Parsing the Ridiculous

Context matters when you're nitpicking.

How not to make a political ad--don't try to use an inclusive, positive and bold statement of unity against someone well-liked and popular:

“America, this is our moment. This is our time” – Obama, speaking in MN the night he officially won the Dem nomination (6/3).

“People of Berlin -- people of the world -- this is our moment. This is our time” – Obama, in his first formal speech of his foreign tour (7/24).

What ad guru won’t be tempted to play the clips back-to-back, only one to a widely ecstatic cheering crowd of Europeans? Insert announcer with an appropriately unnerving, deep voice, asking: “Which is it, Obama? Who’s moment? Who’s time?”

On 6/3, Obama addressed a crowd in the packed arena where John McCain will accept his party's nomination--the context of his speech was to that specific crowd and the Democratic Party that nominated him, and a broader appeal to voters that he hoped would support him this fall.

[Barack Obama, Berlin]

Today, Obama spoke on German soil to a foreign crowd, but addressed his remarks to a US audience and to the world at large, in a speech with broader context that addressed a broader audience. I think people are smart enough to figure out the context here--Obama is going to give a lot more speeches to a lot more audiences, including a speech at the Democratic Convention soon--and they get who he's addressing and including and talking to. Obama's popularity is the terrifying development that has the Republicans scrambling. They're used to, and were counting on, a figure that just about less than half of all Americans would like and accept. Obama has skated past that dynamic and entered Ronald Reagan territory.

The arrival of a Democratic Ronald Reagan has them shitting themselves with fear. Kennedy wasn't as popular as Obama and won no landslide in 1960. If current trends continue, and if McCain's gaffes and his amped-up Cotton Hill routine continues, he might win a dozen states, if that. If it gets any worse, he'll lose his home state and win seven southern states and perhaps Utah. Not quite winning everything but Minnesota and the District of Columbia, but close enough to frighten a Republican consultant. Hopefully, Obama won't have Reagan's policies or daftness but be similar in his ability to inspire his followers--the Democratic Party--and communicate with voters. Substance would definitely be an improvement. This is an important distinction--we may have a Democrat with actual charisma and appeal beyond the usual level we've seen in our lifetimes. I know--I can't get used to that idea, either.

[John F. Kennedy, Berlin]

Of course, if you're a fucking idiot, it all looks sinister and un-American to you. As in, how did the man with dark skin get to be liked by so many people? What the Republicans should really fear is the fact that Germany, a country known for a certain strain of xenophobia, has embraced Obama in a way that means Obama is likely to be embraced by the American people.

Hopefully, that will be as a, as the, as our President.

--WS

What's a Candidate Supposed to Do?

You'd think they would praise Obama for ignoring the foreign media--where virtually nothing that is written is going to help him but will likely hurt him because there has been a slew of negative criticism from Drudge and other outlets as to how "popular" Obama is overseas. Witness the story about Obama's rock star appeal to foreigners.

Barack Obama is on his way to Europe, where an adoring public awaits. But I wonder if the reception would be quite so enthusiastic if Obama's fans across the Atlantic knew a dirty little secret of his remarkable presidential campaign: Although Obama portrays himself as the best candidate to engage the rest of the world and restore America's image abroad, and many Americans support him for that reason, so far he has almost completely refused to answer questions from foreign journalists. When the press plane leaves tonight for his trip, there will be, as far as I know, no foreign media aboard. The Obama campaign has refused multiple requests from international reporters to travel with the candidate.

As a German correspondent in Washington, I am accustomed to the fact that American politicians spare little of their limited time for reporters from abroad. This is understandable: Our readers, viewers and listeners cannot vote in U.S. elections. Even so, Obama's opponents have managed to make at least a small amount of time for international journalists. John McCain has given many interviews. Hillary Clinton gave a few. President Bush regularly holds round-table interviews with media from the countries to which he travels. Only Obama dismisses us so consistently.

Sounds pretty whiny, actually--almost like the reporter in question is about to burst into tears because he's not having his ass kissed.

The Germans are carrying water for the Republican Party--why would Obama bother to talk to German media? He has anonymous German politicians helping perpetrate the smears that the American Republican Party would love to spread through any means possible:

His appearance at the "Victory Column" in Berlin's central Tiergarten park is expected to draw huge crowds and is being likened in advance to former president John F. Kennedy's celebrated "Ich bin ein Berliner" performance of 1963.

But in the German Chancellery a few hundred meters away there is unease with the Illinois senator's cult-like following and skepticism about whether he can live up to the hype.

"There is a sort of Obama-mania in Germany right now, but I think a lot of people will have their illusions shattered if he does become president," an official in Chancellor Angela Merkel's office told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

You know, that first summit between Merkel and Obama is likely to be interesting.

What no one points out is that, when McCain talks to the foreign media, he has to have Joe Lieberman close at hand to help him tell the players apart. When Obama talks to the media, he is focused on the US media because he's not the President--he's running for the job and he's trying to bolster his foreign policy credentials. All of the favorable stories in the overseas media would just be used against him anyway, so what does he do? He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, and he's never going to get the favorable treatment that McCain enjoys.

--WS

Foreign Fighters Have Been Going Back and Forth For Years

The notion of people crossing borders is a reflection of the Western mindset--we see the crossing of an international boundary as an event! A legal instance of moving from one place to another! Something to be recorded! Write it down in a passport and stamp it! There! It's official!

It's not really a big deal for people who live in the Middle East--the borders were all drawn for them, not by them, and the idea that foreign fighters are moving into Afghanistan is new is laughable. Foreign fighters--so-called Jihadis--have always moved around, pointedly ignoring borders.

Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al Qaeda is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.

More foreigners are infiltrating Afghanistan because of a recruitment drive by al Qaeda as well as a burgeoning insurgency that has made movement easier across the border from Pakistan, U.S. officials, militants and experts say.

Oh no! What are we going to do about it? We can calm down, for starters.

The problem with this thinking is that it ignores that this was going on in October, 2007:

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

And it ignores what was happening in 2006:

Intelligence suggests that fighters from Syria, Egypt and Yemen have joined the Taliban in attacking the troops from the Nato International Security Assistance Force.

The recent assaults by the Taliban on British outposts in the north of Helmand province in Sangin, Musa Qala, Nowzad and Kajaki, were all believed to have been assisted by foreign fighters.

You can see the first inkling of this type of thing in 2005:

Last week the US magazine Newsweek reported that the Taliban in Afghanistan had brought in a team of instructors from Iraq to pass on the latest techniques.

Mr Jabr said hundreds of foreign militants had already left Iraq. Those remaining numbered fewer than 1,000, compared with up to 3,000 six months ago. But he said the fall was due to the success of recent US and Iraqi offensives

Notice anything?

This is the same recycling of the same panicky theme that gets trotted out when things start to go bad. Why wouldn't the "Jihadis" flock to Afghanistan? They do it every year, they get to do their Jihadi thing, and then they get to leave. It's called whack-a-mole by the carnies and that's what you have right now--a policy of fighting terrorism throughout the world played out as a panicky, ineffective game of whack-a-mole.

--WS

Would McCain reprise the Cold War?

That is a justified fear when he makes pronouncements like he would like to kick Russia out of the G-8. It didn't get much notice when he made his sweeping foreign policy speech in March - perhaps because of the media mancrush that we have been diligently documenting - but this is definitely worth examination. Not because he could actually do it - the United States is only one of eight member nations, as the name indicates, and the other seven would not go for it - but because such a position would further alienate the few allies we have left.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it's popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

"It's not even a theoretical discussion. It's an impossible discussion," said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "It's just a dumb thing."

Aside from that, many wonder whether McCain's suggestion would be wise policy. They fear that if McCain is elected and follows through on an attempt to toss Russia from the group, it could anger and isolate Russia, which has been increasingly assertive on the world stage, autocratic within its borders and is the second-largest producer of the hydrocarbons that feed the world's energy needs.

"In Europe, there's very little support ... for a policy like that," said Stephen Larrabee, an expert on Europe and Russia at the RAND think tank. "It's too late in the game to try and oust Russia."

The proposal also seemed at odds with the theme of McCain's speech, which promised a less unilateral approach to world affairs than the Bush White House has pursued. That could reflect tension between two Republican foreign-policy camps vying for influence in McCain's campaign: the pragmatic realists and the hard-line neo-conservatives — with the neo-cons ascendant for now in Russia policy.

"There are a lot of important issues that we need Russia's support on. ...What's to be gained by tossing Russia out? We feel more self-righteous about ourselves?" said Andrew Kuchins, the director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a center-right think tank.

Let's call this idiocy what it is...the crankery of a backward-thinking cold-war codger, unable to turn around and embrace the future so he cleaves to the comfort of the known, i.e. the past.

And here is all you need to know about just how stupid this idea really is...Heritage wankers think it's a splendid notion....and when was the last time those chuckleheads were right about any damned thing?

This is getting too cozy for comfort...

Let me point out my prejudices right up front.

I am the ultimate cold-war brat. When a teacher asked if anyone knew what the Great Plains were, my hand shot up and I answered "The F-14's!" I was still my Dad's dependent when I married my husband on a Saturday afternoon, and by the end of the following week, we were living atop 18 10-megaton Titan II ICBMs, and would live with those massive killing machines until the last one was pulled out of the ground. The first decade of our marriage, we both did our part to complete the SAC mission and win the Cold War.

The thing is, I never really thought it was "won" in the traditional sense, because George H.W. didn't get together with the top commie and sign a treaty ending it all. Hell, I have always thought the end of the Cold War was less of a sure thing than the Korean armistice. The Soviet Union simply collapsed, but the same people were still running things, they just weren't encumbered by the party any longer, and criminal enterprises - never in danger of extinction in Russia - has flourished. I have never trusted our former adversaries, and thought the administration was beyond stupid to underestimate Putin and the Russian inclination to empire.

So this stuff disturbs me...

Remember that two weeks ago, Putin made a "Nixon goes to China" trip to Tehran, the first Kremlin leader to visit Iran since 1943. That trip took place just days after he snubbed and mocked Condi Rice and Bob Gates when they went to Moscow.

Well, as I type another Russian potentate is in Tehran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while in the neighborhood on a visit to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, popped in on Ahmadinejad for tea. A spokesman said the impromptu visit was to discuss Iran's nuclear activities as well as bilateral ties between the two nations.

After the visit by Putin, Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Laranjani (who resigned last week over differences with Ahmadinejad) said that the Russian leader had delivered a proposal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that represented a new approach to the current nuclear standoff with the Bush administration. Neither the Russians not the Iranians were willing to divulge details of the proposal, but the Iranian side was said to be studying it.

State-run television and news agencies quoted Ayatollah Khamenei at the time as telling Putin, "We will think about what you said and about your proposal," even as he added that Iran was "determined to provide our country's need for nuclear energy."

In the ever-escalating one-upsmanship that the aWol bush maladministration mistakes for foreign policy, unilateral sanctions against Iran were imposed last week in a feeble attempt to punish Iran for their nuclear program, and accusing the Revolutionary Guard of illegally spreading WMDs. Iran seemed to brush off the administrations latest hissy-fit.

Putin reportedly mocked the move, and news agencies quoted him as saying "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end?"

In the meantime, I am viewing this new "BFF" status that the Iranians and Russians seem to be with a wary eye. We have been down this path before with the proxy wars between the two superpowers. They facilitated the deaths of 58,000 Americans in Vietnam, and the United States backed the Mujihideen fighters in Afghanistan, who killed approximately 15,000 Red Army soldiers.

I do not believe that the recent muscle-flexing by Russia is just that. I think the messages are quite clear. The world is realigning along an energy axis. Iran and Russia have it, and we need it. But so does China, and they can pay for it with the intrest we pay them on the debt accumulated to finance aWol Bush's vanity war!

Thanks to the arrogance, ignorance, jingoism and hubris of this administration, American influence has been drastically undermined and American interests have been compromised. Perhaps to a point they can't be repaired.

Losing the Cold War after the fact

Image courtesy McClatchy - click to enlarge

Not content with mismanaging a war and an occupation to the point that America stands to end up with not just one, but two hash-marks in the "L" column, the chump in charge has reached back into the recesses of time and managed to give it a go at reversing the outcome of the freakin’ Cold War, too.

Seriously – didn't anyone else cringe when the Connecticut cowboy was selected by the Supremes to parry with Putin? I sure as hell did. Panic at the prospect of the little idiot in negotiations with Russia was one of my first reactions.

C’mon – on the one hand you have a moronic, coke-addled, intellectually incurious, sociopathic, amoral, inept and hapless doofus who failed upwards his whole life…and on the other a former KGB case officer – decisive, derisive, stridently nationalistic, cold, calculating and competent. There was simply no way in hell this was going to work out well for United States interests, but not enough of us “got it” and of those of us who did, not enough were speaking up; so those of us who did voice our concerns were viewed askance, like we needed a shiny jacket to go with our pretty tinfoil hats.

When the affable moron met the spy in Slovenia in the summer of 2001, and claimed he had “looked into his soul” and saw a good guy, I guffawed, and the mockery in my household was overt and palpable. The entire family got weeks of mileage out of “looking into souls.” Our oldest was leaving for college that summer, and we looked into the soul of the laptop salesman, the residence hall coordinator, the university bookstore clerk, the financial aid officer that administered his scholarship…pretty much everyone we came in contact with for weeks got a good soul-peering.

We aren’t laughing any more, though, because the fallout of aWol’s inept foreign policy is no laughing matter.

Bush and his circle of bubble-supporting yes-men, lackeys and corporate good-ole-boy cronies grossly misjudged the Russian leader, just blithely assuming he was “a good guy” and “one of us.” (In their jingoistic worldview, it is just assumed that everyone wants to be “like us” or they simply aren’t worth bothering with). The ethnocentric, swaggering, bloviating asshats just couldn’t see it coming, but our emic was bound to crash into theirs.

It did, and the results of this prolonged foreign policy train wreck have been painful to watch, especially for those with an awareness and understanding of the historical relationship between the two superpowers. In the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, there was unprecedented cooperation between the two nations. The Russians shared intelligence, and the U.S. government turned a blind eye to the dirty war raging in Chechnya.

Now, there is not even a pretext of cooperation and common goals.

Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates (two so-called “experts” on the former Soviet Union, both of whom failed to read the handwriting on that crumbling wall) went to Moscow to meet with the Russian president last week.

First Putin kept them waiting for over a half hour. Then he openly mocked their mission in front of the press and the T.V. cameras.

On Saturday, Defense Secretary Gates said that he isn’t sure Russia is even interested in cooperating with the United States to defend Europe against Iranian missiles or whether Moscow “simply wants to stop the U.S. from building missile defenses in Eastern Europe.” (emphasis mine).

Gates, speaking with reporters on his trip home, showed us some of that prescience he is famous for (remember, he was the CIA’s expert who insisted the Soviet Union was reemerging as it was crumbling) saying he believes Russia is reasserting it’s presence on the world stage. "I think President Putin is coming back and saying you know you have to take us into account on all these things. In essence: 'We are back. We've got a lot of money. And we are a key player.' " Then he quickly added "I'm putting words into his mouth. He didn't say these things. This is my interpretation of perhaps his thinking: 'And you will need our help to solve problems. And if you won't seek our help, we can prevent problems from being solved,' " Gates said.

Of course Russia is reasserting dominance and flexing muscles, and has been for some time! I dunno about the SecDef, but I have been paying attention. In April, it went largely unnoticed when it became official Russian policy to refer to the United States in an adversarial manner in official reports and press releases. In May, they tested a new MRV-ICBM. In July, they laid claim to the North Pole, an International Zone. In August, their pilots started buzzing Guam for the first time since the cold war. In October, the Russian President mocked and humiliated two cabinet secretaries.

And I haven’t even brought up the energy issue. Not directly, anyway. But that is what it all boils down too. Russia has Energy, the west needs that energy, and Russia is not a country we can just invade, commence “kickin’ ass” and take it away from.

This administration has destroyed American credibility, negotiating power and economic stature. A solid victory in the Cold War, after a half-century of ideological brinksmanship and reams of hard-fought treaties, has been cast aside.

If there is one person on the face of the earth who is more pleased than Osama bin Laden to see the United States mired down in Iraq, bleeding away blood and treasure, and destroying the finest Army the world has even seen, it is Vladimir Putin.

What scares me even more than the damage that will be done to this country by another year of fighting in Iraq is the long-range damage being done to our foreign policy by another year of Bush incompetence. The destruction of the relationship with Russia is arguably the greatest threat to long-range security that the United States will face for the next 50-100 years.

Meanwhile...

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]

Yet another invocation of the Law of Unintended Consequences™ where the war in Iraq is concerned is the neglect of foreign policy in other parts of the world.

An eagerly-accepted presidential visit to Singapore in September for a summit meeting with Southeast Asian leaders has been canceled. Condi is skipping the same summit and 86’d plans for a trip to Africa this week. Defense Secretary Gates canceled a trip to El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Chile earlier this month.

The reason for all these cancellations? Iraq.

The occupation of Iraq is sucking all the oxygen out of foreign relations. As the conflict there rages on, over four years after the so-called mission was supposedly accomplished, every other priority is being shunted aside, and the slights are accumulating. Diplomats and analysts are getting nervous. "Canceling a meeting here or there may not seem like a big deal, but the slights are piling up," Asia expert Walter Lohman of the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote recently. "Unless the Bush administration can quickly get back on track, the game is over; it will fall to the next president to revitalize the U.S. commitment" to Asia.

No one in their right mind doubts the importance of Iraq and why it is central to the United States foreign policy efforts. The cock-up there ha already damaged U.S. standing, to a point it might take decades to recover; but more importantly is the possibility of the Iraq debacle spreading across the borders and setting off a regional war.

So while they all huddle ‘round their calendars and stare at “September 15 ” circled in red, the rest of the world can take a number. “The rest of the world” apparently includes the U.S. Diplomatic Corps. If they are not part of the Iraq contingent, they are pushed down the priority list, too.

Staffing has taken a hit, too. Embassies and offices in the State Department have come to expect a cut in resources for projects other than Iraq, a senior State Department official said.

"Everybody is subject to an Iraq tax. They basically know they will give up resources for Iraq," said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

When Crocker complained in late May that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad didn't have enough highly qualified staff, the State Department's response included sending one of its top experts on the Arab world, Robert Ford, back to Baghdad. He was pulled from Algeria, where he'd been ambassador less than a year.

With just 18 months left in office, Bush appears to have settled on a few top-flight issues — Iraq, the "war on terrorism," North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — to shape his legacy.

While it is not possible to overstate the importance of Iraq, other parts of the world are important, too.

In Latin America, many leaders are struggling to maintain close ties with Washington despite the increasingly anti-American mood there spurred by popular anger over the war in Iraq. China has expanded its influence and trade there.

Sub-Saharan Africa, where Rice has stopped only briefly in her two and a half years as secretary of state, is by far the most pro-American region in the world, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, but it isn't on anyone's priority list.

Nowhere is the lack of U.S. leadership felt more keenly than in East Asia, where China's growing economic and political power has left midsize nations traditionally sympathetic to the United States nervous about the future, critics said.

I have my days where I give these fools too much credit. I really shouldn't do that, because doing so implies competence, and they honest to god have none. Not a drop. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. The most bumbling, embarrassing Secretary of State ever (John Foster Dulles was a right prick, but he wasn’t incompetent) and the stupidest fuckwit to ever hold the office of the presidency have diminished America’s stature for the next half-century. By a bunch of dolts who have been wrong about absolutely everything and could not organize a two-car parade.

The next president is going to have a hell of a lot of damage to undo, not just in the Middle East, but all over the world.

Have you learned a lesson America? There is a hell of a lot more to consider when you go to the polls to elect your president than “Which one of these guys would I like to have a beer with?”

And by the way - when you use that standard and the guy you want to drink with is an alcoholic...you really need to think about it a little harder.