any bank robberies recently."
That's what Wilson's instructions boiled down to. So from the gitgo the CIA knew he would bring home nothing. And Wilson knew he would bring home nothing. If he had just left it at that, but he couldn't. That's because he was a flaming Liberal who couldn't stand the Bush administration and was very much against the Iraq invasion.
Thus, Wilson was provoked to dash off an op-ed piece for The New York Times after Bush quoted from a forged document to warn that Saddam had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger.
A furor followed. And so it came to pass that the Bush administration then had no choice but to ask George Tenet to please declassify highly sensitive data. The data indicated that the Niger yellowcake information Bush quoted was correct, even though the particular source he quoted was bad.
Once the data were declassified and broadcast a very strange thing happened. Despite their criticism of the Iraq invasion, Chirac's government transformed into a veritable fountainhead of helpfulness in the US war on terror.
France gave (and continues to give) the US military big help in French regions of Africa -- fighting terrorists alongside US forces in Sahel and other places -- and tremendous help with interdictions of terrorist ships at sea. And, one might infer, they keep a closer watch on Niger's dealings with despots wanting to buy uranium.
But something went horribly wrong, as so often happens in war. Mr Wilson might have been philosophical about being used as a pawn but he drew the line at an attack on his wife. As to why anyone in the White House would go after his wife while the White House was basking in a huge wartime coup is beyond Pundita.
And it was a coup -- and a diplomatic success. There was no way Chirac's government could cry "Foul" about the release of that intelligence. Clearly, Bush had no choice given that he'd quoted from a forged document. (A forgery so poorly done, I might add, that a 12 year old with Internet access could see through it.)
How to put this delicately...everyone's ass on our side of the Pond was covered; the same for MI6, which if I recall handed the CIA the forged document that Bush quoted from. Nobody could be accused of making an effort to embarrass France's government.
Then why did some idiots in the White House go after Mrs Wilson? Mr Wilson could huff and puff all he wanted against the Iraq invasion; the declassified intelligence showed that indeed, there had been negotiations on the part of Saddam's government to purchase Niger yellowcake.
The only answer I can muster is that in war the best you can hope for is that you'll make fewer mistakes than the enemy. Yet going after Valerie Plame was a very costly mistake.
If you tell me that my theory is on the moon, Pundita will just continue to sit up here on the moon and let you stay down there on earth watching B'rer Wilson get revenge. At least my vantage point allows me to keep an eye on the French.
Speaking of which, it's really helpful toward understanding the French if you read through the intelligence report I linked to above. The sections are short and clearly written. You might want to go directly to Section II France and Nuclear Energy. Unless you're already an expert on the topic I bet your jaw will drop at least once while reading. And note they've been a lot smarter than the US about energy matters.
Is there any way, any way at all at this late stage, to head off the worst of Mr Wilson's ire? Well, one has to consider the skills of an ambassador who spent much of his career dealing with despots and crooks.
The negotiation skills one gains under such conditions are not terribly unlike those shown by Bre'r Rabbit in Tales of Uncle Remus, which are rooted in the trickster lore of West African folk tales.
One should also recall Joe Wilson's courage -- one might even say reckless courage. He sheltered more than 100 Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein went after them, and he mocked Hussein's threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. Those acts endeared him to President Bush's father.
So the Bush administration might want to consider the famous encounter between Bre'r Fox and Bre'r Rabbit and ponder deeply. A public apology to Valerie Plame might help even if they have to swallow hard to do it.
..."I ain't got no string," sez Brer Fox, sezee, "En now I speck I'll hatter drwon you," sezee.How Mr Rabbit was too sharp for Mr Fox from Tales of Uncle Remus (published 1881) by Joel Chandler Harris.
"Drown me ez deep es you please, Brer Fox," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, "but don't fling me in dat brier-patch," sezee.
"Dey ain't no water nigh," sez Brer Fox, sezee. "En now I speck I'll hatter skin you," sezee.
"Skin me, Brer Fox," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, "snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my yeras by de roots, en cut off my legs," sezee, "but please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat briar-patch," sezee.
Co'se Brer Fox wnater hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung im right in de middle er de briar-patch.
Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang roun fer ter see w'at wuz gwinter happen.
Bimeby he hear somebody call im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin de pitch outen his har wid a chip.
Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad.
Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er Brer Fox's sass, so he holler out: "I wuz bred en bawn in a briar-patch, Brer Fox -- bred en bawn in a briar-patch!"
En wid dat he skip out des ez lively as a cricket in de embers.
BEIJING WAKES UP ABOUT BIRD FLU?
Thanks to Dan at Riehl World View for sending me this:
Yet only the naive would assume that these are the first suspected human cases of H5N1 that China has seen. Given the repeated history I can't take Beijing at their word at this time; a pattern of actions from their health ministry is what I'll be looking for.
I am suspicious about the timing of Beijing's announcement. It could be a showcase move to head off criticism ahead of the Geneva meeting.
Click here for the rest of this very important story.
BEIJING (Associated Press Nov 7) - China said Sunday it had asked for outside help to test three possible cases of bird flu in people while scientists and government representatives prepared for a strategy session in Geneva amid fears of a possible worldwide flu pandemic among humans. ...If China has turned over a new leaf by immediately reporting suspected human cases of H5N1 and asking for outside help in testing, I could not be more relieved. It would mean there is a chance to speed-bump the virus, which buys the human race more time to prepare for a pandemic.
Yet only the naive would assume that these are the first suspected human cases of H5N1 that China has seen. Given the repeated history I can't take Beijing at their word at this time; a pattern of actions from their health ministry is what I'll be looking for.
I am suspicious about the timing of Beijing's announcement. It could be a showcase move to head off criticism ahead of the Geneva meeting.
Click here for the rest of this very important story.
Sunday, November 6
It's on
The situation in France seems to have started as unplanned riots but Pundita has a problem with coincidences during war. By coincidence the rioting escalated from spontaneous expressions of rage to well coordinated attacks last Thursday, which was the day after the Mehlis Commission issued a summons to six Syrian intelligence officers to appear for questioning outside Syria.
So as you can see, things have moved quickly; it was only last Monday that UN Resolution 1636 passed by unanimous vote in the UN Security Council. The resolution gives the Syrian government virtually no stalling time to produce witnesses in the Mehlis Commission investigation and the witness list could, in theory, extend to Syria's President Bashar Assad.
A Washington Post/Associated Press article notes that the resolution has given the commission sweeping powers. Six Syrian intelligence officers have been summoned outside Syria for questioning along with a Lebanese official.
The resolution gives Mehlis the power to question "any Syrian at a location and under conditions of his choosing."
Translation: the parties can be questioned without Syrian government "minders" present, and they and the investigators now have a fighting chance of avoiding assassination enroute to the interrogation locations.
Yet whatever the wording of the powers conferred by the resolution, enforcement will require that the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) continue to hang tough.
And dang if it didn't happen that around the same time poverty stricken rioters commandeering attack squads of motor scooters, and using cell phone and Internet networks, pulled off surprisingly well-coordinated attacks, according to French police. And also managed in their grief to throw together a firebomb making factory.(1)
For readers who keep track of such things, here are the intel officers named so far that Mehlis has called for questioning.
> General Assef Shawkat, chief of Syria's military intelligence service (President Assad's brother-in-law).
> Maj. General Bahjat Suleiman, former chief of Syria's internal intelligence service.
> Brig. General Rustum Ghazale, Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon when ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated.
According to the AP story the other three senior officers listed in the summons did not include President Assad's brother, Maher, whose name was mentioned in Mehlis' report.
Now what should happen if the three generals on the list suddenly find themselves in need of triple bypass surgery and die on the operating table before Mehlis can interview them?
Pundita doesn't know. However, those three generals are probably very hard to catch napping; after all, they surived the Assad regime this long. So I sense it's more likely that Assad will stall while he tries to whip up support at the Arab League for thumbing his nose at Mehlis' demand. And while he phones Jacques Chirac to extend his sympathies about the troubles across France.
1) From a MSNBC News Services report 8:28 p.m. ET Nov. 6 (H/T World Net Daily): Police find Molotov cocktail factory in Paris; marauders attack in central Paris; and in Grigny (south of Paris) 10 police were injured from shotgun blasts fired by marauders. (Let's stop calling them rioters, shall we?)
So as you can see, things have moved quickly; it was only last Monday that UN Resolution 1636 passed by unanimous vote in the UN Security Council. The resolution gives the Syrian government virtually no stalling time to produce witnesses in the Mehlis Commission investigation and the witness list could, in theory, extend to Syria's President Bashar Assad.
A Washington Post/Associated Press article notes that the resolution has given the commission sweeping powers. Six Syrian intelligence officers have been summoned outside Syria for questioning along with a Lebanese official.
The resolution gives Mehlis the power to question "any Syrian at a location and under conditions of his choosing."
Translation: the parties can be questioned without Syrian government "minders" present, and they and the investigators now have a fighting chance of avoiding assassination enroute to the interrogation locations.
Yet whatever the wording of the powers conferred by the resolution, enforcement will require that the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) continue to hang tough.
And dang if it didn't happen that around the same time poverty stricken rioters commandeering attack squads of motor scooters, and using cell phone and Internet networks, pulled off surprisingly well-coordinated attacks, according to French police. And also managed in their grief to throw together a firebomb making factory.(1)
For readers who keep track of such things, here are the intel officers named so far that Mehlis has called for questioning.
> General Assef Shawkat, chief of Syria's military intelligence service (President Assad's brother-in-law).
> Maj. General Bahjat Suleiman, former chief of Syria's internal intelligence service.
> Brig. General Rustum Ghazale, Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon when ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated.
According to the AP story the other three senior officers listed in the summons did not include President Assad's brother, Maher, whose name was mentioned in Mehlis' report.
Now what should happen if the three generals on the list suddenly find themselves in need of triple bypass surgery and die on the operating table before Mehlis can interview them?
Pundita doesn't know. However, those three generals are probably very hard to catch napping; after all, they surived the Assad regime this long. So I sense it's more likely that Assad will stall while he tries to whip up support at the Arab League for thumbing his nose at Mehlis' demand. And while he phones Jacques Chirac to extend his sympathies about the troubles across France.
1) From a MSNBC News Services report 8:28 p.m. ET Nov. 6 (H/T World Net Daily): Police find Molotov cocktail factory in Paris; marauders attack in central Paris; and in Grigny (south of Paris) 10 police were injured from shotgun blasts fired by marauders. (Let's stop calling them rioters, shall we?)
Saturday, November 5
Not yet storming the Bastille
Dan at Riehl World View is keeping tabs on the Paris riots; thank goodness because Pundita too tuckered to follow the story. Click here for the latest.
Radio host John Batchelor wades into Wilson-Plame Affair
Pundita's favorite radio host and news anchor John Batchelor recently aired a bombshell interview in which a retired West Pointer recalled that Ambassador Joseph Wilson had "bragged" to him in 2002 that his wife worked for the CIA.
Now Batchelor has gone to the blogosphere (Welcome, John!) to recount the story and nail down the meaning of a "covert agent." Finally, a little clarity! Visit Red State for Batchelor's full report. Selected passages here:
For more on General Vallely's comments to John Batchelor about Ambassador Wilson, see World Net Daily Nov 5 report. (H/T Dan Riehl)
Now Batchelor has gone to the blogosphere (Welcome, John!) to recount the story and nail down the meaning of a "covert agent." Finally, a little clarity! Visit Red State for Batchelor's full report. Selected passages here:
My colleague Major General Paul Vallely, USA (ret.), West Point '61, wrote me ... that Wilson had bragged of his wife the "CIA desk officer" to Paul and all other ears in the green room at Fox News in D.C. in the winter spring of 2002. ...11:30 PM update
Paul told the same story to me on air on Wednesday, November 2 ... Joe Wilson called his wife a "CIA desk officer."
This is nearly the only accurate statement that Wilson is now making. He uses the ambiguity of spytalk to avoid clarity. "CIA desk officer" is vague. "Covert agent" is not vague, but it must be carefully studied with regard the 1982 law:
(4) The term "covert agent" means--
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency--
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or
(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and--
(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or
(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or
(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.
Reason simply: when Wilson bragged of Valerie Plame to fashionable media savvy Washington in the winter/spring of 2002, he was speaking the facts of the matter. According to her present employment status, she was not covert -- she factually was a "CIA desk officer."
Critically, according to the 1982 law, Valerie Plame, while at one time a "covert agent," serving overseas, was no longer overseas, nor had she been since 1997.
Also, again according to the law, the five-year time limit protection expired in 2002.
(Puzzle: did Joe Wilson, revealing his wife's employment to Vallely in the Fox green room in 2002, violate the 1982 law's time limit clause?)
In any event, by 2003, the relevant year, anyone who ever cared to listen to Wilson -- at a major TV station, at cocktails parties, in the usual Washington elbow rubbing rooms -- knew that his wife was working as a "CIA desk officer." ...
For more on General Vallely's comments to John Batchelor about Ambassador Wilson, see World Net Daily Nov 5 report. (H/T Dan Riehl)
Killer Toast and how to impress your boss's mistress
I kept wanting to share this historic photograph but never got around to fixing up my blog to display pictures. So you'll just have to click on the link and scroll down to the second photograph. Oh, go ahead and live dangerously. You won't get on a watch list; the link is from the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas.
To many Americans it would just seem a picture of some old Chinese guy with salad dressing on his chest raising his wine glass in toast. Actually, you are looking at one of the most important moments in modern China's history.
Pundita readers need no introduction to General Cao Gangchuan and his role in bringing down the curtain on Jiang Zemin's rule. That's what you're looking at. When General Cao raised his wine glass on the evening of July 31, 2004 he did more than pay tribute to the 77th anniversary of the founding of China's modern military. From the tone of his speech, everyone in attendance guessed that he was marking the end of an era in China and the start of a new one.
But that historic toast was not Killer Toast; the killer came the next day, August 1, which is Military Day in China. By then everyone was breathlessly waiting to hear General Cao's toast at the festivities.
They had already flipped through their Communist Party Toast Codebook. From this, they recalled that during the previous year's Military Day toast, General Cao had told them to obey the Central Party Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Jiang.
Slowly, General Cao rose from his chair and raised his wine glass. A hush fell over the assembly. Then... then .... this is always the part where Pundita has to take a sip of sherry to prevent palpitations ... then... General Cao said nothing at all about Jiang Zemin.
Only military discipline prevented the gathering from knocking over chairs in their haste to spread the news. A New York Times reporter was arrested in China on spying charges, simply for reporting the gossip raging around Beijing within minutes of the speech.
A month later Jiang Zemin relinquished his last official hold on power in China. And all that's happened since, and all that is to come in China, was set in motion by a general's toast on a glorious summer evening in a grand banquet hall.
For an extremely biased and downright catty account of Jiang Zemin's rise to power ("Licking the Boots of the Upper Echelon to Rise Further...Working His Connections and Fawning on Key Personnel to Become Shanghai’s Leader..."), see The Epoch Times biography.
The stories of Jiang's wait for hours in the snow to give a present to a superior's mistress, and how he flummoxed democracy advocates by reciting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, are by themselves worth the read. (1)
Who cares how much of the biography is true? It's a primer on what Chinese don't like about their leaders and a rare glimpse of sexual politics, China style.
1) Stories from Anything for Power: the real story of China's Jiang Zemin, Chapter Four.
To many Americans it would just seem a picture of some old Chinese guy with salad dressing on his chest raising his wine glass in toast. Actually, you are looking at one of the most important moments in modern China's history.
Pundita readers need no introduction to General Cao Gangchuan and his role in bringing down the curtain on Jiang Zemin's rule. That's what you're looking at. When General Cao raised his wine glass on the evening of July 31, 2004 he did more than pay tribute to the 77th anniversary of the founding of China's modern military. From the tone of his speech, everyone in attendance guessed that he was marking the end of an era in China and the start of a new one.
But that historic toast was not Killer Toast; the killer came the next day, August 1, which is Military Day in China. By then everyone was breathlessly waiting to hear General Cao's toast at the festivities.
They had already flipped through their Communist Party Toast Codebook. From this, they recalled that during the previous year's Military Day toast, General Cao had told them to obey the Central Party Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Jiang.
Slowly, General Cao rose from his chair and raised his wine glass. A hush fell over the assembly. Then... then .... this is always the part where Pundita has to take a sip of sherry to prevent palpitations ... then... General Cao said nothing at all about Jiang Zemin.
Only military discipline prevented the gathering from knocking over chairs in their haste to spread the news. A New York Times reporter was arrested in China on spying charges, simply for reporting the gossip raging around Beijing within minutes of the speech.
A month later Jiang Zemin relinquished his last official hold on power in China. And all that's happened since, and all that is to come in China, was set in motion by a general's toast on a glorious summer evening in a grand banquet hall.
For an extremely biased and downright catty account of Jiang Zemin's rise to power ("Licking the Boots of the Upper Echelon to Rise Further...Working His Connections and Fawning on Key Personnel to Become Shanghai’s Leader..."), see The Epoch Times biography.
The stories of Jiang's wait for hours in the snow to give a present to a superior's mistress, and how he flummoxed democracy advocates by reciting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, are by themselves worth the read. (1)
Who cares how much of the biography is true? It's a primer on what Chinese don't like about their leaders and a rare glimpse of sexual politics, China style.
1) Stories from Anything for Power: the real story of China's Jiang Zemin, Chapter Four.
"Yo, we're all democrats here"
"You have accused the state department of a double standard about Russia and China. Aren't you guilty of the same about Vladimir Putin? You have used tortured arguments to defend his anti-democratic measures while at the same time praising democracy to the sky! Please explain the contradiction if you can.
Alena in New York"
Dear Alena:
I don't know what part of my argument is tortured. I observed that Putin has gathered and wielded enormous power in the process of trying to create a nation out Russian territories that were run like duchies.
However, I have egg on my face about lecturing the Russians about duchies. This is since Hurricane Katrina turned up that Louisiana has been run like a duchy, right down to making their own foreign policy under the direction of a French Canadian organization started by a Canadian with close connections to North Korea's government.
If you missed my post on the topic that man is Maurice Strong, who didn't recall a million dollar check made out to him as part of a UN Oil-for-Food deal.
However, I think (I hope) that Louisiana is an exception to the rule among American states, which agree to act as if they're part of a union. In Russia, the exception has been the rule.
So Putin is operating on the principle that before you can have a democratic nation, first there has to be a nation. Many Russians agree with him, which is how he was able to gather so much power.
As to whether the agreement is actually a majority -- taking a shot in the dark, I'd say most Russians want to have their cake and eat it too. They want independence from a centralized government but at the same time they want a centralized government to pick up the pieces.
So what does that make Russians? It makes them normal. Look at Tamil Nadu state in India. Look at Louisiana. Look all around the world, and you will find regions that can't stand the thought of a centralized government until they need one. So then it's decision time. By atavistic tradition, usually backed by military force, you can't keep changing your mind about your decision on the days it suits.
It's also dealing from the bottom of the deck if your idea of establishing democracy includes a program of balkanization. "Yo, we're all democrats here in these 20 square miles of our nation."
And how long do they think they'll remain democratic, when everyone around them with their own 20 square miles says the same thing? That situation is ripe for a strongman and slick operators. And where does it end?
"Yo, we're all democrats here in New Orleans."
Then who ran screaming to the federal government after Katrina struck?
President Putin knows that promises are not enough. By the time he leaves office he must deliver a central government and consolidated union of states that do not run roughshod over democracy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but he has always seen himself as preparing the ground for a democratic nation -- groundwork that was not done by Boris Yeltsin and his American and West European backers.
The Russian people have the hard job of both supporting Putin's efforts and protesting when he makes too many compromises with the old order. So far, they're doing a pretty good job of threading the needle. They're not helped by State's efforts to discredit Putin and make his successor more malleable to their balmy theories about defending American interests in Central Asia.
Alena in New York"
Dear Alena:
I don't know what part of my argument is tortured. I observed that Putin has gathered and wielded enormous power in the process of trying to create a nation out Russian territories that were run like duchies.
However, I have egg on my face about lecturing the Russians about duchies. This is since Hurricane Katrina turned up that Louisiana has been run like a duchy, right down to making their own foreign policy under the direction of a French Canadian organization started by a Canadian with close connections to North Korea's government.
If you missed my post on the topic that man is Maurice Strong, who didn't recall a million dollar check made out to him as part of a UN Oil-for-Food deal.
However, I think (I hope) that Louisiana is an exception to the rule among American states, which agree to act as if they're part of a union. In Russia, the exception has been the rule.
So Putin is operating on the principle that before you can have a democratic nation, first there has to be a nation. Many Russians agree with him, which is how he was able to gather so much power.
As to whether the agreement is actually a majority -- taking a shot in the dark, I'd say most Russians want to have their cake and eat it too. They want independence from a centralized government but at the same time they want a centralized government to pick up the pieces.
So what does that make Russians? It makes them normal. Look at Tamil Nadu state in India. Look at Louisiana. Look all around the world, and you will find regions that can't stand the thought of a centralized government until they need one. So then it's decision time. By atavistic tradition, usually backed by military force, you can't keep changing your mind about your decision on the days it suits.
It's also dealing from the bottom of the deck if your idea of establishing democracy includes a program of balkanization. "Yo, we're all democrats here in these 20 square miles of our nation."
And how long do they think they'll remain democratic, when everyone around them with their own 20 square miles says the same thing? That situation is ripe for a strongman and slick operators. And where does it end?
"Yo, we're all democrats here in New Orleans."
Then who ran screaming to the federal government after Katrina struck?
President Putin knows that promises are not enough. By the time he leaves office he must deliver a central government and consolidated union of states that do not run roughshod over democracy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but he has always seen himself as preparing the ground for a democratic nation -- groundwork that was not done by Boris Yeltsin and his American and West European backers.
The Russian people have the hard job of both supporting Putin's efforts and protesting when he makes too many compromises with the old order. So far, they're doing a pretty good job of threading the needle. They're not helped by State's efforts to discredit Putin and make his successor more malleable to their balmy theories about defending American interests in Central Asia.
Friday, November 4
We had to destroy this democracy to save it
"With the election on May 2 of Chile's former interior minister Jose Miguel Insulza to the post of secretary general of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.), that alliance will, for the first time since its founding in 1948, have a chief executive who is not the preferred choice of the United States."
So begins a May 2005 PINR intelligence brief titled Washington loses control of OAS. The brief is a must read if you want to understand the real background to the unpleasant reception President Bush has received during his trip to Argentina. It also brings out that the US Department of State has been relying on an outmoded playbook in their approach to the Latin American region as a whole; a playbook that flagrantly contradicts the Bush Democracy Doctrine.
Recall all US ambassadors to Washington and put them in a stadium along with all DOS employees. Breakfast, lunch and dinner catered by Taco Bell, until everybody understands that protecting a democracy by supporting despotic regimes will come back to bite you real fast in the modern age.
Once everyone is on the same page, the next step is to take this simple quiz: What is the difference between a market economy and a democracy?
It might take a month or so of subsisting on burritos (especially if the quiz taker has been posted to China), but eventually everyone will figure out the answer.
So begins a May 2005 PINR intelligence brief titled Washington loses control of OAS. The brief is a must read if you want to understand the real background to the unpleasant reception President Bush has received during his trip to Argentina. It also brings out that the US Department of State has been relying on an outmoded playbook in their approach to the Latin American region as a whole; a playbook that flagrantly contradicts the Bush Democracy Doctrine.
Although the installation of market democracies is Washington's best-case scenario, it has been willing to embrace authoritarian regimes when it perceives that they are fending off political forces that would establish alternatives to capitalism and cultivate the support of powers outside the hemisphere for their experiments.Pundita never likes to propose the Taco Bell Solution but that might be just the ticket in this case. By now Pundita readers should be familiar with the basic drill:
Recall all US ambassadors to Washington and put them in a stadium along with all DOS employees. Breakfast, lunch and dinner catered by Taco Bell, until everybody understands that protecting a democracy by supporting despotic regimes will come back to bite you real fast in the modern age.
Once everyone is on the same page, the next step is to take this simple quiz: What is the difference between a market economy and a democracy?
It might take a month or so of subsisting on burritos (especially if the quiz taker has been posted to China), but eventually everyone will figure out the answer.
Loony Tunes Cable News
Once in a while Pundita receives a letter that goes something like this: "How do you stay sane if you're following world news 24/7? I'm asking because I want to start a blog about foreign affairs."
Well, first of all -- and here I think I speak for many veteran bloggers -- the line between sanity and insanity lurks around 18/7. Once you near the 20/7 range of news consumption, you're getting beyond the help of medication.
In truth you can't closely follow world news without meeting the Twilight Zone. So a lot of the work of staying sane is finding ways to ignore that zone opening up while you scan news wires. Take this item from yesterday, for example:
About 3 million of those victims are sleeping in the open, during a part of the year in Pakistan when the temperature is plunging and snowstorms are looming in the mountainous regions. People in the worst-affected zones can't take refuge in the existing structures. This is because there are still earth tremors and the structures are very unsound; buildings collapse on a tremor.
So it's down now to a matter of days -- a few weeks if you are a hopeful sort -- before you're looking at a human death toll that could easily reach a half million within hours.
That prospect could have been avoided if Pakistan had been quicker to accept India's offer to fly aid into Pakistan's remote regions. (We're still twiddling our thumbs waiting on November 7, when the red tape will finally unwind enough from the Line of Control to allow for Pak Kashmiri quake victims to enter India's refugee shelters.)
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has thrown his weight behind speeding up the process. Today he announced that Pakistan is delaying purchases of F-16 jet fighters from the United States. This is so the projected expense can be diverted to aid Pakistan's quake victims.
Here a reasonable person would ask, "What the hell does a projected expense have to do with the next 72 hours in Pakistan's mountainous regions?"
Pundita is an expert at making the Twilight Zone vanish but I can't help you, if you insist on understanding what's going on in that part of the world. Your best bet is to pretend that Musharraf's announcement is a clever way to twist another billion in cash out of the United States. That makes sense, doesn't it?
It's easier to explain away UNICEF's poor prioritizing. There are uncounted billions of dollars sloshing around in what might be countless UN programs, but the monies aren't fungible. So you can have, say, a Palestine UN committee collecting USD millions to educate Muslims about the threat of Zionism. But no portion of that money can be used to deliver food and tents to Muslims in imminent danger of freezing and starving to death. Go down the list of UN programs to find the same story.
The upshot? Last week the United Nations pleaded for millions USD in donations so they don't have to suspend helicopter relief flights to Pakistan's quake victims.
Without the helicopter flights directed by the US military based in Afghanistan, the estimated 79,000+ death toll in Pakistan from the quake and its aftermath would be much higher. The bad news is that the death toll is galloping toward 100,000 and that's not including projected deaths from weather exposure and starvation as winter closes in.
Meanwhile, it's business as usual at the United Nations.
Pundita will not reveal all her secrets for staying sane. However, I will share a trick if you're a heavy-duty news consumer. I turn over certain stories to the news anchors and Talking Heads at Loony Tunes Cable News and let them have a whack. Recent LTCN offerings:
> Cooking with Tony and Jacques: Making bangers souffle in the microwave.
> Kim Jong-il analyzes news on high level Chinese Communist Party officials "Basically, they're all trying to move to Singapore."
> Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, aka Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ("Just call me Brother Daffy") discusses why Saudi Arabian princes are never seen in public without a headdress. "Less bother than hair straightening preparations." *
> The Yossef Bodansky-Paris Hilton daily report on terrorist activities. [tossing his pen in the air] "Paris, we've been over this before. The Land of Two Rivers is not in Minneapolis."
> The Apprentice for Tyrants. Individuals on two teams compete in tasks to show Robert Mugabe why they deserve to be his top general. Elimination rounds take place in front of a firing squad.
> Remake of Casablanca starring Victor Yushchenko as Rick and Yulia Timoshenko as Ilsa. Ukraine's government a bunch of crooks? Round up the usual oligarchs.
If you want to subscribe to LTCN you'll have to use your imagination. And stay on that 18/7 side of the line, hear?
As to what's really going on in Pakistan, same thing that's been going on for decades. China's military is worried that Pakistan will rejoin India. Pakistan's military is worried that if the US pulls out of the region again, this will leave them facing China's anger if they get too friendly with India.
Will many Pakistani earthquake survivors have to die because of such worries? Many have already died for that reason. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
* For those who have not followed the feud, Qaddafi's embrace of his African heritage has caused discomfit among Arab royalty, particulary the Saudi royals -- much to his glee.
Well, first of all -- and here I think I speak for many veteran bloggers -- the line between sanity and insanity lurks around 18/7. Once you near the 20/7 range of news consumption, you're getting beyond the help of medication.
In truth you can't closely follow world news without meeting the Twilight Zone. So a lot of the work of staying sane is finding ways to ignore that zone opening up while you scan news wires. Take this item from yesterday, for example:
Jordan's Queen Rania, speaking on behalf of the U.N. children's fund, called for help to immunize Pakistani children against disease. UNICEF officials say they are planning a measles vaccination program, and earthquake rescue workers also warned that cases of acute respiratory infection and diarrhea have been increasing.Of course there's nothing eerie about asking for donations to a measles vaccination program for child earthquake victims. Until you learn that only 300,000 tents have been delivered thus far to shelter Pakistan's homeless earthquake victims.
About 3 million of those victims are sleeping in the open, during a part of the year in Pakistan when the temperature is plunging and snowstorms are looming in the mountainous regions. People in the worst-affected zones can't take refuge in the existing structures. This is because there are still earth tremors and the structures are very unsound; buildings collapse on a tremor.
So it's down now to a matter of days -- a few weeks if you are a hopeful sort -- before you're looking at a human death toll that could easily reach a half million within hours.
That prospect could have been avoided if Pakistan had been quicker to accept India's offer to fly aid into Pakistan's remote regions. (We're still twiddling our thumbs waiting on November 7, when the red tape will finally unwind enough from the Line of Control to allow for Pak Kashmiri quake victims to enter India's refugee shelters.)
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has thrown his weight behind speeding up the process. Today he announced that Pakistan is delaying purchases of F-16 jet fighters from the United States. This is so the projected expense can be diverted to aid Pakistan's quake victims.
Here a reasonable person would ask, "What the hell does a projected expense have to do with the next 72 hours in Pakistan's mountainous regions?"
Pundita is an expert at making the Twilight Zone vanish but I can't help you, if you insist on understanding what's going on in that part of the world. Your best bet is to pretend that Musharraf's announcement is a clever way to twist another billion in cash out of the United States. That makes sense, doesn't it?
It's easier to explain away UNICEF's poor prioritizing. There are uncounted billions of dollars sloshing around in what might be countless UN programs, but the monies aren't fungible. So you can have, say, a Palestine UN committee collecting USD millions to educate Muslims about the threat of Zionism. But no portion of that money can be used to deliver food and tents to Muslims in imminent danger of freezing and starving to death. Go down the list of UN programs to find the same story.
The upshot? Last week the United Nations pleaded for millions USD in donations so they don't have to suspend helicopter relief flights to Pakistan's quake victims.
Without the helicopter flights directed by the US military based in Afghanistan, the estimated 79,000+ death toll in Pakistan from the quake and its aftermath would be much higher. The bad news is that the death toll is galloping toward 100,000 and that's not including projected deaths from weather exposure and starvation as winter closes in.
Meanwhile, it's business as usual at the United Nations.
Pundita will not reveal all her secrets for staying sane. However, I will share a trick if you're a heavy-duty news consumer. I turn over certain stories to the news anchors and Talking Heads at Loony Tunes Cable News and let them have a whack. Recent LTCN offerings:
> Cooking with Tony and Jacques: Making bangers souffle in the microwave.
> Kim Jong-il analyzes news on high level Chinese Communist Party officials "Basically, they're all trying to move to Singapore."
> Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, aka Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ("Just call me Brother Daffy") discusses why Saudi Arabian princes are never seen in public without a headdress. "Less bother than hair straightening preparations." *
> The Yossef Bodansky-Paris Hilton daily report on terrorist activities. [tossing his pen in the air] "Paris, we've been over this before. The Land of Two Rivers is not in Minneapolis."
> The Apprentice for Tyrants. Individuals on two teams compete in tasks to show Robert Mugabe why they deserve to be his top general. Elimination rounds take place in front of a firing squad.
> Remake of Casablanca starring Victor Yushchenko as Rick and Yulia Timoshenko as Ilsa. Ukraine's government a bunch of crooks? Round up the usual oligarchs.
If you want to subscribe to LTCN you'll have to use your imagination. And stay on that 18/7 side of the line, hear?
As to what's really going on in Pakistan, same thing that's been going on for decades. China's military is worried that Pakistan will rejoin India. Pakistan's military is worried that if the US pulls out of the region again, this will leave them facing China's anger if they get too friendly with India.
Will many Pakistani earthquake survivors have to die because of such worries? Many have already died for that reason. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
* For those who have not followed the feud, Qaddafi's embrace of his African heritage has caused discomfit among Arab royalty, particulary the Saudi royals -- much to his glee.
Thursday, November 3
"State is Metternich with satphones"
Letter 3
Glad you enjoyed the analysis but look how much you conveyed in one short sentence! Yet Metternich had his excuse: the times in which he lived. What is the State Department's excuse?
If State continues on the same path it places America in grave danger because having recanted we can't say "Fooled you twice" without unleashing implacable rage and distrust.
Bush had a bad moment in East Europe when (after talking about America's support for democracy) he was confronted by a reporter about the phony Orange Revolution. He made an incoherent reply but what could he say? "I have no control over the State Department?"
Yet his democracy doctrine has been swimming upstream just because of the Orange Revolution. China's leaders and every other despot (including Assad) point to the example of the Orange putsch to justify cracking down on genuine democracy movements -- on the argument that they're protecting their people from American meddling!
"Remember the Orange Revolution" has become the cry used by despots to justify everything from crackdowns on the Internet to public protests. The Orange Revolution has been used to mock every speech that Bush (and Rice) have made in defense of democracy.
We've gotten two breaks: Bush didn't fully articulate the democracy doctrine until after the travesty in Ukraine, and the successes of the Afghan and Iraq elections came close in time. But we are now inviting the world to believe in our commitment to genuine democracy. If we go back on our word now I do not want to think about the consequences.
State is not the only one with satphones: it is now virtually impossible to pull off a phony revolution without many people finding out -- except in America, of course, where most of the population still doesn't know that the Orange Revolution was a stage show that utterly failed to meet State's objective.
The larger issue is that Metternich's view is suicidal in an era of human megapopulations. I've been inching (okay, careening) toward that realization for years and this past year of blogging helped me crystallize it. It struck me with great force that democracy is no longer a choice for humanity; it is the only model of governance that is suited to deal with megapopulations.
When societies get into the tens of millions, the oligarchical and monarchical models of governing collapse. Then rulers have two choices: "winnow" the population down to a more manageable size (via genocide, driving populations to another region, etc.) or open up the governing process to a larger number of people.
Democracy is the only protection against the race dying from its very success. The more viewpoints represented, the more input, the more problem solving ability brought into the governing process, the better the chance at solving the problems that face megapopulations.
This defense of democracy is divorced from a value system and thus might be too cold-blooded for many tastes. Yet it rests, I think, on unassailable data drawn from every kind of management situation and indeed every human social experience:
When a company or family gets too big, more help is needed to manage it and once the numbers become great, diversity of experience and knowledge are critical to effective management. This diversity can only come from the democratic process.
Metternich's viewpoint was built from managing a very small population; State's view was honed during an era when most of the world was in effect a small population from the American viewpoint. That's because most of the world had no way to protest being treated in the manner of chess pieces. Today, a nuke in a suitcase explains that the unwashed masses will make their displeasure heard by one means or another.
A new age is here, and State is dangerously oblivious to it.
Glad you enjoyed the analysis but look how much you conveyed in one short sentence! Yet Metternich had his excuse: the times in which he lived. What is the State Department's excuse?
If State continues on the same path it places America in grave danger because having recanted we can't say "Fooled you twice" without unleashing implacable rage and distrust.
Bush had a bad moment in East Europe when (after talking about America's support for democracy) he was confronted by a reporter about the phony Orange Revolution. He made an incoherent reply but what could he say? "I have no control over the State Department?"
Yet his democracy doctrine has been swimming upstream just because of the Orange Revolution. China's leaders and every other despot (including Assad) point to the example of the Orange putsch to justify cracking down on genuine democracy movements -- on the argument that they're protecting their people from American meddling!
"Remember the Orange Revolution" has become the cry used by despots to justify everything from crackdowns on the Internet to public protests. The Orange Revolution has been used to mock every speech that Bush (and Rice) have made in defense of democracy.
We've gotten two breaks: Bush didn't fully articulate the democracy doctrine until after the travesty in Ukraine, and the successes of the Afghan and Iraq elections came close in time. But we are now inviting the world to believe in our commitment to genuine democracy. If we go back on our word now I do not want to think about the consequences.
State is not the only one with satphones: it is now virtually impossible to pull off a phony revolution without many people finding out -- except in America, of course, where most of the population still doesn't know that the Orange Revolution was a stage show that utterly failed to meet State's objective.
The larger issue is that Metternich's view is suicidal in an era of human megapopulations. I've been inching (okay, careening) toward that realization for years and this past year of blogging helped me crystallize it. It struck me with great force that democracy is no longer a choice for humanity; it is the only model of governance that is suited to deal with megapopulations.
When societies get into the tens of millions, the oligarchical and monarchical models of governing collapse. Then rulers have two choices: "winnow" the population down to a more manageable size (via genocide, driving populations to another region, etc.) or open up the governing process to a larger number of people.
Democracy is the only protection against the race dying from its very success. The more viewpoints represented, the more input, the more problem solving ability brought into the governing process, the better the chance at solving the problems that face megapopulations.
This defense of democracy is divorced from a value system and thus might be too cold-blooded for many tastes. Yet it rests, I think, on unassailable data drawn from every kind of management situation and indeed every human social experience:
When a company or family gets too big, more help is needed to manage it and once the numbers become great, diversity of experience and knowledge are critical to effective management. This diversity can only come from the democratic process.
Metternich's viewpoint was built from managing a very small population; State's view was honed during an era when most of the world was in effect a small population from the American viewpoint. That's because most of the world had no way to protest being treated in the manner of chess pieces. Today, a nuke in a suitcase explains that the unwashed masses will make their displeasure heard by one means or another.
A new age is here, and State is dangerously oblivious to it.
Wake Up
A blogger wrote this morning to protest Pundita's opinion that John Bolton should have been given the post of Secretary of State. The blogger noted in mock horror (I assume it was mock) that the appointment would have unlocked "the seventh seal on the way to apocalypse."
While waiting to learn whether I have permission to publish the blogger's entire letter and his name, I wrote a response to the above observation, which I publish here.
Readers whose views on John Bolton were shaped by the news media might wish to first study the informed opinion of 53 distinguished former ambassadors.
The endorsements were in response to the Senate review of Bolton's qualifications to be US Ambassador to the United Nations. This writing projects what John Bolton could have accomplished as Secretary of State, and why he had no chance to be offered the position.
Apocalypse has not broken out at the United Nations since Bolton arrived. Instead, the United Nations Security Council quickly delivered an unanimous vote on the Syria resolution; this, after cosmetic changes to the resolution's wording that allowed China and Russia to save face but which didn't water down the seriousness of the demands.
I'll grant this much: There would have been an apocalyptic battle at Foggy Bottom if by some miracle Bush could have put Bolton in as Secretary of State. By the time the dust would have settled, several obstructionists at State would have been reassigned to token posts. (There would have been no way to fire them or pressure them into resigning, at least not without another battle that would have taken years.)
Reassigning the obstructionists would have cleared the way for a coherent, modern US foreign policy. Also, Bolton as Secretary of State would have put the Bush doctrine at the helm of US foreign policy instead of the Chirac Multilateralism school, which State adopted during the Clinton era, and which Condoleezza Rice and Robert Zoellick have carried forward at State. *
But few Americans can imagine what John Bolton would have accomplished as Secretary of State because he was smeared by the Eurocrat wing of the Democrat Party, GOP toadies for the Chirac School mounted a limp-wristed defense of Bolton, and praise for Bolton from neoconservatives amounted to damnation.
As it was, Bolton's trip to the UN as US Ambassador was blocked for months during a critical period while Bush had to decide whether to override Congress on the matter. America and her allies lost precious time in the war because of that.
While he was at State Bolton was repeatedly blocked by State mandarins who believed it was better to follow along with the EU Three's approach to negotiating with Iran over nuclear proliferation. He was blocked as well by mandarins who wanted to carry forward State's badly conceived, outmoded policy on China.
The result: Bolton, as did his predecessors, failed to bring about progress in negotiations that by now could have disarmed the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
The American Left (and several on the Right, I seem to recall) went to lengths to portray Bolton as so bad-tempered that he was incapable of pulling together multilateral negotiations. Yet as John O'Sullivan pointed out for the National Review Online:
John Bolton was so long in getting to the United Nations because President Bush was already overseeing a shooting war on multiple fronts and didn't want the Beltway War between DoD and State to escalate into a shooting one.
I hardly exaggerate about the shooting part, if you consider the very damaging CIA and State "leaks" about military matters that occur every time State mandarins become enraged with Bush or Rumsfeld.
The tragedy is that John Bolton's approach is just what America and the world need at this time. It is a practical approach, rather than a pragmatic or idealistic one. His approach is making good progress at the United Nations. It could have done the same at the US Department of State.
Bolton's practical orientation allowed him to grow and change with the times, while those who wield great power at State remain stuck in an era that is gone. To this day, few Americans understand that there are people serving at the US foreign office who through pragmatism believe with all their heart that the best defense of America lies in not breaking with Brussels policy.
If you should observe, "I thought defense policy is shaped by the White House, Congress and Pentagon" -- now you know I wasn't joking when I wrote that I would have advised Cindy Sheehan to protest outside the US Department of State, if she wanted redress.
The war on terror wouldn't have been necessary, if after the breakup of the Soviet Union the White House and Congress had brought US defense policy in line with the times -- and ordered State to recall that America's reason for existence was broader than making sure the Soviet Union never rose again.
I could have also told Cindy Sheehan this: the Iraq insurgency would have been over by now if John Bolton had taken the helm at State. But I never did seek her out when she came to Washington. I suppose that's because I feared I'd grab her by the shoulders and yell, "Wake up!"
Not a kind thing to do to a bereaved mother. But maybe now you can understand why John Bolton did indeed display a short temper at times while at State.
* For more on the differences between the Chirac School and the Bush doctrine, see Pundita's Two very different views of the world, which builds on points in Belmont Club's Pro and Contra essay, linked above. I have just noticed that the one-year anniversary of the essay's publication is nearing. So this is a good time to remind readers that Wretchard's Pro and Contra inspired me to create this blog.
While waiting to learn whether I have permission to publish the blogger's entire letter and his name, I wrote a response to the above observation, which I publish here.
Readers whose views on John Bolton were shaped by the news media might wish to first study the informed opinion of 53 distinguished former ambassadors.
The endorsements were in response to the Senate review of Bolton's qualifications to be US Ambassador to the United Nations. This writing projects what John Bolton could have accomplished as Secretary of State, and why he had no chance to be offered the position.
Apocalypse has not broken out at the United Nations since Bolton arrived. Instead, the United Nations Security Council quickly delivered an unanimous vote on the Syria resolution; this, after cosmetic changes to the resolution's wording that allowed China and Russia to save face but which didn't water down the seriousness of the demands.
I'll grant this much: There would have been an apocalyptic battle at Foggy Bottom if by some miracle Bush could have put Bolton in as Secretary of State. By the time the dust would have settled, several obstructionists at State would have been reassigned to token posts. (There would have been no way to fire them or pressure them into resigning, at least not without another battle that would have taken years.)
Reassigning the obstructionists would have cleared the way for a coherent, modern US foreign policy. Also, Bolton as Secretary of State would have put the Bush doctrine at the helm of US foreign policy instead of the Chirac Multilateralism school, which State adopted during the Clinton era, and which Condoleezza Rice and Robert Zoellick have carried forward at State. *
But few Americans can imagine what John Bolton would have accomplished as Secretary of State because he was smeared by the Eurocrat wing of the Democrat Party, GOP toadies for the Chirac School mounted a limp-wristed defense of Bolton, and praise for Bolton from neoconservatives amounted to damnation.
As it was, Bolton's trip to the UN as US Ambassador was blocked for months during a critical period while Bush had to decide whether to override Congress on the matter. America and her allies lost precious time in the war because of that.
While he was at State Bolton was repeatedly blocked by State mandarins who believed it was better to follow along with the EU Three's approach to negotiating with Iran over nuclear proliferation. He was blocked as well by mandarins who wanted to carry forward State's badly conceived, outmoded policy on China.
The result: Bolton, as did his predecessors, failed to bring about progress in negotiations that by now could have disarmed the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
The American Left (and several on the Right, I seem to recall) went to lengths to portray Bolton as so bad-tempered that he was incapable of pulling together multilateral negotiations. Yet as John O'Sullivan pointed out for the National Review Online:
[Bolton] devised a practical way of halting the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups and rogue states -- the Proliferation Security Initiative -- that the international community has now signed onto. The PSI advanced U.S. interests by recruiting those allies who could offer America real help to prevent its enemies obtaining weapons of mass destruction. That was pragmatic multilateralism of a high order. [...]O'Sullivan also pointed out in the same writing that Bolton was among the James Baker proteges "...who managed the delicate diplomacy of defeating the Soviet Union and reunifying Germany without provoking a major European crisis."
John Bolton was so long in getting to the United Nations because President Bush was already overseeing a shooting war on multiple fronts and didn't want the Beltway War between DoD and State to escalate into a shooting one.
I hardly exaggerate about the shooting part, if you consider the very damaging CIA and State "leaks" about military matters that occur every time State mandarins become enraged with Bush or Rumsfeld.
The tragedy is that John Bolton's approach is just what America and the world need at this time. It is a practical approach, rather than a pragmatic or idealistic one. His approach is making good progress at the United Nations. It could have done the same at the US Department of State.
Bolton's practical orientation allowed him to grow and change with the times, while those who wield great power at State remain stuck in an era that is gone. To this day, few Americans understand that there are people serving at the US foreign office who through pragmatism believe with all their heart that the best defense of America lies in not breaking with Brussels policy.
If you should observe, "I thought defense policy is shaped by the White House, Congress and Pentagon" -- now you know I wasn't joking when I wrote that I would have advised Cindy Sheehan to protest outside the US Department of State, if she wanted redress.
The war on terror wouldn't have been necessary, if after the breakup of the Soviet Union the White House and Congress had brought US defense policy in line with the times -- and ordered State to recall that America's reason for existence was broader than making sure the Soviet Union never rose again.
I could have also told Cindy Sheehan this: the Iraq insurgency would have been over by now if John Bolton had taken the helm at State. But I never did seek her out when she came to Washington. I suppose that's because I feared I'd grab her by the shoulders and yell, "Wake up!"
Not a kind thing to do to a bereaved mother. But maybe now you can understand why John Bolton did indeed display a short temper at times while at State.
* For more on the differences between the Chirac School and the Bush doctrine, see Pundita's Two very different views of the world, which builds on points in Belmont Club's Pro and Contra essay, linked above. I have just noticed that the one-year anniversary of the essay's publication is nearing. So this is a good time to remind readers that Wretchard's Pro and Contra inspired me to create this blog.
Same old song at Foggy Bottom
Letter 2
My estimation is that things are even worse at State now. Maybe I'm saying that because I had unrealistic expectations of Condoleezza Rice. If you recall, during 2003 I brushed aside your cautions about her.
I knew she was a Cold War warrior. I knew Robert Blackwill (and Madeline Albright's father) had been her mentor, which gave me a bad turn. But she stayed on point during a very bad period for the Bush administration.
I didn't expect miracles from Rice's first year at State; anyone appointed to the job by any president has to work around the mandarins dug in there. Yet I really believed it was a new day for American foreign policy when she arrived at State.
Then, within weeks of taking the helm at State, Rice's fawning and cowardly response to China's pressure -- and Red Queen response to reporters who questioned her ditching human rights demands -- and her bullying, irrational and poorly informed response to Russia set off my alarms. The double standard was painfully obvious.
Then came John Batchelor's remark one night on his show, "Condi only wants one war at a time." That clued me that as with all good Cold War warriors of the Albright school, she was looking at Iraq as distinct from the war on terror. That, despite all she had said in defense of the Iraq invasion.
Since coming to State, Rice put a loyalist in charge of dealing with North Korea/6 party talks; his expertise is Eastern Europe. He has made one mistake after another, in my book.
Rice's unreasonable, completely uninformed and dangerous expectations about India threaten the fragile 'new beginning' of diplomatic relations between India and US, which Bush pushed hard for.
Pressure on Japan has made things more difficult for the Japanese vis-a-vis China -- an already difficult situation.
Ditto for Ukraine -- Rice (as did Powell) completely ignored the strategic situation as she's done for all the FSU that have close historical ties with Russia.
Ditto for Latin America. She has consistently misread the situation there, and particularly with regard to Venezuela.
In his recent speech Zoellick (who is Rice's mouthpiece) very precisely laid out State's 'mature' Cold War policy, which was to "expand" China and "contract" the Soviet Union. The policy remained in effect even after the Soviet Union dissolved.
Although Putin was hysterical in his language after Beslan, his observation that Britain and the US had adopted the '"Carthage solution" in the post-Soviet era with regard to Russia was not too far off the mark. To the victor goes the spoils of war; with the Cold War won, State became obsessed with trying to ensure that the Soviet Union could never form again.
Yet by Clinton's era simple greed jostled geostrategy as the prime mover in State's actions. The Russian mobs and Western businesspeople who wanted to run Russia or rip off its people got their hooks into State, USAID and the World Bank via oligarchs who shaped State's views on the FSU in general and the situation in Russia.
State continued with the view formed during the 1990s: Russia could exist if it became a vassal of the United States. Then by a whisker Putin beat Khordokovsky at his own game. (Indeed, only K's arrogance caused him to lose that match.) K's drubbing enraged State.
That brought forth the Get Putin campaign and heavy-handed meddling in Ukraine's election; the latter only shifted power from one oligarch clan to another.
All that sent Bush's efforts down the drain. He'd managed to convince Putin that the US wasn't intent on reducing Russia to the size of a postage stamp. The US meddling and bullying talk played into the hand of Russia's hard right factions.
The upshot? Russia's military learned for certain they couldn't count on the US when China leaned on them. So Russia drew closer to China and dug in their heels about Syria and Iran. And the majority of Russians slipped back to Cold War paranoia about America's intentions.
As for the rest -- some of the best Cold War warriors have now left State, people still under the influence of the oligarchs remain dug in there, and Rice just doesn't get much about the concept of a truly 'American' policy, beyond keeping NATO together and reducing Russia to jelly.
So that's why I think things are worse now at State than in 2003. The mandarins treat the Bush doctrine as a blip and they got a Secretary of State who will hold the line until Bush leaves.
Rice's democracy speeches have been wonderful, but I suspect that comes from Bush breathing down her neck.
Maybe I am being too hard on her, maybe a leopard can change its spots. But I think we would have been better off, if Bush had sent Bolton to head State and sent Rice to the UN.
12:30 PM Update
For those horrified at the above suggestion, kindly reserve judgment until you've read Wake Up, which I published in response to a reader's observation that Bolton as Secretary of State would have unlocked "the seventh seal on the way to apocalypse."
My estimation is that things are even worse at State now. Maybe I'm saying that because I had unrealistic expectations of Condoleezza Rice. If you recall, during 2003 I brushed aside your cautions about her.
I knew she was a Cold War warrior. I knew Robert Blackwill (and Madeline Albright's father) had been her mentor, which gave me a bad turn. But she stayed on point during a very bad period for the Bush administration.
I didn't expect miracles from Rice's first year at State; anyone appointed to the job by any president has to work around the mandarins dug in there. Yet I really believed it was a new day for American foreign policy when she arrived at State.
Then, within weeks of taking the helm at State, Rice's fawning and cowardly response to China's pressure -- and Red Queen response to reporters who questioned her ditching human rights demands -- and her bullying, irrational and poorly informed response to Russia set off my alarms. The double standard was painfully obvious.
Then came John Batchelor's remark one night on his show, "Condi only wants one war at a time." That clued me that as with all good Cold War warriors of the Albright school, she was looking at Iraq as distinct from the war on terror. That, despite all she had said in defense of the Iraq invasion.
Since coming to State, Rice put a loyalist in charge of dealing with North Korea/6 party talks; his expertise is Eastern Europe. He has made one mistake after another, in my book.
Rice's unreasonable, completely uninformed and dangerous expectations about India threaten the fragile 'new beginning' of diplomatic relations between India and US, which Bush pushed hard for.
Pressure on Japan has made things more difficult for the Japanese vis-a-vis China -- an already difficult situation.
Ditto for Ukraine -- Rice (as did Powell) completely ignored the strategic situation as she's done for all the FSU that have close historical ties with Russia.
Ditto for Latin America. She has consistently misread the situation there, and particularly with regard to Venezuela.
In his recent speech Zoellick (who is Rice's mouthpiece) very precisely laid out State's 'mature' Cold War policy, which was to "expand" China and "contract" the Soviet Union. The policy remained in effect even after the Soviet Union dissolved.
Although Putin was hysterical in his language after Beslan, his observation that Britain and the US had adopted the '"Carthage solution" in the post-Soviet era with regard to Russia was not too far off the mark. To the victor goes the spoils of war; with the Cold War won, State became obsessed with trying to ensure that the Soviet Union could never form again.
Yet by Clinton's era simple greed jostled geostrategy as the prime mover in State's actions. The Russian mobs and Western businesspeople who wanted to run Russia or rip off its people got their hooks into State, USAID and the World Bank via oligarchs who shaped State's views on the FSU in general and the situation in Russia.
State continued with the view formed during the 1990s: Russia could exist if it became a vassal of the United States. Then by a whisker Putin beat Khordokovsky at his own game. (Indeed, only K's arrogance caused him to lose that match.) K's drubbing enraged State.
That brought forth the Get Putin campaign and heavy-handed meddling in Ukraine's election; the latter only shifted power from one oligarch clan to another.
All that sent Bush's efforts down the drain. He'd managed to convince Putin that the US wasn't intent on reducing Russia to the size of a postage stamp. The US meddling and bullying talk played into the hand of Russia's hard right factions.
The upshot? Russia's military learned for certain they couldn't count on the US when China leaned on them. So Russia drew closer to China and dug in their heels about Syria and Iran. And the majority of Russians slipped back to Cold War paranoia about America's intentions.
As for the rest -- some of the best Cold War warriors have now left State, people still under the influence of the oligarchs remain dug in there, and Rice just doesn't get much about the concept of a truly 'American' policy, beyond keeping NATO together and reducing Russia to jelly.
So that's why I think things are worse now at State than in 2003. The mandarins treat the Bush doctrine as a blip and they got a Secretary of State who will hold the line until Bush leaves.
Rice's democracy speeches have been wonderful, but I suspect that comes from Bush breathing down her neck.
Maybe I am being too hard on her, maybe a leopard can change its spots. But I think we would have been better off, if Bush had sent Bolton to head State and sent Rice to the UN.
12:30 PM Update
For those horrified at the above suggestion, kindly reserve judgment until you've read Wake Up, which I published in response to a reader's observation that Bolton as Secretary of State would have unlocked "the seventh seal on the way to apocalypse."
Wednesday, November 2
Did al Qaeda include Tinkerbell in the death threat?
12:05 AM UPDATE
Oops! Pundita Brain Furballs Alert ack ack! They sentenced him to death for playing St. Peter, not Peter Pan. Now we can breathe a sigh of relief that Tinkerbell is not on the hit list.
* * * * * *
Al Qaeda has put out a contract on Egyptian actor Omar Sharif (remember Lawrence of Arabia?) because he announced that he enjoyed playing the role of Peter Pan. Tick tock tick tock is that a crocodile drawing near Captain Hook?
In other terror news, Riehl World View points out that Iran made the AP wires three times today and that none of the news is pleasant. I guess Iran's bosses are not happy with Monday's UNSC vote on Syria. Look for more chest beating from Iran, more attempts to provoke Israel into a war, and more "Made in Iran" bombs shipped across the Iraq border.
Oops! Pundita Brain Furballs Alert ack ack! They sentenced him to death for playing St. Peter, not Peter Pan. Now we can breathe a sigh of relief that Tinkerbell is not on the hit list.
* * * * * *
Al Qaeda has put out a contract on Egyptian actor Omar Sharif (remember Lawrence of Arabia?) because he announced that he enjoyed playing the role of Peter Pan. Tick tock tick tock is that a crocodile drawing near Captain Hook?
In other terror news, Riehl World View points out that Iran made the AP wires three times today and that none of the news is pleasant. I guess Iran's bosses are not happy with Monday's UNSC vote on Syria. Look for more chest beating from Iran, more attempts to provoke Israel into a war, and more "Made in Iran" bombs shipped across the Iraq border.
An unwilling revolutionary
"I'm assuming you heard Stephen Hayes on John Batchelor [show] last night but have you read his article for the Weekly Standard? I don't want to use the word treason, but I don't know what else to call Joseph Wilson's lying and the support he got from the CIA.
Also, I don't know what to make of Hayes' claim that the White House is spooked by the CIA's machinations. Do you think that's the right interpretation of Bush's unwillingness to strongly defend the US invasion of Iraq?
Aries in Los Angeles"
Dear Aries:
Everything that Wilson and the CIA did is wholly justified, wholly consistent with supporting the NATO alliance, which is held key to defending America. President Bush isn't spooked; he's caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The situation is rich in irony because by temperament Bush is the last person to be a revolutionary. He sees himself as a defender of the best of the old order. Thus, his decision after 9/11 to preserve American-led institutions such as NATO, UN and the World Bank by reforming and modernizing them.
Here we come to a snag: those organizations are dedicated to preserving the peace, which is not the same as promoting genuine democracy. That's the problem with revolutionary ideas; you can't both break with an old order and compromise with it.
That's also the problem for Republicans trying to muster arguments in defense of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. They're arguing about the price of tea unless they defend a purely American-oriented defense policy, which they're unwilling to do if it means taking an overt stand against the NATO alliance.
Thus, in the manner of ecclesiastics debating the size of angels, these Republicans nit-pick over the hideously complicated facts of the Wilson/Plame affair and US intelligence on WMD in Iraq -- and lose the American public in the process. *
Bush's democracy doctrine, when piled on top of his defense doctrine (which reserves the right to preemptive military strikes) is a direct challenge to the guiding principles of the NATO alliance. So Bush's attempts to preserve the alliance have backed the administration into a position that works against his decision to invade Iraq.
Peel away the layers of debate and you're left asking whether America's best defense is found in an alliance with other nations or adherence to fundamental American principles. Unless defenders of the Iraq invasion engage with that central debate, American political and business interests that view the democracy doctrine as plumb loco will continue to hack away at the Iraq invasion.
Invariably, people who find themselves an unwilling revolutionary try to get out of the dilemma by reaching for a compromise, as well they should. Nobody with an eye on history seeks revolution; it is horribly messy process that brings suffering to all.
Yet Bush's democracy doctrine rides on the tide of human progress, not the will of an American leader. There is no turning back now.
* I'm not familiar enough with Stephen Hayes' writings to judge whether he's among such Republicans. His latest article about the Wilson/Plame affair strikes me as simply well sourced reporting on a view that's gained coin among Republicans. They'd rather argue about whether Bush is spooked than grapple with the central debate.
Also, I don't know what to make of Hayes' claim that the White House is spooked by the CIA's machinations. Do you think that's the right interpretation of Bush's unwillingness to strongly defend the US invasion of Iraq?
Aries in Los Angeles"
Dear Aries:
Everything that Wilson and the CIA did is wholly justified, wholly consistent with supporting the NATO alliance, which is held key to defending America. President Bush isn't spooked; he's caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The situation is rich in irony because by temperament Bush is the last person to be a revolutionary. He sees himself as a defender of the best of the old order. Thus, his decision after 9/11 to preserve American-led institutions such as NATO, UN and the World Bank by reforming and modernizing them.
Here we come to a snag: those organizations are dedicated to preserving the peace, which is not the same as promoting genuine democracy. That's the problem with revolutionary ideas; you can't both break with an old order and compromise with it.
That's also the problem for Republicans trying to muster arguments in defense of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. They're arguing about the price of tea unless they defend a purely American-oriented defense policy, which they're unwilling to do if it means taking an overt stand against the NATO alliance.
Thus, in the manner of ecclesiastics debating the size of angels, these Republicans nit-pick over the hideously complicated facts of the Wilson/Plame affair and US intelligence on WMD in Iraq -- and lose the American public in the process. *
Bush's democracy doctrine, when piled on top of his defense doctrine (which reserves the right to preemptive military strikes) is a direct challenge to the guiding principles of the NATO alliance. So Bush's attempts to preserve the alliance have backed the administration into a position that works against his decision to invade Iraq.
Peel away the layers of debate and you're left asking whether America's best defense is found in an alliance with other nations or adherence to fundamental American principles. Unless defenders of the Iraq invasion engage with that central debate, American political and business interests that view the democracy doctrine as plumb loco will continue to hack away at the Iraq invasion.
Invariably, people who find themselves an unwilling revolutionary try to get out of the dilemma by reaching for a compromise, as well they should. Nobody with an eye on history seeks revolution; it is horribly messy process that brings suffering to all.
Yet Bush's democracy doctrine rides on the tide of human progress, not the will of an American leader. There is no turning back now.
* I'm not familiar enough with Stephen Hayes' writings to judge whether he's among such Republicans. His latest article about the Wilson/Plame affair strikes me as simply well sourced reporting on a view that's gained coin among Republicans. They'd rather argue about whether Bush is spooked than grapple with the central debate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)