Saturday, November 20, 2004
IRAQ THE MODEL
Friday, November 19, 2004
Stupid British!
I heard href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4015441.stm"what Mr. Chirac said few days ago and read about it everywhere I turn my head to. At first, it was something I felt I shouldn’t even bother to listen to. It was something like what Al Jazeera keep showing us or what Arab leaders say all the time. But again this was a president of one of the most advanced and civilized countries in our times. It wasn’t Kaddafi or Assad and it made me sad and furious.The French government keep surprising me with their intentionally stupid and vicious arguments and I don’t know what to say about it or if it’s even necessary to say something at all. But then I’m an Iraqi citizens and these people are taking about Iraq and usually how the war brought nothing good to Iraq or the world, and I just can’t stay silent about it. I know there’s almost no chance that you’ll read my words Mr. Chirac, but it doesn’t matter, as I’m not writing for you anyway. You live in a different world.In the past, I used to swallow my anger and frustration because I could get killed if I messed up with one of Saddam’s personal friends, but now Saddam is gone and I’m not afraid and I won’t stay silent anymore. This is a difference Mr. Chirac, and it’s a great one, probably just to me and the rest of Iraqis but not to you, and you just have to understand that it’s not all about you and your European dream which no one want to steal from you by the way.The world is certainly not a better place after the war Mr. Chirac, but that’s your world, while our world, Iraqis as well as tens of millions of oppressed people everywhere who are dying for some help, is certainly MUCH better now, and I’m sure the Americans and the British world as well as most countries (including yours) is better and safer and will keep getting better. However I agree with you, as your world, your own personal world, the world of your fellow corrupt politicians in France, Russia, Germany, China and the stinking UN, your fortune and your influence is definitely suffering. I’m even surprised that you ‘saw’ that Saddam’s departure was positive “to a certain extent”, and I can’t wonder why is that! Is it because it left you with some bills you don’t have to pay?!Is my language too offensive?!
Not as half as offensive and irritating as yours and I will NEVER apologize, not even after you apologize and pay the Iraqis back all the money you have stolen from us in return for supporting your partner, Saddam and keeping him in charge for few more years.
You see, your problem and what separate you from men like Tony Blair is that you look only for what you might gain, and again “you” is not the French people, but rather you in person and the bunch of hypocrites that so sadly control the French people and manipulate them through lies and silly arguments.
You never cared what would happen to Iraqis and the rest of the world had Saddam stayed in power, while Tony Blair did. Do you know why? Because he and the British government with all the brave British people live in our world, while you don’t.Stupid British! Why should they care for us, America or their own kids when they can do exactly like you; take advantage of America’s need, blackmail her, support Saddam without taking much risk and gain billions of dollars.Stupid British!Haven’t they learned from WW2 when you got your country back and even decided the fate of other nations on victory even though half of you made peace with the Nazis!? You certainly don’t owe the British and the Americans anything for that, as it was just their own stupidity not to do the math and see how much would they gain.
Their lands weren’t invaded and the Nazis were trying to make a peace with them, yet they refused and fought as hard as men and women can fight to free your country for you, so that your troops could march victoriously in Paris!
And you dare say that the US doesn’t repay favors!??If you don’t like the world after Saddam, and if you miss him that much, you can keep living in your own world and we won’t bother you...at all.
-By Ali.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Stupid British!
I heard href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4015441.stm"what Mr. Chirac said few days ago and read about it everywhere I turn my head to. At first, it was something I felt I shouldn’t even bother to listen to. It was something like what Al Jazeera keep showing us or what Arab leaders say all the time. But again this was a president of one of the most advanced and civilized countries in our times. It wasn’t Kaddafi or Assad and it made me sad and furious.The French government keep surprising me with their intentionally stupid and vicious arguments and I don’t know what to say about it or if it’s even necessary to say something at all. But then I’m an Iraqi citizens and these people are taking about Iraq and usually how the war brought nothing good to Iraq or the world, and I just can’t stay silent about it. I know there’s almost no chance that you’ll read my words Mr. Chirac, but it doesn’t matter, as I’m not writing for you anyway. You live in a different world.In the past, I used to swallow my anger and frustration because I could get killed if I messed up with one of Saddam’s personal friends, but now Saddam is gone and I’m not afraid and I won’t stay silent anymore. This is a difference Mr. Chirac, and it’s a great one, probably just to me and the rest of Iraqis but not to you, and you just have to understand that it’s not all about you and your European dream which no one want to steal from you by the way.The world is certainly not a better place after the war Mr. Chirac, but that’s your world, while our world, Iraqis as well as tens of millions of oppressed people everywhere who are dying for some help, is certainly MUCH better now, and I’m sure the Americans and the British world as well as most countries (including yours) is better and safer and will keep getting better. However I agree with you, as your world, your own personal world, the world of your fellow corrupt politicians in France, Russia, Germany, China and the stinking UN, your fortune and your influence is definitely suffering. I’m even surprised that you ‘saw’ that Saddam’s departure was positive “to a certain extent”, and I can’t wonder why is that! Is it because it left you with some bills you don’t have to pay?!Is my language too offensive?!
Not as half as offensive and irritating as yours and I will NEVER apologize, not even after you apologize and pay the Iraqis back all the money you have stolen from us in return for supporting your partner, Saddam and keeping him in charge for few more years.
You see, your problem and what separate you from men like Tony Blair is that you look only for what you might gain, and again “you” is not the French people, but rather you in person and the bunch of hypocrites that so sadly control the French people and manipulate them through lies and silly arguments.
You never cared what would happen to Iraqis and the rest of the world had Saddam stayed in power, while Tony Blair did. Do you know why? Because he and the British government with all the brave British people live in our world, while you don’t.Stupid British! Why should they care for us, America or their own kids when they can do exactly like you; take advantage of America’s need, blackmail her, support Saddam without taking much risk and gain billions of dollars.Stupid British!Haven’t they learned from WW2 when you got your country back and even decided the fate of other nations on victory even though half of you made peace with the Nazis!? You certainly don’t owe the British and the Americans anything for that, as it was just their own stupidity not to do the math and see how much would they gain.
Their lands weren’t invaded and the Nazis were trying to make a peace with them, yet they refused and fought as hard as men and women can fight to free your country for you, so that your troops could march victoriously in Paris!
And you dare say that the US doesn’t repay favors!??If you don’t like the world after Saddam, and if you miss him that much, you can keep living in your own world and we won’t bother you...at all.
-By Ali.
Friday, November 19, 2004
What the Marine Did
The shooting of an unarmed Iraqi was a tragedy. But was it a war crime?By Owen West and Phillip CarterUpdated Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004, at 10:28 AM PT
A Marine shot an unarmed insurgent in a Fallujah mosque on Saturday. We know this because we saw it. The digital video footage of the shooting—recorded by NBC reporter Kevin Sites, who was embedded with the Marines—is running nearly continuously on cable news channels worldwide. We heard it, too. A Marine says: "He's fucking faking he's dead. He's faking he's fucking dead." The Marine comes into view with his rifle shouldered. There is a rifle shot. An Iraqi leaning against a wall slumps, leaving a blood stain behind. According to CNN, another Marine says, "Well, he's dead now."
This case would not exist without Mr. Sites. That a young soldier deferred to instinct over the rulebook in combat is unsurprising. What was surprising was the near-instant transmission of a battlefield video around the world, allowing us to witness the actions of one American rifleman. Judging by the swift condemnation from all over, the world is drawing its own conclusion about what happened in the bloody mosque. But to judge the Marine fairly takes more perspective and context. The video is clear enough, but truly understanding requires navigating an underlying landscape littered with legal ambiguity and moral craters.
When a unit seizes terrain, its enemy military occupants generally become prisoners, as long as they don't continue fighting. The Third Geneva Convention makes it a war crime to kill or injure a prisoner or to deny medical care to a prisoner for wounds suffered in combat, among other things. If prosecutors charge the Marine with murder, they will argue that the Marines took these Iraqi men as prisoners the moment they secured the building. Moving or not, the wounded Iraqi was a prisoner, and therefore it was a crime to shoot him, even in the crazy kill-or-be-killed environment of Fallujah.
Continue Article
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The practice of taking battlefield prisoners dates back millennia, but the rules for treating them humanely are more recent. Ancient militaries treated prisoners well when they wanted to enslave them, not because there was any norm for doing so. It wasn't until the emergence of the chivalric code in the Middle Ages that rules of conduct came about. Still, even through the 20th century, examples abounded of prisoner mistreatment, especially at the precise moment of surrender—the moment when the battle is supposed to stop instantly and quarter is to be given. Popular histories of World War II are replete with examples of soldiers who killed their enemy after some overture of surrender was made or as retribution for atrocities by the other side. In Vietnam, Sen. John Kerry earned his Silver Star in part because he chased down and shot a fleeing Viet Cong fighter who had fired on his boat only minutes before.
International law treats such breaches mildly, with the understanding that it's difficult to expect soldiers to fight fiercely, then instantly behave amicably at the first signal of surrender. And so, the defense will argue that the Marines did not really secure the building and that these Iraqis were not prisoners yet: They were still combatants and still lawful targets; thus there's no crime. It's not clear how a military jury will judge this Marine when his day in court comes.
The twin essences of war are chaos and killing, so the very idea of placing inflexible constraints on the act of killing is at odds with the fundamental nature of warfare. Managing this cognitive dissonance while trying to stay alive takes tremendous skill. Professional militaries, like the U.S. Marine Corps, do this well because of their discipline and training. But the very existential nature of combat tilts the moral plane under these young riflemen's boots. In a place where you are fighting for your very survival, like the streets of Fallujah, any action that keeps you alive is a good one. And any misstep could get you or your buddies killed.
In this unit's case, one early lesson in Fallujah was to avoid Iraqis altogether, dead or alive. Iraqis wearing National Guard uniforms had ambushed them, killing one of their own. Another Marine had been killed when an explosive detonated under an insurgent corpse. Several insurgents had continued desperate fights notwithstanding gruesome wounds. Others tried to exploit the civil-military moral gap, acting as soldiers at 500 meters and as civilians when the Marines closed in. The Iraqis in the mosque may have been immobile, but to the Marines, they posed a threat.
Further, the Marines were fighting in an enemy city with little uncontested territory. There were no "friendly lines" behind which they could rest. The Marine in question had been wounded already. He was no doubt exhausted by five days of continuous fighting by the time he risked his life and burst into the mosque on Saturday. A well-rested man would have faced a dilemma inside, filled with shades of gray. A sleep-deprived man weary from days of combat saw only a binary choice: shoot or don't shoot, life or death.
Sleep requirements for pilots are rigorously enforced because performance is directly correlated to rest. After a sleepless 24 hours, a human being is no more coordinated or thoughtful than someone with a 0.1 percent blood-alcohol level, above the legal driving limit in all 50 states. Every subsequent sleepless day takes an exponential toll on the body, degrading performance roughly 25 percent a day until a state of chronic sleep deprivation takes hold, usually by the fifth day. Aviation units ground their tired pilots because they pose a danger to themselves and others. Yet there is no safeguard for the infantrymen and other ground troops who are doing 95 percent of the dying in Iraq. Whether you're a grunt fighting in Fallujah or a truck driver bringing supplies up from Kuwait, the military expects you to persevere, often with tragic consequences.
The literature on combat stress also suggests that prolonged periods of combat, upwards of 60 days, can lead to significantly reduced performance. Judgment and physical coordination are so retarded that some soldiers function only on the most basic level—survival.
So context is crucial when judging actions under fire. The very job of a rifleman is to close with and destroy his enemy—in essence, to kill the bad guy before he can kill you. But what separates the Marines from the rabble is their professional discipline—what a Harvard political scientist called the "management of violence" in describing the U.S. military. And so, this incident stands out for two reasons. First, it shows a breach of discipline, albeit under very stressful circumstances. But it also shows the extent to which the U.S. military will throw the book at one of its own. Already, the entire 1st Marine Division staff is involved with the case, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that "[I]t's being investigated, and justice will be done."
On the same day as this story, the tragic news broke that CARE International worker Margaret Hassan had been executed by her captors in Iraq. Already, there have been cries of moral equivalence. One Iraqi told the Los Angeles Times: "It goes to show that [Marines] are not any better than the so-called terrorists." Al Jazeera fanned these flames of anti-American sentiment by broadcasting the shooting incident in full while censoring Hassan's execution snuff tape. (U.S. networks refused to air actual footage of both killings.) There is a simplistic appeal to such arguments because both events involve the killing of a human being and, more specifically, the apparent execution of a noncombatant in the context of war.
Yet it is the differences between these two killings that reveal the most important truths about the Marine shooting in Fallujah. Hassan was, in every sense of the word, a noncombatant. She worked for more than 20 years to help Iraqis obtain basic necessities: food, running water, medical care, electricity, and education. The Iraqi insurgents kidnapped her and murdered her in order to terrorize the Iraqi population and the aid workers trying to help them.
By contrast, the Marines entered a building in Fallujah and found several men who, until moments before, had been enemy insurgents engaged in mortal combat. A hidden grenade would have changed everything, and the Marine would have been lauded. As it turned out, the Iraqi was entitled to mercy, but Hassan was truly innocent. There is no legitimate moral equivalence between a soldier asking for quarter and a noncombatant like Hassan.
There is another key difference that reveals a great moral divide between the Marines and insurgents they fought this week in Fallujah. The insurgents choose the killing of innocents as their modus operandi and glorify these killings with videos distributed via the Internet and Al Jazeera. They recognize no civilized norms of conduct, let alone the rules of warfare. The Marines, on the other hand, distinguish themselves by killing innocents so rarely and only by exception or mistake. Collateral damage is part of warfare, and civilians will die no matter how many control measures are in place. Yet the U.S. military devotes a staggering amount of resources to ensuring that civilian deaths do not happen, from sophisticated command systems that control precision bombs to staffs of lawyers at every level of command to vet targeting decisions. And when such breaches do occur, as they apparently did on Saturday, U.S. military commanders act swiftly to punish the offender, lest one incident of indiscipline blossom into many. (Indeed, one Army captain currently faces charges for killing a wounded Iraqi after a firefight and pursuit through the streets of Baghdad.)
War may be hell, but no honorable warrior likes to spread the hell unnecessarily. Killing Hassan, regardless of any attenuated argument the insurgent apologists may make, was both unlawful and amoral—and beneath what any warrior would do. Killing the insurgent in a split second because it was instinctual, on the other hand, was a tragedy, not an atrocity.
The shooting of an unarmed Iraqi was a tragedy. But was it a war crime?By Owen West and Phillip CarterUpdated Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004, at 10:28 AM PT
A Marine shot an unarmed insurgent in a Fallujah mosque on Saturday. We know this because we saw it. The digital video footage of the shooting—recorded by NBC reporter Kevin Sites, who was embedded with the Marines—is running nearly continuously on cable news channels worldwide. We heard it, too. A Marine says: "He's fucking faking he's dead. He's faking he's fucking dead." The Marine comes into view with his rifle shouldered. There is a rifle shot. An Iraqi leaning against a wall slumps, leaving a blood stain behind. According to CNN, another Marine says, "Well, he's dead now."
This case would not exist without Mr. Sites. That a young soldier deferred to instinct over the rulebook in combat is unsurprising. What was surprising was the near-instant transmission of a battlefield video around the world, allowing us to witness the actions of one American rifleman. Judging by the swift condemnation from all over, the world is drawing its own conclusion about what happened in the bloody mosque. But to judge the Marine fairly takes more perspective and context. The video is clear enough, but truly understanding requires navigating an underlying landscape littered with legal ambiguity and moral craters.
When a unit seizes terrain, its enemy military occupants generally become prisoners, as long as they don't continue fighting. The Third Geneva Convention makes it a war crime to kill or injure a prisoner or to deny medical care to a prisoner for wounds suffered in combat, among other things. If prosecutors charge the Marine with murder, they will argue that the Marines took these Iraqi men as prisoners the moment they secured the building. Moving or not, the wounded Iraqi was a prisoner, and therefore it was a crime to shoot him, even in the crazy kill-or-be-killed environment of Fallujah.
Continue Article
document.write('
The practice of taking battlefield prisoners dates back millennia, but the rules for treating them humanely are more recent. Ancient militaries treated prisoners well when they wanted to enslave them, not because there was any norm for doing so. It wasn't until the emergence of the chivalric code in the Middle Ages that rules of conduct came about. Still, even through the 20th century, examples abounded of prisoner mistreatment, especially at the precise moment of surrender—the moment when the battle is supposed to stop instantly and quarter is to be given. Popular histories of World War II are replete with examples of soldiers who killed their enemy after some overture of surrender was made or as retribution for atrocities by the other side. In Vietnam, Sen. John Kerry earned his Silver Star in part because he chased down and shot a fleeing Viet Cong fighter who had fired on his boat only minutes before.
International law treats such breaches mildly, with the understanding that it's difficult to expect soldiers to fight fiercely, then instantly behave amicably at the first signal of surrender. And so, the defense will argue that the Marines did not really secure the building and that these Iraqis were not prisoners yet: They were still combatants and still lawful targets; thus there's no crime. It's not clear how a military jury will judge this Marine when his day in court comes.
The twin essences of war are chaos and killing, so the very idea of placing inflexible constraints on the act of killing is at odds with the fundamental nature of warfare. Managing this cognitive dissonance while trying to stay alive takes tremendous skill. Professional militaries, like the U.S. Marine Corps, do this well because of their discipline and training. But the very existential nature of combat tilts the moral plane under these young riflemen's boots. In a place where you are fighting for your very survival, like the streets of Fallujah, any action that keeps you alive is a good one. And any misstep could get you or your buddies killed.
In this unit's case, one early lesson in Fallujah was to avoid Iraqis altogether, dead or alive. Iraqis wearing National Guard uniforms had ambushed them, killing one of their own. Another Marine had been killed when an explosive detonated under an insurgent corpse. Several insurgents had continued desperate fights notwithstanding gruesome wounds. Others tried to exploit the civil-military moral gap, acting as soldiers at 500 meters and as civilians when the Marines closed in. The Iraqis in the mosque may have been immobile, but to the Marines, they posed a threat.
Further, the Marines were fighting in an enemy city with little uncontested territory. There were no "friendly lines" behind which they could rest. The Marine in question had been wounded already. He was no doubt exhausted by five days of continuous fighting by the time he risked his life and burst into the mosque on Saturday. A well-rested man would have faced a dilemma inside, filled with shades of gray. A sleep-deprived man weary from days of combat saw only a binary choice: shoot or don't shoot, life or death.
Sleep requirements for pilots are rigorously enforced because performance is directly correlated to rest. After a sleepless 24 hours, a human being is no more coordinated or thoughtful than someone with a 0.1 percent blood-alcohol level, above the legal driving limit in all 50 states. Every subsequent sleepless day takes an exponential toll on the body, degrading performance roughly 25 percent a day until a state of chronic sleep deprivation takes hold, usually by the fifth day. Aviation units ground their tired pilots because they pose a danger to themselves and others. Yet there is no safeguard for the infantrymen and other ground troops who are doing 95 percent of the dying in Iraq. Whether you're a grunt fighting in Fallujah or a truck driver bringing supplies up from Kuwait, the military expects you to persevere, often with tragic consequences.
The literature on combat stress also suggests that prolonged periods of combat, upwards of 60 days, can lead to significantly reduced performance. Judgment and physical coordination are so retarded that some soldiers function only on the most basic level—survival.
So context is crucial when judging actions under fire. The very job of a rifleman is to close with and destroy his enemy—in essence, to kill the bad guy before he can kill you. But what separates the Marines from the rabble is their professional discipline—what a Harvard political scientist called the "management of violence" in describing the U.S. military. And so, this incident stands out for two reasons. First, it shows a breach of discipline, albeit under very stressful circumstances. But it also shows the extent to which the U.S. military will throw the book at one of its own. Already, the entire 1st Marine Division staff is involved with the case, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that "[I]t's being investigated, and justice will be done."
On the same day as this story, the tragic news broke that CARE International worker Margaret Hassan had been executed by her captors in Iraq. Already, there have been cries of moral equivalence. One Iraqi told the Los Angeles Times: "It goes to show that [Marines] are not any better than the so-called terrorists." Al Jazeera fanned these flames of anti-American sentiment by broadcasting the shooting incident in full while censoring Hassan's execution snuff tape. (U.S. networks refused to air actual footage of both killings.) There is a simplistic appeal to such arguments because both events involve the killing of a human being and, more specifically, the apparent execution of a noncombatant in the context of war.
Yet it is the differences between these two killings that reveal the most important truths about the Marine shooting in Fallujah. Hassan was, in every sense of the word, a noncombatant. She worked for more than 20 years to help Iraqis obtain basic necessities: food, running water, medical care, electricity, and education. The Iraqi insurgents kidnapped her and murdered her in order to terrorize the Iraqi population and the aid workers trying to help them.
By contrast, the Marines entered a building in Fallujah and found several men who, until moments before, had been enemy insurgents engaged in mortal combat. A hidden grenade would have changed everything, and the Marine would have been lauded. As it turned out, the Iraqi was entitled to mercy, but Hassan was truly innocent. There is no legitimate moral equivalence between a soldier asking for quarter and a noncombatant like Hassan.
There is another key difference that reveals a great moral divide between the Marines and insurgents they fought this week in Fallujah. The insurgents choose the killing of innocents as their modus operandi and glorify these killings with videos distributed via the Internet and Al Jazeera. They recognize no civilized norms of conduct, let alone the rules of warfare. The Marines, on the other hand, distinguish themselves by killing innocents so rarely and only by exception or mistake. Collateral damage is part of warfare, and civilians will die no matter how many control measures are in place. Yet the U.S. military devotes a staggering amount of resources to ensuring that civilian deaths do not happen, from sophisticated command systems that control precision bombs to staffs of lawyers at every level of command to vet targeting decisions. And when such breaches do occur, as they apparently did on Saturday, U.S. military commanders act swiftly to punish the offender, lest one incident of indiscipline blossom into many. (Indeed, one Army captain currently faces charges for killing a wounded Iraqi after a firefight and pursuit through the streets of Baghdad.)
War may be hell, but no honorable warrior likes to spread the hell unnecessarily. Killing Hassan, regardless of any attenuated argument the insurgent apologists may make, was both unlawful and amoral—and beneath what any warrior would do. Killing the insurgent in a split second because it was instinctual, on the other hand, was a tragedy, not an atrocity.
Neocon-Neolib
Just learn to accept that Bush has won, says Blair
By Philip Webster and Peter Riddell
'I do not feel we have been acting out of blind loyalty or out of compulsion as an ally' - Tony Blair (CHRIS HARRIS)
EUROPEAN leaders must emerge from their “state of denial” and wake up to the fact that they will be dealing with President Bush for the next four years, Tony Blair says today.
In an appeal to America and the countries that opposed the war in Iraq to come together, the Prime Minister tells The Times: “The election has happened. America has spoken. The rest of the world should listen.” He adds: “It is important that America listens to the rest of the world too. But the fact is that President Bush is there for four years. He is there because the American people have chosen to elect him.” Without naming his targets, Mr Blair says:
“Some people are in a sort of state of denial.” He predicts they will soon be in a “more receptive mood”.
Mr Blair spoke to The Times before travelling to Brussels for a European summit, where he expected the first discussions last night to be about the re-election of Mr Bush and an agenda on which they could move forward together. He makes plain that he will take his role as a bridge between the two continents even more seriously than before, saying Britain is “uniquely placed” because of its “immensely strong” alliance with America to mark out the common ground for agreement.
The Middle East peace process, the Iraqi elections, Iran, Afghanistan and even climate change will be the key areas where progress must be made, he says.
And he discloses that in a conversation with Mr Bush last Saturday — three days before the US election — the President left him with the impression that he intended to use the “space and energy” that a second term gave him to develop an agenda of unifying Europe and America.
Mr Blair says that he slept through the twists and turns of the American election on Tuesday. He went to bed at 10.30pm thinking that John Kerry had won, on the basis of the early exit polls, and woke up at 5.30am to find that President Bush had been re-elected.
He dismisses the idea that he or Britain should receive some kind of reward from Mr Bush for backing him in the war against terrorism and Iraq. “I don’t feel we are acting out of compulsion because we are an ally of the United States.” It was true that there were issues such as the Middle East where he wanted the United States to move forward. “But I don’t regard that as a pay-off,” he says.
Mr Blair risks a diplomatic storm after talking of “massive human rights issues” with North Korea. He says it is strange that, although he faces protests on everything outside Downing Street, there are none over North Korea “despite the fact that the people there live in a form of semi- slavery”.
The Prime Minister also speaks of his relief at having made plain his intentions to fight the next election but to leave office before fighting a fourth.
Mr Blair says there was more overlap between the increased focus in President Bush’s speeches during the past year about “bringing democracy or a set of values to the Middle East” and the views of the progressive centre-left. “That is part of the argument we should be able to agree with. Why should we be the people on the progressive left saying it is a terrible thing to bring democracy to these countries? Or when the Americans say we want to extend democracy to these countries, or extend democracy and human rights throughout the Middle East in the Greater Middle East initiative, people say well that is part of the neo-conservative agenda. Actually if you put in different language, it is a progressive agenda.”
Just learn to accept that Bush has won, says Blair
By Philip Webster and Peter Riddell
'I do not feel we have been acting out of blind loyalty or out of compulsion as an ally' - Tony Blair (CHRIS HARRIS)
EUROPEAN leaders must emerge from their “state of denial” and wake up to the fact that they will be dealing with President Bush for the next four years, Tony Blair says today.
In an appeal to America and the countries that opposed the war in Iraq to come together, the Prime Minister tells The Times: “The election has happened. America has spoken. The rest of the world should listen.” He adds: “It is important that America listens to the rest of the world too. But the fact is that President Bush is there for four years. He is there because the American people have chosen to elect him.” Without naming his targets, Mr Blair says:
“Some people are in a sort of state of denial.” He predicts they will soon be in a “more receptive mood”.
Mr Blair spoke to The Times before travelling to Brussels for a European summit, where he expected the first discussions last night to be about the re-election of Mr Bush and an agenda on which they could move forward together. He makes plain that he will take his role as a bridge between the two continents even more seriously than before, saying Britain is “uniquely placed” because of its “immensely strong” alliance with America to mark out the common ground for agreement.
The Middle East peace process, the Iraqi elections, Iran, Afghanistan and even climate change will be the key areas where progress must be made, he says.
And he discloses that in a conversation with Mr Bush last Saturday — three days before the US election — the President left him with the impression that he intended to use the “space and energy” that a second term gave him to develop an agenda of unifying Europe and America.
Mr Blair says that he slept through the twists and turns of the American election on Tuesday. He went to bed at 10.30pm thinking that John Kerry had won, on the basis of the early exit polls, and woke up at 5.30am to find that President Bush had been re-elected.
He dismisses the idea that he or Britain should receive some kind of reward from Mr Bush for backing him in the war against terrorism and Iraq. “I don’t feel we are acting out of compulsion because we are an ally of the United States.” It was true that there were issues such as the Middle East where he wanted the United States to move forward. “But I don’t regard that as a pay-off,” he says.
Mr Blair risks a diplomatic storm after talking of “massive human rights issues” with North Korea. He says it is strange that, although he faces protests on everything outside Downing Street, there are none over North Korea “despite the fact that the people there live in a form of semi- slavery”.
The Prime Minister also speaks of his relief at having made plain his intentions to fight the next election but to leave office before fighting a fourth.
Mr Blair says there was more overlap between the increased focus in President Bush’s speeches during the past year about “bringing democracy or a set of values to the Middle East” and the views of the progressive centre-left. “That is part of the argument we should be able to agree with. Why should we be the people on the progressive left saying it is a terrible thing to bring democracy to these countries? Or when the Americans say we want to extend democracy to these countries, or extend democracy and human rights throughout the Middle East in the Greater Middle East initiative, people say well that is part of the neo-conservative agenda. Actually if you put in different language, it is a progressive agenda.”
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Europe doesn't believe in democracy
By Janet Daley
(Filed: 17/11/2004)
What Tony Blair disarmingly calls his "damn high wire act" is getting shakier. The bridge between Europe and the United States has become a frayed rope in a tug-of-war match.
No sorry, that metaphor breaks down, because neither side is actually pulling - the rope is levitating of its own accord, hoping that the two teams won't just drop their ends and walk away.
It is the broker who wants this deal, not the antagonists. Forget all this claptrap about the second Bush administration softening up and feeling the need for what is quaintly called "the support of its allies".
That is a confection of blather and wishful thinking conjured up by blithely arrogant
Europeans and American Democrats in denial. George Bush has just got the mandate for pursuing his global policy on terrorism that he did not have in his first term: his position is stronger, not weaker. For the domestic market (which is all that matters to an American president), he has less need than before for the spurious credibility that European approval might offer.
The other side - as Jacques Chirac so sublimely demonstrated in his grandiloquent comments this week - is even less interested in a rapprochement. For Mr Chirac, too, the home audience is all that matters, and his supercilious dismissal of the "cowboy in the White House" is going down a treat with the French public.
Mr Blair is the only world leader who sees much point in trying to find common ground between the Chirac world view and the Bush one. That is because the home market is the most important audience for him, too, and he is determined to sell himself as both an Atlanticist and a pro-European. It is he who must square the circle, not the White House or the European Union.
The Prime Minister still hopes that the great triumph of his premiership - his lasting historical testament - will be taking Britain into full-hearted participation in the EU. Somehow, he must reconcile this with his equally passionate conviction, not only that the United States is Britain's most important ally, but that its present foreign policy is ethical and sound.
But, even given Mr Blair's own political vested interest in this undertaking, it could still be worthwhile in itself. After all, if you believe (as I think Mr Blair genuinely does) that the right way to bring lasting peace is through the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy to the regions of the world which now lack it, then surely it must be right to try to get everybody on board.
The more countries that participate in this democracy outreach programme, the more effective it is likely to be. That was what Mr Blair's Guildhall speech was trying to invoke: what Mr Bush would call "the free peoples of the world" should be joining together in this great task, in the liberation of those populations which do not enjoy what Mr Blair described as the "rights we take for granted".
Surely on this, he suggested, we could all agree: it must be the goal of the great democracies to deal with those failed states that "injure rather than protect" their own citizens. This must be the shared moral obligation of the fortunate nations of the Earth, the great thing that unites, rather than divides Europe and America.
What we share - an unfailing belief in democracy - has to be deeper than any present disagreement.
This is all very fine and very eloquent. The trouble is that it is quite wrong. Europe (particularly in the incarnation of Mr Chirac) does not have a deep commitment to democracy, at least not in the sense that the English-speaking tradition understands it.
The American Constitution may have borrowed much of its frame of reference from French revolutionary ideals, but the historical outcomes parted company pretty quickly. The United States ended up with a federalised system and an iron-clad Bill of Rights while France was descending into the Terror. We do not have a shared reverence for the robustness of democratic institutions because, in continental Europe, democratic institutions have been anything but robust.
That is why the EU is busily moving away from the idea of government being directly and transparently responsive to the popular will.
The monstrous global crimes of the 20th century - the collective guilt which is still the motor force of European political consciousness - were all thought to have been generated (or at least condoned) by popular will.
The political instincts of the people are far too inflammable and mercurial to be trusted. Better leave the serious business of law-making and governance to a professional class of administrators, an enlightened elite who will not be subject to the whims and volatile passions of the mob whose vicissitudes have brought such disgrace on our countries.
Public opinion manipulated by national political leaders has to take the rap for the hideous events of the two world wars and the Cold War that followed them, and so they will all be cut down to size. Democracy is all well and good in its place but the power of the people must be sieved, regulated and heavily supervised if it is to come to the right conclusions.
It may sound apocalyptic, but I do believe that the democratic experiment in continental Europe, begun just over 200 years or so ago, is coming to a close.
The European Union is creating what it hopes will be a benign oligarchy. Real political power will reside once again within elite circles (as it does already in France) which will conduct their business in the corridors rather than in the assemblies.
Meanwhile, the United States will persevere with the belief, which Europe regards as crass, that giving ordinary people power over their governing class is the only hope for peace and security. Democracy, and what it entails, is not what unites us, Mr Blair. It is what divides us.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
By Janet Daley
(Filed: 17/11/2004)
What Tony Blair disarmingly calls his "damn high wire act" is getting shakier. The bridge between Europe and the United States has become a frayed rope in a tug-of-war match.
No sorry, that metaphor breaks down, because neither side is actually pulling - the rope is levitating of its own accord, hoping that the two teams won't just drop their ends and walk away.
It is the broker who wants this deal, not the antagonists. Forget all this claptrap about the second Bush administration softening up and feeling the need for what is quaintly called "the support of its allies".
That is a confection of blather and wishful thinking conjured up by blithely arrogant
Europeans and American Democrats in denial. George Bush has just got the mandate for pursuing his global policy on terrorism that he did not have in his first term: his position is stronger, not weaker. For the domestic market (which is all that matters to an American president), he has less need than before for the spurious credibility that European approval might offer.
The other side - as Jacques Chirac so sublimely demonstrated in his grandiloquent comments this week - is even less interested in a rapprochement. For Mr Chirac, too, the home audience is all that matters, and his supercilious dismissal of the "cowboy in the White House" is going down a treat with the French public.
Mr Blair is the only world leader who sees much point in trying to find common ground between the Chirac world view and the Bush one. That is because the home market is the most important audience for him, too, and he is determined to sell himself as both an Atlanticist and a pro-European. It is he who must square the circle, not the White House or the European Union.
The Prime Minister still hopes that the great triumph of his premiership - his lasting historical testament - will be taking Britain into full-hearted participation in the EU. Somehow, he must reconcile this with his equally passionate conviction, not only that the United States is Britain's most important ally, but that its present foreign policy is ethical and sound.
But, even given Mr Blair's own political vested interest in this undertaking, it could still be worthwhile in itself. After all, if you believe (as I think Mr Blair genuinely does) that the right way to bring lasting peace is through the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy to the regions of the world which now lack it, then surely it must be right to try to get everybody on board.
The more countries that participate in this democracy outreach programme, the more effective it is likely to be. That was what Mr Blair's Guildhall speech was trying to invoke: what Mr Bush would call "the free peoples of the world" should be joining together in this great task, in the liberation of those populations which do not enjoy what Mr Blair described as the "rights we take for granted".
Surely on this, he suggested, we could all agree: it must be the goal of the great democracies to deal with those failed states that "injure rather than protect" their own citizens. This must be the shared moral obligation of the fortunate nations of the Earth, the great thing that unites, rather than divides Europe and America.
What we share - an unfailing belief in democracy - has to be deeper than any present disagreement.
This is all very fine and very eloquent. The trouble is that it is quite wrong. Europe (particularly in the incarnation of Mr Chirac) does not have a deep commitment to democracy, at least not in the sense that the English-speaking tradition understands it.
The American Constitution may have borrowed much of its frame of reference from French revolutionary ideals, but the historical outcomes parted company pretty quickly. The United States ended up with a federalised system and an iron-clad Bill of Rights while France was descending into the Terror. We do not have a shared reverence for the robustness of democratic institutions because, in continental Europe, democratic institutions have been anything but robust.
That is why the EU is busily moving away from the idea of government being directly and transparently responsive to the popular will.
The monstrous global crimes of the 20th century - the collective guilt which is still the motor force of European political consciousness - were all thought to have been generated (or at least condoned) by popular will.
The political instincts of the people are far too inflammable and mercurial to be trusted. Better leave the serious business of law-making and governance to a professional class of administrators, an enlightened elite who will not be subject to the whims and volatile passions of the mob whose vicissitudes have brought such disgrace on our countries.
Public opinion manipulated by national political leaders has to take the rap for the hideous events of the two world wars and the Cold War that followed them, and so they will all be cut down to size. Democracy is all well and good in its place but the power of the people must be sieved, regulated and heavily supervised if it is to come to the right conclusions.
It may sound apocalyptic, but I do believe that the democratic experiment in continental Europe, begun just over 200 years or so ago, is coming to a close.
The European Union is creating what it hopes will be a benign oligarchy. Real political power will reside once again within elite circles (as it does already in France) which will conduct their business in the corridors rather than in the assemblies.
Meanwhile, the United States will persevere with the belief, which Europe regards as crass, that giving ordinary people power over their governing class is the only hope for peace and security. Democracy, and what it entails, is not what unites us, Mr Blair. It is what divides us.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Iraq The Model, one year old!Today we celebrate the 1st anniversary of this blog. We sat together recalling the early moments in the life of Iraq the model, reliving the moments of happiness and grief and the huge magnitude of events we’ve been through in the past twelve months where tears mixed with smiles, anger and dreams....it’s been a long year.Many people ask me why I started to write and how was the beginning and I today remember the time when we were sitting together, carrying our dreams, our ambitions and our hunger to communicate with the others; it felt like a sweet dream to find all the doors wide open for us and all the chains that restricted our minds simply gone.I am free...And I need to tell the whole world what this means.I’d love to share this feeling with everyone, the feeling of being strong and capable of making miracles happen and that nothing can limit your dreams.My friends...my readers..This wasn’t an action from one side, your have always been a rich source of inspiration to us.We have learned the meaning of being united together and we never felt alone in this; freedom lovers are everywhere.Reading your comments and e-mails made my cry many times and I wish I could remember all your names and I could feel everyone, even those who didn’t write to us.I wish I could embrace you all.Together, you and us were, and will always be closer than brothers and sisters trying to stand against the powers of darkness and ignorance, doing our best to make our voice louder and louder and to make everyone see what our dream is.Sometimes I would despair but your words were always there to comfort me and encourage me to restore my strength and hope.I used to watch the media presenting the false image all the time and then I would want to scream out loud:This is not the whole truth, this isn’t right . You’re overlooking a great deal of the truth and you’re not presenting the feelings of the love that exists; those feelings that are stronger than weapons and politics and are stronger than the hatred you’re trying to spread.And this is the reason why we keep writing to you and we know that our love will find its way to you. No borders can stop it and no power on earth can stand between the love and the heart that opened its doors for the light.My dearest..Thank you for your empathy and for walking through this tough road with us. I have no doubt that one day we will reach our destination and even if we stumble once or twice, we’ve got the determination now to try again and again and we will triumph at the end.We are so happy and we love you all.Mohammed.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Iraq The Model, one year old!Today we celebrate the 1st anniversary of this blog. We sat together recalling the early moments in the life of Iraq the model, reliving the moments of happiness and grief and the huge magnitude of events we’ve been through in the past twelve months where tears mixed with smiles, anger and dreams....it’s been a long year.Many people ask me why I started to write and how was the beginning and I today remember the time when we were sitting together, carrying our dreams, our ambitions and our hunger to communicate with the others; it felt like a sweet dream to find all the doors wide open for us and all the chains that restricted our minds simply gone.I am free...And I need to tell the whole world what this means.I’d love to share this feeling with everyone, the feeling of being strong and capable of making miracles happen and that nothing can limit your dreams.My friends...my readers..This wasn’t an action from one side, your have always been a rich source of inspiration to us.We have learned the meaning of being united together and we never felt alone in this; freedom lovers are everywhere.Reading your comments and e-mails made my cry many times and I wish I could remember all your names and I could feel everyone, even those who didn’t write to us.I wish I could embrace you all.Together, you and us were, and will always be closer than brothers and sisters trying to stand against the powers of darkness and ignorance, doing our best to make our voice louder and louder and to make everyone see what our dream is.Sometimes I would despair but your words were always there to comfort me and encourage me to restore my strength and hope.I used to watch the media presenting the false image all the time and then I would want to scream out loud:This is not the whole truth, this isn’t right . You’re overlooking a great deal of the truth and you’re not presenting the feelings of the love that exists; those feelings that are stronger than weapons and politics and are stronger than the hatred you’re trying to spread.And this is the reason why we keep writing to you and we know that our love will find its way to you. No borders can stop it and no power on earth can stand between the love and the heart that opened its doors for the light.My dearest..Thank you for your empathy and for walking through this tough road with us. I have no doubt that one day we will reach our destination and even if we stumble once or twice, we’ve got the determination now to try again and again and we will triumph at the end.We are so happy and we love you all.Mohammed.
TO A CERTAIN EXTENT....
Chirac Says War in Iraq Spreads Terrorism
By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, Nov. 17 - On the eve of a visit to Britain, President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday that the world was more dangerous because of the American-led invasion of Iraq.
"To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing," Mr. Chirac said in an interview broadcast on the BBC Newsnight television program. "But it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilization in a number of countries of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous."
Ensuring that his country's relations with the United States and Britain will remain cool, he said, "There is no doubt" that terrorism around the world has increased because of the war in Iraq.
President Chirac's comments followed an equally acerbic assessment of American-led foreign policy that he made in an interview published in British newspapers on Tuesday. In that interview, he expressed doubt that "with America as it is these days," Britain or any other country could be an "honest broker" in improving trans-Atlantic relations.
The comments were a pointed rebuke of Mr. Bush's contention that the world is safer since Mr. Hussein was deposed, and of Prime Minister Tony Blair's view that Britain is a bridge between the United States and Europe.
French-American relations, rarely easy, have lingered near historic lows since Mr. Chirac's government fought bitterly last year to avert the war. His unwillingness to reach out to the United States as the Bush administration heads into a second term is certain to keep those relations at a low ebb for now.
Perhaps more striking than Mr. Chirac's disdain for the Bush administration (he referred in the newspaper interview to the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, as "that nice guy, I've forgotten his name, who talked about Old Europe") was his dismissal of Mr. Blair's unyielding support for Mr. Bush.
Recalling a French-British meeting on the eve of the Iraq war, Mr. Chirac told the British reporters that he had counseled Mr. Blair to get something from Washington in return for Britain's support for the war.
"Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in return," the French president was quoted as saying in The Times of London. "I am not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favors systematically."
The unvarnished tone of Mr. Chirac's remarks surprised many people in the normally discreet diplomatic corridors of Europe. But several senior foreign policy analysts remarked that if Mr. Chirac's view of the Bush administration is borne out in the next four years, the weight of Europe may swing behind him.
"Chirac is in a fairly strong position," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, an independent research organization at the French Institute of International Relations.
He argued that Mr. Chirac is appealing to both the British public and people within Mr. Blair's own party to work with France. "Blair needs to show that his support for Bush hasn't broken his ties with Europe," he said.
Mr. Chirac's strong words are also likely to resonate in other European countries, particularly Germany, where frustration with American foreign policy runs high. European support for the war in Iraq has faltered, with both the Netherlands and Hungary planning to follow Spain by withdrawing their troops from Iraq.
In his interviews, Mr. Chirac repeated his vision of a "multipolar" world in which "there will be a great American pole, a great European pole, a Chinese one, an Indian one, eventually a South American pole," with the United Nations mediating.
Despite his remarks, Mr. Chirac insisted that he feels no anger toward the United States and said that French-British relations were always based on mutual esteem. "We enjoyed hating each other," he said in the newspaper interview. "It was a kind of violent love."
Mr. Chirac's two-day visit to Britain, which begins Thursday, is meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, a pact that ended centuries of intermittent warfare between the two countries. The French president, who turns 72 next month, will be the guest of Queen Elizabeth II and stay at Windsor Castle, where he will be treated to a production of the musical Les Misérables.
Chirac Says War in Iraq Spreads Terrorism
By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, Nov. 17 - On the eve of a visit to Britain, President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday that the world was more dangerous because of the American-led invasion of Iraq.
"To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing," Mr. Chirac said in an interview broadcast on the BBC Newsnight television program. "But it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilization in a number of countries of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous."
Ensuring that his country's relations with the United States and Britain will remain cool, he said, "There is no doubt" that terrorism around the world has increased because of the war in Iraq.
President Chirac's comments followed an equally acerbic assessment of American-led foreign policy that he made in an interview published in British newspapers on Tuesday. In that interview, he expressed doubt that "with America as it is these days," Britain or any other country could be an "honest broker" in improving trans-Atlantic relations.
The comments were a pointed rebuke of Mr. Bush's contention that the world is safer since Mr. Hussein was deposed, and of Prime Minister Tony Blair's view that Britain is a bridge between the United States and Europe.
French-American relations, rarely easy, have lingered near historic lows since Mr. Chirac's government fought bitterly last year to avert the war. His unwillingness to reach out to the United States as the Bush administration heads into a second term is certain to keep those relations at a low ebb for now.
Perhaps more striking than Mr. Chirac's disdain for the Bush administration (he referred in the newspaper interview to the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, as "that nice guy, I've forgotten his name, who talked about Old Europe") was his dismissal of Mr. Blair's unyielding support for Mr. Bush.
Recalling a French-British meeting on the eve of the Iraq war, Mr. Chirac told the British reporters that he had counseled Mr. Blair to get something from Washington in return for Britain's support for the war.
"Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in return," the French president was quoted as saying in The Times of London. "I am not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favors systematically."
The unvarnished tone of Mr. Chirac's remarks surprised many people in the normally discreet diplomatic corridors of Europe. But several senior foreign policy analysts remarked that if Mr. Chirac's view of the Bush administration is borne out in the next four years, the weight of Europe may swing behind him.
"Chirac is in a fairly strong position," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, an independent research organization at the French Institute of International Relations.
He argued that Mr. Chirac is appealing to both the British public and people within Mr. Blair's own party to work with France. "Blair needs to show that his support for Bush hasn't broken his ties with Europe," he said.
Mr. Chirac's strong words are also likely to resonate in other European countries, particularly Germany, where frustration with American foreign policy runs high. European support for the war in Iraq has faltered, with both the Netherlands and Hungary planning to follow Spain by withdrawing their troops from Iraq.
In his interviews, Mr. Chirac repeated his vision of a "multipolar" world in which "there will be a great American pole, a great European pole, a Chinese one, an Indian one, eventually a South American pole," with the United Nations mediating.
Despite his remarks, Mr. Chirac insisted that he feels no anger toward the United States and said that French-British relations were always based on mutual esteem. "We enjoyed hating each other," he said in the newspaper interview. "It was a kind of violent love."
Mr. Chirac's two-day visit to Britain, which begins Thursday, is meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, a pact that ended centuries of intermittent warfare between the two countries. The French president, who turns 72 next month, will be the guest of Queen Elizabeth II and stay at Windsor Castle, where he will be treated to a production of the musical Les Misérables.
One Way
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.16.04
ith the departure of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, the Bush administration's great foreign policy rift has finally ended. The rift, which pitted Foggy Bottom against the Pentagon and the White House, made the Kissinger-Rogers and Brzezinski-Vance duels that preceded it seem trivial by comparison. The damage it wrought, too, was of much greater consequence than those earlier fights. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Israel, China--in virtually every corner of the globe, the Bush team had not one policy but two, whose contradictions intensified precisely when America's involvement did. During Bush's second term, however, the president's foreign policy counselors will all be reading from the same page. Yesterday, after all, one side forfeited the argument.
Personnel, as they say in Washington, is policy, and nowhere has this been truer than among members of the Bush foreign policy team, where the disagreements were always less expressions of personal distaste than of competing philosophical convictions--Kissingerian realism, on the one side, and Reaganite neoconservativism on the other. But with Powell's departure, what members of the Bush team knew as soon as the first shot was fired in the Iraq war became apparent to the nation at large: The argument has been settled in the latter's favor. Not because of the Pentagon's bureaucratic weight (Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives around him will be departing soon enough--replaced, in all likelihood, by a Senator, perhaps even Joe Lieberman). And not because Dick Cheney isn't going anywhere. Rather, President Bush, as evidenced by his remarks last week on democratizing the Middle East and pacifying Iraq, genuinely believes--and, indeed, clings religiously to the belief--that only the vigorous assertion of American power and ideals will make the world a better place. Chalk it up to his evangelical faith, his brainwashing at the hands of a sinister cabal, or his Manichean conception of the international scene: When it comes to the broad foreign policy questions of the day, Bush no longer needs advisers to tell him what to think. He needs them to translate his thinking into policy.
For that to happen, Powell had to go. Here, after all, was a Secretary of State who viewed himself as Foggy Bottom's ambassador to the White House rather than the other way around. His insistence on hearing out, and too often bending to, the objections of the State Department bureaucracy encouraged a tendency in the diplomatic corps that needed no encouragement. "If the president decides against them," then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger complained of the Nixon-era foreign policy bureaucracy, "they are convinced some evil influence worked on the president: If only he knew all the facts, he would have decided their way." If anything, that conviction only grew stronger in recent years, as members of the Foreign Service leaked, complained, delayed, hindered, and obstructed their way through the first term of a president who viewed the world through a lens barely comprehensible to them.
The wonder of it all is that Powell, for all of the battles he fought in the name of his "troops" at Foggy Bottom, accomplished next to nothing on their behalf. Iraq, Kyoto, ABM, direct negotiations with North Korea--nearly every time Powell waded into an inter-agency conflict, he lost. Even when he won, he lost. When, for example, Powell persuaded the president to dispatch a special envoy into the Israeli-Palestinian thicket, the result was an explosion of violence on both sides and the prompt collapse of the U.S. effort. When Powell convinced the president to return to the United Nations one last time before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the effort backfired, doing nothing to budge the Europeans and much to discredit the cause of the Americans. His signature accomplishments as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--delaying U.S. action in Bosnia, preventing gays from serving openly in the military, placing restrictions on the scope of American action during the first Gulf War--may have been controversial. But at least they left their mark.
With Condoleezza Rice at the helm--and, in all likelihood, with Undersecretary of State John Bolton as her deputy--the State Department will now be run by a team known for its rigid loyalty to the president. They, more than any other administration officials, represent authentic expressions of Bush's foreign policy--more realistic than the Bush team's neoconservatives but far more aggressive than its self-described "realists." Rice, to be sure, is neither a great thinker nor a great manager. But she is a great lieutenant--that is, someone who can be relied on to convey and translate the president's inclinations into official policy. For his part, Bolton is all of these things, plus a fierce conservative. Between the two of them, they could well transform Foggy Bottom into something that looks more like the Pentagon--only competently run. Even if the State Department doesn't become the center of foreign policy deliberations, it certainly won't stymie them.
As for the National Security Council, the very fact that Rice's former deputy will be running day to day operations at the NSC ensures that cooperation between Foggy Bottom and the White House will improve. If Stephen Hadley, like Rice, is essentially a technocrat, he is a loyal technocrat, known for his lawyerly-like implementation of orders from above. Moreover, with staunch realist and Powell ally Robert Blackwill out of the way as Hadley's competitor--and co-deputy national security adviser--philosophical objections to the direction of U.S. policy that often made their way from Foggy Bottom to the White House should effectively be silenced.
Nor will the expected departure of Rumsfeld and his lieutenants at the Defense Department dilute the president's robust foreign policy preferences. Were a Joe Lieberman or, by an outside chance, Paul Wolfowitz catapulted to the top Pentagon post, the new defense secretary may end up promoting an even more aggressive foreign policy stance than the president himself. But, even at the cabinet level, ideology's no longer the point. If a John Warner or a Dan Coats winds up in the E-ring, it won't really matter. In contrast to the president's first term, personnel won't be policy in his second. Bush knows what he believes now. And there's no one left to stand in his way.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at TNR.
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.16.04
ith the departure of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, the Bush administration's great foreign policy rift has finally ended. The rift, which pitted Foggy Bottom against the Pentagon and the White House, made the Kissinger-Rogers and Brzezinski-Vance duels that preceded it seem trivial by comparison. The damage it wrought, too, was of much greater consequence than those earlier fights. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Israel, China--in virtually every corner of the globe, the Bush team had not one policy but two, whose contradictions intensified precisely when America's involvement did. During Bush's second term, however, the president's foreign policy counselors will all be reading from the same page. Yesterday, after all, one side forfeited the argument.
Personnel, as they say in Washington, is policy, and nowhere has this been truer than among members of the Bush foreign policy team, where the disagreements were always less expressions of personal distaste than of competing philosophical convictions--Kissingerian realism, on the one side, and Reaganite neoconservativism on the other. But with Powell's departure, what members of the Bush team knew as soon as the first shot was fired in the Iraq war became apparent to the nation at large: The argument has been settled in the latter's favor. Not because of the Pentagon's bureaucratic weight (Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives around him will be departing soon enough--replaced, in all likelihood, by a Senator, perhaps even Joe Lieberman). And not because Dick Cheney isn't going anywhere. Rather, President Bush, as evidenced by his remarks last week on democratizing the Middle East and pacifying Iraq, genuinely believes--and, indeed, clings religiously to the belief--that only the vigorous assertion of American power and ideals will make the world a better place. Chalk it up to his evangelical faith, his brainwashing at the hands of a sinister cabal, or his Manichean conception of the international scene: When it comes to the broad foreign policy questions of the day, Bush no longer needs advisers to tell him what to think. He needs them to translate his thinking into policy.
For that to happen, Powell had to go. Here, after all, was a Secretary of State who viewed himself as Foggy Bottom's ambassador to the White House rather than the other way around. His insistence on hearing out, and too often bending to, the objections of the State Department bureaucracy encouraged a tendency in the diplomatic corps that needed no encouragement. "If the president decides against them," then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger complained of the Nixon-era foreign policy bureaucracy, "they are convinced some evil influence worked on the president: If only he knew all the facts, he would have decided their way." If anything, that conviction only grew stronger in recent years, as members of the Foreign Service leaked, complained, delayed, hindered, and obstructed their way through the first term of a president who viewed the world through a lens barely comprehensible to them.
The wonder of it all is that Powell, for all of the battles he fought in the name of his "troops" at Foggy Bottom, accomplished next to nothing on their behalf. Iraq, Kyoto, ABM, direct negotiations with North Korea--nearly every time Powell waded into an inter-agency conflict, he lost. Even when he won, he lost. When, for example, Powell persuaded the president to dispatch a special envoy into the Israeli-Palestinian thicket, the result was an explosion of violence on both sides and the prompt collapse of the U.S. effort. When Powell convinced the president to return to the United Nations one last time before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the effort backfired, doing nothing to budge the Europeans and much to discredit the cause of the Americans. His signature accomplishments as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--delaying U.S. action in Bosnia, preventing gays from serving openly in the military, placing restrictions on the scope of American action during the first Gulf War--may have been controversial. But at least they left their mark.
With Condoleezza Rice at the helm--and, in all likelihood, with Undersecretary of State John Bolton as her deputy--the State Department will now be run by a team known for its rigid loyalty to the president. They, more than any other administration officials, represent authentic expressions of Bush's foreign policy--more realistic than the Bush team's neoconservatives but far more aggressive than its self-described "realists." Rice, to be sure, is neither a great thinker nor a great manager. But she is a great lieutenant--that is, someone who can be relied on to convey and translate the president's inclinations into official policy. For his part, Bolton is all of these things, plus a fierce conservative. Between the two of them, they could well transform Foggy Bottom into something that looks more like the Pentagon--only competently run. Even if the State Department doesn't become the center of foreign policy deliberations, it certainly won't stymie them.
As for the National Security Council, the very fact that Rice's former deputy will be running day to day operations at the NSC ensures that cooperation between Foggy Bottom and the White House will improve. If Stephen Hadley, like Rice, is essentially a technocrat, he is a loyal technocrat, known for his lawyerly-like implementation of orders from above. Moreover, with staunch realist and Powell ally Robert Blackwill out of the way as Hadley's competitor--and co-deputy national security adviser--philosophical objections to the direction of U.S. policy that often made their way from Foggy Bottom to the White House should effectively be silenced.
Nor will the expected departure of Rumsfeld and his lieutenants at the Defense Department dilute the president's robust foreign policy preferences. Were a Joe Lieberman or, by an outside chance, Paul Wolfowitz catapulted to the top Pentagon post, the new defense secretary may end up promoting an even more aggressive foreign policy stance than the president himself. But, even at the cabinet level, ideology's no longer the point. If a John Warner or a Dan Coats winds up in the E-ring, it won't really matter. In contrast to the president's first term, personnel won't be policy in his second. Bush knows what he believes now. And there's no one left to stand in his way.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at TNR.
