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This is where we excerpt articles from the media that take a historical approach to events in the news.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Richard Reeves: Who is Prepared to be President? Nobody

Source: Real Clear Politics (8-30-08)

Is Barack Obama prepared to be president? No. Neither is John McCain.

I have written about 12 pounds of books on the presidency over the past 22 years, three long studies that focused on the day-to-day work of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. This is the most important thing I learned in doing that, a paragraph at the end of the introduction to "President Kennedy: Profile of Power":

"John F. Kennedy was one of only 42 men who truly knew what it is like to be president. He was not prepared for it, but I doubt that anyone ever was or ever will be. The job is sui generis. The presidency is an act of faith."

The Kennedy book was published during the presidency of Bill Clinton, so now 43 men know. Obama, as I said, is obviously not one of them. But in praise of his acceptance speech here after winning the Democratic nomination, I did think the senator from Illinois, four years older than Kennedy was when he was inaugurated, showed he had a clue when he said:

"We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

That is not a particularly graceful or articulate line, but it is the most important fact about being president. The toughest job in the world is essentially reactive. The president does not run the country and is not paid by the hour. He is there to respond to events unanticipated: bizarre attacks on New York City, the blockade of a European city occupied by American troops, the rising of young black men and women against legal segregation, civil wars and genocides in places we never knew existed, the shelling of an American fort off South Carolina by other Americans.

Presidents are alone, facing the unknown. The job is not about running the country; it is about leading the nation in unexpected crisis or danger. No one remembers whether Lincoln balanced the budget.

Obama touched on what we anticipate will be the issues faced by the next president, as McCain will this week: a fading economy and place in the world, terrorism, health care, climate change. All important, critical, even, but no one knows what will be the issue that defines the next president. John Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated about defending Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off what we then called "Red China," but Kennedy's presidency was defined by surprising events in the Cold War against communism, and by civil rights and a civil war in what was called French Indo-China....

Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 5:19 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Fareed Zakaria: The Georgia attack will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder

Source: Newsweek (8-30-08)

... The attack on Georgia will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder. Look at what has happened. Russia has scared its neighboring states witless, driving them firmly into the arms of the West. For almost two years, Poland had been dragging its feet on the American proposal to deploy missile interceptors in that country as part of a continent wide shield (a few months ago public support for the shield varied between 15 and 25 percent). Within days of the Russian attack, Warsaw agreed to the deployment. Ukraine had long been divided on whether to have closer ties to the West. A few years ago, 60 percent of the country wanted some kind of federation with Russia instead. Now the Kiev government has unhesitatingly asked for a path to NATO membership.

Vladimir Putin has done more for transatlantic unity than a President Barack Obama ever could. The United States and Europe are now in greater strategic agreement than at any point in the last two decades. Even the autocracies in the Caucasus have reacted negatively to the attack, refusing to endorse Russia's actions and legitimize the new facts on the ground. China has refused its support. And what did Russia get for all this? Seventy thousand South Ossetians.

Several diplomats and commentators have compared the attack on Georgia to the Soviet Union's invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I think a more telling historical parallel might prove to be the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Then, as now, a Kremlin elite drunk on high oil prices foolishly overreached and triggered a countervailing reaction in the region and across the world.

The truth is, we're not in the 19th century, where the Russian intervention would have been standard operating procedure for a great power. In fact, only 50 years ago Britain and France clung to their colonies—in Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, Cyprus—with much greater determination and violence than has Moscow. By contrast, this is the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Russia has sent troops into a neighboring country (a country that it had ruled since 1801). Its actions are deplorable but the reaction to them —worldwide—is a sign of how much the rules have changed. President George W. Bush seemed to understand this when he spoke of Russia's behavior as being unacceptable "in the 21st century."...

Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 5:17 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Dan Senor: Biden Wanted to Break Up Iraq

Source: WSJ (8-29-08)

[Mr. Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a founder of Rosemont Capital. He served as a senior adviser to the Coalition in Iraq and was based in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004.]

At the Democratic convention, Joe Biden had the opportunity to showcase his foreign policy experience. Yet his principal and most recent foreign policy initiative -- his plan for the soft partition of Iraq -- was glaringly absent from his acceptance speech. When Barack Obama named his running mate, he ticked off Mr. Biden's work on a range of other foreign policy issues -- from chemical weapons to Bosnia. But there was no mention of Mr. Biden's plan for Iraq.

This was a remarkable omission. Mr. Biden's Iraq plan had been a central theme of his own presidential campaign, and the subject of numerous addresses, television appearances, and op-eds. He authored a Senate resolution, passed in September, that reflected his plan, and he even created a Web site to promote it: www.planforiraq.com. But there is no more talk about that Senate resolution. And the Web site has been quietly taken down.

Why the sudden silence?

When Mr. Biden first proposed his plan with much fanfare just over two years ago, it was greeted with deep concern by a number of Iraqi political leaders. They loosely understood the Biden plan to mean a Kurdish state in the provinces north from Mosul up to the Turkish and Iranian borders; a Shiite state in the provinces south of Baghdad down to the Kuwaiti border; and a Sunni state in the provinces immediately north and northwest of Baghdad.

Mr. Biden was well known to Iraqi leaders. He had visited Iraq more than other Senate critics of the Bush administration. As a supporter of the war and later as a pivotal voice on the early congressional funding debates, he had been constructive in his criticisms. For those of us advocating for increased troop levels early on, Mr. Biden was an ally. Indeed, even before the war, he said on the Senate floor that "we must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after." And despite his reputation for lecturing, he actually would listen to U.S. officials on the ground.

His case for soft partition was based on the Bosnian model where, he argued, the U.S.-brokered Dayton accords had "kept the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations." There was a logic to it. Unlike post-World War II Germany and Japan, both Bosnia and Iraq had disparate ethnic and sectarian communities; both were modern creations, established out of the ashes of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires, respectively.

But that is where the similarities ended. As a model for a tripartite federation of secure, semi-independent regions, Bosnia offered few actionable lessons for us in Iraq.

First, the 1995 Bosnia peace agreement was possible only after the momentum in the Balkan war had turned markedly against the Serbs. Until then, the Serbs had been on offense, were successful, and had no incentive to compromise. But by the mid-'90s, the Serbs suddenly found themselves defeated, with no viable alternatives to cutting a deal.

When Mr. Biden was arguing for a similar plan for Iraq, however, the Sunni extremists -- al Qaeda in Iraq, the 1920s Revolutionary Brigades, and other members of the Sunni resistance -- were in ascendance. So were the Shiite extremists, including Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Islamist Badr Brigades. The radicals had not been defeated.

Second, the key leaders behind the Bosnian war were in a position to sign a deal and deliver their proxies. Who would Mr. Biden have proposed we bring to the table to negotiate on behalf of the Sunnis and Shiites? Did he have confidence that they would be able to rein in the militias? The Shiite political leadership in Iraq's Parliament, for example, had very little influence over the Sadrists, whose movement was growing and whose leader had national -- not regional -- ambitions. Meanwhile, moderate Sunni leaders were losing hearts and minds in Sunni dominated areas to a violent campaign of intimidation by jihadists.
....

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 6:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

John Fund: Obama Should Come Clean On Ayers, Rezko And the Iraqi Billionaire

Source: WSJ (8-30-08)

... Walking the rows of media outlets at the Denver convention, I had no trouble finding reporters who complained the campaign was secretive and evasive. Ben Smith of Politico.com has written about Team Obama's "pattern of rarely volunteering information or documents, even when relatively innocuous." Politico asked months ago if Mr. Obama had ever written anything for the Harvard Law Review as a student. The Obama campaign responded narrowly, with a Clintonesque statement that "as the president of the Law Review, Obama didn't write articles, he edited and reviewed them." This month it turned out Mr. Obama had written an article -- but it was published a month before he became president.

Chasing the rest of Mr. Obama's paper trail is often an exercise in frustration. Mr. Obama says his state senate records "could have been thrown out" and he didn't keep a schedule in office. No one appears to have kept a copy of his application for the Illinois Bar. He has released only a single page of medical records, versus 1,000 pages for John McCain.

Then there's the house that Mr. Obama bought in 2005 in cooperation with Tony Rezko, his friend and campaign fund-raiser -- a move the candidate concedes was "boneheaded." Rezko was convicted in June of 16 counts of corruption. (Mr. Obama was not implicated in Rezko's crimes.)

Rezko's trial raised a host of questions. Was Mr. Obama able to save $300,000 on the asking price of his house because Rezko's wife paid full price for the adjoining lot? How did Mrs. Rezko make a $125,000 down payment and obtain a $500,000 mortgage when financial records shown at the Rezko trial indicate she had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000? Records show her husband also had few assets at the time.

Last April, the London Times revealed that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born billionaire living in London, had loaned Mr. Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before the day the sale of the house and lot closed in June 2005. Mr. Auchi's office notes he was a business partner of Rezko but says he had "no involvement in or knowledge of" the property sale. But in April 2004 he did attend a dinner party in his honor at Rezko's Chicago home. Mr. Obama also attended, and according to one guest, toasted Mr. Auchi. Later that year, Mr. Auchi came under criminal investigation as part of a U.S. probe of the corrupt issuance of cell-phone licenses in Iraq.

In May 2004, the Pentagon's inspector general's office cited "significant and credible evidence" of involvement by Mr. Auchi's companies in the Oil for Food scandal, and in illicit smuggling of weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime. Because of the criminal probe, Mr. Auchi's travel visa to the U.S. was revoked in August 2004, even as Mr. Auchi denied all the allegations. According to prosecutors, in November 2005 Rezko was able to get two government officials from Illinois to appeal to the State Department to get the visa restored. Asked if anyone in his office was involved in such an appeal, Mr. Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times last March, "not that I know of." FOIA requests to the State Department for any documents haven't been responded to for months.

After long delays, Mr. Obama sat with the editorial boards of the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune in March to answer their questions about his connection to Rezko. He had no recollection of ever meeting Mr. Auchi. He also said he didn't understand a lot about house buying, and gave vague answers to other questions. Since then, he has avoided any further discussion of the Rezko matter.

Some inquiries could be cleared up if the Obama campaign were forthcoming with key documents. Mr. Obama claims that in buying his house in 2005 he got a low mortgage rate from Northern Trust bank because another bank made a competitive bid for his business, but his campaign won't reveal from which bank. While he has released 94 pages of documents relating to the Rezko sale, they don't include the single most important one -- the settlement statement that shows the complete flow of funds that were part of the house sale. When asked why that last key document isn't being released, the Obama campaign issued a boilerplate statement saying, "we have released documents that reflect every one of the final terms of the senator's purchase of the home." But key data are still being withheld.

The Obama campaign didn't hesitate to criticize Hillary Clinton for not revealing the names of donors to the Clinton Library, or John McCain for releasing only two years of tax returns as opposed to Mr. Obama's 10 years. Those were proper questions. But so too are requests for information from Mr. Obama, a man whose sudden rise and incompletely reported past makes him among the least-vetted of presidential nominees....

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 6:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tom Baldwin: History? It’s enough to make you cry your eyelashes off

Source: Times (8-30-08)

[Tom Baldwin is a Times journalist.]

Whenever the Denver Broncos get a touchdown, a blonde woman dressed as a cowgirl charges across the pitch astride a white horse waving her arms furiously in celebration. It is doubtful, however, that their mile-high Invesco Field stadium has ever witnessed a spectacle or sent such a roar into the Rocky Mountain night sky as that which greeted Barack Obama.

It was a pulsing, flag-waving, screaming, weeping, beachball-tossing, camera-flashing mass comprised of 84,000 human beings. The chant of “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” rolled around one side, U! S! A!, U! S! A!" across the other.

This was the moment for which they had queued for up to three hours in the heat, passed through endless top-heavy security – was it really necessary for the National Guard to turn up in Humvees? – only to discover that the awful stadium food and overpriced water was in short supply. Unlike Broncos games, there was no beer.

“I think this is, in all probability,” said Jennifer Williams, 26, “the single most amazing thing that has happened to me in my life, ever.” Really? “We’re making history!”

And there he was, illuminated by more than 450 spotlights, striding down a blue-carpeted stage decorated with Classical-style columns made of plywood. Republicans had been busy sneering at the Temple of Obama – “Barackopolis” – advising those attending to wear togas and robes. His advisers denied that the stage was meant to be anything so hubristic. No, it was designed to resemble the White House. So that was all right, then.

Mr Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President in front of a crowd even bigger than that of John F. Kennedy in Los Angeles 48 years ago. The first black man to be nominated by a major party for President, the son of a Kenyan goat herder who spent some his childhood in Indonesia, wanted to tell an Everyman American story...

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 6:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

James Castagnera: Our GDP Suggests Yankee Ingenuity Is Alive and Well

Source: Carbon County (PA) Times-News (9-6-08)

[Jim Castagnera is the Associate Provost and Associate Counsel at Rider University. His novels and columns are available here.]

Recently I had a couple of beers on a Friday afternoon with an old college chum, who now owns and operates a small, high-tech manufacturing company in Exton (PA). Bill made two intriguing comments. The first was an assertion: “If you’re not making money as a manufacturer in this country, it’s because you’re dumb.” The second was: “Container ships bringing goods to the U.S. from China used to travel back home empty. Today, if you want to ship overseas, you have to reserve a container well in advance.”

Bill’s words came echoing back to me, when the NPR six o’clock news reported, even more recently, that America’s gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 3.3 percent during 2008’s second quarter. "The overwhelming story is that the export numbers have offset… domestic weakness in consumer spending and business investment," John Silvia of Wachovia Corp observed elsewhere in the media.

That very night, Barack Obama, accepting the Democratic nomination, commented, “Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it. Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.”

I liked the sound of that. By the time this column is in print, we’ll know what John McCain has to say on the same subject. Let’s hope it’s something along the same lines. Clearly, small-business entrepreneurs like my friend Bill are key to our future. This has always been the case in America. Many years ago, when I was a Coast Guardsman on the Great Lakes, I visited a maritime museum that featured old photos of ice harvesting. Intrigued, I researched the subject and learned that in 19th century New England, ice harvesting was big business. Crafty Yankee merchants cut blocks of ice from lakes, ponds and rivers, packed it in saw dust below their ships’ waterlines and shipped it all the way around the world. A website called “The Heart of New England” confirms my memory: “The birth of America’s large scale commercial ice industry began in New England in 1805. Frederick Tudor, a Boston merchant, created the first natural ice business in the United States. He shipped ice harvested on a pond in Lynn, Massachusetts to the West Indies. Over the next thirty years Tudor made a fortune shipping ice around the world to places like Charleston, New Orleans, Cuba, Calcutta, South America, China and England. British records show that Queen Victoria purchased some ice from Massachusetts in the 1840’s.”

Who but an American entrepreneur would conceive of a scheme such as this, and then work out the technology to make it a reality? In his famous trilogy, “The Americans,” historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, “Between the Revolution and the Civil War, America flourished not in discovery but in search. It prospered not from the perfection of its ways but from their fluidity. It lived with the constant belief that something else or something better might turn up.” Obama’s acceptance speech captured Boorstin’s sentiment: “It is that American spirit --- that American promise --- that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain… that makes us fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.”

In the 1890s another famous historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, worried in a famous paper and a book that the official Federal announcement of the closing of the American frontier during that decade might start the decline of the American democracy. He didn’t know that Americans would continue finding, or creating, new frontiers. In the 1960s the New Frontier was in outer space. In the 1990s it was in cyberspace. The surprising vigor of our economy from April through June had many causes, some surely beyond our control and purely serendipitous. But it wasn’t all by accident, as my old college buddy, Bill, would be the first to tell you.

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 4:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 29, 2008

John B. Judis: Avoiding A Long, Disappointing Fall

Source: New Republic (8-28-08)

The Barack Obama campaign has been floundering. If he had a lead in the polls in late June--and the summer polls are notoriously fickly--he clearly lost it by the convention's beginning. And so far, the convention--dominated, ironically, by the Clintons--has not particularly helped. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden performed quite well last night, but if Obama fails to deliver a spellbinding oration tonight, the Democrats could be in for a long and disappointing fall.

Why is Obama in trouble? Many of his problems are not of his own doing; they stem from his being the first African American to have a shot at the presidency. The New York Times' Matt Bai insists that "the race isn't about race" and that what matters more is Obama's "remarkably little governing experience." Obama's inexperience is undoubtedly a handicap against John McCain, but what Bai misses is the connection: Obama's race reinforces whatever doubts voters might have about his ability to govern. As several psychological experiments have shown, white voters asked to compare white and black candidates of equal accomplishment will tend to view the black candidate as being less competent.

Stanley Greenberg and Democracy Corps make a similar mistake in what is otherwise a brilliant study of how voters in Macomb County, a white working class area north of Detroit, plan to vote this fall. Greenberg found Obama trailing McCain by 46 to 39 percent in this bellwether county, which Bill Clinton won in 1996 and John Kerry lost in 2004. Greenberg found that a third of Macomb voters were worried that Obama "will put the interests of black Americans ahead of other Americans," but concluded that Macomb's voters "do not seem to be voting predominately on race." Instead, he contended that Macomb voters are more worried about Obama raising taxes.

Concerns about Obama's race and his being a tax-and-spend liberal, however, are intricately related. Psychological studies showing that white voters will judge a black candidate to be less competent also show that they will judge a black candidate with the same views as a white one to be less moderate and more leftwing. Worries about race reinforce worries about taxing and spending.

So Obama starts the general election with a large handicap that he has to overcome. And as voters have begun to focus on the choice between him and McCain, and as the McCain campaign has gone on the attack against Obama's experience and ideology, these handicaps have become much more serious....

Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 6:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Dick Morris: A strategic opening for McCain

Source: dickmorris.com (8-29-08)

Many political campaigns run against the wrong candidate. The opportunity to pick on a vulnerable target is so tempting that they are lured into attacking someone who isn’t running. In 1992, the Republicans unleashed their convention barrage at Hillary and left Bill unscathed. In 1996, Dole still ran against Clinton the liberal and ignored the changes in his political positioning. Campaigns go after the flaming red cape, so glittering a target, and leave the matador alone.

That’s what the Democratic convention has been doing in Denver. They are so anxious to run against Bush, their animosity is so pent up, that they persist in running against a man who is not seeking a third term. In speech after speech, the Democrats knock the Bush record and then add, lamely, that McCain is the same as Bush. Or they call the McCain candidacy Bush’s third term. It was no accident — or Freudian slip — when Joe Biden spoke of John Bush instead of George in his litany of attacks.

This pattern of shooting at the decoy, not the duck, gives McCain a bold strategic opportunity. He can nullify the impact of the entire Democratic convention simply by distancing himself from Bush.

The truth is, of course, that McCain is the most unlike Bush of any of the Republican senator. (When Obama’s people claim that Bush and McCain voted the same 94 percent of the time, they forget that most of the votes in the Senate are unanimous.) The fact that McCain backs commending a basketball team on its victory doesn’t mean that he is in lockstep ideologically with the president.

The issues on which McCain and Bush differ are legion:

* McCain fought for campaign finance reform — McCain-Feingold — that Bush resisted and ultimately signed because he had no choice.

* McCain led the battle to restrict interrogation techniques of terror suspects and to ban torture.

* McCain went with Joe Lieberman on a tough measure to curb climate change, something Bush denies is going on.

* McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts when they passed.

* McCain urged the Iraq surge, a posture Bush rejected for years before conceding its wisdom.

* McCain favors FDA regulation of tobacco and sponsored legislation to that effect, a position all but a handful of Republican senators oppose.

* McCain’s energy bill, also with Lieberman, is a virtual blueprint for energy independence and development of alternate sources.

* After the Enron scandal, McCain introduced sweeping reforms in corporate governance and legislation to guarantee pensions and prohibit golden parachutes for executives. Bush opposed McCain’s changes and the watered-down Sarbanes-Oxley bill eventuated.

* McCain has been harshly critical of congressional overspending, particularly of budgetary earmarks, a position Bush only lately adopted (after the Democrats took over Congress).

Remember that McCain ran against Bush in 2000.

McCain’s Republican advisers need to realize that they won the primary and that they do not need to cotton to the delegates at their convention or to appease the Bush White House. The more they respond to Obama’s and Biden’s attacks on Bush by saying, “It ain’t me, babe,” the more he will moot the entire purpose of the Democratic convention.

It is a rare opportunity to nullify the entire Democratic line of attack, and McCain should seize on it.

Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 6:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Ian Breen: Notes on Past Conventions

Source: Atlantic Monthly (8-25-08)

Since their inception in 1832, national political conventions have played an important but ever-evolving role in presidential elections. Over the years, changes in nominating procedures have lessened the political power of conventions, even as new broadcast technologies have increased their impact on voters. Four Atlantic articles spanning nearly one hundred years examine this changing role and lend perspective to the conventions taking place this election cycle.

In "Presidential Nominations" (April 1884), Oliver T. Morton addressed what he perceived to be a serious problem in the American electoral process: the tendency for political conventions to produce candidates that are neither the most capable leaders nor the choice of the majority of voters. Morton was writing at a time when conventions played a much more central role in selecting candidates. Until state primaries were instituted early in the twentieth century, delegates at the conventions made nominations and debated among themselves until a candidate was chosen. While this may sound to us like democracy in action, in fact the delegates were typically handpicked by state party bosses to ensure ahead of time that certain people would receive votes. The common voter only got to weigh in after the candidates had been chosen by the convention insiders. "In truth," Morton wrote, "the people of this country have very little to do with the choice of the supreme magistrate, their option being restricted to two men, the creatures of two practically irresponsible conventions."

Not only were nominating conventions exclusive, Morton argued, they also typically produced mediocre candidates. He quoted John Stuart Mill, who had written of America's flawed candidate selection process,

In the United States...the strongest party never dares put forward any of its strongest men, because every one of these, from the mere fact that he has been long in the public eye, has made himself objectionable to some portion or other of the party, and is therefore not so sure a card for rallying all their votes as a person who has never been heard of by the public at all until he is produced as the candidate.

Morton thus felt that great Presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant had come to power in spite of the conventions, rather than because of them. Their nominations, he believed, were due to "exceptional causes." He quoted a contemporary English economist, Walter Bagehot, who argued that Lincoln's nomination for the Presidency had been a matter of luck rather than an example of the nominating process functioning effectively.

It was government by an unknown quantity. Hardly any one in America had any living idea what Mr. Lincoln was like, or any definite notion what he would do...Mr. Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness. But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries.

In Morton's view, then, the exclusionary nature of the nominating conventions was an impediment to true democracy. Correcting the problem, he wrote, "necessitates a transfer of power from that body to the people." To that end, he outlined a series of measures designed to put power into the hands of the voters, many of which were similar to those that were eventually adopted in the state primary system....

Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 6:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Peter Beinart: Dems need to remain true to Wilsonianism in international affairs

Source: World Affairs Journal (Summer issue) (7-1-08)

... To revive the collective security tradition, Democrats must first conquer a fear: not of military adversaries overseas, but of political adversaries here at home. For several generations now, liberals have lived in terror of being labeled “soft” on national security. The policymakers of the early Cold War—men like Dean Acheson, Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson—saw colleagues and friends destroyed during the McCarthy years, and the experience haunted them to their graves. Baby boomers, coming of age during Vietnam, saw Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan exploit the popular impression of Democratic weakness to win electoral landslides. And, most recently, a younger, post-Cold War generation has listened to George W. Bush assail Democrats as appeasers in the war on terror, and ride the accusation to victory in the elections of 2002 and 2004.

As a result, for many Democrats shaped in the eras of Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush, the simple act of envisioning a liberal foreign policy has been radically inhibited. In Washington, where discussions of policy can rarely be disentangled from discussions of politics, the assumption that Americans tend to be naturally “Jacksonian”—hawkish, nationalistic, and unilateralist—blunts intellectual inquiry before it even begins. Democrats don’t wait for Karl Rove to tell them that Joe Sixpack considers them weak and naïve; they tell each other. The result has been a party that devises its foreign policies under such heavy political constraints that, were those constraints suddenly to be lifted, many Democrats would be hard-pressed to articulate the principles that lie beneath. Democrats have become so accustomed to not saying what they truly believe about foreign policy—because they assume these beliefs, once exposed, would invite political disaster—that they have nearly forgotten what the beliefs were in the first place.

The contrast with the development of modern conservative foreign policy is instructive. When William F. Buckley, James Burnham, and the other founding editors of National Review set out in the 1950s to devise a conservative approach to the Cold War, they did so in the full knowledge that their views were wildly outside the political mainstream. (In fact, Buckley and Burnham did not even live in Washington.) Yet they continued to elaborate and refine them, making few concessions to political necessity, until in 1976 and 1980, when Ronald Reagan brought first the Republican Party, and then the entire country, around to their worldview.

The point is not that Democratic foreign policymakers should ignore political reality. Sometimes external events—the fall of China, the Soviet atomic test and the Communist invasion of South Korea in 1949 and 1950, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and of course 9/11—force liberals to trim their ideological sails in the face of conservative gusts. But liberals, and I include myself in this indictment, tend to internalize these moments so deeply that even after the political constraints have been washed away, they cannot see that the storm has passed. The awful irony of Vietnam, David Halberstam argued in The Best and the Brightest, was that by 1964 and 1965, when Lyndon Johnson set America on the path to quagmire, the fears of a right-wing backlash that haunted him into doing so were vastly overblown. But Johnson, so deeply scarred by McCarthyism early in his career, could not see how much the political landscape had changed by the mid-1960s.

2008 is a similar moment. Politically, the storm has passed, and yet Democrats remain so traumatized by the past that they have trouble seeing present circumstances for what they are. Analogies with the 1970s and 1980s, and with 2004, hang darkly over Democratic foreign policy discussions. Yet in two fundamental ways, the analogies are misplaced. In 1980, after the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Americans were newly—and justifiably—scared. That fear was dramatically revived in the years following September 11, 2001. According to one 2002 poll, even a plurality of Democratic voters preferred the GOP on matters of national defense....

Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 5:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Juan Williams: Uncles to the New China ... George Herbert Walker Bush and Henry Kissinger

Source: http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com (8-26-08)

Beijing, August 9 – Henry Kissinger is standing in the entry to the newly rebuilt Jianfu Palace inside the Forbidden City, once home to the Chinese emperor. The 85-year-old gets a greeting worthy of an emperor from Chinese political and business leaders.

To Kissinger's right is another American imperial presence during these Olympics: 84-year-old former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. The senior Bush was the first U.S. liaison to China after Kissinger and President Nixon opened the door to U.S. diplomatic relations with China in 1972.

Bush and Kissinger came to China for the opening of the Olympics as revered elders. As China celebrates its thriving economy and rising political power on the world stage the Chinese leadership recognizes these two octogenarian Americans as not quite founding fathers but important uncles to this new China.


It was 1971 when Kissinger, then the U.S. national security adviser, traveled secretly into China to meet with former Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. They negotiated President Nixon's meeting in 1972 with Chairman Mao that signaled the end of nearly twenty year-long estrangement between communist Red China and the U.S.

Kissinger's role during the turmoil of Vietnam and his support for Nixon during the Watergate scandals is a non-story here. At these Olympics he is an honored pioneer who laid the groundwork for China's growth. And Kissinger looks back on his work in China with clear emotion of a proud relative.

His voice shifting lower he told me there are not many times in life when you know you have made a difference, but China is "one time when I know I made a difference for the good." The very building he is standing in is evidence to that truth. Built in 1740 as one of several pavilions in a garden court it was burned down in 1923 and only recently restored through joint financial help from Chinese and U.S. business leaders.

Kissinger praised the late Zhou Enlai as a great negotiating partner. According to archival records of their negotiations opened just a few years ago the Chinese Prime Minister focused on getting U.S. support in holding off Russian hegemony while limiting the U.S. military presence in Asia, particularly in Taiwan and Korea. Kissinger had a different focus. He wanted to build China's confidence to allow the leadership to take the risk of opening its doors to American business and innovation as well as to a political alliance against the Russians. To that end Kissinger convinced the Chinese that President Nixon understood the differences between the communist leadership in Moscow and the communist leadership in Beijing.

There are ups and some disappointing downs in the U.S. relationship with China. But looking at modern China through Kissinger's eyes it is impossible not to be giddy at the Olympian fruit that has grown from those 1971 talks. The odds did not favor China, in just over 30 years, hosting its first Olympics much less becoming a powerful economic and political player that is willing to stand with the U.S. on issues from halting North Korea's nuclear ambitions to dealing with global energy policy.

Former President Bush, in remarks during the dinner here Saturday night, joked that he is literally a proud father after Chinese President Hu Jintao told him 8 years of his son's administration have improved U.S. - Chinese relations to the point that they have never been better.

Looking back on his work as a diplomat here in the 1970s, the former President said he always believed China's relationship with the U.S. was important to stabilizing the region. Now he said time has proven him right to the point that he now believes the most important bi-lateral relationship in the world is between Beijing and Washington. With Russia at war last week fighting to hold on to what remains of the former Soviet empire, Bush's words seem beyond argument. Last week's opening of a new $450 million U.S. embassy in Beijing, second in size only to the U.S. embassy in Iraq, also confirmed the increasingly critical nature of U.S. ties to China.

Even widespread U.S. concern over China's questionable position on human rights, in Tibet and the Sudan, seems lacking in perspective given the gross history of Chinese repression. Tens of thousands died under the heavy hand of Chinese communism 40 years ago during Chairman Mao's repressive Cultural Revolution. Similarly, the power of the famous picture taken in Tiananmen Square, with one man standing defiant against the power of a government tank in the 1980s, seems distant now when a Pew poll, done before the Olympics, shows the Chinese to be near the top of a worldwide survey of people most content with their government's leadership and their lives.

Based on face-to-face interviews after March riots in Tibet and a deadly May earthquake, the poll found that among citizens of 24 nations the Chinese are the most satisfied "the way things are going in their country and with their nation's economy." That includes 65 percent of Chinese who say their government is doing a good job on issues most important to them, such as increasing wealth and opportunity.

What must be particularly pleasing to Bush and Kissinger is that 70 percent of Chinese, according to the Pew poll, say their former communist country is better off with its hybrid form of capitalism.

The poll's results were evident to me in a visit to Sichuan Province where an earthquake three months ago killed thousands. In Dujiangyan city a 63 year old man, Qi Chengbin, who lost his only child, an 18-year-old son, in the earthquake and now lives in temporary housing had only praise for what he called the government's fast response. He said 30 years ago he lived in worse conditions than his current temporary shelter.

Kissinger and the elder Bush are old enough to know the truth of how much change has taken place in China – change for the better – during their lifetime. The Chinese and their leadership are also in touch with the rapid change and intent on trying to control it. As Americans watch China's missteps on human rights, the environment and the press it helps to see modern China through the eyes of those two old American diplomats who had a hand in transforming China — Bush and Kissinger.

Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Michael Nelson: If Obama loses, is racism to blame?

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed (8-28-08)

[Michael Nelson, a former editor of The Washington Monthly, is a professor of political science at Rhodes College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.]

A conventional wisdom is forming to the effect that if Barack Obama loses the presidential election in November, white racism will be the cause. The reasoning runs as follows: The combination of economic anxiety, the unpopular war in Iraq, George W. Bush’s low approval ratings, and the public’s overwhelming sense that the United States is on the “wrong track” means that the deck is stacked this year in favor of the Democrats. So if the Democratic nominee for president loses, it must be for some shady reason. Add to that a recent New York Times poll showing that although only 5 percent of voters say they would not vote for an African-American candidate for president, 24 percent say they don’t think the country is ready to elect one.

The truth is more complicated. In good times and bad, Democrats tend to lose presidential elections: Since 1968, they have lost 7 of 10, four of them by landslides. The only Democrats who have won the presidency — Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 — were centrist Southern governors. Whenever the party has nominated a Northern liberal, especially one whose chief political credential is in Washington, it has lost the election: Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000 (a de facto Washingtonian), and John Kerry in 2004.

Obama is a Northern liberal whose chief political credential is in Washington. And he’s “balanced” the ticket with Joseph Biden, another Northern liberal whose chief political credential is in Washington.

To be sure, Obama will lose some votes because he is black. He will also gain some votes because he is black, not just from fellow African-Americans (an already solidly Democratic constituency, but one whose turnout rate is expected to rise) but also from young white voters.

And don’t forget the particular burden of prejudice that John McCain bears: ageism. Exactly one year ago, Gallup asked people to look at a long list of candidate characteristics and say whether they thought each one “would be a desirable characteristic for the next president to have, an undesirable characteristic, or if it wouldn’t matter much to you either way.” Ten percent responded that being “a member of a racial or ethnic minority group” would be desirable, 13 percent that it would be undesirable....

Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 5:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Victor Navasky: Making History at the Convention

Source: Nation (8-27-08)

[Victor Navasky was the magazine's editor from 1978 to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005.]

Yesterday, last night and this morning it was all about Hillary, and she didn't let her supporters or her party down. Go (or, depending on where you stand, Welcome Back) Hillary!

But while all eyes are on the podium, the election and the direction (of the country) may be determined by events and ideas under consideration outside the formal arena.

At the notorious 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, I remember sitting in the office of Larry O'Brien, who by that time, was running the Hubert Humphrey campaign. He had three television sets, tuned to the three big TV networks. On two of them, cops were beating up and otherwise abusing demonstrators in the streets, and on the third set, a political insider, Richard Goodwin (who had moved, after Robert Kennedy's assassination, to the McCarthy camp), was giving his analysis of the delegates. O'Brien turned off the sound on the two street-violence pictures, and turned up the sound on the Goodwin interview. It all seemed to me emblematic of the way in which the party establishment missed the historical moment, the real story of what was happening at their own convention.

Here in Denver, the main action outside of the arena is not in the streets but indoors. Most of it has to do with progressive possibility. Yesterday, for example, I attended a half-day series of panels organized by Bob Borosage, where people like Arianna H., Senator Sherrod Brown, Rep. Donna Edwards, Bob Kuttner, Rep. Keith Ellis and Alan Charney held forth. The talk was about a "new" New Deal. (The old one, designed to overcome the Great Depression, gave birth to Social Security, public works and such; the new one, designed to overcome "the great devaluation," requires social investment in human capital-- healthcare and a college education for all, and other elements of "a new dream" ). The talk was about:

• Conyers' single-payer bill, HR 676

• A minimum wage indexed to inflation

• The right to organize (but also the need for unions to invest more of their assets into organizing)

• Retirement (don't move the age up, said US Action President Bill McNair, "snap the cap" on Social Security)

The point here is not whether one agrees with David Sirota that "The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has finally defeated the corporate wing of the Democratic Party" but that the conversations outside the arena should remind those inside that the debates between Clinton, Obama, Edwards et al. in the primaries were in large part over who was more antiwar, who was greener, who cared more about labor. They assumed, in other words, that the old Democratic Leadership Council's push towards so-called moderation was yesterday's news.

There is much talk here about this being an "historic convention." And of course what most people are referring to is the first nomination by a major party of a black candidate for President. But the talk in the penumbra of the Pepsi Center embodies the content of what could really make the aftermath of these proceedings historic, i.e., what Borosage and others have called "a transformational moment." Let's hope that the new leadership has not turned the sound off.

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

David R. Stokes: Obama’s Very Un-JFK Moment

Source: Nixon Blog (8-27-08)

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.]

If Barack Obama winds up losing the election this November, most likely a significant portion of the blame will affix to his selection of a running mate. The issue will not have much of anything to do with Senator Joe Biden’s personality or performance. It will simply be a case of “what might have been” if Hillary Rodham Clinton had been placed on the ticket.

In fact, the man who would be John F. Kennedy, who has sought the Camelot mantle and basked in déjà vu images of a time that never really was, has for the first time in his once-quixotic campaign departed from the script. JFK would have made the tough and pragmatic choice, against the advice of those closest to him – particularly brother Bobby. He would have chosen Clinton. In fact, he did choose “his” Hillary – a man named Lyndon.

It remains for the story to fully unfold, and for journalists and historians to research and write about the behind the scenes machinations leading to the Biden selection and, more importantly, the Clinton rejection. But I suspect that we will come to learn about strong feelings generated by the deep wounds inflicted during fierce political battle.

The whole image of all things Kennedy clearly resonates with the Democratic standard bearer. He has laboriously cultivated a calculated political resemblance. But there are many compelling distinctions between Barack and Jack, not the least of which are fundamental differences in temperament and personality.

Kennedy was not only cool – he was cold. He could turn the charm on when necessary – and did so with unparalleled effectiveness – but his default mode was to be detached and aloof.

As Seymour Hersh wrote in The Dark Side of Camelot, the public-at-large was enamored of Jack’s “charm and style,” but most “would see very little of the real John F. Kennedy, and would never fully sense the Kennedy cynicism and toughness.”

It is, of course, a very good thing that Mr. Obama has a demonstrable capacity for closeness to others, as is clearly apparent with his marriage and family (another contrast with JFK). And this suggests that when people close to him feel strongly, he can and will be influenced.

In other words, some in his inner circle have never gotten over what Bill and Hillary Clinton said and did during the primary campaign. It is that simple.

JFK’s brother and campaign manager Bobby despised Lyndon Johnson – and was distraught when Jack tapped him for Vice President. One wonders - how did Michelle Obama (Barack’s “Bobby”) feel and express herself about the whole “should Hillary be on the ticket” subject? A while back, in an appearance on that wonderfully erudite television show The View, Mrs. Obama seemed to distance herself from the process saying, “I am just glad I am not involved in that decision.” Really? It is really hard to envision such an otherwise fully immersed life partner not being privy to those discussions.

John F. Kennedy went against the advice of his closest advisors when he chose Lyndon Baines Johnson to run with him. It was a marriage of calculated political convenience. It was not about “chemistry” or compatibility. It was a shrewd and pragmatic decision based on the bottom line: who would best help the ticket in November.

The twelve-hour period in Los Angeles during the night of July 13-14, 1960, as Mr. Kennedy pondered his running mate options, was one of the most interesting moments in the history of presidential electoral politics. Having captured the nomination on the first ballot with 806 votes (761 required to win), he had beaten back a late-hour challenge by Johnson, the powerful Senate Majority Leader from Texas. Though LBJ had only “officially” announced his candidacy a few days before the convention, he had been orchestrating a stealth campaign for many months. When the roll was called, he received 409 votes – a strong second, considering his late entry.

The Kennedy-Johnson battle of July 1960 may have been brief, but it was very brutal. The Texan tore into Jack using everything he could think of to sway convention delegates. He talked about Kennedy’s health and the rumors of Addison’s disease (potentially fatal). He railed against JFK’s youth, regularly referring to him as a “forty-two year old kid” (he was actually forty-three). He even brought up old family history declaring that in the Second World War: “I wasn’t any Chamberlain-umbrella policy man, I never thought Hitler was right.” This was, of course, a reference to Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had been the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James in Great Britain in the late 1930s. His views on appeasement and Hitler led to his recall by President Roosevelt.

The gloves were off.

By the way, part of John F. Kennedy’s detached aloofness was evident in the way he could deflect personal attacks with humor. In fact, at a hastily arranged televised “debate” before a joint meeting of Massachusetts and Texas delegates just the day prior to his nomination, he listened to Johnson’s tirade. But when his turn to talk came, he chose only to speak about how much he admired LBJ and how he supported him for Majority Leader in the Senate.

It was the triumph of cool. That capacity is actually what made it possible for Kennedy to choose Johnson, against the advice of a host of soon-to-be New Frontier characters.

Lyndon Johnson surprised many by accepting the number-two spot on the ticket. Just why he would give up a clearly more powerful position in the senate to take a job that had been long-referred to as “not worth a bucket of warm spit,” puzzled many close to him. Possibly the greatest influence on him was then Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, LBJ’s long-time mentor. Mister Sam, as he was affectionately known by friends, had been opposed to the idea of Lyndon running as VP, but overnight changed his mind declaring: “I’m a damn sight smarter than I was last night.”

Interestingly, one clue as to what Johnson was thinking is left to us in a biography of Clare Booth Luce, former congresswoman and one time U.S. Ambassador to Italy, written by Ralph G. Martin. The book describes a conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Mrs. Luce shortly after the inauguration on January 20, 1961 – in fact while the two were riding together en route to the inaugural ball. Having been asked why he accepted the Vice Presidential nomination the previous July, LBJ told her:

“Clare, I looked it up; one out of every four presidents has died in office. I’m a gamblin’ man darlin’, and this is the only chance I got.”

So the Kennedy-Johnson partnership was born of, and driven by, political cynicism. It was only possible in an environment where naked ambition trumped personal feelings of animosity, suspicion, and hurt.

Mr. Obama chose not to go down that path when he passed over Hillary Clinton in favor of Joseph Biden. Because he and those around him are still licking their wounds, he chose the safe-bet over the slam-dunk. In doing so, he stepped out of predictable Kennedy-esque character in a way not yet seen in this campaign.

If he loses in November, he may very well be remembered as a John F. Kennedy wannabe who couldn’t really pull the cynical trigger. And maybe that would be best for all of us.

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 3:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Arkady Ostrovsky: Flirting with Stalin

Source: Prospect (9-1-08)

[Arkady Ostrovsky is a journalist who reported from Moscow.]

"Dear friends! The textbook you are holding in your hands is dedicated to the history of our Motherland… from the end of the Great Patriotic War to our days. We will trace the journey of the Soviet Union from its greatest historical triumph to its tragic disintegration."

This greeting is addressed to hundreds of thousands of Russian schoolchildren who will in September receive a new history textbook printed by the publishing house Enlightenment and approved by the ministry of education. "The Soviet Union," the new textbook explains, "was not a democracy, but it was an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society." Furthermore, over the past 70 years, the USSR, "a gigantic superpower which managed a social revolution and won the most cruel of wars," effectively put pressure on western countries to give due regard to human rights. In the early part of the 21st century, continues the textbook, the west has been hostile to Russia and pursued a policy of double standards.

Had it not been for Vladimir Putin's involvement, this book would probably have never seen the light of day. In 2007, Putin, then Russian president, gathered a group of history teachers to talk about his vision of the past. "We can't allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us," was his message.

The 1990s were largely ideology-free in Russia. The country was too weary of grand designs and too preoccupied with economic survival. When Putin came to power in 2000, he said Russia's national idea was "to be competitive." But then, as the price of oil climbed and Russia started to feel important again, the need for ideology became more urgent. Unable to offer any vision or strategy for the future, the Kremlin looked, inevitably, to the past.

The textbook covers the period 1945-2006, a suggestive choice: from Stalin's victory in the "great patriotic war" to the "triumph" of Putinism. It celebrates all contributors to Russia's greatness, and denounces those responsible for the loss of empire, regardless of their politics. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is seen not as a watershed from which a new history begins, but as an unfortunate and tragic diversion that has hindered Russia's progress.

The whole postwar period in Russian history is viewed through the prism of the cold war "initiated by the United States of America." The textbook does not deny Stalin's repressions; it justifies them. The concentration of power in Stalin's hands suited the country; indeed, conditions of the time "demanded" it. "The domestic politics of the Soviet Union after the war fulfilled the tasks of mobilisation which the government set. In the circumstances of the cold war… democratisation was not an option for Stalin."

But if Stalin mobilised the country and expanded the Soviet empire so that it reached parity in power-status with the US, Mikhail Gorbachev surrendered those hard-won positions. Stupidly, from the textbook's point of view, Gorbachev considered western partners to be his political allies. He gave up central and eastern Europe, which meant Russia lost its security. America and the west instigated revolutions in Ukraine and in Georgia, which turned the former Soviet territories into western military bases. These revolutions "set a task for Moscow to pursue a more ambitious foreign policy in the post-Soviet space," the textbook says.

Now we have seen this ambition realised in the recent war against Georgia....

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 2:28 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Ben Macintyre: Assassination ... the most grimly familiar tale in US history

Source: Times (8-27-08)

[Ben Macintyre is a columnist writing for The Times newspaper.]

A few months ago Doris Lessing, the novelist and Nobel laureate, was discussing the life-expectancy of Barack Obama, should he win the race to the White House: “He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president,” she mused. “They would kill him.”

Lessing was roundly criticised for insensitivity, but in the light of the arrests in Colorado yesterday, her remarks now seem grimly prescient.

When I heard that a group of men had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill the Democratic presidential candidate in Denver, my first reaction was not shock, but rather a thudding sense of déjà vu - for the narrative of presidential assassination has become deeply embedded in American culture, the most grimly familiar story in American history.

Mr Obama has been stalked by the possibility of assassination since he declared his candidacy. After all, Colin Powell, the last African-American to contemplate running for president, pulled out because his wife apparently feared his assassination.

Every few weeks during the campaign, the possible threat to Mr Obama has bubbled to the surface, often inadvertently. Hillary Clinton was savaged in May for remarking: “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Mike Huckabee, a former contender for the Republican nomination, apologised after joking, in a speech to the National Rifle Association, that a sudden noise offstage had been Mr Obama diving to avoid a gunshot. The boxer Bernard Hopkins was blunter: “They won't let him become president, but if they do, it will be for a short time, maybe less than a month.”

The colour of Mr Obama's skin, obviously, makes him a target, but beyond the violent racism that still festers in the sump of American society is the extent to which the long and bloody tradition of presidential assassination looms over US politics. There have been at least 17 assassination attempts against presidents, and four of the 43 presidents were murdered in office.

The alleged would-be assassins arrested this week do not strike me as historians. They are unlikely to be conscious of following in the footsteps of John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Abraham Lincoln, and less likely still to recognise the name of Charles Guiteau, who murdered James Garfield in 1881. But they will most assuredly know of Lee Harvey Oswald, the enduring role model for the disgruntled American assassin...

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 1:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scott McLemee: The End of the End of the End of History?

Source: Inside Higher Ed (8-27-08)

[Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.]

One minor casualty of the recent conflict in Georgia was the doctrine of peace through McGlobalization — a belief first elaborated by Thomas Friedman in 1999, and left in ruins on August 8, when Russian troops moved into South Ossetia. “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s,” wrote Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

Not that the fast-food chain itself had a soothing effect, of course. The argument was that international trade and modernization — and the processes of liberalization and democratization created in their wakes — would knit countries together in an international civil society that made war unnecessary. There would still be conflict. But it could be contained — made rational, and even profitable, like competition between Ronald and his competitors over at Burger King. (Thomas Friedman does not seem like a big reader of Kant, but his thinking here bears some passing resemblance to the philosopher’s “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” an essay from 1784.)

McDonald’s opened in Russia in 1990 — a milestone of perestroika, if ever there were one. And Georgia will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its first Micky D’s early next year, assuming anybody feels up for it. So much for Friedman’s theory. Presumably it could be retooled ex post facto (“two countries with Pizza Huts have never had a thermonuclear conflict,” anyone?) but that really seems like cheating.

Ever since a friend pointed out that the golden arches no longer serve as a peace sign, I have been wondering if some alternative idea would better fit the news from Georgia. Is there a grand narrative that subsumes recent events? What generalizations seem possible, even necessary and urgent, now? What, in short, is the Big Idea?

Reading op-ed essays, position papers, and blogs over the past two weeks, one finds a handful of approaches emerging. The following survey is not exhaustive — and I should make clear that describing these ideas is not the same as endorsing them. Too many facts about what actually happened are still not in; interpretation of anything is, at this point, partly guesswork. (When the fog of war intersects a gulf stream of hot air, you do not necessarily see things more clearly.) Be that as it may, here are some notes on certain arguments being made about what it all means....

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jeffrey Rosen: The Myth of Biden v. Bork

Source: NYT (8-27-08)

[Jeffrey Rosen is the author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”]

WHEN Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands on the podium in Denver tonight as Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, conservatives of a certain age will see a bogeyman who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Those hearings are to conservatives what the Clinton impeachment is to liberals, and conservatives blame Senator Biden for inaugurating the post-Bork politics of personal destruction. To them, Mr. Obama’s selection of Mr. Biden reveals the insincerity of his pledge to change politics as usual in Washington.

The charge is unfair. Twenty-one years ago, during the Bork nomination, I worked for Mr. Biden as an intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From that modest vantage point, I saw Mr. Biden struggle to focus the hearings on Judge Bork’s judicial philosophy rather than his private life, in the face of overwhelming political pressure from interest groups on the left. Mr. Biden’s efforts to protect Judge Bork’s and Judge Thomas’s privacy demonstrate that, although he was present at the creation of the post-Bork era, he did not cause it. On the contrary, he did everything in his power to resist the collapse of boundaries between nominees’ public and private lives.

When President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the court in 1987, some liberal senators and interest groups were eager to distort his record. Hours after the nomination was announced, for example, Senator Edward Kennedy charged that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.”

Senator Biden, who had built a national reputation by attacking the excesses of liberal interest groups, made clear that he would not tolerate these ad hominem attacks. He promised to focus the questioning on Judge Bork’s substantive views about the right to privacy, rather than demonize him by conflating his personal and judicial views or trolling for private indiscretions.

When confronted with a request to subpoena Judge Bork’s video rental records in a search for possible pornography, Mr. Biden refused. (The records, which revealed that Judge Bork’s only weakness was for Cary Grant, were leaked anyway to The Washington City Paper.) At this same time, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign collapsed in the face of plagiarism charges, but he won bipartisan praise for conducting the Bork hearings with fairness and restraint.

His performance during the Thomas hearings in 1991 was just as restrained. He focused his opposition on Judge Thomas’s radical views on property rights and limitations on federal power. When Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment began to circulate in private, Senator Biden angered liberal interest groups by insisting that the Judiciary Committee handle the accusations confidentially....

Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 7:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Max Boot: Eastern Europe Can Defend Itself

Source: WSJ (8-25-08)

Eastern Europeans are rightly alarmed about the brazenness and success of the Russian blitzkrieg into Georgia. For many living in Russia's shadow, this is reviving traumatic memories -- of 1968 for Czechs, 1956 for Hungarians, 1939 for Poles. It does not help that senior Russian generals are threatening to rain nuclear annihilation on Ukraine and Poland if they refuse to toe the Kremlin's line.

Even those states which, unlike Georgia and Ukraine, are already in NATO can take scant comfort. As Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, says, "Parchments and treaties are all very well, but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies."

Warsaw's response has been to draw closer to the United States, by rapidly concluding an agreement in long drawn-out negotiations over the basing of U.S. interceptor missiles on Polish soil. That's a good start, but it's a move of symbolic import only. The small number of interceptors are designed to shoot down an equally small number of Iranian missiles -- not the overwhelming numbers that Russia deploys. Poland and other states should be under no illusion they can count on the U.S. in a crisis. In the past we left Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the lurch. More recently we haven't done much to help Georgia.

The only thing that the frontline states can count on is their own willingness to fight for independence. But willingness alone is not enough. They also need the means to fight, and at the moment they don't have them. We have already seen how the tiny Georgian armed forces -- with fewer than 30,000 men -- were routed by the Russian invaders.

What gets ignored is that Georgia, although a small country (population: 4.6 million), has the potential to do far more for its defense. According to the CIA's World Factbook, Georgia has over 900,000 men between the ages of 16 and 49. It could easily create a larger military force than it has, but that would require spending more on defense. By the CIA's estimate, its defense budget was just 0.59% of GDP in 2005.

Georgia's military spending has grown in recent years, but not Eastern Europe's. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, only one country in Eastern Europe spends more than 2% of GDP on defense. That would be Bulgaria at 2.2%. Romania is in second place at 1.9%, followed by Poland at 1.8%. Nor do these countries maintain large standing forces. Poland has 7.9 million males of military age but only 127,266 active-duty personnel in its armed forces. Hungary could mobilize 1.9 million men but has only 32,300 in uniform. Bulgaria has 1.3 million potential soldiers but only 40,747 actual soldiers. And so on.

There is one exception to this demilitarizing trend. Russia, which has more than a million soldiers under arms, has been increasing its defense budget from the lows of the immediate post-Soviet era. Based on official figures it spends at least 2.5% of GDP on its military. But if you add in expenditures on paramilitary forces and other items, the total comes closer to 4% -- roughly the same percentage that the U.S. is spending.

Small states have often shown the ability to humble great powers. In 1920, under the inspired leadership of Marshal Josef Pilsudski, the Poles staged a brilliant counterattack to save Warsaw and drive the Red Army off their soil. In the winter war of 1939-1940 the plucky Finns held off Soviet invaders, forcing the Kremlin to settle for a slice of its territory rather than all of it. More recently, the Afghan mujahedeen drove the Red Army out of their country altogether, thereby helping to bring down the Soviet Union.

But if they have any hope of emulating such feats -- or, more precisely, of deterring the Russians from threatening them in the first place by making it clear that they could emulate such feats -- today's Eastern Europeans have to do much more to prepare a robust defense. They should double their military spending to make themselves into porcupine states that even the Russian bear can't swallow.

The U.S. can help, as we helped the Afghans in the 1980s and as the French helped the Poles in 1920. That will require a readjustment in our military assistance strategy, which has been to create in Eastern Europe miniature copies of our own armed forces. Our hope, largely realized, has been that these states will help us in our own military commitments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. But in addition to developing NATO-style expeditionary capacity, these states need to be able to conduct a defense in depth.

That means having large reserves ready for fast call-up and plenty of defensive weapons -- in particular portable missile systems such as the Stinger and Javelin capable of inflicting great damage on Russia's lumbering air and armor forces. That's more important than fielding their own tanks or fighter aircraft. We should offer to sell them these relatively inexpensive defensive systems, and to provide the advisory services to make the best use of them. But the first step has to be for the Eastern Europeans to make a larger commitment to their own defense.

Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Jonathan Freedland: What Ted can teach Hillary

Source: Guardian (8-26-08)

[Jonathan Freedland has been a columnist for the Guardian since 1997.]

Every politician begins a speech with the words "It's wonderful to be here" – but it's rare for that sentence to be freighted with as much poignant meaning as it carried when uttered by Senator Teddy Kennedy at the Democratic convention in Denver on Monday.

The mere fact of his presence on stage, just three months after his diagnosis of brain cancer, delighted and relieved the crowd at the Pepsi Centre. Rumours earlier in the day had said the 76-year-old senator would be able to do no more than attend, watching the (meticulously-produced) video tribute to his life and career from the stalls (a much better video, it has to be said, than the one that introduced Michelle Obama an hour later).

Instead, Kennedy walked his distinctive waddle to the podium, his white hair visibly interrupted by a shaved patch, and delivered a traditional barnstormer of a partisan speech. The voice wavered, but it never mattered. Delegates waved their Kennedy placards, chanted "Teddy! Teddy" and sent waves of affection and admiration his way.

All of which should be carefully noted by Hillary Clinton.

For 28 years ago, at the 1980 convention, Ted Kennedy was the Democrat who had been defeated in a bitter primary contest. His presidential ambitions seemed to have been dashed forever; the best years of his political career were surely behind him.

Yet here he was nearly three decades later, revered as the liberal lion of the Democratic party, respected for his legislative accomplishments, especially those related to what he called "the cause of my life", the still-unfinished work of providing universal healthcare.

And here's the thing. Earlier the man who defeated Kennedy in 1980, Jimmy Carter, was also on stage in Denver. He was received warmly but stirred none of the devotion that poured out for Kennedy. He wasn't even allowed to make a speech (a pre-appearance video had to suffice).

So this is the lesson for Hillary. Even if she never runs for president again, even if she never makes it to the White House, but dedicates herself instead – as Kennedy did – to a lifetime of service in the senate, she could yet be a giant of the Democratic party. And in 2036, who knows, it could be she who receives the ovations – while former President Obama can only look on.

Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Dayo Olopade: The inside story of how Obama was chosen for his big night at 2004 convention

Source: New Republic (8-25-08)

[Dayo Olopade is a reporter-researcher for The New Republic.]

... the chain of events that launched Obama into the keynote began in April 2004, when Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill was in the early stages of planning a convention that the Kerry team hoped would rejuvenate his sagging campaign. They were eagerly looking for "something that would be high impact and would be written about a lot and reported on," as Cahill puts it. And as she was helping compile a shortlist of possible keynoters, she recalled a photo spread about Obama she saw in Time magazine earlier that year, leading her to consult friends from Harvard who had taught him, members of the Illinois delegation to the convention, and others who knew him--including Tribe. "Throughout the 1990s, I was saying the most impressive all-around student I had was Barack," Tribe now reflects. "What I wasn't sure of was how charismatic a speaker he would be."

Kerry aides had the same doubts. At the time, Obama had never used a teleprompter, and they were unsure how the colloquial style he had honed on the streets of Chicago would play before a national audience. "Obama was kind of winging it--that was how he was doing things back then," says Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell, who covered Obama's senate race and who later authored the book Obama: From Promise to Power. "There was certainly a risk for the DNC and Kerry, because Obama had never given a speech of that magnitude before."

Obama came up again in a discussion Corrigan was having with a friend, Lisa Hayes, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Obama. "I was arguing with her about trying to give money to Kerry. She said she had to save her money for her friend Barack." She told Corrigan that when he spoke at a law school banquet, all of the waiters stopped serving to listen to what he had to say. "That was a pretty ringing endorsement," says Corrigan--enough to suggest that Obama could hold his own at the convention.

But there were also concerns about Obama's short résumé. Though he had won his senate primary in March and was expected to coast to a win that November, Obama was the rare keynoter to bear the honor without holding higher office. And there was no shortage of "names you know well" on Cahill's roster, she says, which reportedly included more proven party leaders like Governors Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and Tom Vilsack of Iowa.

But according to Shrum, the campaign was not interested in bolstering someone else's career--they needed someone who would score points for them. "Kerry said he didn't care about [about Obama's future prospects]--for him the future was now," he says. The senior brass knew Obama was a politically smart pick, fitting into the campaign's efforts to attract black voters. Throughout the summer, Kerry polled lower than typical Democrats among blacks, who supported Bush by 18 percent (double his 2000 number). The Kerry campaign announced Obama's selection the same day they rolled out a record-breaking ad buy for black radio stations, television channels, and newspapers. "[Obama] sends a great message to young, upwardly mobile African Americans that this party is inclusive, that this party is not afraid of new thoughts and is not afraid of young blacks," House Majority Whip James Clyburn said at the time.

The Obama campaign actively lobbied for the slot as well. According to his Senate campaign manager, Jim Cauley, the team had prepared an eight-minute audition video containing Obama's primary victory speech (complete with a crowd chanting, "Yes we can"), as well as campaign ads and still photos over a song from When We Were Kings, the Mohammed Ali biopic. Cauley believes that it was Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry staffer who joined Obama's senate campaigln in April 2004 and is now communications director for his presidential campaign, who provided a direct link between the two teams. "Robert knew all of the personalities fairly well," Cauley told me, saying that the video was intended to send the message that "he's a good speaker, he can do this." (Gibbs did not respond to a request for comments.)

The rapport between Obama and Kerry--which had been seeded even before Cahill composed her list of contenders--helped clinched the deal. According to Mendell, Kerry's respect for the newcomer was solidified during a joint campaign swing in Chicago in the spring of 2004. Mendell, who attended the event, recalls Obama stealing the show from the presumptive nominee. "It's Kerry kind of looking at him and picking up tricks from the rookie," Mendell told me. "That was the event where he really impressed Kerry." ...


Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Susan Faludi: Second-Place Citizens (Re: Hillary's women supporters)

Source: NYT (8-26-08)

[Susan Faludi is the author, most recently, of “The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America.”]

... The despondency of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters — or their “vitriolic” and “rabid” wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it — has been the subject of perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don’t these dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right?

Shouldn’t they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made unprecedented strides. She garnered 18 million-plus votes, and proved by her solid showing that a woman could indeed be a viable candidate for the nation’s highest office. She didn’t get the gold, but in this case isn’t a silver a significant triumph?

Many Clinton supporters say no, and to understand their gloom, one has to take into account the legacy of American women’s political struggle, in which long yearned for transformational change always gives way before a chorus of “not now” and “wait your turn,” and in which every victory turns out to be partial or pyrrhic. Indeed, the greatest example of this is the victory being celebrated tonight: the passage of women’s suffrage. The 1920 benchmark commemorated as women’s hour of glory was experienced in its era as something more complex, and darker.

Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.

In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women’s voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women’s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women’s advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads. “It was clear,” said the 1920s sociologist and reformer Sophonisba Breckinridge, “that the winter of discontent in politics had come for women.”

That discontent was apparent in a multitude of letters, speeches and articles. “The American woman’s movement, and her interest in great moral and social questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many warring leaders,” despaired Frances Kellor, a women’s advocate.

“The feminist movement is dying of partial victory and inanition,” lamented Lillian Symes, a feminist journalist.

“Where for years there had been purpose consecrated to an immortal principle,” observed the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, her compatriots felt now only “a vacancy.”

Even Florence Kelley, the tenacious progressive reformer, concluded, “Keeping the light on is probably the best contribution that we can make where there is now Stygian darkness.”...

Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 7:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Glenn Church: What Barack Obama Learned From Richard Nixon

Source: http://foolocracy.com (8-23-08)

The Obama campaign has promised to contest all 50 states. Does that mean he plans to visit all 50? No, Obama has wisely chosen to say “contest” not “visit.” That is because he has learned an important lesson from the last President to try a 50-state campaign — Richard Nixon.

In 1960, Richard Nixon made even a better promise. Nixon promised to visit all 50 states. He made that vow during his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention.

It goes to show that Tricky Dick could keep a promise. Nixon did visit the 50 states. Unfortunately, it probably cost him the 1960 election to John Kennedy — one of the closest in history.

Three days before the election, Nixon had visited every state except for Alaska. Aware that he would be accused of breaking a campaign promise before even being elected, Nixon spent that last weekend on a long plane trip to Alaska. That might have let him carry Alaska, as he only defeated Kennedy there by a little over 1% or 1,100 votes. However, Alaska was only three electoral votes. Nixon ended up 51 electoral votes, although only 110,000 popular votes behind Kennedy.

Nixon lost Hawaii, New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois and New Jersey by less than 1% — a total of 63 electoral votes. A better placement of his resources at the end of the campaign could have made a difference.

Interestingly, this is the first year since 1960, that Alaska has been up for grabs. It has been a reliable Republican state, but polls show Obama as close as 4% to McCain. An Obama visit just might do some good, as long as it is not on the last weekend of the campaign.

Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, August 25, 2008

Drew Westen: What Obama Needs to Do in Denver

Source: Huffington Post (8-25-08)

[Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," recently released in paperback with a new postscript on the 2008 election.]

In the presidential race of 2004 we had the Two Americas. In this year's race we have the Two Obamas: the one who has drawn repeated comparisons to JFK, RFK, and MLK, and the one who has drawn comparisons to Adlai Stevenson, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. Whether Obama will win the general election depends on whether he and his campaign make sure that the right Obama shows up for the remainder of the campaign.

Obama was losing this time last year to Hillary Clinton until he changed course at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa in November and started inspiring voters again in a way that only a once-in-a-generation leader can do. He lost much of the second half of the primary season as his negatives rose consistently in response to her sustained blows as he refused even to put his hands up to block them. From the time he became the presumptive nominee until the last two weeks, Democrats have been growing increasingly alarmed that they were poised to lose another unloseable election, as his campaign was once again turning Obama the charismatic leader into Obama the rambling, dispassionate, conflict-avoidant, traditional Democratic presidential candidate.

The Kerry Playbook: How to Suck the Life Out of a Candidate in Ten Easy Steps

It is time, once and for all, for Democrats to burn the Kerry playbook. For those who have done their best to forget, here are some of its key features. It is the same playbook used to guide one losing Democratic campaign after another for decades:

Be nice. Be positive. It's okay to take an occasional swipe, but don't remind the public regularly why they should be concerned about keeping the incumbent or his party in the White House no matter how incompetent, deceitful, or criminal their actions (e.g., don't talk about Abu Ghraib because the other side might accuse you of "nor supporting our troops").

If you get attacked, don't attack back. If you absolutely have to respond, start with a weak rejoinder, preferably one without any hint of masculinity, like "If that were the case, I would find it very disappointing." Show as little emotion as you can when responding to attacks. Never express outrage at attacks on your character or patriotism or strike back at your opponent for making them or colluding with those who do.

Assume people know who your candidate is because you do and they've heard about him for months. Wait until the convention to start defining your candidate in richer detail, after he's already been branded by the other side and it's difficult to change people's minds. Don't inoculate in advance against the ideas you know will appear in early August attack books that are likely to morph into television ads around the time of the Democratic Convention or in October, particularly if their content is predictable and potentially toxic.

If there are elements of your candidate's life story that worry you, don't talk about them. Cross your fingers and close your eyes really tight, and hope Karl Rove won't notice them.

If the other side starts to define your candidate in ways that might be damaging, hold your fire, and if you have to say anything, start with, "the American people are smarter than that." If you have to take corrective measures, do so only after your polling data have shown definitively that the damage has been done.

If the other side predictably defines you as elite (as they have done against every Democrat for 40 years), don't respond, especially if your opponent is from a much more privileged background than you are. Find a way to mention any elite universities you've attended or slip them into images in your biographical ads.

Don't make any sustained effort to brand your opponent, even as he is branding you. That would be negative, and focus group participants don't like negativity. Let your opponent define both of you.

To prepare for debates and similar television performances, focus on facts, figures, and briefing books. Spend little or no time on nonverbal cues, like making eye contact with the audience, and be sure not to have anyone prep the candidate who has expertise in nonverbal communication.

When asked in debates and similar forums about wedge issues such as abortion or guns, appear as if you've heard the question for the first time, or be ready with dispassionate responses, and make little effort to connect with voters in the center who could hear your values and resonate with them if you spoke about them with conviction. Do not describe the slippery slopes on the other side the way Republicans always do against Democrats (e.g., that your opponent believes that if your sixteen-year-old daughter were raped, the government, not you and your daughter, should decide whether she should carry the baby to term).

If anti-incumbent sentiment is high and your opponent's party is unpopular, make the election a referendum about your candidate (the challenger) rather than the incumbent and his party.
Is this a parody of the Kerry campaign? I wish it were. It's a synopsis.

The Kerry campaign was determined to run a positive campaign against one of the most corrupt, incompetent, destructive administrations in the history of the country, which has only become more corrupt, incompetent, and destructive in the ensuing four years. It never told a story of who George W. Bush was and why people shouldn't re-elect him that would be emotionally compelling and memorable or capitalize on and amplify voters' pre-existing sentiments. (Bush was below 50 percent approval in the days running up to the election, a very dangerous position for an incumbent.) Kerry's operatives were furious when anyone said anything negative about Bush at the Democratic Convention, convinced that the American people didn't want any more negativity (a mistake that will not be repeated this year in Denver).

When the Bush campaign began branding Kerry as a flip-flopper the day he became the presumptive nominee, the Kerry campaign let it fester, not wanting to "dignify" the attack. When they branded him as elite, un-American ("French"), and outside the mainstream, he never mentioned Bush's privileged pedigree (George Walker Bush: Andover, Yale, Harvard M.B.A., son of George Herbert Walker Bush). They never discussed his failure to fight when called to duty in Vietnam (because it might offend members of the National Guard), and his media consultants emphasized Kerry's elite alma mater (Yale) in their first and primary biographical piece of the general election.

When the swift boat attacks began to surface along with a book detailing their charges in early August, the Kerry team let it fester, not wanting to "dignify" the attack. Once it responded to the ads weeks later, they had done irreparable damage, and the election was over. The swift boat attacks played on an element of John Kerry's life that worried the campaign from the start but that they readily could have cast (I believe accurately) as one more instance of his courage: his testimony before the Senate upon returning to Vietnam, describing, among other things, atrocities committed by Americans. He could have given a speech before, say, a VFW audience early in the campaign describing why he had felt compelled to testify when he returned from the war, displaying courage and conviction by speaking to a potentially unfriendly audience. He could have talked about the courage it took to stand up before the United States Senate as a young man to tell them how they were destroying the lives of the soldiers they were sending into a war in which they couldn't tell children from combatants. His campaign could have framed his testimony before the Senate as illustrating the same courage under fire that he had shown as a soldier in Vietnam (a great master narrative for his campaign that would have underscored his own history and contrasted him with the Wizard of Terror in the Oval Office, who had never shown an ounce of demonstrable courage in his lifetime). But instead, guided by advisers and pollsters driven by the same fearfulness that makes Americans wary of Democrats on national security, Kerry was silent about that part of his biography. Instead of inoculating against the charge that he had betrayed his fellow soldiers, the Kerry campaign crossed its fingers and hoped for the best. The best did not come.

What Obama Needs to Accomplish in His Speech in Denver

When I started writing this piece two weeks ago, like many Democrats, I felt like I was watching a bad sequel to the election of 2004. Just as the Kerry campaign let the flip-flopper charge fester, the Obama campaign let the Internet smears designed to paint him as foreign, Muslim, dangerous, and "other" persist for over a year before even mentioning them publicly. Once McCain had secured the presumptive nomination, not only did the Obama campaign fail to begin branding him, but it implored progressive donors not to fund any independent expenditure organizations (527s) that could have done it for them, essentially unilaterally disarming the left just as Rove protégés were beginning to nest in the McCain campaign. As the newly infested McCain campaign began attacking Obama relentlessly, he and his entire campaign team waited to respond until they saw severe damage in the polls.

In recent days we have seen a dramatic course correction, and with every objective indicator on his side (a terrible economy, the most unpopular incumbent in the history of polling, an unpopular war, and a poor campaigner as an opponent), hopefully Obama will regain the momentum in Denver and begin to pull out of reach of John McCain. The only disasters that could come out of the convention would be if the Hillary roll call stunt spirals out of control and leads to a narrative about the convention that re-ignites old passions or if the Convention goes as planned, Obama wins, and Democrats conclude that the strategies that almost cost him the election were the ones that delivered it to him.

None of this is to deny the aspects of the Obama campaign that have indeed been spectacular. Its "ground game," it ability to organize people, and its use of new media have been brilliantly orchestrated and should serve as models for future campaigns.

But the campaign's failure to brand either its own candidate or its opponent, its reluctance until recently to fight back when hit hard (if even simply to say, "There you go again--that's the same politics of division that has gotten us where we are"), and its tone-deafness to narratives and nonverbal communication, reflected in its inability to self-correct after more than 20 tries when its candidate couldn't apply his natural skills as an orator to debates and similar formats (exemplified yet again in his recent performance relative to McCain's at Rick Warren's forum), illustrate how destructive Democratic strategic dogma can be even with the best of candidates.

So what does Obama need to accomplish at the convention? The same five things he needs to accomplish every week from now until the election.

First, he needs to tell Americans his story in a way that allows them to identify with him, and to make clear that he understands their stories, their pain, and their aspirations for their families. He needs to drive home the story he has told intermittently since he began running for president: That he grew up with his white mother and grandparents, whose Kansas values, along with his subsequent life experiences, shaped who he is and the values he teaches his own daughters; that in no country but America could a man with his history and his story be where he is today, and that he counts his blessings every day for being an American; that he understands the trials and tribulations of the millions of women who are raising children on their own because he saw what that was like for his mother; that he understands the toll it takes on men who want to nothing more than to feel the pride of providing for their families to see their jobs shipped overseas or their income no longer keeping pace with the rising cost of gas and groceries; that he understands the importance of fatherhood because he never had a father and had to try to invent one, and that he will do everything in his power to reverse the breakdown of the family in our inner cities; that he understands both the pain of prejudice and the extent to which we have overcome it as a society because he has seen and experienced both; and that he understands what happens when people begin to despair and lose hope because he has seen that despair with his own eyes.

Second, he needs to explain to the American people how we have gotten to this place in history, where American prestige and power are at low ebb, where our economy and infrastructure are in tatters, and where our dependence on foreign oil is not only economically devastating but a serious danger to our national security. He needs to offer an indictment of the Republican Party and the Bush presidency, and to make clear that the economic insecurity of middle class families, the spiraling cost of gas and health care, and the indifference to future generations that has produced our current energy crisis is not an accident but is a direct result of a radical ideology that has proven dangerous, reckless, and now discredited. He needs to compare American economic power and our world leadership during the 1990s under a strong Democratic administration with what has followed in eight short years of Republican rule. He needs to make clear to the American people that he understands their anxiety and anger as they struggle to pay for health care for their families and to put groceries on the table, as they watch their hard-earned money transferred to big oil companies that are getting tax breaks at the expense of the people they are gouging at the pump, and as they watch their biggest asset--the equity in their homes (if they can still afford to pay the mortgage)--plummet because of a get-rich-quick scheme designed for the few and now paid for by the many. He needs to tell a compelling story about why we are where we are and what he is going to do to help a realistically worried nation get back on its feet again and restore American productivity at home and prestige and security abroad.

Third, he needs to explain why John McCain is not the right man for the times. He has to build a compelling case--a sustained and compelling emotional argument--for why John McCain should not be President. The Obama campaign has a wide choice of narratives they could offer about McCain, some of which they have floated at times but none of which they have repeated over and over in the way that leads a story to "stick." None would require them to utter a word of untruth; in fact, they could tell most of these stories using nothing but McCain's own words, as Joe Biden did in his first address as Obama's running mate: that McCain is Bush's third term, that he is a man who has stood on every side of every issue except for the one about which he has stood strong (that he wants to be president), that he is a Washington insider who is part of the problem and not the solution, that he's the Man from Hopelessness, that his ideas and epithets (e.g., "tax and spend liberal") are old and tired, that he is out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans, that he is filled with 20th century solutions to 21st century problems (like invading sovereign states when the states that harbor terrorists tend to be failed states, or offering up free market rhetoric in an era of globalization in which it's just not quite that simple).

Of all the stories Obama could tell, three are probably the most compelling. The first is that a vote for McCain is a vote for continuing the failed policies of George W. Bush, policies that have weakened us economically and threatened our national security in a world whose greatest dangers lie in international terrorism (which require coordination with other nations, not condescension toward our allies, refusal to speak to our enemies, and saber rattling when we have no sabers left to rattle). The second is that McCain is not the straight-talking maverick who many admired in 2000 but a man whose ambition has gotten the best of him, who learned the wrong lessons from watching himself swift-boated by George W. Bush and Karl Rove--a man who is so desperate to be President that he will say whatever he has to say to convince conservatives he is one of them, say whatever he has to say to convince moderates that he isn't really the person he is telling the far right, and convince himself that if he has to take the low road to the presidency, that's just politics. The third is that McCain is out of touch with the American people; that he has no idea of the suffering his party and their policies have inflicted on working Americans; that a man who can't remember how many houses he has, whose wife says the only way to get around Arizona is by private jet, and whose closest economic advisor thinks people who lose their jobs or can't keep up with the bills through no fault of their own are just whiners clearly doesn't understand what middle class families are experiencing.

The fourth thing Obama needs to do in Denver is to address head-on the stories told by the other side that have eroded positive feelings toward him among a large swath of the electorate and that have kept so many people undecided in a race that should be all but over. In particular, he needs to address the stories that he is just an empty celebrity, that he is an elitist, and that he is not really American, patriotic, or "one of us." He needs to do what he should have done the day McCain launched his celebrity ad, to fire back with something as simple as, "John McCain makes fun of the fact that people are coming out all over this country to hear what I have to say and to talk with me about their lives, their concerns, and their dreams. But he doesn't seem to get that there's a reason no one's listening to him: because they've been hearing the same party line for 8 years, and they've seen where it's taken us. If John McCain wants to draw some crowds of his own, perhaps he should stop filtering out everyone who isn't already his supporter and try listening to people who may not agree with all his solutions." He needs to turn the charge of elitism back on the man who has to ask his staff how many homes he has. And he needs to attack McCain and his allies directly for questioning his patriotism and to redefine turning American against American as un-American. He needs to ask McCain just what he is implying about Obama when he runs ads that call himself "the American President Americans have been waiting for." What kind of President is saying Obama would be if not an American President? And what is he implying (which Joe Lieberman actually made explicit) in his campaign theme that he, unlike Obama, will put "country first." He needs to turn the attack back on the attacker. And he needs to confront the issue of race head-on, not run from it, and signal to working class and rural whites that the most offensive and elitist thing he has heard in this election is that people like them won't vote for him because he's black and that they're too ignorant and bigoted to judge him on the content of his character. He needs to acknowledge that what they need from him most is to know that he shares their values and that he understands people like them--the same thing black voters often wonder when a white politician comes to town--and he needs to let them know that he will come to their neck of the woods to talk with them and let them get to know him.

And finally, he needs to recognize that an accidental but toxic byproduct of his effort to make this campaign a positive one about his own vision for America and McCain's effort to make it a negative one about Obama's differentness and dangerousness is that he has allowed this election to be a referendum on him, just as Kerry did. This election should be a referendum on the Bush-McCain years and whether we can afford any more of them.

Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Leon Hadar: Czechoslovakia on Their Minds

Source: The American Conservative (8-25-08)

[Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.]

Neoconservatives and their useful idiots in the American media have been on overdrive this August, rewinding to their World War II analogies and applying them to the fast-forwarding world of global politics. Exhibit A: the obvious likeness of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Berlin Games. Hitlergram of the Month was the parallel drawn between Nazi-era filmmaker turned propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who was invited by the Führer to film the Olympics in Berlin—the result being the technically and aesthetically impressive documentary “Olympia”—and the celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who was commissioned by his government to produce the magnificent opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. The power of analogy, there for the China-bashers’ taking.

But no neocon narrative is complete without Czechoslovakia. Imagine your average Weekly Standard subscriber taking a free-association test and being asked to state the first words that come to his mind when he hears “Czechoslovakia.” Rest assured, he would respond with “Munich,” “appeasement,” “Chamberlain,” or “umbrella.” And let’s not forget “Hitler.” Thus can anyone clamoring for U.S. military intervention in, say, the former Yugoslavia or the Persian Gulf, mount a successful media and public-relations campaign by identifying his chosen victim (the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, or Kuwait, or the Kurds) with Czechoslovakia and associating his preferred “aggressor” (Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein) with Hitler. Those Americans who resist pressure to deploy U.S. troops abroad to save the victim from the aggressor are appeasers leading the world into another Munich.

Here we go again. “The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important,” explained leading neocon foreign-policy ideologue Robert Kagan—who insists that he isn’t a neocon at all—in a column in the Washington Post three days after the eruption of hostilities between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. “Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia?” he asked. Kagan, one of the chief advisers to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, wants to kick “revisionist” Russia out of the G-8 and establish a League of Democracies as part of a strategy to contain the growing threat from Moscow. Kagan’s answer to his rhetorical question in his column titled “Putin Makes his Move” (wink, wink—like you-know-who made his move 70 years ago): “Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.”

That would also be our new drama in which “little” Czechoslovakia becomes “tiny” Georgia, the South Ossetians stand in for the Sudeten Germans, Mikheil Saakashvili is Eduard Benes, Putin does Hitler, and we, of course, are required to reprise the role of Churchill. But according to Kagan the dramatist, there is a danger that we’ll be tempted to beat our swords into umbrellas: “Now, as then, however, [feelings] are being manipulated to justify autocracy at home [in Russia] and to convince Western powers that accommodation—or to use the once-respectable term, appeasement—is the best policy.”

The U.S. military is fighting two major wars in the Broader Middle East—perhaps three soon, if we follow the neocon advice to strike Iran—paid for by the central bankers in Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul. What sense does it make for Washington to risk a costly diplomatic conflict and perhaps a military confrontation with Russia over a local dispute in the Caucasus?..

Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 1:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Paul Eddy: Spanair crash recalls 1987 Detroit disaster

Source: Times (8-24-08)

[Paul Eddy has been writing about intrigue, corruption, mayhem and murder for more than 25 years, primarily for The Sunday Times of London.]

Experts investigating last week’s Spanish air crash, in which 154 people died, are reviewing a disaster in Detroit two decades ago that had striking similarities.

Mechanical failure, human error or a combination of the two are presumed to have doomed Spanair flight JK5022 as it tried to take off for the Canary Islands from Barajas airport in Madrid on Wednesday afternoon.

Initial reports that the port engine of the MD82 aircraft had caught fire as the plane hurtled down the runway appeared to have been disproved by a video that the airport has given to investigators.

The tape, which has been viewed by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, and King Juan Carlos, showed the plane reaching almost the end of the runway before struggling into the air.

It lurched to the left, then the right, plunged onto a wing tip and skidded across a field for 500 yards before exploding next to a stream.

Miraculously, 19 people, including three children, survived Spain’s worst air disaster in 25 years. The government declared three days of national mourning.

Experts from America’s National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing and the engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney were helping with an investigation that has focused on a mechanical problem that had forced the plane to abandon an earlier take-off.

The pilot had told passengers that he had a “red light” and had to return to the gate.

Spanair said the problem was a minor glitch involving an air intake temperature gauge near the cockpit. The gauge was turned off and the plane cleared for take-off “in accordance with regulations”, as one airline official put it.

Experts said the gauge problem was not likely to have caused the crash, but Manuel Bautista, Spain’s civil aviation chief, said that it could have contributed to it.

“A problem with a temperature sensor may not matter at all or it can be very important,” he said, “depend-ing on what other circumstances accompany it.”

He said the aircraft must have suffered more than one kind of problem because engine failure alone would not have been enough to bring it down.

“There has been more than one breakdown,” he said, adding that modern passenger aircraft were designed to survive the loss of one engine during take-off. “I am not sure that the engine has failed.”

According to experts, any engine failure would have occurred after the aircraft reached what is known as “commitment speed”, the speed at which the pilot cannot abort take-off, whatever happens.

Whether or not an engine failed, a critical mistake may have been made in preflight planning in calculating the settings for the flaps and slats that the MD82 has on the trailing and leading edges of its wings to provide extra lift during take-off.

Another possibility is that the crew was distracted and neglected to extend the flaps and slats.

It may seem unlikely but it has happened before: experts noted striking similarities between the crash and that of Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Detroit in 1987.

The first officer on that flight had failed to pull the lever that would have extended the MD82’s slats and flaps. The crew was apparently distracted by a late change in the departure runway, which caused the captain to miss a turn.

Like the Spanair flight, the American plane continued along the runway far longer than normal. When it finally laboured up into the air, it began oscillating from side to side until it fell sideways onto the ground and disintegrated with the loss of 154 passengers and crew. Only a four-year-old girl survived...

Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Keith Richburg: Don't heed these cries of 'colonialist'

Source: Observer (8-24-08)

[Keith Richburg is now the Washington Post's New York bureau chief.]

On the streets of Kinshasa years ago, during a protest against the then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, I remember someone in the crowd cornering me, an American reporter, and demanding to know why the United States had not sent troops to intervene. 'You took out Duvalier! You took out Marcos,' he said, referring to deposed dictators in Haiti and the Philippines. 'Why not here?' It was a question that I heard often over the years, in East Timor and Rangoon, in Malawi and Cameroon. It was usually posed by people who felt they had no other recourse against a repressive regime.

Intervention has been discredited in recent years, since the American and British-led invasion of Iraq. But there are still people clamouring for someone from outside - usually America or a former European colonial power - to come and rescue them.

And any hint at intervention, like any criticism, is deflected by authoritarian regimes that have proven deft at playing 'the colonial card'. Expressions of concerns for human rights and democracy are ridiculed as a modern way for the West to 'subjugate' countries of the south. We have heard it from Zimbabwe, where British criticism of Robert Mugabe is routinely denounced as a new kind of imperialism.

Coming from the likes of Mugabe and his henchmen, playing the colonial card is self-serving justification. And the silence of others in the region and the world - of South Africa, in Zimbabwe's case, of the south east Asian countries who continue to deal with Burma's military regime - sometimes makes it seem as if concern for democracy and human rights are only European and American fixations.

That doesn't mean there are not also real sensitivities involved.

I have to agree with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who observed several years ago that 'the single most under-appreciated force in international relations is humiliation'. For Africa in particular, most of which has been independent for more than four decades, colonialism remains a source of humiliation and resentment and the cause of deep-seated inferiority complexes.

The fact that outside action has been required so many times over the years only deepens the humiliation. French troops have, by one count, intervened in Africa more than 45 times between 1960 and 2005. British troops have intervened in Africa as well, in places such as Sierra Leone, when rebels besieged the capital, Freetown ... American troops have intervened, most disastrously in Somalia in the early 1990s.

If it's not a lingering colonial mentality, ask African critics of such interventions, then why does France only intervene in its former colonies? Why does Britain put so much pressure on Zimbabwe?..

Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 9:39 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mike Phillips: As racism fades into my memory, it begins yet again for others

Source: Observer (8-24-08)

[Mike Phillips is the co-author of Windrush: Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain.]

When the Notting Hill riots started 50 years ago, I had been in a London school for two-and-a-half years. I was 14 and it was probably the biggest, most dramatic event in my life up to that time, but nothing about it was totally astonishing, because it was precisely the sort of event I had been fearing since I arrived.

Today, walking around London with my teenage son, it's hard to explain why it was no great surprise back then, as those first pictures of howling mobs chasing black men through the streets were shown around the world. Struggling to make sense of it, I tell him that I knew what was happening simply because of what I saw and what I felt about all the little things that went to make up our ordinary everyday life then. I tell him that the past is a different country and the differences are most noticeable not in the big changes, but in the small, unremarkable happenings.

Since 1958, there have been laws intended to prevent or inhibit the sort of violent assaults that we saw in Notting Hill, beginning with the draconian sentences handed out to some of the worse offenders. Then came the Race Relations Act followed by various tranches of immigration legislation, followed by new housing provisions and so on and so on. In the wake of all this, myths have grown up around the Notting Hill riots. Explanations for them abound. From the left come cries of poverty and deprivation, housing need and frustration. From the right, the Powellite agenda, which rationalises the riots in terms of liberal bullying of a neglected working class, discredited but still with resonance, resurfacing from time to time in one guise or another. In recent years, another (black) myth has begun to emerge, one that places the riots at the beginning of an official multicultural cause, exemplified by the Notting Hill Carnival this weekend.

All of these are certain to show up in any discussion about the meaning of the Notting Hill riots. In all the commentary, however, there is one element that is routinely neglected. That is about how people feel about themselves and about the undramatic routine of their lives, the everyday events that dictate how happy we can be in our environment. Last week, I went to a supermarket late in the evening. It was all routine. My partner and I were feeling rather giggly, partly because the teenage son was away for the night. Halfway down the first aisle, we encountered a young white woman stacking shelves and she began bantering with us. I don't remember what she said, but we all laughed uproariously. At the checkout, there was an Asian girl wreathed in smiles. It struck me that this was an experience which is absolutely normal, but would have been unimaginable 50 years ago.

Looking back, what I remember is being surrounded by an atmosphere of suspicion, indifference or hostility. In those days, out in public, if you smiled or spoke to a white person you didn't know, the response was most likely to be concern, offence or even physical assault. It was safer not to speak to anyone, because any encounter could provoke a racist jibe. Pick up the local newspaper and you were certain to read reports, features or letters which were offensive or threatening or downright racist. Switch on the radio and you were certain to hear an interview, or a speech or joke, which reminded you that you were the object of your neighbours' anger, dislike or contempt. That was 1958 and that was a different country and there was a sense in which the Notting Hill riots summed up what I could feel around me every time I went out of the house.

I don't feel that today. Nowadays, I am a relatively respectable gent of a certain age and no one has in for me, unless they know who I am. It is easy to note the contrasts with that other time, 50 years ago, in the ease with which most black people navigate the city. This isn't the case only in London. I could say similar things about Leeds or Birmingham or Manchester. In any number of routine encounters, it is easy to appreciate the extent to which the country has changed. Coming back from abroad, I don't feel even the smallest part of the caution I used to. This country is home.

On the other hand, it is impossible to escape the realisation that, for many, more recent migrants, the city offers an experience which feels uncomfortably like the way it was for black migrants in the Fifties...

Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Michael Barone: The Chosen Obama Narrative

Source: Real Clear Politics (8-23-08)

Once upon a time, the two parties' national conventions chose presidential nominees. Now, they are television shows that try to establish a narrative -- one that links the long-since-determined nominee's life story with the ongoing history of the nation, one that shows how this one man is perfectly positioned to lead America to a better future. The hope is that the nominee will get a bounce in the polls.

And they usually do. Gallup poll data shows that nominees got a 5 percent or better bounce from 14 of the 16 national conventions between 1976 and 2004. And that's even for nominees that in retrospect seem less than inspiring.


In 1988, Democrats presented Michael Dukakis as the son of immigrants who produced the Massachusetts miracle; Republicans presented George H.W. Bush as the pioneer who went to Texas and was now ready to take on another mission. Both got 11 percent bounces.

The biggest of all -- 30 percent -- went to Bill Clinton, "the man from Hope" in 1992, helped by Ross Perot's withdrawal on the day of his acceptance speech. The notable exceptions came in 2004, when a polarized electorate gave George W. Bush only a 4 percent bounce and John Kerry -- "reporting for duty" -- actually lost ground.

There is a difference between the two parties, however. The Democrats can usually depend on the mainstream media accepting their narratives uncritically, while the Republicans can expect them to punch holes in their storylines. In 1988, the media didn't note that Dukakis was less an earthy ethnic than a reformer in the Massachusetts Puritan tradition, but it was eager to point to the senior Bush's aristocratic Eastern background.

The narrative of this year's Democratic National Convention can be forecast with some assurance. It will emphasize Barack Obama's roots in Kansas more than Kenya or even Hawaii; it will portray him as a leader from a new generation eager to cast off the partisanship of the last decade; it will hail him as a symbol that America has risen above past prejudices and can once again stand proud in the world. His acceptance speech in Invesco Field will invite comparison with the other two Democratic nominees who spoke in stadiums, Franklin Roosevelt in Philadelphia's Franklin Field in 1936 and John Kennedy in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

An interesting question is whether mainstream media have any appetite for undermining this undeniably attractive narrative. Of "the whole Obama narrative," one reporter told The New Republic's Gabriel Sherman, "like all stories, it's not entirely true."...

Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 4:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 22, 2008

Nabil Al-Hadithy: The Kurds are stealing Kirkuk. The US should stop them.

Source: Special to HNN (8-22-08)

[Nabil Al-Hadithy heads Berkeley's toxic management division addressing hazardous waste problems. He graduated in Geology from University of London in 1975 and obtained Master's Degree from Cranfield University in Material Science in 1977 and doctorate in Welding Technology in 1982. He joined City of Berkeley in 1993 as HazMat Inspector and then became HazMat Manager. An Iraqi, he voted in the country's elections.]

Within a year of the 1958 independence from the British monarchy, Iraq was in turmoil through a leftist revolt from Colonel Shawwaf in Mosul, the northern capital. Baghdad was ruled by nationalists, largely Arab Sunni military cliques. Commander Tabakchali, the Turkmen chief of the Second Battalion based in Kirkuk also faced an aggressive Kurdish land-grab led by Mullah Mustafa Barazani in oil-rich Kirkuk. Kirkuk City was largely a Turkmen enclave.

Barazani’s strategy was to uproot mountain Kurds living north and east of the City and force them to resettle in Kirkuk. Using the Peshmerga and strong arm tactics, Kurdish refugee camps started outside Kirkuk. The Turkmen population convened a meeting with the provincial Governor, Hadithi, and Commander Tabakchali, The Turkmen demanded an end to the obvious threat on the City by Barazani. Within weeks, the central government of Kassim summoned the Governor and the Commander to Baghdad to answer to the deterioration in the north. In a well publicized kangaroo court, Tabakchali was executed and Hadithi was put in jail until the next Sunni military coup d'état released him.

Twenty years later in exile in London, former Governor Hadithi, my father, would tell me of Barazani’s ruthless plot to secure an independent Kurdistan. The Governor and the Commander were friends, they were sympathetic to the Turkmen and were fully aware of Barazani’s plot. But they would not force tens of thousands of scared Kurdish peasants back to their burnt villages and into the guns of the Peshmerga.

Barazani’s strategy was adopted subsequently by the dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Arabs resettled in a more orderly manner in Kirkuk over the last 30 years. Since the invasion of Iraq, Kurds have resorted to ethnic cleansing of Arabs and the settlement of more Kurdish peasants in Kirkuk.

Of all the pretexts to invade Iraq, perhaps the spread of democracy, as envisioned by the Bush administration, went off the mark by the widest margin. Even though I voted in Iraqi elections, there was no semblance of the imposition of democratic principles by the occupation. Instead, it was clear that the US and Britain wanted to control the nation by imposing illegal laws and placing their puppets in power. All went wrong, their puppets were forced out of leadership positions and their laws were largely overturned. One outcome that the US wished to impose was the creation of an independent Kurdistan which would have led to the dissolution of Iraq.

There are both internal and external forces playing to dissolve Iraq. The interests of these forces converged some fifty years ago around the Kurdish separatist, Mullah Mustapha Barazani, the late father of current Kurdish regional ‘President.’ To have an independent Kurdistan, it must have oil for it is landlocked and surrounded by hostile neighbors. Barazani started the process by forcing demographic changes in Kirkuk. The elder Barazani found external support to take Kirkuk and dismember Iraq in regional powers of Iran and Israel. All three forces benefited from the dissolution of a strong, secular, nationalist, Arab Iraq for obvious reasons.

Israel’s national interest was to destroy Arab nationalism. Later, militant Islam (Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran) became their scourge. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had oil and supported Palestine. The Shah of Iran’s interest was to dominate the Persian Gulf and become the largest oil producer to eclipse Iraqi and Saudi power.

What is unusual about the costly occupation of Iraq is that the interests of the U.S. will not benefit. Iraq served U.S. interests and the interests of Arab allies of the U.S. by containing militant Islam in Iran. Yet today, the U.S. forces in Iraq pay homage to an Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, and Iranian trained militia leaders are in power (Maliki and Hakim).

The Neocons of the Bush administration who created the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq professed democratic principles but worked to cede Kirkuk to the Kurds in an undemocratic manner. The U.S. interim constitution for Iraq (Iraqi Law of Administration) gave Kurds irrevocable control of Kirkuk and its oil fields. Section 58(A)(2) of this law even required ethnic cleansing or the "resettlement" of non-Kurds out of Kirkuk. This U.S. law went on to require 2/3 of the electorate, not a mere majority, to vote Kirkuk out of Kurdish control. The inclusion of this clause is testament that Kurds never had a majority population in Kirkuk up to the time the U.S. invaded Iraq. That law was repealed by the new Iraq government but Mullah Mustapha Barazani’s son has continued the demographic manipulation of Kirkuk that his father started with quiet approval of the U.S. Few reporters wrote of this travesty. Stephen Farrell of the NY Times wrote a rare eyewitness story on December 9, 2007.

To retaliate against the central government for not ceding Kirkuk, Kurds are holding the central government hostage on all responsible new legislation. It is unlikely that Baghdad will abandon 40% of Iraq’s oil to the Kurdish separatists. Turkmen have appealed to Turkey to assist them in maintaining control of their ancestral homeland.

The U.S. is not served by the dissolution of Iraq. The U.S. should pursue its own interests in the Middle East and fulfill its legal obligations to protect the people of Iraq. The U.S. should move to avert a civil war around Kirkuk by maintaining it as an integral part of Iraq.

Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 at 4:07 PM | Comments (12) | Top

Peter Dreier: Jerome Corsi's "NonFiction Bestseller" Is Neither

Source: Huffington Post (8-20-08)

[Dreier is Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program, Occidental College.]

The publication on August 1 of Jerome Corsi's book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has triggered considerable controversy in political and publishing circles, not only because the book is filled with many lies and distortions, but also because Corsi has long been affiliated with the nut-case wing of the conservative movement. Last Friday, John McCain exacerbated the storm when he responded to a reporter's question about the book by saying, "Gotta keep your sense of humor," which some observers took to be a casual endorsement of the book.

Several anti-Obama books have recently arrived in bookstores, but Obama Nation is getting the most attention, in large part because it is so inflammatory and is being heavily marketed. The book's publisher has 475,000 copies in print, according to a company spokesperson. In contrast, the first serious liberal book about the Democratic candidate -- Robert Kuttner's Obama's Challenge -- is being released August 25 with a first printing of 75,000.

Despite Obama Nation' s many lies and distortions, the book wasn't put out by an ideologically-driven right-wing publisher such as Regnery, but by the profit-driven Simon & Schuster, one of the country's largest and most respected publishers, now owned by CBS Corporation. Corsi has been interviewed on numerous TV and radio talk shows (both right-wingers like Sean Hannity and mainstreamers like Larry King). He and his book have been profiled in the New York Times (on the front page) and by other mainstream publications, lending credibility to Obama Nation's scurrilous claims. The book has risen to the top of the Times best-seller list, despite indications that its sales were artificially inflated by bulk sales, most likely by right-wing anti-Obama groups. Many bookstores, especially major national chains, are heavily promoting the book and stocking their "best seller" shelves with this mudslinging hatchet job. The New York Times even published the book's Preface on its website.

Corsi catapulted to notoriety in 2004 as the author of Unfit for Command, which attacked Sen. John Kerry's military record in Vietnam in the midst of his presidential bid. Corsi's accusations, along with those of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that ran misleading TV ads against Kerry, were later contradicted by news reports, but they nevertheless had a political impact by generating considerable media attention that distorted Kerry's genuine record as a courageous war hero. Indeed, they may have cost Kerry the election.

Corsi has long-term ties to extreme right-wing, white supremacist hate groups. He writes for the ultra-right World Net Daily. He's called Arabs "ragheads," Bill Clinton an "anti-American communist," Islam a "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion," Martin Luther King a "shake-down artist," and Katie Couric "Little Katie Communist." He recently was scheduled to appear on the Memphis-based white-supremacist radio show, "Political Cesspool," whose host, James Edwards, referred to Slate columnist Timothy Noah as "Jew Timothy Noah." (Corsi canceled his appearance after facing a firestorm of bad publicity).

Corsi told the New York Times that he wrote the book in order "to defeat Obama. I don't want Obama to be in office," but he has also been critical of John McCain and, in fact, supports the Constitution Party's presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin.

The Kerry campaign was justifiably criticized for not responding quickly or forcefully enough to Corsi's Unfit for Command. The Obama campaign has learned from Kerry's mistake. The campaign quickly released on its website a point-by-point rebuttal of Crosi's book, part of the broader "Fight the Smears" initiative to respond immediately to attacks. Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Ventor said that the book is "made up of the same old debunked smears that have been floating around the Internet for months." He also called Corsi a "discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago."

Independent of the Obama campaign, other critics have identified numerous lies and errors in Obama Nation, including a thorough and devastating critique by Media Matters and another by John K. Wilson on the Huffington Post. Newscasters on MSNBC have started describing it as "the dishonest book" about Obama.

Some of Corsi's lies are simply stupid, such as his claim that Obama didn't dedicate his first book, Dreams of My Father, to his family, when in fact the book's introduction includes a dedication to "my mother, my grandparents, my siblings." Others are more hateful and vituperative, such as his claim that Obama "has yet to answer questions" about whether "he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, "when in fact Obama has made clear in his first book and subsequently that he stopped using drugs when he transferred to Columbia University for his junior year in college.

The book is filled with such factual errors. It is hard to attribute them to carelessness because all the errors distort Obama's life, views, writings, and political career in ways obviously intended to hurt the candidate's reputation.

Simon & Schuster selected Obama Nation for major celebrity treatment, knowing that the book was written by an author with a well-deserved reputation for falsehoods. What, if any, responsibility do publishers have when dealing with a book and an author like this? Given the controversy over Corsi's previous book, should Simon & Schuster have hired a fact-checker to make sure that Obama Nation, which they are promoting as "non-fiction," was reasonably accurate?

What responsibility, if any, do publishers and booksellers have in calling the book a "best-seller" when that label may be as fictitious as the information contained in the book itself?

Indeed, the New York Times currently lists Obama Nation as its #1 "best seller" even though the paper acknowledges that sales of the book have been influenced by "bulk orders." Does the paper have a responsibility to find out whether these included large purchases by the author or by right-wing organizations?

As the publisher notes on its corporate website, "In all, Simon & Schuster titles have received 54 Pulitzer Prizes, 15 National Book Awards, 14 Caldecott and 18 Newbery Medals." But the company clearly didn't have a Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award in mind when it decided to publish Corsi's book. It did so under its new Threshold Editions imprint which, under the direction of hard-nosed Republican operative Mary Matalin, is dedicated to recruiting conservative writers. Other publishers have conservative imprints -- such as Random House's Crown Forum and Penguin's Centinel -- but Simon & Schuster is the first to employ a high-profile right-wing politico to sit in editorial judgment of what books should and shouldn't be published.

"Mary is very well-connected," Threshold spokesperson Jean Anne Rose told me. So far, Matalin's connections have netted Simon & Schuster some big-name right-wing authors, including Bush's controversial former UN Ambassador John Bolton, former Reagan economic advisor Arthur Laffer, Second Lady Lynne Cheney, former GOP chairman Ed Gillespie, right-wing TV talkmeister Glen Beck, and Bush political advisor Karl Rove.

Simon & Schuster's website describes Obama Nation as a "thoroughly researched and documented book." Matalin told the New York Times that the book "was not designed to be, and does not set out to be, a political book." She even called the book, which is little more than a hate-filled political hatchet job, "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." Asked about the many falseholds in the book, Threshold Editions spokesperson Rose said that the book provides a useful service by assembling "all the criticisms of Obama in one place."

"It isn't likely that publishers will start their own fact-checking departments," said Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. "But whatever a book's political view, publishers have a responsibility, to the best of their ability, to make sure that what are claimed to be facts are true."

It is obvious that Simon & Schuster wasn't focused on the truthfulness of Corsi's book when it decided, upon Matalin's recommendation, not only to publish the book but also to spend a bundle marketing it. Over the past few weeks, Corsi has been a constant presence on TV and radio talk shows. The book is prominently displayed in major bookstores, especially big national chains. Walk into any Borders bookstore and you'll find Obama Nation prominently displayed on the front table with a 30% discount. One Borders bookstore manager explained that this high-profile promotion is a "corporate decision" made in Borders' Ann Arbor headquarters. Anthony Ziccardi, vice president for sales for Pocket Books and Threshold Editions, confirmed that Simon & Schuster paid Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers a two-week fee to display the Corsi book in the most prominent location in each of its stores in order to boost sales. This is standard procedure in the publishing/bookselling industry.

Most stores, including big chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble, and the dwindling number of independent bookstores, have put Obama Nation on their "best seller" shelves or identify it as a "best seller." This week it ranks #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, #2 on Publishers Weekly's list, #12 on USA Today's list (but #2 among non-fiction books), and #6 on the American Booksellers Association list among independent (non-chain) bookstores. Among regional lists, Obama Nation ranked #2 on the Washington Post list and #10 on the Los Angeles Times list. (It didn't crack the top ten on the Boston Globe list). It is also the most popular non-fiction book sold on Amazon.com.

But is Obama Nation really a best-seller? The New York Times puts a dagger next to some books, indicating that "some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." Among the Times' top 16 non-fiction books for August 24, three others -- Stori Telling, a memoir by actress Tori Spelling (#3), The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso, published by Regnery (#5), and Fleeced, another anti-Obama book by conservative political operative and pundit Dick Morris and coauthor Eileen McGann (#8) -- have similar daggers.

The other major best-seller lists don't have comparable designations, but the sales figures reported by their sample of booksellers can also be influenced by bulk orders.

The New York Times best-seller list, the most prestigious, is based on weekly sales reports from national samples of independent and chain bookstores, online booksellers, as well as wholesalers that provide books to other retailers like department stores and supermarkets. The Times' list of 4,000 sellers is a closely-guarded secret. Other best-seller lists use a different mix of chains, independents, on-line sellers, and wholesalers.

According to BookScan, a sales monitoring service, the Corsi book had sold about 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.

Shouldn't newspapers want to know -- about the Corsi book but all others as well -- what proportion of sales are influenced by bulk buying before they put them on their best-seller lists? Ziccardi acknowledged that one bookstore in the South sold 2,500 copies to one organization , but claimed that Simon & Schuster doesn't know how many of Corsi's books were purchased through bulk orders or whether any conservative groups were part of a bulk-order scheme. But it's difficult to believe that Matalin, a former aide to VP Dick Cheney, didn't use her connections to boost the sales of the book published under her imprint in this hotly-contested election season.

Shouldn't publications find out whether the author or interest groups are responsible for inflating a book's sales by this method, before they call a book a "best seller"?

Deborah Hofmann, who tracks book sales and assembles the best-seller list for the New York Times, did not return repeated calls seeking answers to these questions. But a staff-person at a major book review told me that while some publishers, authors and interest groups have learned how to "game the system" by orchestrating bulk orders in multiple locations, publications with best-seller lists, including the prestigious New York Times, don't make much effort to find out who is involved and how big an influence they have in inflating sales.

Nelson, of Publishers Weekly, explained that publications with best seller lists could ask bookstores to identify how much of a book's total sales are due to this practice. "This information is knowable," she said, acknowledging that her own publication does not seek this information.

One book review staffer observed that conservative activist groups and book clubs are more effective than their liberal counterparts at jacking up sales figures through bulk buying.

The current New York Times best-seller list seems to confirm his observation. Four conservative books -- by Corsi, Feddoso, and Morris and McGann, plus The Revolution, a libertarian manifesto by former Presidential candidate Ron Paul, currently listed at #21 -- all come with daggers indicating that sales figures have been influenced by bulk orders. The eight books on the list that are critical of the Bush administration -- Ron Suskind's The Way of the World (#3), Jane Mayer's The Dark Side (#7), Vincent Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (#10), Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew (#11) , former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's What Happened? (#19), Nancy Pelosi's Know Your Power (#23) and Stephen Colbert's I Am America (#29) -- are dagger-less.

Five years ago, on August 10, 2003, the New York Times listed Hillary Clinton's autobiography, Living History, published by Simon & Schuster, as the #2 best-seller, followed by Ann Coulter's Treason, published by Random House's conservative imprint, Crown Forum. The Clinton book was dagger-free, while Coulter's book, which allegedly dissected "liberal treachery from the cold war to the war on terrorism," had the dagger next to it.

Most of the more popular liberal books of recent years, such as books by celebrities like Bill Clinton and Al Franken, didn't reach the Times' best-seller list with a dagger, although one of Michael Moore's books, Stupid White Men, was daggered for four of the 37 weeks it was on the New York Times list in 2002.

The New York Times has not affixed a dagger to Obama's memoir The Audacity of Hope, which had a long run on the hardback best-seller list and has been on the paperback best-seller list (now ranked #4) for 33 weeks, nor to his previous memoir, Dreams From My Father, which is now in its 108th week on the paperback best-seller list. None of the various memoirs and autobiographies coauthored by John McCain and his staffer Mark Salter -- Faith of My Fathers (1999), Worth the Fighting For (2002), Why Courage Matters (2004), and Hard Call (2007) -- have had daggers. This suggests that neither campaign nor their supporters sought to "game" the system on behalf of the candidates' own books.

(Faith of My Fathers was recently re-released to coincide with McCain's campaign. Obama's campaign book, Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise, will be published by Crown on Sept. 9, with a first printing of 300,000 copies).

Next week, Chelsea Green, a small Vermont-based publisher, is releasing Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency by journalist Robert Kuttner. To promote the book, Chelsea Green has arranged to give delegates and other participants at the Democratic Party convention in Denver a large discount. But groups that support Obama -- like MoveOn, labor unions, and environmental and women's rights groups -- aren't making bulk purchases, according to Margo Baldwin, Chelsea Green's president.

Although Baldwin calls it a "pro-Obama" book, it is certainly not the liberal parallel to Corsi's hate-filled attack. Kuttner's book is not a valentine to Obama, but a serious political analysis of the potential -- and pitfalls -- of an Obama presidency. Kuttner, founding editor of the liberal magazine American Prospect and a former columnist for Business Week, has authored numerous books on politics and economic policy. Obama's Challenge includes a progressive policy prescription as well as a warning to progressives that the success of an Obama administration -- and his potential to be a "transformational" president like FDR or Ronald Reagan -- will depend partly on his own leadership, and partly on the ability of liberal groups to mount a persistent grassroots organizing, lobbying, and opinion-shaping effort to push both Obama and Democrats in Congress to resist pressure from big business and its allies to adopt centrist policies.

Kuttner's serious book is meant to be read, discussed, and debated. In contrast, Corsi's book is meant to be a totem for right-wing talk shows, bloggers, and columnists, and an opportunity to get its author on the conservative lecture and talk-show circuit and even, as happened last week, on CNN's "Larry King Live" show. The challenge to which Kuttner refers is for Obama to appeal to what is most noble in American democracy. Corsi's book appeals to our most sordid instincts.

Like most politically-oriented books that make the best-seller lists in part through bulk sales, Obama Nation is most likely being purchased by people who already agree with the book's perspective. It isn't going to persuade any voters who are undecided between Obama and McCain. It is meant, rather, to contribute to the right-wing echo chamber to whip up conservative true-believers and to provide credibility to a book that would otherwise belong to the lunatic fringe.

"Its too bad that a publisher of Simon & Schuster's stature would call this a scholarly book," said Peter Osnos, the founder and editor of PublicAffairs Books, which publishes serious books on political topics. But, he added, "the book's contents aren't important on their own. Obviously the publisher wants to make money. But the book is intended to stir controversy, and allow people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly to tout the book. That's more important than the sales of the book."

Indeed, the controversy around Obama Nation -- the time and effort required by the Obama campaign to rebut Corsi's falsehoods, the attention its getting on Fox News and its conservative media counterparts, the publicity the contretemps has generated in the mainstream media (including a front-page article in the August 13 New York Times), and the legions of articles (like this one) about the book generated through the blogosphere -- is exactly the impact that Corsi, Matalin, and (directly or indirectly) the McCain campaign and its allies had hoped for.

Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 at 3:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rens Lee: In Havana, Waiting for Obama or for Putin?

Source: Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) (8-21-08)

[Rens Lee is the author of Smuggling Armageddon and a senior fellow at FPRI.]

As I left Havana earlier this month, Cuba was eagerly awaiting the United States’ November presidential elections. The buzz around the capital, reportedly from a highly placed source, was that Barack Obama has already talked to Raul Castro by phone. Obama has publicly stated that if elected, he would immediately ease restrictions on Cuban American travel and remittances placed by the Bush administration in 2004, but maintain the embargo, which has been in place since 1961, until there is evidence of Cuban democratization. Indeed, no president could unilaterally lift the U.S. embargo—the main sticking point in U.S.-Cuban relations—because U.S. law (the 1996 Helms-Burton Act) mandates preconditions for this, such as legalization of all political activity and departure of the Castro brothers from the political scene, that Cuba finds unacceptable. But a new president who is open to dialogue with America’s enemies could prevail on a solidly democratic Congress to amend or abrogate the law and thus un-freeze the U.S.-Cuban relationship.

The embargo bans most U.S. trade with and all investment in Cuba. While damaging the country’s economy, it has obviously failed in its intended purpose of getting rid of the Castro regime. Cuba remains a police state in which the population is subject to a repressive control and, excepting favored few, lives at or close to the subsistence level. (Interestingly, the police are among the best paid professionals in Cuba, earning almost twice the miserly average wage of $17 per month). Cuba-watchers debate whether lifting the embargo and flooding the country with U.S. tourists and businesspersons would erode the legitimacy of the current regime or breathe new life into it. Yet there are very good strategic reasons why America should not continue its policy of isolating Cuba, even in the absence of positive signs of democratization on the island.

One reason is that the current U.S. policy makes Cuba a target of opportunity for a resurgent and increasingly hostile Russia. Vladimir Putin talks openly about “restoring our position in Cuba,” and hints are surfacing in Moscow that Russia might reestablish a military and intelligence presence on the island in response to the planned missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. Points of cooperation under consideration include use of Cuba as a refueling stop for long range bombers and for reconnaissance ships and aircraft, and also reopening of a gigantic Soviet-era electronic monitoring and surveillance facility at Lourdes, near Havana. A state visit to Havana in July by hard-line Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin (an ex-KGB member of Putin’s inner circle) and head of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev could presage a new strategic dialogue between Moscow and Havana, even though the visit was officially touted as investment-related.

It is hardly coincidental that the warming of Cuban-Russian ties and discussion of a renewed military relationship follows closely on the accession of Raul Castro as de facto Cuban leader. Moscow has historically regarded Raul’s brother as a bit of a nut case, stemming from Fidel’s erratic behavior during the Cuban missile crisis, when (in the Soviet’s view) Castro was trying to provoke a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict. With Raul—who resembles a Soviet-style apparatchik—in charge, Russia may feel more comfortable about deploying strategic or intelligence assets on the island.

Another point to consider in reevaluating U.S. Cuba policy—and for doing so in the short term—relates to Cuba’s huge potential energy reserves located deep offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, which the U.S. Geological Survey says could contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. With most of the U.S. east and west coasts closed to offshore drilling and oil prices at well above $100 a barrel, and international demand for hydrocarbons projected to increase massively in future years, U.S. exploration and development of these deposits becomes a tempting prospect—a justification of rescinding the embargo or at least creating an exception to it. Other energy-dependent countries (such as China and India) already are negotiating exploration rights, but because Cuba is a sanctioned country, U.S. companies are forced to stand idly by.

In sum, current strategic and economic realities argue for dealing with the communist Cuban regime “as is”—i.e. not insisting on regime change as a precondition for improving relations. Opening Cuba to commerce and interchange with the United States could, as many argue, plant the seeds of democracy and capitalism there and give Americans some leverage to moderate the regime’s police-state characteristics. But positioning the United States to participate in what could be a Cuban energy bonanza and keeping Cuba out of the orbit of America’s geopolitical competitors represent more immediate challenges that should guide a new U.S.-Havana dialogue.

Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 at 5:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Sarah E. Mendelson: The End of the Post-Soviet Era

Source: Moscow Times (8-19-08)

[Sarah E. Mendelson is director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.]

The dream that many inside and outside Russia had since the Soviet collapse -- to see Russia integrated with the West -- was crushed long before Russian tanks rolled into Georgia. The Kremlin's assault on democratic institutions such as the press, political parties and the parliament began years ago. The controlled process by which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin moved from president to prime minister was the defining moment. It marked the end of the post-Soviet era.

Pundits and policymakers in Washington are now scrambling frantically to figure out what a new U.S. policy should look like. Will the United States be successful in forging this new policy together with Europe, or will there be divisions? No one I have talked to has good answers yet to these questions, but surely the answers will come through analyzing what type of power Russia is and what type of power the United States wants to be.

Under Putin, Russia has been advancing a sort of "benevolent authoritarianism." The government has engaged in elaborate soft-power projects at home and abroad, such as the Nashi youth movement, Russia Today satellite television and rewriting history books. This effort seemed to be paying off. Many world leaders view Russia as a status quo power -- one that is needed to help solve some of the world's most difficult problems, such as Iran and North Korea. At the same time, they tend to dismiss Russia's human rights abuses, violations of international law and poor governance inside the country.

The quandary for the United States is that it has only two models to choose from: a containment policy from the Cold War era or a policy of integrating Russia as used in the post-Soviet era. Neither approach is appropriate today...

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 8:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Noam Scheiber: How Cindy Hensley invented John McCain

Source: New Republic (8-20-08)

On Saturday, May 17, 1980, Cindy Lou Hensley married Navy Captain John McCain at the First United Methodist Church on Central Avenue in Phoenix, not far from the bride's childhood home. After the ceremony, the wedding entourage headed nearly three miles east to the Arizona Biltmore resort, a sprawling gray oasis designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright protégé in the 1920s. Guests fêted the couple in the resort's Aztec Room, an elegant, twelve-sided banquet hall with a vaulted, gold-leaf ceiling. The 25-year-old bride seemed impervious to the desert heat. She had flawless skin and wore a long-sleeved gown with a veil that extended to the floor.

The only crack in the day's elegant veneer came from the groom. A photograph of the couple, taken against the backdrop of First United's distinctive silver cross and stained-glass wall, shows him stuffed awkwardly into a black tuxedo, which rides high up front and hangs low in the rear. His nearly white hair slopes haphazardly off to the side, and his skin is splotchy and red.

A celebrated aviator and POW, McCain was then the Navy's chief lobbyist to the U.S. Senate. Two of his groomsmen were friends he'd acquired on the job--the young Maine Senator Bill Cohen and Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. It was the type of rarefied company that would normally have turned heads at a provincial wedding. But, over the course of the day, it gradually dawned on Cohen that the bride's family was the main attraction. Cindy's father, Jim, was one of the most successful businessmen in the state--the owner of its largest Anheuser-Busch distributorship. The wedding of his daughter was a bona fide social event. "The Hensley family was very prominent," Cohen recently told me. "Having Gary and I there--it may have impressed a few people, but it didn't make an impact. . . . We were walk-ons."

There was, as it happens, one small incident that hinted at this dynamic. At the climax of the wedding ceremony, with everyone looking on, the pastor prepared to present the new couple: "I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. . . ."--at which point there was an awkward pause. "He stopped, he obviously didn't remember," recalls David Frazer, who was then Jim Hensley's corporate lawyer. Finally, mercifully, someone from the wedding party interjected: "John McCain."

As Cindy McCain faithfully shadows her husband in his quest for the presidency, it's hard to imagine that she was once the senior member of their partnership. Looking back, McCain's steady march from admiral's son to war hero to White House contender seems almost preordained--certainly unrelated to the brittle blond cipher at his side. Cindy brings to mind the political wives of yore--a perpetually demure and deferential presence. All the more so in an age of Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama....

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 5:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

R.J. Eskow: It's Dukakis all over again

Source: Huffington Post (8-21-08)

History doesn't just repeat itself. For the Democrats it's like a broken record. Once again the party's blowing a healthy lead by being reluctant to engage its opponent. It's Groundhog Day starring Michael Dukakis, and Obama's VFW speech yesterday could have come directly from the Dukakis playbook.

Defensive plays like "FightTheSmears" are all well and good, but where's the offense? The GOP keeps throwing roundhouse blows. When they start to lose they make like Mike Tyson and bite somebody's ear off. Meanwhile Democrats fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules -- that is, if they deign to fight at all.

Some of us have been taught that it's wrong to speak harshly of others unless unless there's a higher purpose. Well, there is a higher purpose: This country's on the ropes and a McCain victory could devastate it. But instead of a fight, for the last month we've been getting the same old Democratic listlessness -- and the same impulse to be overly conciliatory. Obama ran a tough, smart primary campaign. Where did that guy go?

Meanwhile McCain's been hitting below the belt, lashing out like a punchdrunk flyweight. And guess what? It's working. You're not going to stop Raging Bull's Mini-Me with oratory and Facebook pages.

Look at the parallels between that VFW speech and this 24-year old Dukakis ad. First, Obama:

"... one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain."

Now for the Dukakis ad. It shows him angrily turning off his television as a George Bush Sr. commercial is running, then turning to the camera and saying:

"I'm fed up with it! Never seen anything like it in 25 years of public life, George Bush's negative TV ads. distorting my record. Full of lies and he knows it. I'm on the record for the very weapons systems his ads say I'm against. I want to build a strong defense. I'm sure he wants to build a strong defense. So this isn't about defense issues. It's about dragging the truth into the gutter.

And I'm not going to let them do it! This campaign is too important. The stakes are too high for every American family."

Why do Democrats feel the need to reassure voters of their opponent's noble intentions? Who says they have noble intentions? And something else: What's striking about the Dukakis ad in retrospect is how good it is. His delivery is clear and forceful, and he seems to be making strong points. It's as good, in fact, as a defensive ad can get. And it didn't work.

That was the lesson of 1988, one that may have been forgotten: You can't land any punches from a defensive crouch. Dukakis is a brilliant man and he would have been a fine President. But he was painted as too cerebral, too passionless, and too remote from the occasionally atavistic impulses and emotions that drive us all. That was unfair -- but it's a candidate's job to triumph over unfairness.

Bernard Shaw's infamous "if Kitty Dukakis were raped ..." question was a low moment in American political journalism (up until then), and it set the tone this year's debate moderation. But you go to your campaign/war with the press corps you have, not the press corps you wish you had. You learn how to get your message across in a punchy way, even if -- especially if -- the questions are loaded.

Here's another problem with the defensive crouch: The candidates are defending themselves. Voters don't care if somebody lied about a politician! They figure that comes with the job title. What they want to know is what that politician will do for them.

Then there's the fact that both Dukakis and Obama affirm their opponent's good intentions, even as that opponent goes about slandering them. Why? In this context that looks weak, not generous or gracious.

Books have been written about why these tactics don't work, but the real reason is as simple as the old adage about the best defense being a good offense. You won't knock an opponent out with FightTheSmears.com -- or, for that matter, with ruminative evenings like the one Sen. Obama spent last weekend with Rick Warren.

Obama has new ads attacking McCain's voting record. That's good, but it's not enough. As uncomfortable as it may make them, the Democrats are going to have to hit McCain on his seemingly endless list of vulnerabilities: The flip-flops. His laziness. His craven surrender on matters of principle. His lobbyist minders. His misunderstanding of basic facts. And then there are all those legitimate questions about his personal integrity and character.

McCain's not reluctant to do whatever it takes to win. If his opponent is, the results will be all too predictable. If the past month's caution was born of a desire to protect Obama's lead, forget about it. That lead is gone. He may have hoped to avoid a brawl, but he can't. It's on.

But, some may ask, what about McCain's war record? The answer is simple: Stop bringing it up. That's their job, not yours. Remember, Bob Dole was a war hero too - and he lost.

Consensus is a beautiful thing, but it starts by forming a consensus around the understanding that we won and you lost. As for "FightTheSmears.Com" -- after watching McCain score with lowball tactics, I'm ready for a website that attacks rather than defends.

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Dick Morris: Back-to-back conventions and the outcome of the election

Source: The Hill (8-19-08)

For the first time in memory, the two parties are holding their conventions right after one another. Within 72 hours of Obama's acceptance speech on the night of Aug. 28, in front of 75,000 adoring fans outdoors at Invesco Field, the Republican convention's opening gavel will come crashing down. How will it work? What will be the impact of these nearly simultaneous events? Nobody really knows, but the answer is critical. Usually, the post-convention polling sets a pattern that lasts at least until the candidates debate.

Will Obama's magic and aura last for the ensuing week, casting a fog over the Republican convention, obscuring its proceedings and dulling its impact? Or will the winds of criticism against Obama, for four nights in a row in Minneapolis, dissipate the vapors and nullify his bounce?

At the moment, the scheduling of the conventions appears to make a prolonged deadlock between the two campaigns the most likely result.

Normally, when conventions are held several weeks apart, the party holding the later gathering has a huge advantage. It can absorb the worst the opposition has to dish out and then work for the ensuing weeks to reduce the size of its post-convention bounce. Then, when the party with the second convention meets, it can build on an even race and structure a bounce that lasts through the fall.

That's what happened in 1996 and in 2004. Both times, the challenger party had the first convention and, in both cases, it was a good one, affording a standard 10-point bounce. In 1996, the Clinton administration nullified the bounce by signing welfare reform and other key legislation during the interval between the conventions. By the time the Democrats met in late August, Clinton had restored a seven-point lead. By the end of the convention, it was over 20 points. It didn't drop to the seven points -- Clinton's actual margin of victory -- until the China fundraising scandals of late October.

In 2004, the Republicans used the time in between the two conventions to launch their Swift Boat attack on John Kerry, offsetting the tales of Vietnam heroism that had been spun at the July Democratic convention. By the time the Republicans gathered in August, the bounce was almost entirely extinguished and Bush's bounce from his convention lasted until October.

But this year, while the Republicans got the later convention, and hence an advantage, the Democrats may have nullified the edge by scheduling their gathering right before the GOP's conclave. This juxtaposition will not give the Republicans time to clear away the Obama bounce before their convention starts.

What makes this particularly important is that the Obama-McCain race is tied, according to most polls, going into the Democratic convention. History suggests that the average convention gives its party a 10-point bounce. So what happens if the conventions afford identical 10-point swings and leave us, in September as in August, with a tied race, presaging a deadlock all fall?

One senses that the Republicans will be grateful if they can achieve a deadlock coming out of the conventions. They are justifiably afraid of Obama's charisma and skill at teleprompter speaking. It has been this ability that has held his candidacy up for all of 2008. His primary victories created a self-perpetuating cycle where each win laid the basis for another rousing victory speech, which spawned the next victory. In Berlin, he wove a similar magic and returned from Europe nine points ahead.

Two facts offer the GOP some comfort if the exchange of conventions yields comparable bounces and a deadlocked outcome. First, the Republicans have a great deal of ammunition left to fire. They really have not unloaded their main attacks yet, settling for more limited hits on Obama's celebrity status. When they unload attack ads focusing on Obama's tax program and on his naïveté, they are likely to score big. Second, each time an Obama bounce dissipates, voters must get more and more inured to the experience. An immunity will develop that will make voters less and less susceptible to his charisma. In any event, the convention will be Obama's last opportunity to speak with his beloved teleprompter. After that he's on his own!

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Daniel Henninger: Saddleback ... where did all those questions come from?

Source: WSJ (8-21-08)

...Can one imagine Dwight Eisenhower, FDR or JFK being asked to define marriage? Abe Lincoln or George Washington could have handled Jesus, but stem cells? Would we have had better presidents back then if we made them talk about their greatest moral failure?

Maybe not. One guesses Jimmy Carter would have aced the Saddleback quiz. Harry Truman probably would have said it's none of your ---- business.

The questions at Saddleback reflect the modern pull of the interior life. Barnes & Noble fills whole walls with guide books to solving the riddles of the Fantastic Self.

No such industry would exist to help people figure out "Who am I?" and "What should I do?" if the world wasn't filled with so much moral confusion.

This, I think, is what Rick Warren meant when he said, "Everybody's got a world view, a Buddhist, a Baptist, a secularist, an atheist, everybody's got a world view."

There was a time before the multitude of world views fell from the sky -- let's say every presidential election from 1789 to 1964 -- when one could assume that all the candidates shared a basic set of moral precepts, now called "values." They were Judeo-Christian precepts. Old Testament-New Testament. It was pretty simple. Some past presidents may have been closet agnostics, but when they were growing up, someone "wise" told them what the common rules were. Most people in public life felt no need to challenge this world view.

That's gone.

How we got where we are today was Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision wherein the nation's highest Court decided when a fetus became "viable," along the way discussing "mediate animation" and "ensoulment." In any event, it became the law.

How we got here as well was because science discovered it could manipulate embryonic stem cells.

How we got here was through a politics able to place on California's November ballot a Proposition H, which would amend the state's constitution to define as valid only a marriage between a man and a woman.

These, with much else, are contested matters now. Absent the settled mores that held sway in 1916 when Woodrow Wilson defeated Charles Evans Hughes, you get Rick Warren trying to open up the inner candidate. One has to ask if evil exists because even that is up for grabs....

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 9:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Michael Kinsley: Say No to Class War

Source: Time (8-14-08)

Opponents and supporters of affirmative action all carry a picture in their heads of how things should work. In this picture, everyone in the world is lined up, from No. 1 to No. 7 billion, in order of their qualifications for a job, admission to a university or whatever. The job goes to the first person in line who wants it. Opponents of affirmative action say it's unfair to let anyone jump ahead because of his or her race. Supporters say, Unfair? Are you kidding? Affirmative action just gives people the same places in line they would have had if there had been equal opportunity.

This picture is wrong in many ways. What makes someone good in a job depends on a variety of factors that are hard to define or measure. They can't be used to line people up on the basis of a variable called "qualifications." Furthermore, race, or at least a diversity of racial backgrounds, often is a qualification. Finally, the benefits of affirmative action sometimes go to people who have already had equal opportunity and more.

Because racial affirmative action is such a raw sore on our body politic, some advocate a modification: affirmative action by social class. If you were raised barefoot and poor, you move up the line, past children of the rich and the upper middle class, no matter what your race or theirs. The idea is tempting. It would take race out of the picture. It would eliminate the galling (though still rare) sight of blacks from privileged backgrounds marching into Princeton past the crumpled bodies of working-class whites with higher sat scores. And it would be truer to the principle of equal opportunity. It would be fairer. Barack Obama has half endorsed the idea, saying his own privileged daughters don't deserve the benefits of affirmative action. John McCain's views have been too contradictory to know for certain, but he also could be interpreted as being favorably inclined to something like this.

It's a terrible idea. It would do nothing about the principal complaint people have about affirmative action: that it violates the principle of merit. People with better qualifications would still lose jobs and university slots to people with worse qualifications, and their resentment probably wouldn't be mollified by the fact that the beneficiaries of this policy might be white. Moreover, it would put America in the business of labeling people and rewarding them according to a criterion--social class--which would be a nightmare possibly even worse than race....

Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 5:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

David R. Stokes: Acceptance Speeches Can Actually Matter

Source: Nixon Blog (8-20-08)

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.]

In late July 1968, against the beautiful backdrop of Skipper’s Cottage at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, Long Island, Richard M. Nixon worked on the acceptance speech he would soon be delivering to the Republican National Convention in Miami. Working on yellow legal pads, as was his custom, he experimented with words and ideas. He was looking for something beyond the routine campaign speech he had been giving along the primary trail. Somewhere during this incubatory phase, he decided to wax a bit sentimental and do something not usually done with major political addresses; he would talk a little about his journey. This was a break from tradition.

FDR had not talked in his speeches about polio, nor had John Kennedy ever discussed descending from Irish immigrants. LBJ didn’t reminisce about his school teaching days in Texas. In fact, Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t even talk about World War II. But when Mr. Nixon addressed the party faithful – and the nation at large via television - at 11:00 p.m. on August 8, 1968, he ended what had already been a very good speech with a personal touch:

“I see another child tonight. He hears the train go by at night and he dreams of far away places where he’d like to go. It seems like an impossible dream. But he is helped on his journey through life. A father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his sons could go to college. A gentle, Quaker mother, with a passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but she understood why he had to go.

A great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way. A courageous wife and loyal children stood by him in victory and also defeat.

And in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions worked for his success. And tonight he stands before you — nominated for President of the United States of America.

You can see why I believe so deeply in the American Dream.”

So when Barack Obama uses his stadium moment next week to tell us about humble origins and his unlikely path to the presidency, he is walking down a road paved by our thirty-seventh president. In fact, both candidates will do so – and we are better for it because we get to know more about the men themselves.

Though the political conventions convene relatively late this year, and promise little in the way of compelling political drama, history shows that acceptance speeches can actually matter.

Mr. Obama has changed the address for his address to Invesco Field in Denver - no doubt to continue his not-so-subtle quest to be John F. Kennedy when he grows up. Watch for a rocking chair any day now. Maybe even an accent.

John McCain will give his acceptance speech to Republicans in Minneapolis a week later. But it will not – in fact, it could not – be as big of a deal as Barack Obama’s pre-inaugural media coronation. The fix is in on that.

Then again, maybe the Arizonian can use what the current resident of the Oval Office might refer to as “misunderestimation” to his advantage.

Back in 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a man with even less political experience than Barack Obama, gave a Democratic convention address that brought the audience to its feet. Then those feet marched to give the Boy Orator of the Platte the nomination. He was only thirty-six years old. Speeches can make a difference.

Actually, up until 1932 it wasn’t accepted practice for a nominee to even appear at a convention to accept in person. No – instead, after the votes were counted, a delegation would travel to the candidate’s hometown to notify him. Such was the case of Republican Warren Harding, who accepted the nod in 1920 from his front porch.

Franklin D. Roosevelt changed all that. He broke with tradition and flew from New York to Chicago to promise a New Deal for Americans in 1932. The next time he was nominated (1936), he told that audience about America’s “rendezvous with destiny.” But that was only after some high drama. As he approached the podium that night, one of his leg braces broke and the polio-stricken president fell to the floor as thousands watched in horrified silence. But not a single flashbulb burst – nor did the radio audience hear about it. The press had more ground rules back then.

We all know, of course, that John F. Kennedy accepted the 1960 Democratic nomination speaking at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. What is seldom noted these days, however, is that the speech didn’t play well on television. JFK would make up for that with a better tube moment a few months later.

There have been occasions when a nominee’s speech has been overshadowed by someone else’s appearance and rhetoric. There is actually some potential for this in Denver as Hillary and Bill have their respective moments in the spotlight.

Very few remember what Lyndon Johnson had to say in Atlantic City as he accepted his party’s nomination in 1964. But Robert Kennedy’s moment, complete with a twenty-two minute ovation, has not been forgotten. And RFK’s contempt for his brother’s successor could not be completely disguised, in spite of the surface appearance of party unity. He shared a quote from Romeo and Juliet that referenced the “garish sun.” Some saw this as a thinly veiled reference to the president. Lyndon sure did.

Though not widely-known at the time, Mr. Johnson, just the day before he was nominated, was seriously considering withdrawing from the race. He wrestled with chronic issues of insecurity – even inferiority. It was left to Lady Bird to talk the tall Texan from the ledge. She had to do this a lot. Years later, she would recall many such moments in her husband’s career, referring to the phenomenon as “the same old refrain.”

Though he won re-nomination in 1980, Jimmy Carter came in second to Ted Kennedy on the rhetoric meter at that year’s Democratic convention. Not only did the flawed heir of all things Camelot outshine him in the speech-making department, he wouldn’t do that thing that all good losers are supposed to do. You know - when they join hands and raise their arms up in victory with a candidate. Poor Jimmy chased the Senator all around the stage, but Teddy did the old stay-away-from-Jimmy two-step.

Mr. Carter’s performance was so bad that night that he botched what should have been a great applause line. Democratic icon Hubert Humphrey had passed away a couple of years earlier and Jimmy wanted to say something gracious about the former vice president. But he butchered the line, not to mention the name, calling the late liberal “Hubert Horatio Hornblower…er…Humphrey.”

Too bad we didn’t have YouTube back then.

John McCain would do well to study a couple of great acceptance speeches delivered by men who were not known for their oratory and had been given little chance of ultimate victory. One of them came close to winning a race he seemed destined to lose by a wide margin. The other man actually won his race – to the shock and dismay of many political experts.

In the summer of 1976, Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency upon the resignation of Richard Nixon, was nearly thirty percentage points behind Jimmy Carter in many polls. He was not a great speaker; nor was he known for his quick wit. But he managed to pull off the greatest speech of his career at just the right time.

Mr. Ford’s chief speechwriter Robert Hartman, along with a few others on the staff, worked for weeks on the speech. The President himself studied every previous acceptance address (of either party) since 1948. He knew that a home run performance was his best chance to get back in the game.

Ford even practiced the speech on videotape. He watched the video over and over again - even up to the beginning of the nomination roll call. The reviews were nearly universally favorable with Time Magazine calling the address “the best of his presidency and perhaps of his career.” Though he would lose to Mr. Carter in November, his convention appearance sparked a surge that moved him within striking distance.

The gold standard, however, for come-from-behind acceptance speeches, not to mention campaigns, has to be that of Harry S. Truman in 1948. By the time of the convention, he was being dismissed as irrelevant and the election of Thomas Dewey of New York was widely considered to be inevitable.

Even Bess Truman didn’t think her husband could win.

The party was divided several ways, the Republicans had won big in the off-year elections two years earlier, and Truman himself didn’t seem to inspire anyone. The Democrats gathered in Philadelphia where the Republicans had met three weeks earlier. The city of brotherly love was strategically located along the path of a new coaxial cable, thus conducive to television coverage.

Something happened then and there to the Man from Missouri when he addressed a fractious convention and weary television viewers. He reached down deep into himself and found a spark that would be fanned into a flame. The great Methodist preacher, John Wesley, once revealed the secret to his success as a speaker: “I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.” That’s what Mr. Truman did that night – and for the rest of the campaign.

Far from the tightly scripted and carefully choreographed moments we have come to expect from political stars today, President Truman had to give his important speech while circumstances were spinning out of anyone’s control. His nomination wasn’t secured until 1:48 a.m. and some wanted him to wait a day to deliver the speech. He wanted to give it then – he was ready and didn’t want to delay at all. The convention hall was overheated and the convention agenda far behind schedule – yet Truman was able to maintain his edge and couldn’t wait to come out fighting.

Then, just as he was ready to come to the platform and during Sam Rayburn’s introduction, a woman carrying a large Liberty Bell made of flowers seized the microphone. She had a point to make. Her flower arrangement was accompanied by four dozen “doves of peace,” and she set them free. The birds went crazy, having been caged for hours in the heat. One publication reported that, “the dignitaries on the platform cringed and shrank away like troops before a strafing attack.”

That was a tough act to follow, but Mr. Truman ignored all that, as well as the problems in his party, and gave the speech of his life. It had been decided that the president would not speak from a manuscript, but rather from an outline describing basic talking points. Aides had recently noticed a tremendous difference in how their boss had been able to connect with audiences when he departed from a prepared text. It set him free and, as one biographer said, “he was suddenly a very interesting man of great candor who discussed the problems of American leadership with men as neighbors.”

Robert Schlesinger, in his book, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters from FDR to George W. Bush, has calculated that only about forty percent of Truman’s words that morning were actually written in his notes. It was a technique he would further develop to perfection during his whistle-stop campaign that fall.

The recent forum at Saddleback Church in California showed Americans a side of Mr. McCain that is reminiscent of the Truman transformation sixty years ago. He was relaxed, witty, informal, and transparent. And Obama played the Dewey role that night.

As the conventions convene, followed by the campaign to come, it remains to be seen if McCain can continue to compete so effectively. Some polls have him now in the lead. But there is one thing for sure - by developing and delivering the speech of his life with passion, conviction, and vision, he could teach young Mr. Young-Whipper-Snapper-Rock-Star a thing or two about politics – and leadership.

Maybe John McCain should try to spend a night or two out on Long Island at Gurney’s Inn. The Skipper’s Cottage can be rented for a mere $1,600.00 a night these days.

By the way, Richard Nixon went back out there after his election in 1968. He stopped for a pineapple sundae at a local ice cream stand and got his picture in the local paper. It would be thirty years before Montauk residents would have another chance for a presidential glimpse. The Clintons went there in 1998.

But they didn’t stay at Gurney’s.

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 5:05 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Andy McSmith: Bletchley ... a national disgrace

Source: Independent (UK) (8-20-08)

[Andy McSmith is a senior reporter at The Independent.]

Sixty-six years ago in Block B of the old Bletchley Park, a discovery was made that saved thousands of lives. A young woman, doing the filing, noticed a lot of coded messages, all concerning fuel deliveries to a small village in northern Germany called Peenemünde.

She didn't think much of them at the time. But she reported the information upwards – and the Allies stumbled on the concealed factory site where the Germans were constructing the V1 and V2 flying bombs. An air strike later and the factory was destroyed. Proof, if ever it was needed, that a well-run filing system can help win a war.

Today moss, weeds and wild flowers have taken over in Block B, a place where the course of history was changed. Nature has reclaimed its ceiling and its floor, and unless something is done soon it will either collapse or be pulled down.

Bletchley Park is one of the world's greatest and most neglected wartime monuments. But large parts of it are being left to rot. The north wall of the main building, a 19th-century country house, is now covered in scaffolding, and part of the roof is missing. The Bletchley Park Trust scraped together £100,000 to repair a quarter of the roof. The rest of the building also needs attention, but the money is not there.

In the grounds nearby, a blue tarpaulin covers a whole wall of Hut 6. The windows are boarded; the white paint is so cracked that you could remove it with you thumbnail. It is so unsightly that it would have been broken up for firewood long ago, were it not for its incredible past.

This was where some of the world's cleverest mathematicians pored over passages of gobbledygook trying to find the formula that would convert it into intelligible German – and save Allied servicemen.

Having worked out the key to the code, they passed it through a connecting hatch to the adjacent, Hut 3. That, too, is now an unsightly morass of peeling paint, rotting planks, and boarded windows.

Everywhere around the site there are the same signs of decay. Even on the brick buildings, constructed to be shrapnel-proof, there is chipped masonry, rotting window ledges, chimneys in an unsafe condition, and guttering needing repairs. Weeds are everywhere.

For Block F, where Colossus, the world's first computer, was set to work in December 1943 reading the private messages between Hitler and the top command, it is already too late. It has been flattened to make way for a housing estate and grass pitch.

Bletchley's history since the war has been chequered to say the least. Originally it was the private property of the director of naval intelligence, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, who liked its handy location half way along the railway line that ran from Oxford to Cambridge.

In utmost secrecy it was taken over by the Government during the war where it became home to Britain's code-breakers in a story that would not be told until nearly 30 years later...

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 7:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Barbara Bornet Stumph: One artist recalls Beijing Olympics Opening

Source: http://forum.eastwestcenter.org/blog (8-19-08)

[Retired Teacher at Pittsburg and Mt. Diablo Unified School Districts of English Language Development (ESL) and Ancient World History. She has a Masters Degree in education from CA State University. She studied Chinese at the University of Oregon.]

The opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was dazzling. But what did it mean?

If we can decode the symbolism of that extravaganza, we may glean more understanding of the culture and thinking of this blooming, controlled state.

Two days after Beijing’s performers bedazzled the world in their 2008 Olympics Opening show, Bill Kristol said on Fox News, “Well, the Olympics is just a giant opportunity for People’s Republic of China to deliver their propaganda.”

This is an outdated viewpoint, I believe. Yes, the State uses art for its own purposes.

I am much more intrigued by what three famous artists in China, Zhang Yimou (Film Director), Jang Ligang (Director of Dance), and Tan Dun (Musical Director), tried to convey to us in the Opening Ceremony from inside an economically blooming, controlled state. While Democracies loathe Communist arrests of dissidents, for example, I wonder, what we also can learn from China’s contemporary artists?

Here’s my attempt to humbly decode the Olympics opening show from my vantage point as a student of intensive Mandarin Chinese and Related Studies at the East West Center, University of Hawaii, in 1965-66 with a life-long specialty in Chinese brush painting.

Olympics Beijing needs to be viewed in the context of the past fifty years of Chinese international relations, and then re-viewed to include the past five thousand years of Chinese history.

The current generation of elderly people in China vividly remember their suffering when Japan invaded. All Chinese were proud to receive Hong Kong back after the ninety nine year lease from the British; Shanghai, their cultural center, is dotted with French buildings and other European architecture. Adult Chinese lived during the so-called Cultural Revolution, a time of Chinese anarchy, when fine arts and Western music were demolished by Maoist doctrine. During the most recent twenty years in the run-up to hosting the Olympics, modern Beijing Chinese are quite a bit freer than before and are feverously working to modernize—to show their strength and resilience—in order to launch a new Era in Chinese history.

How did artists like Misters Zhang, Jang, and Tan use the language of the arts in today’s China? Let’s look at Zhang’s efforts to bring Harmony to center stage in the world. The concept of Harmony in China comes from a balance of the forces of male (Yang), and female forces (Yin). How did these artists try to balance these forces in their show? With 100 million dollars at their fingertips, what language did Director Zhang use last Friday night in designing their show?

We recall hundreds of drummers playing on reconstructed model drums based on one which was excavated in one of China’s tombs. Regimental pounding and chanting had a militaristic aura. Zhang gave us a feeling of how the Emperor of old may have felt when his subjects filled his courtyard. This fierceness was balanced by the ethereal flying fairy goddess on a high wire with her flowing silk robes. Only if one connects these two events together, can one feel the Chinese notion of the balance of opposites.

I heard one American news commentator at the Opening say, “We will experience lots of contrasts tonight.” That is only part of the story.

Many people will recall a highlight of the show were silver pistons which moved up and down in massive, mechanical patterns. “How are they doing that on the stage floor?” we wondered. Look at the degree of group control. There is a “scary” aspect, my Jewish friend, confided to me later. It reminds me of May 5 parades for Mao.

“Impressive,” says my husband. “How are they doing that?”

Suddenly the cold looking pistons with power to mesmerize us, all transformed: pink and red paper flowers spurted out of the tops of every piston until into a warm field of flowers in Chinese lucky red, a traditional, New Year greeting. I laughed with the world audience. Next hundreds of young boys’ heads popped up out of the flower bed. “Yep, I guessed there had to be people inside,” my husband said. Young boys with scrubbed fresh faces, representing the future China, waving at us.

Did you see high wire dancers pretending to walk all around the latitude of the monstrous golden moon? A spaceman floated out of the sky probably to symbolize China’s dream for putting a man on the moon in the next two years: here Zhang reminded us of China’s growing technological expertise.

A lithe, young sweetheart came flying across the sky of the Bird’s Nest near the paper moon, while famous pianist Lang Lang emerged center stage surrounded by light. Director Zhang seated a young girl next to Lang Lang. Why is there a child next to Lang Lang? Traditionally, Chinese want children to learn from the masters, as well as their parents, like a young branch grows off of a mature stem of a tree.

Another Chinese dancer dressed in flying robes appeared elevated on top of moving shoulders of an army of hidden foot students. As she dances gracefully like a classical Chinese painting I have seen, somehow she keeps her footing. What is she standing on? The music changes to symphonic melodies of China, as directed by Tan Dun. Other dancers formed five perfect concentric rings on the stage floor. “There are no guidelines painted on this floor,” the NBC commentator said.

“The message was loud and clear to me,” my father said on the telephone. “One person can screw the whole thing up!” In fact, other commentators, like George Will, noted the group control demonstrated in the ceremony.

Every now and then, outside cameras showed us the grand view of “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium: the building glowed with 90,000 visitors, as the structure was lighted in wide bands of red and green. These two colors are used to indicate Yin/Yang principles: red is Yang, green is Yin. Together red and green are used on the Peach of Long Life in Chinese painting.

One moment, which did seem to me reminiscent of Mao’s China was when they paraded ethnic children in traditional costumes. Yet when cameras zoomed in on the faces, those kids looked thrilled.

Next, a hundred or so male students appeared dressed in Confucius-like gowns. White pheasant feathers, pierced the sky from their headdresses. Silver and black gowns, made a modern art pattern, as they prostrated themselves, as if to kow tow to the Emperor. They carried bamboo books, showing ancient love of learning. These scholars came out ahead of the Kung Fu martial artists about whom Zhang Yimou said in an interview with Beijing Review magazine: “I put them in because the world expects to see them from us.” Then the Yin performance to balance this spectacle came in the form of Tai Chi Chuan dancers whose slow movements are for breathing and bodily health.

Sarah Brightman and a popular, Chinese male singer, sang while holding hands on top of a sky scraper. Here, East and West are symbolically resolving their historical fear of one another, perhaps: part of my dream.

Where lighted dancers swarmed onto the stage like thousands of fireflies, Chinese explorer ships emerged. The ships contradicted the commentator who spoke of “Chinese historical isolationism.” It depends on what dynasty you’re talking about. The international community was treated to a vast collage of sights and patterns reminding us of China’s aggressive trade on the seas and on her ties over the Silk Road. I read in Beijing Review that Zhang had originally dressed the lighted dancers in black; but Zhang did not like the effect in dress rehearsal. One week later, two thousand dancers were wearing light green body suits instead.

One memorable performance was when other black clothed dancers appeared center stage to perform on a computer screen which represented the center of a Chinese scroll unfolding. (Note the theme here: value education and learning.) Their sleeves were long so they could touch the monster screen beneath them and thus were able to “paint” a traditional landscape; another dancer added a moon. A happy face was added to the moon by a child.

As the athletes of hundreds of countries parade, their feet walked across colored stamp pads, so their footprints made a rainbow across the high tech screen. Rainbows are a universal symbol of resolution after the storm. I felt the Harmony of the moment. This screen will tour the world after the Olympics are over.

The fireworks were a grand, fiery display: I saw white chrysanthemums march across the sky, a symbol on Chinese porcelain and in painting for Longevity.

California, where I live, sent more than one hundred athletes to Beijing. I hope the athletes, too, felt the Harmony that Zhang, Jang, and Tan strived to create in the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony.

After all, the theme of the Beijing Olympics is, “One world, one dream.”

Meanwhile, I say a prayer for all Chinese artists, who live in a society which requires that art serve the State. As I think back, I find there was an emphasis on conformity and authoritarian rule. The uniformity of the drummers and the prostrate Confucian scholars, for example, were serving the one ruler. Was this a bit of protest art?

I guess I want the Olympics Opening Ceremony to be more than an opportunity for propaganda. For me, at least, it was a visual feast, and an impressive feat.

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 6:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Michael Barone: Echoes of Berlin

Source: Washington Times (8-19-08)

Last week, the two erstwhile communist superpowers were in the spotlight. Starting on Aug. 8, China staged the Olympics - an event on the schedule for years. Also on Aug. 8, Russia invaded the independent republic of Georgia - which apparently caught our government flatfooted. George W. Bush remained in Beijing watching the Olympians, while Vladimir Putin, making no secret of who is in charge, went to the Russian borderland with Georgia to supervise.

There are echoes of history in all this. Echoes that remind us in one way or the other of Berlin. China's Olympic extravaganza - and its suppression of dissent - inevitably remind us of Adolf Hitler's Berlin Olympics in 1936. Russia's torrent of lies - its claims that democratic Georgia has been engaged in ethnic cleansing, its claims that it is acting in the interest of Russian citizens, its claims that it has accepted a cease-fire when its tanks continue to enter Georgian cities - remind us of Hitler's claims that Czechoslovakia was oppressing the Sudeten Germans and his claims that Poland was committing atrocities before he invaded.

Belatedly, on Aug. 13, George W. Bush reminded us once again of Berlin, when he announced that the United States would airlift supplies and send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia. The United States has no capacity to join Georgia in arms and does not want a direct military confrontation with Russia. But in effect we are putting feet on the ground in Tbilisi and its airport, which should make it plain to Mr. Putin that an assault on them is an attack on the United States.

There's a parallel here to the situation in Berlin in June 1948, when the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin. Harry Truman's top civilian and military advisers told him there was no way to supply the city by air and that we could not win a land war with the Soviets. But Truman said, "We're staying in Berlin," and the American military made the airlift work. The Soviets could have wiped out the Allied garrison, but they dared not do so. For the full story of the airlift, read Andrei Cherny's riveting "The Candy Bombers."

John McCain has taken a strong stand from the start. His statement, "We are all Georgians," echoes John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner." Barack Obama, after a weak opening statement, has also condemned the Russian actions. But his own speech before the Prussian Victory Column in Berlin showed an incomplete appreciation of history.

He hailed the Berlin airlift as an example of American generosity, which it was. But he didn't note that it was an example of American military strength: The "candy bombers" were members of the U.S. Air Force. And when he celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said it was supported by "the world as one." But a lot of people - communists - built and supported the Berlin Wall and shot men who attempted to climb over it to freedom....

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 6:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Bernard Henri-Levi: The task of the Jews

Source: http://www.the-american-interest.com (8-19-08)

Leo Strauss wrote in the preface to the American edition of his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1965) that “it is not quite day and not quite night, either.” In doing so, Strauss was up to his old esoteric tricks, for that phrase, a reference to the coming of the Messiah, is taken from the Passover service. Strauss seemed to be suggesting that Jews had as many reasons to be afraid as they had reasons to hope. That, I think, remains true today: There are reasons for fear as well as reasons for hope, the latter defining the tasks incumbent upon the Jewish people of this new century.

I am almost as old now as the State of Israel, and I sense that not in the past sixty years has there been a time when Israel has been so alone, vulnerable and threatened as it is today. Israel has always had enemies, of course. But as I have watched Hamas firing rockets at Sderot and now at Ashkelon, from a territory Israel has not occupied for two years, I think of Hizballah: During the summer of 2006 it amassed missiles at Israel’s northern border at a time when Lebanon itself no longer had any territorial dispute with Israel (save the ambiguous, minute and artificial Shebaa Farms affair). In other words, here we have two adversaries of Israel, Hamas and Hizballah, who no longer have claims that are intelligible within the classical logic of political conflict. Today, at least, the demands of the Palestinians may be seen as exaggerated and unrealistic, but at least there are demands. Hamas and Hizballah demand nothing from Israel, except that it be annihilated. Their actions are not based on strategy but on a brutal and naked hatred, one that no negotiation or concession can slake.

When facing its enemies since the consolidation of independence in 1948–49, Israel has always been able to rely on its indisputable military superiority. Israelis and their well-wishers often worried of course, knowing, as Thucydides paraphrased Pericles, that “no one is ever so strong that he can be sure he is the strongest.” We were nervous on the narrowing road past Latrun up to Jerusalem before the Six Day War, yes, but we also knew that security is less about kilometers than intelligence—and that in terms of intelligence, the Jewish State would be unbeatable for a long time.

Today, however, one detail changes everything: That these enemies-to-the-death of Israel are tied to a state in pursuit of a technological leap that could nullify the strategic superiority of the Israeli Defense Forces. No one knows exactly what Iran is doing in its nuclear projects. What we do know is that the regime wants a nuclear weapon, and that its President, at least, wants it for the clear, repeatedly declared purpose of getting rid of what he calls, depending on his mood, an “imposture”, a “criminal regime”, a “dirty black germ” or a “wild animal” unleashed by the West in order to destroy the Muslim world. If Lenin was soviets-plus-electricity, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the bomb-plus-eschatology....

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 6:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: How strange it is watching Americans wrestle with their religion

Source: New Republic (8-20-08)

[Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the editor of "Lessons from the Poor" and the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute. His e-mail address is AVLlosa(at)independent.org.]

... The encounter at Saddleback, a megachurch in California's Orange County, brought home to an international audience a great theme of American history: the tension between the theocratic and the secular. It has been there from the nation's beginning, in the difference between the original Virginia settlers, whose ambition was not subordinate to religion, and the Pilgrims from the Mayflower, who wanted to establish the kingdom of God. And historians have pointed to the Great Awakening, the religious revival in 18th-century America, as the matrix from which the revolution sprang: British historian Paul Johnson sees in the fact that the American Revolution was "a religious event" the essential difference with the French Revolution. And yet the U.S. Constitution is a secular document that pretty much ignores religion until the First Amendment--which then lays in stone the separation of church and state.

In modern times, there were periods--the counterculture of the 1960s, Roe v. Wade in 1973--when the secular impulse had the upper hand. They were followed by the theocratic backwash--the evangelical revival that started in the 1980s and with which one in four Americans strongly identifies today.

This unresolved struggle--the 800-pound gorilla at the Saddleback forum--is what stands in the way of the Republican Party becoming truly the party of small government. The tension between theocrats and secularists in society at large is mirrored in the soul of Republican conservatives who are torn between individual liberty--their belief in the free ownership of guns or their aversion to high taxes--and the "values state"--their belief in making the government an agent of the "right" moral values.

There are times when the secular overshadows the theocratic among conservative Republicans. In such times, as happened with Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, the Republican Party produces leaders inclined toward a libertarian, small-government society. But there are times when the theocratic pulsation is stronger. That helps explain George W. Bush and the decisive growth of government under his presidency. Individual freedom and moral engineering are the systole and the diastole of the Republican heart.

Similarly dramatic is the contradiction among Democrats. Although they have made concessions to conservatives out of political necessity, Obama's conversation with Rick Warren reminded us that the Democratic Party does not want the government to impose values on society through coercion. That is a secular, small-government belief. But the faith in government as the agent of social justice in everything from poverty alleviation to energy policy to the unionization of workers is a recipe for big government. It is also a theocratic proposition of sorts: the government as the agent of good....

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 4:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Jim Castagnera: Playing the Great Game (again)

[Jim Castagnera is the Associate Provost/Associate Counsel at Rider University. He is writing his 14th book, about terrorism’s impact on higher education, for Praeger.]

The Russians have romped through Georgia. When taken to task, they asked rhetorically, if Uncle Sam can invade Baghdad, why can’t the Bear invade Tbilisi. Secretary of State Rice retorted that this was not Czechoslovakia in 1968. With all due respect, Dr. Rice drew the wrong analogy. Cold War thinking isn’t helpful here.

To find an accurate historical analogy to today’s situation, she would do better to hark back to 1885. For decades British India and Tsarist Russia had been playing a chess game in Central Asia. The Russians had designs on a vast region, which they considered a natural part of their sphere of influence. Victorian Brits feared that Russian aspirations extended beyond the Caucasus and the Steppes. In their minds, India, the jewel in their queen’s crown, was the ultimate stake in the game.

Early in the game, Britain tried to control Afghanistan as a buffer to perceived Russian lust for the Indian subcontinent. The first Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42) ended in an English disaster. From a column of some 16,000 British troops retreating out of Kabul, only one survivor emerged to tell the grizzly tale. The Brits later took their revenge, razing Kabul. The second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-81) was a win for the Lion.

Four years later, the Empire was ill-prepared to counter Russian incursions in Central Asia. In 1884 General Sir Peter Lumsden, a member of the Joint Afghan Boundary Commission formed by the two “super-powers,” warned that the Russian Bear was stirring in the region once more. Then, in January 1885, came the news from a relief force sent south along the Nile from Egypt that Khartoum, capital of the Sudan, had fallen to a self-proclaimed Islamic Mahdi. Worse, the British icon, General Charles “Chinese” Gordon, who had organized the defense of Khartoum, had been killed. Although the British, who effectively ruled Egypt, had planned to abandon the Sudan in the face of the fanatical Islamic forces, Gordon’s death left them honor-bound to avenge him. Lumsden’s warning, that the Russians would be on the move “as soon as a large portion of our forces are locked up in Egypt and the Sudan,” proved itself prophetic.

The Russians seized some additional Central Asian territory, the British issued diplomatic warnings and marshaled troops along India’s northern border, and in the words of historian Peter Hopkirk, “the tremors of the crisis were being felt throughout the rest of the world.” He adds, “In America, where the news had rocked Wall Street, all talk was of the coming struggle between the two imperial giants.” However, no repeat of the 1854-56 Crimean War occurred.

In his 1992 book, The Great Game, Hopkirk --- a London Times reporter who traveled extensively in Central Asia --- referred to the 1979-89 Russian debacle in Afghanistan, when he introduced his account of the 19th century: “If [my] narrative tells us nothing else, it at least shows that not much has changed in the last hundred years. The storming of embassies by frenzied mobs, the murder of diplomats, and the dispatch of warships to the Persian Gulf --- all these were only too familiar to our Victorian forebears. Indeed, the headlines of today are often indistinguishable from those of a century or more ago.”

Now, some 20 years after the Soviet Bear departed Afghanistan, tail between its legs, we are hearing the same echoes reverberate down the long corridors of history from those distant days when Great Britain --- our only staunch ally today in Afghanistan and Iraq --- fought a sometimes-cold, occasionally-hot, war for control of the vast land of the “Stans.” As in 1885, and in 1979-89, Western and Russian forces will not clash directly with one another. Rather, we will work to outmaneuver the Bear. Russo-Ursus will work just as hard to regain its earlier influence in those oil-rich lands, which broke free in 1989-1990, when the USSR crumbled like the Berlin Wall. The Great Game will go on, the 21st century continuing the patterns of geopolitical power struggle that characterized Central Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries.



Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Matthew Kaminski: Russia is Still a Hungry Empire

Source: WSJ (8-19-08)

[Author: Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.]

The sight of Russian tanks rolling through Georgia was shocking yet familiar. Images flash back of Chechnya in 1994 and '99, Vilnius '91, Afghanistan '79, Prague '68, Hungary '56. Before that the Soviet invasions, courtesy of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, of Poland and the Baltics in '39 and '40. Kazaks, Azeris, Tajiks, Ukrainians remember -- from family stories and national lore -- their own subjugation to Russian rule.

Other empires such as Britain and France adjusted, not without difficulty, to the fall of their distant domains. Far more of Russia's essence is tied up in the Imperium, and it barely tried to find a new identity after the Soviet Union fell. The war in Georgia marks an easy return to territorial expansion (here Moscow has taken chunks of Georgia for itself) and attempted regional dominance.

Russia is a relatively young nation, dating from after the turn of the previous millennium. Drive the highway from Gori to Tbilisi and you'll find signs of Christianity that predate Russia by some five centuries. Georgians will tell you, with a mixture of pride and scorn, that their culture and history goes back a lot deeper than Russia's.

Starting out as an isolated village, Muscovy grew by conquest, swallowing up lands and people at a dizzying rate, especially from the 18th century on. Though Russian nationalists claim otherwise, as a nation the Russians are a mix of Slavic, Asian and other European ethnicities. This national hodgepodge was wrenched together by an authoritarian czar who claimed his right to rule from the heavens.

The Soviets were even better empire builders. Vladimir Putin, whose formative years were spent in Dresden spying on the East German colonials, comes from this tradition.

Never in the history of empire was the periphery generally so much more advanced than the center. With each move into Europe, from the partitions of Poland to Stalin's great triumph at Yalta, Russia acquired what it didn't have -- an industrialized economic base, better infrastructure and above all contact with Western civilization. Aside from St. Petersburg and a few other towns, Russia itself stayed a largely rural, Eastern Orthodox backwater. It knew it too.

In the Soviet days, Russian culture, language and history were pressed on its captive nations. But these nations in and outside the U.S.S.R. never gave up their dreams of freedom. Starting in the Baltics, and then spreading to the Caucasus and Ukraine, their resurgence was, as much if not more than Mikhail Gorbachev, the internal force that brought about the Soviet Union's collapse. They easily imagined life without Mother Russia. Russia could not reciprocate. To dominate is to be....

Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Ivan Eland: The U.S. Should Be Wary of Strongly Backing Georgia

Source: Independent Institute website (8-15-08)

[Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University.]

Despite significant U.S. and Georgian culpability in the crisis in Georgia, most U.S. politicians and media painted Russia as the diabolical “evildoer.” As if the Russian military incursions into Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia—the latter two are autonomous regions of the former that do not want to be part of that country—happened out of the blue, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice implied that Russia was attempting to bring back the Cold War.

Because Georgia is a U.S. friend, however, U.S. politicians, in a huff to heap blame on the resurgent Russian bear, forgot to mention that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili recklessly first invaded South Ossetia to try to reclaim one of the two regions, which both have had long-standing autonomy and populations who want it to stay that way. He did this in part because the U.S. had helped build up his military, leading him to overestimate U.S. backing in any crisis.

Russia had given ample warnings to Saakashvili that if he attempted to grab such lands, he would meet resistance. In addition, the initial Georgian invasion killed Russian soldiers and apparently many civilians. The United States would never tolerate the killing of its military personnel in such a manner.

But despite their tough pre-election public posturing, some U.S. politicians acknowledge privately that the U.S. friend Saakashvili might be a loose cannon. That they take for granted that the United States should be reflexively supporting him anyway vis-à-vis Russia is troubling. Why should the United States stand behind Saakashvili’s aggressive provocation of Russia—a country with thousands of nuclear warheads?

The answer is that contrary to Secretary Rice’s implication, Russia is not bringing back the Cold War. In fact, it never ended. After the Soviet Union fell, the United States deliberately took advantage of a weakened Russia to incorporate its former allies and even some former Soviet republics into the NATO alliance. The U.S. even sought and won access to military bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. At the time, Russia could do nothing about this perceived hostile alliance moving right up to its current borders. More recently, a stronger Russia—reacting to NATO’s flirtation with Ukraine and Georgia for eventual alliance membership and plans for installing U.S. missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic—tightened its relationship with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Another factor provoking this Russian reaction was the West’s recognition of Kosovo—the secessionist province of Serbia, which is a staunch Russian ally—as an independent state. If the U.S. supported self-determination, as enshrined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, for Kosovo, then why not for Georgia’s breakaway regions?

Thus, the post-1991 “Cold War Lite” policy that the U.S. has adopted has made Russia feel surrounded, isolated, and threatened, as many opponents of NATO expansion predicted in the 1990s would eventually happen. After all, the U.S. is in Russia’s face—that is, in its traditional sphere of influence—and not vice versa. The opponents also correctly predicted if Russia rose again—which they deemed a distinct possibility—the disgruntled bear would put its foot down. That just happened.

This crisis has dragged up larger questions, however. If the U.S. continues to pledge a costly defense of an ever expanding list of NATO allies (currently at 25), at some point, one or more of these small, weak nations in Russia’s “near abroad” will embroil the U.S. needlessly in a Cold War-style confrontation with a nuclear-armed power. In this case, if the rash Georgia had already become a NATO member, pressure would have mounted to send U.S. combat troops instead of humanitarian aid to that nation....

Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 5:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, August 18, 2008

Max Hastings: Rubbing Moscow's nose in its historical failures cannot bring peace

Source: Guardian (8-18-08)

[Max Hastings is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard.]

Seldom since the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia has the west found itself in such a muddle as it is today about events in Georgia and South Ossetia. Among rightwingers, hawks are suddenly back in fashion, and not only in Washington. David Cameron wants Georgia admitted to Nato in quick time. Russian threats to Poland are compared to the Cuban missile confrontation.

In truth, of course, this remains a small crisis by comparison with those of the cold war, even if some of the principals, in Moscow as well as Washington, talk as if Stanley Kubrick was writing their lines. It is nonetheless a real one, because Moscow has shown its readiness to use force in its proclaimed sphere of influence.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, US policy in eastern Europe and beyond has sought to exploit Russian weakness to install pro-western regimes wherever fertile soil could be found. In Washington's perception, this does not represent aggression or even unreasonable assertiveness, because its honourable objective is to replace tyranny and repression with democracy and freedom.

The Russians do not care sixpence about these fine things. They perceive only that American missiles are on their way into Poland and the Czech Republic, while Georgia is becoming a US puppet. A Russian academic living in the west inquired in my hearing a few weeks ago: "What would George Bush say if our government announced that it was installing an anti-missile system in Cuba?"

Even those of us who deplore US attempts to include Georgia and Ukraine in Nato should not lose sight of the fact that, if Moscow's will prevails in the states around Russia's borders, precious few human rights are likely to be available to their citizens. Thirty years ago many western Europeans were too ready to acquiesce in eastern Europe's indefinite enslavement by the Soviet Union. In the name of "peaceful coexistence", it was deemed prudent to allow the Poles, Czechs, East Germans, Hungarians and so on to remain, often literally, behind barbed wire.

It was one of the happiest events of the past century when the Warsaw Pact collapsed, and the nations of eastern Europe became free. Granted the problems of Romania and Bulgaria, it is astonishing how successfully the other former Soviet satellites have embraced democracy and the European Union.

Many British people are so preoccupied with the relatively minor inconveniences imposed by the EU upon this country that they ignore its triumph in bringing peace and stability to many societies that had not known these things in living memory.

Yet Russian exceptionalism persists. It remains unlikely that, in the foreseeable future, it will want to join the EU or share its values. For almost half a century, Russia saw everything through the prism of its second world war experience and that of the cold war. Today its people are obsessed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and their perceived loss of status in the world. Far from recognising this as the consequence of political and economic failure, most Russians from Putin downwards blame western malice and domestic traitors succumbing to western intrigues.

Moscow's behaviour today should be seen not as a reflection of "oil arrogance", though this plays a part, but of neurosis about its own weakness and failure. The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife. They will become willing to play with the west by western rules only if or when they no longer perceive those rules as disadvantaging themselves. Today they cannot compete on the EU's terms, still less those of the US, so they make up their own.

It is unnecessary for the west silently to acquiesce in the Russians' excesses, but it must tread cautiously in the face of their sensitivities. America must stop pretending that democracy is, of itself, the answer to all the world's ills. Washington is already learning painful lessons about this in the Muslim world. Few people doubt that, even if Russian elections are flawed, Putin's policies command overwhelming support among his own people.

While the west can offer political and economic encouragement to nations on Russia's borders, it is folly to go further, seeking to include them in western security organisations, or bribe them to accept US military installations. Such policies merely provoke violent Russian virility displays, to which the west can make no effective response.

Edward Lucas, an impassioned hawk, wrote before the latest Georgian imbroglio: "The west is losing the new cold war, while hardly having noticed that it has started." The Bush administration today talks of gallant little Georgia in 2008 as if it was gallant little Poland in 1939. As so often, it draws the wrong lesson from history. Britain and France had to fight Hitler. But in September 1939 both countries found themselves in the grotesque position of having offered security guarantees to Poland, while being incapable of doing anything practical to frustrate the German invasion.

It is several bridges too far today to pretend that the west can defend Georgia, or indeed Ukraine. The only sensible advice Washington and its allies can offer their governments is to rub along as best they can with the Russians, and avoid offering them military provocations.

Appeasement gained such a bad name in the 1930s that it is sometimes forgotten, especially by Washington's neoconservatives, that it is often indispensable. It can be defined by more honourable names. Most of the world's problems cannot be "solved", least of all by force of arms. They must be managed or endured, in the hope that better times will come, as they often do.

In a world which has seen within the past 20 years the peaceful transfer of power to the black majority in South Africa, as well as the peaceful collapse of the Soviet European empire, it seems absurdly pessimistic to suggest that current difficulties with Russia can be resolved only through confrontation.

American foreign policy is still cursed by post-cold war triumphalism, and aspirations to the "victory" of democracy and capitalist values, while that of Russia languishes under the stigma of defeat. These sensations inspire excessive hubris in both. If Barack Obama wins the US election, the highest hope of the rest of the world must be for a revival of traditional diplomacy, an understanding of the virtues of talking to everybody: the Iranians, the Syrians, Hamas - and the Russians. Successful diplomacy also requires recognition of banal principles of give-and-take, you-win-some-you-lose-some.

US policy towards Moscow for almost two decades has been based upon the assumption that since the Russians were losers, their wishes could be ignored or defied on every front. No useful business could result from such a posture. Putin conducts an ugly polity, and his Russia is not a place where even most successful Russians want to live. But the west will find it easier to coexist with this tormented, intransigent, melancholy and oil-rich neighbour when Russia feels comfortable with itself, not when its nose is rubbed in its long history of failure.

Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 at 9:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Frank Schaeffer: God Against Obama

Source: Huffington Post (8-13-08)

[Frank Schaeffer is coauthor of HOW FREE PEOPLE MOVE MOUNTAINS-A Male Christian Conservative and a Female Jewish Liberal On A Quest For Common Purpose and Meaning. He is also author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.]

Evangelicals have a problem: they want to involve themselves in politics -- for instance by praying that the Obama speech at the Democratic convention is rained out, as James Dobson of Focus On the Family called for. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by such antics. What can they do? Nothing because their theology acknowledges no central authority. Evangelicals don't "do" structure. They don't do government, or bishops or tradition. They just do "me" and "I" never we. So their individualistic and narcissistic village idiots-Dobson, Robertson, Osteen etc.-are in charge by default.

The whole point of Evangelical Christianity is a consumerist-oriented do your own thing approach to Jesus. This is a departure from historical Christianity centered on a liturgical tradition that had to do with faith lived in community and beliefs defined by tradition, not the individual pastor standing in front of the congregation holding forth according to whim. But evangelical "worship" is nothing but grandstanding. It's all about the sermon and the pastor's personality. I know. I was once one such "personality," Evangelical big-time flash-in-the-pan leader egomaniac, until I got out in the mid 80s.

Evangelicals reject all traditions and structures, other than their very own personalized interpretation of the Bible, so there is no there, there to appeal to. Evangelicals can't police themselves or call one of their own a nut for the same reason that the village idiot smearing himself with excrement can't point the finger at another idiot wearing his pants on his head and call him crazy. Each has a "personal relationship with Jesus." So maybe Jesus told that guy to put his pants on his head!

Evangelicals get direct messages from God. So who needs tradition, let alone government? That is why Evangelicals are opposed to all structure. They hate government, and they hate the idea of bishops telling them what it means to be a Christian. They hate the idea of health care for all that might involve someone (other than voices in their heads) telling them what to do. And they want the "right" to own guns, raise kids on myths and own that SUV and believe that more drilling for oil will bring down the price of gas. They also want God to speak directly to them, never mind a community of faith. And God seems to tell them weird stuff. So today's crazy person is tomorrow's best selling Rick Warren or Victoria and Joel Osteen. And how can they be crazy? Look how big their churches are! They measure up to the only real Evangelical creed-the ability to make money and be successful in commercial terms....

Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 at 5:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Paul Vitello: Low Blows on the Campaign Trail, Not Newer, but Lots Faster

Source: NYT (8-17-08)

When Thomas Jefferson found himself accused of planning to burn all Bibles and legalize prostitution if elected president in 1800, he was ready with a counterpunch that might make today’s most vitriolic campaign operatives stop short, if only to gape upon the greatness that once was presidential campaign slander.

Jefferson’s rival, President John Adams, was endowed with a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman”; and if re-elected he would crown himself king; and, by the way, he was “mentally deranged.”

The author of the attacks was not Jefferson himself, of course, but a master poison-pen pamphleteer named James Callender, who, historians have since determined, was bankrolled completely by Jefferson. (For his efforts, Callender spent nine months in prison under the Sedition Act for saying those things about a sitting president; Jefferson pardoned him immediately after defeating Adams and taking office.)

So, if this year’s entries in the annals of presidential campaign smears seem likely to reach depths never before plumbed — the latest example, some would say, being the book “Obama Nation,” which suggests that Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, may be a drug-addicted, Muslim, radical leftist — they probably won’t.

For raw, crushing smear power, the 1964 “Daisy” ad, made for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign and suggesting that the election of the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, would mean the end of life on earth, has still never quite been equaled.

And the 11th-hour telephone “survey” of Republican primary voters in South Carolina in 2000, asking “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” will probably keep its place on the Mount Rushmore of smear for a while.

But while hermaphroditical characters and nuclear madmen may be missing, historians and others say the 2008 presidential campaign has achieved a level of smear and counter-smear sophistication that is unprecedented.

“The viral marketing we are seeing is simply fascinating,” said Sid Bedingfield, a visiting professor of journalism at the University of South Carolina who is the former chief of CNN’s domestic news coverage. “The speed with which the Obama campaign can respond to allegations has been quite impressive, for example.”

For a long time there was a debate in the world of political professionals about when, and how much, to respond to the other side’s brickbats.

But the very notion of viral marketing, a phrase that describes the exponential multiplication of e-mailed campaign messages sent to one network of people who send it on to another reflects the answer that has emerged from that debate: Never wait. Everything is moving at warp speed.

“The lesson of the last 20 years is to respond immediately and aggressively, and across a broad front,” Professor Bedingfield said.

By most accounts of campaign professionals, campaigns operate now like orbiting spacecraft — moving through space 24 hours a day, seven days a week — and are every bit as susceptible to sudden disaster.

The unending news cycle, the explosion of the blogosphere and the freelance work of independent groups like the Swift Boat veterans of 2004, whose campaign severely undercut John Kerry’s bid for president, has made every campaign entourage a kind of road crew cum paramedic team.

“When the Swift Boat ads hit us, it was obviously a serious matter, aimed straight at John’s character,” said Tad Devine, Mr. Kerry’s campaign manager. “We had a difficult decision to make.”

This year, some candidates have figured out how to turn the so-called interactivity of the new age of politics to their advantage. In June, plagued by Internet rumors about its candidate’s patriotism and his religion, Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign launched a Web page, “Fight the Smears,” that in effect can take the negative power of viral marketing and bend it, like Superman, to send it back where it came from and beyond.

Supporters who get such e-mail messages can visit the Obama site to access official campaign rebuttals to dozens of accusations, and then use the site to forward them to those who sent and received the original message.

Still, for all the new technology, the essential text of smears today is about the same as it has always been, said Paul F. Boller Jr., a former history professor at Texas Christian University and author of “Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush.”

“Religion and sex, and whether the other guy is a real ‘man,’ ” Mr. Boller said. “It boils down to that.” The difference now: “If Winfield Scott’s people went out and attacked Franklin Pierce as a coward,” he said, referring to the election of 1852, which Pierce won, “well in those days it took a while for that idea to get around.”

The rhythm of campaigning may have quickened, but the notion that a counterpunch delayed was a counterpunch denied did not seem to take hold in conventional wisdom until 1988.

That year, Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts fell under the wheels of a negative campaign juggernaut — watching from a dignified remove as the supporters of George H. W. Bush wiped out Mr. Dukakis’s 17-point lead by defining him as the man who furloughed the rapist-killer Willie Horton. Largely in response, Bill Clinton’s famous 1992 campaign “war room” made it a policy to rebut or refute opposition accusations within 24 hours.

In the 2004 campaign, when Mr. Kerry came under attack in a television ad campaign and a book co-written by Jerome Corsi, the author of “Obama Nation,” disputing his Vietnam record, Mr. Kerry held back...

Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 at 12:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Anne Applebaum: A tombstone on China's history

Source: Telegraph (8-17-08)

[Anne Applebaum is a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Washington Post.]

Cymbals clashed; a giant scroll unfurled. There were fireworks, kites, ancient soldiers marching in formation, modern dancers bending their bodies into impossible shapes, astronauts, puppets, little children, multiple high-tech gizmos. The Olympic opening ceremony showed you China as China wants you to see it.

But for a deeper understanding of how far China has come - and of how odd its transformation continues to be - switch off the Olympics and consider the existence of a new book, Tombstone. It is the first proper history of China's great famine, a crisis partly created by the Chinese Communist Party and its first leader, Mao Zedong.

"It is a tombstone for my father who died of hunger in 1959, for the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book," writes Yang Jisheng in the first paragraph.

Tombstone has not been translated. Nevertheless, rumors of its contents and short excerpts are already ricocheting around the world. (I first learned of it in California, from an excited Australian historian.)

Based on a decade's worth of interviews, and unprecedented access to documents and statistics, Tombstone, at two volumes and 1,100 pages, establishes beyond doubt that China's misguided charge toward industrialisation - Mao's "Great Leap Forward" - was an utter disaster.

A combination of criminally bad policies (farmers were forced to make steel instead of growing crops; peasants were forced into unproductive communes) and official cruelty (China was grimly exporting grain at the time) created, between 1959 and 1961, one of the worst famines in history...

Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 5:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Alexei Barrionuevo: Difficult Road Ahead for New Paraguay Leader

Source: NYT (8-16-08)

Fernando Lugo, “the bishop of the poor,” as he is known here, was sworn in Friday as president of Paraguay, promising to give land to the landless and to end entrenched corruption after six decades of one-party rule.
Despite his remarkable victory in April, the gray-bearded Mr. Lugo, a 57-year-old former Roman Catholic bishop, faces a challenging road in pursuing his agenda, knowing that the Colorado Party, which ruled Paraguay for 61 years, is still very much ingrained in politics here.

For 35 of those years, the party was dominated by one man, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, a dictator blamed for many human rights atrocities. In the past five years it was represented by the departing president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, who expanded an already bloated and inefficient government bureaucracy.

The election of Mr. Lugo, the ultimate outsider who spent 11 years as a priest living in the countryside working with peasant movements seeking land reform, was a dramatic break with the past for Paraguay, a landlocked country of six million that is hamstrung by inequality and rural poverty.

He was elected promising change on an ill-defined socialist platform and will now have to manage the soaring expectations of Paraguayans in what by law is a single five-year term.

Wearing a long-sleeve white shirt with no necktie or jacket, Mr. Lugo practically screamed his response on Friday while taking the oath to uphold the Constitution and Paraguay’s laws. “Yes, I swear!” he said to a raucous response.

In his 40-minute inauguration speech, he talked about the need to escape the legacy of decades of dictatorship that had “infiltrated” Paraguay’s culture. “Today marks the end of the elitist and secretive Paraguay, famous for its corruption,” Mr. Lugo told a huge crowd gathered outside Paraguay’s Congress.

He later added: “The change is not just an election question. The change in Paraguay is a cultural challenge, perhaps the most important in its history.”

His political skills still mostly untested, Mr. Lugo now faces the challenge of distinguishing his socialist goals from those of other populist leaders who have taken power in South America in recent years.

Some political analysts consider Mr. Lugo part of a wave of anti-free-market leftists that includes Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, who have nationalized industries and redistributed wealth to the poor masses...

... One area he is likely to focus on is relations with neighboring Brazil. Mr. Lugo promised during the campaign to try to renegotiate unfavorable contract terms of the Itaipú hydroelectric dam along the two countries’ border, a winning issue with almost all Paraguayans.

Brazilian officials have not signaled a willingness to review the contracts thoroughly, but Paraguay’s long-term stability is important to Brazil.

But a bold proposal for land reform could also serve Mr. Lugo well. Paraguay, nestled between Argentina and Brazil, ranked seventh highest of 139 countries in terms of inequality in a recent United Nations Development Program study.

About 1 percent of Paraguay’s population owns 77 percent of the country’s land, Frank O. Mora, a professor of national security strategy at the National War College, said this week at a conference in Washington.

The country has struggled to shed its reputation as one of the most corrupt in Latin America. It is also one of the poorest. Some 33 percent of Paraguayans live below the poverty line, and about a million live abroad.

Mr. Lugo won in April amid growing impatience with corruption and the public perception — especially amid rising unemployment in Paraguay’s cities — that the Colorados helped themselves to the country’s wealth to the exclusion of average Paraguayans.

For a time, it was not clear that Mr. Lugo would be allowed to make the transition from priest to politician. The Paraguayan Constitution prohibits church officials of any denomination from being elected president, so Mr. Lugo resigned his position as bishop in December 2006. The Vatican initially refused to accept his resignation and considered him only suspended.

Last month Pope Benedict XVI gave him permission to resign as bishop.



Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mary Anastasia O'Grady: Twenty-Two Years in Castro's Gulag

In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.

At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read "If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He's got the right idea."

Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that "the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism."

Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn't want that sign on his desk. "Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother's room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple."

The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.

Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced "no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state." Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.

Cuban state security applied every torture method in the totalitarian handbook -- and even some new inspirations -- to break the prisoners. Many cracked and many committed suicide, but Mr. Valladares, along with a minority of others, would not bow to the "Revolution." He says that three things preserved him during his 22 years in prison. First, he was totally sure of his ideals. Second was the love of Martha -- who would become his wife -- and the fact that she believed in him. Third were his religious convictions. He was finally released from prison in 1982 and forced into exile.

Castro's resignation as "president" of Cuba this February has touched off a landslide of speculation about whether his brother Raúl, the new official head of state, might soon begin a transition away from political and economic repression. But the 71-year-old Mr. Valladares, who has become an accomplished poet and artist, human-rights activist and diplomat -- he served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva -- says forget it.

I recently had dinner with him and Martha at their home in Miami, and used the opportunity to pepper him with questions about the political landscape in Cuba today. Topping my list was whether we are already seeing the nascent stages of reform on the island.

His answer is an unequivocal no: "Until Fidel Castro dies, there will be no changes in Cuba. Fidel will not permit it. The terror imposed since 1959 continues today and Raúl will not dare make a single change as long as his older brother is alive."...

...Mr. Valladares was giving the Spaniard a dig, but not without provocation. Both he and Mrs. Valladares say that over the years European government officials (Spain and Sweden to name but two) repeatedly acknowledged privately the regime's unacceptable brutality. But the same officials also said that to come out against it publicly would be to admit that the U.S. was right about Castro. And nobody wanted to do that.

"Castro is still there because the world envies the U.S., and all that hatred for the U.S. has gone to support Fidel Castro," Mr. Valladares says. As a result, the Cuban people have been left to fend for themselves against the jackboots and East German spy techniques of Cuban state security. Thousands have died trying to flee.

Martha Valladares says that in the past 50 years she thinks international support for Cuban liberty has improved "a little." She believes the foreign press in Cuba -- despite the fact that it is not free and is manipulated -- has helped. "The Women in White" [a group of prisoners' wives, mothers and sisters who have organized to bring attention to their loved ones] could not have existed before. We tried to do that when Armando's group was on a hunger strike and they took us to jail."

Mr. Valladares says that once Fidel dies, the regime will not be able to keep his death a secret for very long, and the odds for change will go way up. "The old guard will try to maintain the status quo, but there are many young officers who do not have blood on their hands and who won't want to fight for a system that has failed and is dying." Under those circumstances, he contends, there could be a struggle inside the military.

Add to this the fact that Raúl is not respected -- and that "the youth are losing their fear and criticizing the government openly" -- and you can see the possibilities for change. "The capacity to terrorize has a limit," he says, "and the country is reaching it." If anyone knows about that limit, it's Mr. Valladares.

Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Benedict Rogers: Benchmarking Burma

Source: WSJ (8-16-08)

[Mr. Rogers is advocacy officer for South Asia at Christian Solidarity Worldwide and the author of "A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People" (Monarch Books, 2004).]

The United Nations special envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is expected to arrive in Rangoon in the next few days for another round of talks with the country's military regime. If his visit is to have any meaning, he must move beyond the U.N.'s traditional diplomatic niceties and make concrete demands for change.

Since 1990, U.N. envoys have made 37 visits to Burma. The Human Rights Council and General Assembly between them have passed more than 30 resolutions, and the Security Council has made two Presidential Statements. All of this has had little effect. Vague requests to the junta to engage in dialogue with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, made without any deadline, have led nowhere. She remains under house arrest, just as she has been for 12 years.

So rather than more of the same, the U.N. must present the regime with specific benchmarks for progress, accompanied by deadlines. The first benchmark should be the release of political prisoners, who currently number over 2,000. Many are in extremely poor health due to bad prison conditions, mistreatment, torture and the denial of medical care. Mr. Gambari should insist that the junta release political prisoners before U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's visit to Burma in December. And Mr. Ban should be willing to cancel his trip if the junta doesn't comply.

Another important benchmark would be immediately ending the military offensive against civilians in eastern Burma, which has destroyed 3,200 villages and displaced more than a million people since 1996. The junta has destroyed twice as many ethnic villages as has the Sudanese regime in Darfur. Burma has the highest number of forcibly conscripted child soldiers in the world.

Setting such benchmarks with realistic deadlines would enable Mr. Gambari to evaluate the progress he is or isn't making. If the junta complies, so much the better. But if it misses the benchmarks, that would clearly signal the need for international action.

The international community could impose several powerful sanctions for failure to meet these benchmarks. One would be revoking the junta's credentials to represent Burma in world bodies like the U.N. The junta is an illegitimate government, having overwhelmingly lost elections in 1990 and proven itself negligent in its handling of Cyclone Nargis. According to the U.N., more than a million cyclone victims have still not received help. The U.N. also says the regime has been stealing millions of dollars of aid money through its below-market fixed exchange rates. The junta is unfit to govern, and there is a legitimate alternative in the form of the leaders elected in 1990 now living as a government in exile...

Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Judea Pearl: Why Al Jazeera Owes an Apology

Source: WSJ (8-16-08)

[Mr. Pearl is a professor at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org), named after his son, which promotes dialogue, understanding and shared humanity.] I have often wondered why some of the best thinkers of our time refuse to believe in human progress. After all, there was a time when tens of thousands of ordinary citizens flocked to the gates of the Roman Coliseum to enjoy the sight of wild beasts tearing human beings to pieces. Today, such a sight would evoke revulsion and disbelief.

Of course, inhumanity still exists, but it is no longer laudable or fashionable in the public sphere. With the exception of exhibition killings by jihadist recruiters, cruelty is no longer a catalyst of mass arousal. Even the Nazis tried to hide their deeds from the eyes of history. Be it for fear or shame, the trend is clear: The norms of civilized society are moving forward, and it is those norms, not their exceptions, that shape the minds of our youngsters and justify our hopes for a better world.

All this was true until about three weeks ago, when the royal procession of Samir Kuntar brought barbarism back to the public square. Samir Kuntar is the killer who smashed the head of a 4-year-old girl with his rifle in 1979 after killing her father before her eyes. He was convicted, sentenced to 542 years in prison, and never expressed any remorse. He was released by Israel on July 26 in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were kidnapped by Hezbollah in 2006.

As anticipated, Hezbollah's mass celebration in Beirut, in the presence of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, evoked a chivalrous scene from a fairy tale gone awry. One by one, the whole Lebanese leadership stepped up to "brother Kuntar" to shake the hand and kiss the cheeks of that arch-symbol of barbarity.

The focus of my attention naturally turned to Al Jazeera because, with its outreach of 50 million to 100 million viewers from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, this pan-Arab satellite channel is considered the conscience and future of the Arab world.

A chill went down my spine when British-accented announcers, who introduced Al Jazeera's English channel correspondent Rula Amin, translated the wisdom of Kuntar's words from the original Arabic. Imagine a voice cast in a perfect Oxford accent articulating in unmistaken empathy: "He has returned to a hero's welcome . . . After 29 years in [an] Israeli prison, Samir Kuntar spent his first day of freedom vowing to continue to fight against Israel. He says he hopes to see the enemy again very soon."

Then came Kuntar's birthday party, initiated by Al Jazeera's bureau in Beirut and aired on Al Jazeera TV July 19 (translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute). There was orchestral music, a huge birthday cake and infinite admiration by the Al Jazeera bureau chief announcing: "Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you. You deserve even more than this . . . Happy birthday, brother Samir."...

Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 15, 2008

Garry Kasparov: How the West Fueled Putin's Sense of Impunity

Source: WSJ (8-15-08)

Russia's invasion of Georgia reminded me of a conversation I had three years ago in Moscow with a high-ranking European Union official. Russia was much freer then, but President Vladimir Putin's onslaught against democratic rights was already underway.

"What would it take," I asked, "for Europe to stop treating Putin like a democrat? If all opposition parties are banned? Or what if they started shooting people in the street?" The official shrugged and replied that even in such cases, there would be little the EU could do. He added: "Staying engaged will always be the best hope for the people of both Europe and Russia."

The citizens of Georgia would likely disagree. Russia's invasion was the direct result of nearly a decade of Western helplessness and delusion. Inexperienced and cautious in the international arena at the start of his reign in 2000, Mr. Putin soon learned he could get away with anything without repercussions from the EU or America.

Russia reverted to a KGB dictatorship while Mr. Putin was treated as an equal at G-8 summits. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Germany's Gerhardt Schroeder became Kremlin business partners. Mr. Putin discovered democratic credentials could be bought and sold just like everything else. The final confirmation was the acceptance of Dmitry Medvedev in the G-8, and on the world stage. The leaders of the Free World welcomed Mr. Putin's puppet, who had been anointed in blatantly faked elections.

On Tuesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy sprinted to Moscow to broker a ceasefire agreement. He was allowed to go through the motions, perhaps as a reward for his congratulatory phone call to Mr. Putin after our December parliamentary "elections." But just a few months ago Mr. Sarkozy was in Moscow as a supplicant, lobbying for Renault. How much credibility does he really have in Mr. Putin's eyes?

In reality, Mr. Sarkozy is attempting to remedy a crisis he helped bring about. Last April, France opposed the American push to fast-track Georgia's North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership. This was one of many missed opportunities that collectively built up Mr. Putin's sense of impunity. In this way the G-7 nations aided and abetted the Kremlin's ambitions.

Georgia blundered into a trap, although its imprudent aggression in South Ossetia was overshadowed by Mr. Putin's desire to play the strongman. Russia seized the chance to go on the offensive in Georgian territory while playing the victim/hero. Mr. Putin has long been eager to punish Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for his lack of respect both for Georgia's old master Russia, and for Mr. Putin personally. (Popular rumor has it that the Georgian president once mocked his peer as "Lilli-Putin.")

Although Mr. Saakashvili could hardly be called a model democrat, his embrace of Europe and the West is considered a very bad example by the Kremlin. The administrations of the Georgian breakaway areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are stocked, top to bottom, with bureaucrats from the Russian security services...

...The conventional wisdom of Russia's "invulnerability" serves as an excuse for inaction. President Bush's belatedly toughened language is welcome, but actual sanctions must now be considered. The Kremlin's ruling clique has vital interests -- i.e. assets -- abroad and those interests are vulnerable.

The blood of those killed in this conflict is on the hands of radical nationalists, thoughtless politicians, opportunistic oligarchs and the leaders of the Free World who value gas and oil more than principles. More lives will be lost unless strong moral lines are drawn to reinforce the shattered lines of the map.



Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Peggy Noonan: Obama and McCain Aren't "from" Anywhere—Not the Way Jefferson and LBJ Were.

Source: WSJ (8-15-08)

The end of placeness is one of the features of the campaign. I do not like it.

Pretend you are not a political sophisticate and regular watcher of the presidential race as it unfolds on all media platforms. Pretend, that is, that you are normal.

OK, quick, close your eyes. Where is Barack Obama from?

He's from Young. He's from the town of Smooth in the state of Well Educated. He's from TV.

John McCain? He's from Military. He's from Vietnam Township in the Sunbelt state.

Chicago? That's where Mr. Obama wound up. Modern but Midwestern: a perfect place to begin what might become a national career. Arizona? That's where Mr. McCain settled, a perfect place from which to launch a more or less conservative career in the 1980s.

Neither man has or gives a strong sense of place in the sense that American politicians almost always have, since Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, and Abe Lincoln of Illinois, and FDR of New York, and JFK of Massachusetts. Even Bill Clinton was from a town called Hope, in Arkansas, even if Hope was really Hot Springs. And in spite of his New England pedigree, George W. Bush was a Texan, as was, vividly, LBJ.

Messrs. Obama and McCain are not from a place, but from an experience. Mr. McCain of course was a Navy brat. He bounced around, as members of the families of our military must, and wound up for a time in the suburbs of Washington. Mr. Obama's mother was somewhat itinerant, in search of different climes. He was born in Hawaii, which Americans on the continent don't experience so much as a state as a destination, a place of physical beauty and singular culture. You go there to escape and enjoy. Then his great circling commenced: Indonesia, back to Hawaii, on to the western coast of America, then to the eastern coast, New York and Cambridge. He circled the continent, entering it, if you will, in Chicago, where he settled in his 30s.

The lack of placeness with both candidates contributes to a sense of their disjointedness, their floatingness. I was talking recently with a journalist who's a podcaster. I often watch him in conversation on the Internet. I told him I'm always struck that he seems to be speaking from No Place, with some background of beige wall that could exist anywhere. He leans in and out of focus. It gives a sense of weightlessness. He's like an astronaut floating without a helmet.

That's a little what both candidates are like to me.

Mr. Obama hails from Chicago, but no one would confuse him with Chicagoans like Richard Daley or Dan Rostenkowski, or Harold Washington. "There is something colorless and odorless about him," says a friend. "like an inert gas." And Mr. McCain, in his experience, history and genes, is definitely military, and could easily come from Indiana or South Carolina or California, and could easily speak of upholding the values of those places.

What are the political implications of candidates seeming unconnected to regional roots, or being shorn of them? I suppose the question first surfaced in 2000, when Al Gore won the national popular vote and lost Tennessee, his home state. But he hadn't ever really seemed of Tennessee. He was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of a senator. That was his formative experience. They liked him better in New York and California than down South.

They like Mr. Obama in Illinois, but he hasn't locked up neighboring Michigan, just as Mr. McCain has strong support in Arizona but still lags in Colorado and New Mexico.

On a policy level, the end of placeness may have implications. It may, for instance, lead a president to more easily oppose pork-barrel spending. If you're not quite from anywhere, you'll be slower to build a bridge to nowhere. If you don't feel the constant tug of Back Home—if it is your natural habit to think of the nation not first in specific and concrete terms but in abstract ones—then you might wind up less preoccupied by the needs and demands of the people Back Home. Mr. McCain is already a scourge of pork. Mr. Obama? Not clear. One doesn't sense any regional tug on his policy.

All this is part of a national story that wasn't new even a quarter century ago. Americans move. They like moving. Got a lot of problems? The answer may be geographical relocation. New problem in the new place? GTT. Gone to Texas.

It's in us. And yet...

Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Matthew Omolesky: History Returns to the Caucasus

Source: American Spectator (8-11-08)

[Matthew Omolesky recently finished a researcher-in-residency at the Istitut za Civilizacijo in Kulturo in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is presently completing his first book, Striving Towards the Past, a study of the uses of history in contemporary Central and Eastern European politics.]

In his 1953 collection of political essays, The Captive Mind, the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz described a visit by a Soviet journalist to Silesia in the aftermath of World War II. Mistaken for an Englishman, the journalist "was embraced on the street by a man crying: 'The English have come.'" The apparatchik wryly responded: "That's just how it was in the Ukraine in 1919." According to Milosz,

This recurrence of sterile hopes amused [the journalist] and he was flattered to be the representative of a country ruled according to infallible predictions; for nation after nation had indeed become part of its empire, according to schedule. I am not sure that there wasn't in his smile something of the compassionate superiority that a housewife feels for a mouse caught in her trap.

There is a Russian word for this sort of attitude: naglost'. A blend of condescension, arrogance, and brazenness, naglost' has always been associated with political power in Russia, and lately has been a defining characteristic of its revanchist foreign policy with respect to the democratic states of the post-Soviet "near abroad." The gas shut-offs in Ukraine, the bronze soldier mayhem in Estonia, and the combative rhetoric from the Kremlin concerning NATO Central European missile defense initiatives were relatively irenic, however, when compared with the unfolding crisis in the Georgian region of South Ossetia. As the young democracy of Georgia grapples with its gigantic adversary, with the world looking on ineffectually, we can see Robert Kagan's notion of an "end of dreams" and a "return of history" in action in the volatile region of the Caucasus...

Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

John Barry: Appeasing Russia ... The historical reasons why the West should intervene in Georgia

Source: Newsweek (8-11-08)

[John Barry joined Newsweek's Washington bureau as national security correspondent in July 1985.]

Is that "appeasement" we see sidling shyly out of the closet of history? Are we doomed to recall the infamous remark by a Western leader that it was "fantastic" to think Europe should involve itself in "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing"? As the United States and the Europeans feverishly debate how to respond to Russia's onslaught on Georgia, are the ghosts of Europe's bloody history rising from their shallow graves?

As those of a certain age will recall, "appeasement" encapsulated the determination of British governments of the 1930s to avoid war in Europe, even if it mean capitulating to the ever-increasing demands of Adolf Hitler. The nadir came in 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain acceded to Hitler's demand to take over the western slice of Czechoslovakia—a dispute Chamberlain so derisively dismissed.

It is impossible to view the Russian onslaught against Georgia without these bloodstained memories rising to mind. In history, as the great French President Charles de Gaulle remarked—no doubt plagiarising someone else—the only constant is geography. And through centuries of European history the only constant has been that small countries, doomed by geography to lie between great powers, are destined to be the cockpit for their imperial ambitions. That's held true since the Low Countries' agony under Spanish power in the 1500s. And the lichen has not yet spread over the gravestones of Europe and America that mark the toll of the two European wars of the 20th century—both having their roots in struggles between rival empires to assert power over the luckless nations of central Europe...

Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nicholas D. Kristoff: After the Games, Tibet

Source: NYT (8-14-08)

China’s cup runneth over. The Olympics are a milestone in Chinese history, a celebration of the Middle Kingdom’s return to international greatness after nearly two centuries of torpor and humiliation.

Yet the Olympics could end up being the second-most-significant event in China this year.

The Chinese leadership and the Tibetan government in exile have delicately discussed a possible visit by the Dalai Lama to China, nominally to commemorate the victims of the earthquake in Sichuan Province in May. That would be the first meeting between the Dalai Lama and Chinese leaders in more than 50 years and would give enormous impetus to resolving the Tibet question.

The opportunity arises in part because of the Dalai Lama’s public acknowledgement last week for the first time that he could accept Communist Party rule for Tibet. Previously, the Dalai Lama had seemed to demand something like the “one country, two systems” model of Hong Kong, and his concession was a courageous signal of his yearning to reach a deal with the Chinese government.

“The Dalai Lama has taken the kind of courageous step that great political leaders make at crucial turning points in history,” said Melvyn Goldstein, a prominent historian of modern Tibet and a professor at Case Western Reserve University. “After more than 20 years of stalemate, the Dalai Lama, at great risk to his standing in the West and among Tibetans in exile, has unilaterally sent Beijing a clear signal that he is now ready to accept the kind of difficult compromises that are needed to resolve the conflict.”

“For the first time in decades, reconciliation is now genuinely possible,” Professor Goldstein added.

Since then, the Dalai Lama has been scolded by many Tibetans who think that he has been too conciliatory toward China. President Bush and other leaders should praise his courage in taking such a difficult step toward reconciliation...

...President Hu this year engaged in bold diplomacy to defuse tensions with Japan and Taiwan alike. China’s willingness to sound out the Dalai Lama about a visit to commemorate the earthquake victims is a ray of hope for similar outreach to Tibetans. The United States can’t do much to help — this has to be worked out between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership — but we can do more to encourage the process and nudge it to a higher level.

Western leaders, including President Bush, have mostly engaged in the politics of symbolism regarding Tibet — choreographing photos with the Dalai Lama, issuing protests, or calling for China-Tibet talks that everyone knows will get nowhere. What we need is less symbolism and more diplomatic heavy-lifting aimed at a practical settlement of the Tibet question.

President Hu and Prime Minister Wen are basking in good will from their management of the Olympics, so far widely perceived as a triumph for China. If they can also bring the Dalai Lama back to China in November and engineer a deal to resolve Tibet’s future, that would be an even more monumental achievement.

It is in their hands.



Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bartle Breese Bull: The Wrong Force for the ‘Right War’

Source: NYT (8-14-08)

BARACK OBAMA and John McCain have plenty of disagreements, but one thing they are united on is promising a troop surge in Afghanistan. Senator McCain wants to move troops to Afghanistan from the Middle East, conditional on continued progress in Iraq. Senator Obama goes much further, arguing that we should have sent last year’s surge to Afghanistan, not Iraq, that Afghanistan is the “central front” and that we must rebuild Afghanistan from the bottom up along the lines of the Marshall Plan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on board, too. He has endorsed a $20 billion plan to increase substantially the size of Afghanistan’s army, as well as the role and numbers of Western troops there to aid it. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with the idea of an Afghan surge. A recent Time magazine cover anointed the fighting there as “The Right War.”

But what are the real prospects for turning fractious, impoverished Afghanistan into an orderly and prosperous nation and a potential ally of the United States? What true American interests are being insufficiently advanced or defended in its remote deserts and mountains? And even if these interests are really so broad, are they deliverable at an acceptable price? The answers to these questions put the wisdom of an Afghan surge into great question.

Destroying the Taliban regime after 9/11 was just and rational. And it was done in an effective and proportionate manner: over just six weeks in late 2001, with several hundred American special operatives on the ground, American air support and our allies in the Northern Alliance.

Since then, however, the mission has grown. Today there are 71,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, yet things are getting ever worse. There were 10 times as many armed attacks on international troops and civilian contractors in 2007 as there were in 2004. Every other measure of violence, from roadside bombs to suicide bombers, is also up dramatically. Our principal ally at the beginning of the war, the Northern Alliance, controlled more of the country at the end of 2001 than President Hamid Karzai, our current principal ally, effectively controls today.

The United States must certainly punish those who attack it and those who give sanctuary to such people. This is why the Afghan war has always had popular support. But our initial goals — dethroning the Taliban and disrupting Al Qaeda — have been as thoroughly accomplished as is possible given the porous frontier that Afghanistan shares with Pakistan.

Thus the creeping mission in Afghanistan has fed on a perception of four further American interests: the denial of sanctuary to global terrorists; the projection of American power in a sensitive part of the world; support for modernity in the global struggle for the Muslim mind; and cutting heroin exports. Each needs careful reconsideration.

Denying sanctuary to terrorists — in Afghanistan and everywhere else — is undoubtedly an American interest of the first order. Accomplishing it, however, requires neither the conquest of large swathes of Afghan territory nor a troop surge there — nor even maintaining the number of troops NATO has in Afghanistan today. Counterterrorism is not about occupation. It centers on combining intelligence with specialized military capabilities.

While the Taliban is certainly regaining strength, it could provide Al Qaeda with a true safe harbor only if its troops retake Kabul. But they have little hope of returning to power as long as we train the Afghan Army, support an Afghan state generously in other ways and maintain our intelligence and surgical strike capacities.

Besides, even if the Taliban were to return to power and give Al Qaeda the sorts of safe havens it enjoyed in Afghanistan in 2001, this would probably make little difference in America’s security. Rory Stewart, a former British foreign ministry official in Afghanistan and Iraq who now manages a nongovernmental group in Kabul, argues that the existence there of “Quantico-style” terrorist facilities teaching primitive insurgency infantry tactics had little to do with 9/11. “You don’t need to go to Afghanistan to learn how to use a box cutter,” Stewart has told me. “And Afghanistan is not a good place for flight school.”...

Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Melik Kaylan: Failing to Stand Up to Russia Would Jeopardize Every International Gain Since the Cold War

Source: WSJ (8-13-08)

Last year, President Mikheil Saakashvili invited me along on a helicopter flight to see Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital, from the air. We viewed it at some distance to avoid Russian antiaircraft missiles manned by Russian personnel.

He pointed out a lone hilltop sprinkled with houses some 10 miles inside Georgian territory -- scarcely even a town. Much of the population, namely the Georgians, had long ago been purged by Russian-backed militias, leaving behind a rump population of Ossetian farmers and Russian security forces posing as Ossetians. "We have offered them everything," he said, "language rights, land rights, guaranteed power in parliament, anything they want, and they would take it, if the Kremlin would let them."

Moscow's thin pretense of protecting an ethnic group provided just enough cover for Georgia's timorous friends in the West to ignore increasing Russian provocations over the past few years. Moscow, it now seems, intends to "protect" large numbers of Georgians too -- by occupying and killing them if that's what it takes -- and prevent them from building their own history and pursuing their democratic destiny, as it has for almost two centuries.

As we worry about another Russian imperialist adventure in Georgia, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture either: To wit, Moscow has always had a clear strategic use for the Caucasus, one that concerns the U.S. today more than ever.

Having overestimated the power of the Soviet Union in its last years, we have consistently underestimated the ambitions of Russia since. Already, a great deal has been said about the implications of Russia's invasion for Ukraine, the Baltic States and Europe generally. But few have noticed the direct strategic threat of Moscow's action to U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Kremlin is not about to reignite the Cold War for the love of a few thousand Ossetians or even for its animosity toward five million Georgians. This is calculated strategic maneuvering. And make no mistake, it's about countering U.S. power at its furthest stretch with Moscow's power very close to home.

The pivotal geography of the Caucasus offers the Kremlin just such an opportunity. Look at a map, and the East-meets-West, North-meets-South vector lines of the region illustrate all too clearly how the drama now unfolding in the Caucasus casts Moscow's shadow all across Central Asia and down into the Middle East. In effect, we in the West are being challenged by Russian actions in Georgia to show that we have the nerve and the stamina to secure the gains not just of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but of the entire collapse of Soviet power...

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

WSJ Editorial: Bush and Georgis, What Would Truman Do?

Source: WSJ (8-13-08)

On June 13, 1948, the day after the Soviet Union took the first step in its blockade of Berlin, U.S. General Lucius Clay sent a cable to Washington making the case for standing up to the Soviets. "We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent." The Berlin Airlift began 13 days later.

Sixty years on, U.S. credibility is again on the line as the Bush Administration stumbles to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia. So far the Administration has been missing in action, to put it mildly. The strategic objective is twofold: to prevent Moscow from going further to topple Georgia's democratic government in the coming days, and to deter future Russian aggression.

* * *
President Bush finally condemned Russia's actions on Monday after a weekend of Olympics tourism in Beijing while Georgia burned. Meanwhile, the State Department dispatched a mid-level official to Tbilisi, and unnamed Administration officials carped to the press that Washington had warned Georgia not to provoke Moscow. That's hardly a show of solidarity with a Eurasian democracy that has supported the U.S. in Iraq with 2,000 troops.

Compared to this August U.S. lethargy, the French look like Winston Churchill. In Moscow yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, acting as president of the European Union, got Russia to agree to a provisional cease-fire that could return both parties' troops to their positions before the conflict started. His next stop was Tbilisi, on the heels of a visit from Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

If both sides agree to a cease-fire, Mr. Sarkozy promises that Europe will consider sending peacekeepers to enforce it. We trust he will find volunteers from the former Soviet republics, which see the writing on the wall if Russian aggression in Georgia is left unchallenged. The leaders of Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia flew to Tbilisi this week in a show of solidarity.

NATO also met yesterday and denounced the invasion, while stopping short of promising military aid to Georgia. Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the allies "condemned and deplored [Russia's] excessive, disproportionate use of force," and demanded a return to the status quo ante.

The NATO leader also said Georgia's potential membership remains "very much alive" and that it would be a member of NATO one day. Georgia and Ukraine's applications come up again in December, and perhaps even Germany, which blocked their membership bids earlier this year, will now rethink its objections given that its refusal may have encouraged Russia to assume it could reassert control over its "near abroad."

Much as it respects and owes Georgia, the U.S. is not going to war with Russia over a non-NATO ally. But there are forceful diplomatic and economic responses at its disposal. Expelling Russia from the G-8 group of democracies, as John McCain has suggested, is one. Barring Russia's long desired entry into the World Trade Organization is another. Russian leaders should also be told that their financial assets held abroad aren't off limits to sanction. And Moscow should know that the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on the Black Sea are in jeopardy. A country that starts a war on the weekend the Beijing Olympics began doesn't deserve such an honor...

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jeffrey Lord: The Democrats' Missing History

Source: WSJ (8-13-08)

[Mr. Lord is creator, co-founder and CEO of , a conservative video site. A Reagan White House political director and author, he writes from Pennsylvania.]

As Democrats prepare to nominate Sen. Barack Obama to be the first black president, the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Howard Dean, have whitewashed the party's horrific and lengthy record of racism. The omission is in the section of the DNC Web site that describes the party's history. The missing history raises the obvious question of whether the Democrats, unable or simply unwilling to put their party on record as taking direct responsibility for one of the worst racial crimes of the ages, will be able to run a campaign free of the racial animosities it has regularly brought both to American presidential campaigns and American political and social life in general.

What else to make of the official party history as presented by the DNC on its Web site? It is a history so sanitized of historical reality it makes Stalin look like David McCullough.

The DNC Web site section labeled "Party History," linked here, is in fact scrubbed clean of the not-so-little dirty secret that fueled Democrats' political successes for over a century and a half and made American life a hell on earth for black Americans. Literally, the DNC official history, which begins with the creation of the party in 1800, gets to the creation of the DNC itself in 1848 and then--poof!--the next sentence says: "As the 19th Century came to a close, the American electorate changed more and more rapidly." It quickly heads into a riff on poor immigrants coming to America.

In a stroke, 52 years of Democratic history vanishes. Disappeared faster than the truth in the Clinton administration. Why would this be? Allow me to sketch in a few facts from those missing 52 years. For that matter, lets add in the facts from the party history before and after those 52 years, since they aren't mentioned by the Democrats' National Committee either.
So what's missing?

• There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860.

• There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves. There were seven from 1800 through 1861

• There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.

• There is no reference to "Jim Crow" as in "Jim Crow laws," nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the "whites only" front section of a bus, the "whites only" designation the direct result of Democrats.

• There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."

• There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.

• There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln's ticket in 1864. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.

• There is no reference to the Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.

• There is no reference to the Democrats' 1904 platform, which devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP's protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."

• There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."

• There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the "Klanbake." The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.

• There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There \is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.

• There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson's New Freedom and FDR's New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt...

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 8:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ellen Barry: Calling Shots, Putin Salves Old Wounds

Source: International Herald Tribune (8-13-08)

Vladimir Putin, who came to office brooding over the wounds of a humiliated Russia, this week offered proof of its resurgence. So far, the West has been unable to check his thrust into Georgia. He is making decisions that could redraw the map of the Caucasus in Russia's favor — or destroy relationships with Western powers that Russia once sought as strategic partners. If there were any doubts, the last week has confirmed that Putin, who became prime minister this spring after eight years as president, is running Russia, not his successor, President Dmitri Medvedev. And Putin is at last able to find relief from the insults that Russia suffered after the breakup of the Soviet Union. "Georgia, in a way, is suffering for all that happened to Russia in the last 20 years," said Alexander Rahr, a leading German foreign-policy scholar and a biographer of Putin's. With Russian troops poised on two fronts in Georgia, speculation abounds on what Putin really wants to do. He faces a range of options. Russia could settle for annexing the enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — something its forces have largely accomplished. Kremlin authorities have also spoken of bringing Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, to a war crimes tribunal for what they say were attacks on civilians in Tskhinvali last week. A further push might permanently disable the Georgian military. The most extreme option would be occupying Georgia, a country with a population of 4.4 million and a centuries-old distrust of Russia, where Western nations have long planned to run an important oil pipeline. But while the West may see an aggressive Russia, Putin feels embattled and encircled, said Sergei Markov, the director of Moscow's Institute for Political Studies, who has close relationships with officials in the Kremlin. "Russia is in an extremely dangerous situation," trapped between the obligation to protect Russian citizens and the risk of escalating into "a new cold war" with the United States, Markov said. "Washington and the administration are playing an extremely dirty game," he said. "They will show Putin as an occupier even if Putin is doing nothing." Putin and his surrogates have forcefully made the case that Russia has acted only to defend its citizens. In recent days, Putin has appeared on television with his sleeves rolled up, mingling with refugees on the border with South Ossetia — the very picture of a man of action. By contrast, Medvedev is shown sitting at his desk in Moscow, giving ceremonial orders to the minister of defense. "All his liberal speeches which he made in Berlin and elsewhere are forgotten," Rahr, who serves on the German Council on Foreign Relations, said of the new president. "He is playing the game which is designed by Putin." Yulia L. Latynina, a frequent critic of Putin's government, noted with amusement that on the eve of the conflict in Georgia, when President George W. Bush and Putin were deep in conversation in Beijing at the start of the Olympics, Medvedev was taking a cruise on the Volga River. "Now he can cruise the Volga for all the remaining years, or can go right to the Bahamas," she wrote in Daily Magazine, a Russian Web site. "I must admit that for the first time in my life I felt admiration for the skill with which Vladimir Putin maintains his power." In 2000, Putin was elected president of a shaken, uncertain country. Selling off state companies to private investors had led to immense flight of capital. The economy was in shambles. But the bitterest pill of all was NATO's expansion into Russia's former sphere of influence. Nothing highlighted this loss of face as much as Kosovo, where NATO helped an ethnic Albanian population wrest independence from Serbia. Russia has few allies closer than Serbia, and the 78-day American-led bombing campaign in 1999 seemed to drive home the message that a once-great power was impotent. Putin was determined to change that. First, he reasserted state control over Russia's natural resources companies, installing loyalists to run firms like Yukos and punishing oligarchs who challenged his power. With Russia then reshaped as a petro-state, flush with money from oil and natural gas, Putin has sent blunt messages to its neighbors: The flow of cheap energy can be turned off as well as on. Two years ago, after what was called the Orange Revolution swept West-friendly leaders to power in Ukraine, Russia briefly cut off the country's flow of natural gas, sending waves of anxiety across Europe...

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 8:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Steve Kornacki: What History Really Says About an '08 Landslide

Source: New York Observer (8-13-08)

I was trying to figure out where to lead things off today, and then I saw this Politico piece by David Paul Kuhn, which is already getting heavy play across the web. The main idea: Barack Obama will not win a landslide because history says that landslides are evident in polling by the end of the summer. Writes Kuhn:

In five of the six post-war landslides (defined as a victory of 10 percentage points or more) the eventual winner was ahead by at least 10 percentage points in the polls at the close of August, according to a Politico analysis of historical Gallup polls. Over the past week, however, Gallup’s daily tracking poll pegs Obama ahead of John McCain by a margin of 2 to 5 percentage points.

The one exception to the August rule was 1980. Ronald Reagan was trailing slightly in the August polls before surging forward to win by roughly a 10-point margin.

By comparison, the biggest post-war landslides—1964, 1972 and 1984—were signaled by a large, double-digit advantage held by the eventual winner at the close of August.


This is a deeply flawed and inaccurate analysis of history. The Obama-McCain race may end up staying close through Election Day – a scenario that seems more likely than not – but “the August rule” is a rather arbitrary invention with little meaningful history to support.

Start with the fact that public opinion polling was nowhere near as precise and pervasive in the first few decades of the post-war era as it is today. Had there been regular and reliable data in 1948, for instance, Harry Truman’s upset of Thomas Dewey would have been visible weeks earlier and the final outcome wouldn’t have produced a shock that’s reverberated for decades. So in assessing “the August rule,” we can dismiss the post-war elections of ’48, ’52, ’56, and ’60 – at least.

Then, we need to consider the nature of each individual election. Kuhn correctly notes that the landslide winners of the ’64, ’72 and ’84 elections all held wide leads in polls in late August. But there is a common thread between these races: they all featured popular incumbent presidents who were blessed with fractured and politically-suicidal opposition. Elections that involve incumbents are inherently different from those that don’t, in that they serve almost exclusively as a referendum on the president. In this sense, “the August rule” may have some limited application: A large lead for an incumbent at the end of the summer signals a generally content electorate, and hence a likely blowout victory for the incumbent.

Additionally, ’64, ’72 and ’84 each represent a particular and extraordinary type of landslide – the near-total wipeout – that no one (not even the most devout Obamaphile) has been forecasting for this year. Richard Nixon in ’72 and Ronald Reagan in ’84 each won all but one state, while Lyndon Johnson ravaged Barry Goldwater in every corner of the country in ’64, save for the heart of the old Confederacy, where Goldwater’s States’ Rights platform resonated. Those who are most bullish on Obama, by contrast, have been predicting a less thorough landslide – something more consistent with 1980, when swing voters broke heavily toward Reagan in the last week, leading to a 10-point, 44-state rout...

...So what year is 2008 like? It’s obviously no 1964, 1972 or 1984. But it could easily be a 1980, with Obama playing the Reagan role and trying to reassure voters who badly want to toss out the incumbent party. It could also be like ’76, with McCain as Gerald Ford, the likable and “tested” candidate who fed doubts about his opponent’s experience and prompted a surprising number of voters to overlook their hostility toward the incumbent party. In both of those years, what happened on Election Day could not have been reliably predicted from polling in August. It is entirely possible that this year will be the same.

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 8:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Marc Lacey: Cubans Used to Living in U.S. Shadow, but They Don't Like It

Source: International Herald Tribune (8-12-08)

As a major terrorism trial was getting under way at the U.S. naval base not far from here last month, Guantánamo's municipal court, located in Cuban-controlled territory, had a contested divorce on its docket. It was the only case that afternoon.

The aging Guantánamo courtroom, with its leaky roof and well-worn wooden benches, is a far cry from the fancy new judicial center that the Defense Department installed at its base across the fence.

There are typewriters on the desks at the Cuban court, faded portraits of Che Guevara on the walls and a classic motorcycle, complete with a sidecar bearing the court logo, parked in the courtyard.

Both courts earn international scorn. The United States and other critics of Cuba consider the island's judiciary an appendage of the socialist government, a tool of the Castro brothers' repressive ways.

Cuba, in turn, is among the loudest critics of the U.S. policy of holding enemy combatants from the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq at Guantánamo Bay and denying them the legal protections they would be entitled to on U.S. soil.

"The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there," Fidel Castro wrote in a newspaper commentary last year.

Despite the sniping, however, the base has been around so long, 105 years to be exact, that Cubans have grown used to its presence - and its propaganda value - and seem to hold out little hope that the 117 square kilometers, or 45 square miles, will be returned anytime soon.

"They will leave on their own," predicted Carlos González, 80, who fought alongside the Castro brothers, Guevara and other notable figures during the 1959 revolution, which began in eastern Cuba not far from the base. "We'll just wait."

That is an oft-heard sentiment in and around Guantánamo, which relied heavily on the base in the years before relations between Washington and Havana grew frosty once Castro came to power. There was a time when the base was a major source of employment for local residents. But there were plenty of downsides when the base's fencing was more porous, local people say, like the many brothels that operated in town.

Around the corner from the Guantánamo courthouse is a park devoted to the popular Cuban song "Guantanamera," which commemorates a local farm girl. The relatively few tourists who pass through take pictures of themselves in front of the oversize lyrics. Getting a glimpse of the base is trickier, requiring Cuban government permission, which is only sometimes granted.

"It's right over there," said Guillermo Elizalde, 78, who is considered one of the heroes of the revolution. He pointed into the distance toward the site of the U.S. military presence, which was first established in 1898 when the United States landed on Cuba during the Spanish-American War. "It's our territory," he said. "They took it."

Technically, Guantánamo Bay still remains Cuban, though it is the only patch of the socialist island with a McDonald's and a Starbucks in operation. That commercial presence would seem to violate the 1903 treaty that set up the base, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt and his Cuban counterpart. The treaty says that it can be used only as a naval base and that commercial activity is banned.

The U.S. presence has long been used as a rallying cry by the Cubans, a sign of old-time imperialism continuing into the present day. The last time it came up was on July 11, when Raúl Castro, who took over the presidency from his brother in February, mentioned the base in a speech to challenge criticism of Cuba's human rights situation. He said Washington had lost any moral authority because of the prisoners it held "in the territory usurped from our country."

But the base, having been in U.S. hands for so many generations, is not one of the issues raised most frequently by the Cubans.

Instead, it is the case of five Cuban men who were convicted in the United States seven years ago for infiltrating anti-Cuban organizations in Miami and sending information on them back to Havana.

Cuba sees them as heroes, not spies, since they aimed to stop what Cuba says were terrorist plots aimed at Cuban soil.

In its latest public relations push, the government is decrying that two of the five men's wives have not been allowed to visit their husbands in the decade they have been behind bars. The United States counters that the two women were involved in the Cuban surveillance effort.

Roberto González, the brother of one of the incarcerated men and a member of their legal team, said that when he saw his brother in an American prison dressed in a jumpsuit he could not help but think of the similar outfits that the terrorism suspects don at Guantánamo Bay...

Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Toby Harnden: Hillary Clinton's failed strategy inspired by Margaret Thatcher

[Toby Harnden is the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC.]

"We are more Thatcher than anyone else - top of the university, a high achiever throughout life, a lawyer who could absorb and analyse problems," Mark Penn wrote to the former First Lady in a "launch strategy" document in December 2006.

The Democratic candidate, he argued, had to show the kind of decisiveness the former British prime minister had shown when she was first elected in 1979 - "her mantra was opportunity, renewal, strength and choice" - and avoid the temptation to try to be loved.

"Margaret Thatcher was the longest serving Prime Minister in British history, serving far longer than Winston Churchill. She represents the most successful elected woman leader in this century - and the adjectives that were used about her (Iron Lady) were not of good humour or warmth, they were of smart, tough leadership."

The memo was part of a trove of internal Clinton campaign documents leaked to the Atlantic Monthly magazine that reveal a campaign that was fatally undermined by internal dissension, an incoherent strategy and - ironically, given the Thatcher comparison - Senator Clinton's hesitancy and failure to take decisions...

Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 7:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Myra MacDonald: Kashmir ... is this a re-run of 1989?

Source: Reuters (8-12-08)

[Myra MacDonald posts at Reuters.]

After months of relative peace which turned Kashmir into a near-forgotten conflict, the region has exploded again with some of the biggest protests since a separatist revolt erupted in 1989. What started as a dispute over land allocated to Hindu pilgrims visiting a shrine in Kashmir has snowballed into a full-scale anti-India protest, uniting Kashmiri separatists and reviving calls for independence.

The dispute has also pitted Muslims in Kashmir against Hindus in Jammu – the two regions which along with Ladakh make up the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir – in what is the biggest communal crisis faced by the central government in Delhi since it took office in 2004.

At stake is the risk of the “Balkanisation” of Jammu and Kashmir comparable to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In this, worst case, scenario, the state would break up into its three different regions with Jammu and Ladakh favouring India and Kashmir either battling for independence or tilting towards Pakistan. (The state is the part of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir which remained in Indian hands at partition in 1947 with the other side controlled by Pakistan.)

Little wonder then that analysts in India are describing it as a major crisis, with an editorial in the Hindustan Times calling it the greatest test for the central government since it took office.

And although some Indian analysts have accused Pakistan of stoking tensions in Kashmir, the protests look to be, at least in large measure, spontaneous.

So is this a re-run of 1989? At the time separatist sentiments – which had been simmering before 1947 when the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu maharajah from Jammu – erupted into full-scale protests which were primarily Kashmiri nationalist rather than religious. According to the Kashmiri version of history, India then tried to crush the revolt with a clumsy heavy-handedness that only inflamed Kashmiri anger further.

The revolt turned increasingly lethal and vicious — in part due to Pakistan’s involvement in supporting the separatists and to the Islamist influence of the mujahideen who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After Pakistan and India tested nuclear bombs in 1998, Kashmir was dubbed the most dangerous place on earth, bringing the two countries to the brink of war in 2001/2002.

So if today’s protests turn out to be a re-run of 1989, the outlook is grim — both for the people of Jammu and Kashmir and for the peace process between India and Pakistan. Is there still time to find a solution before Kashmir spins off into another 20 years of violence? Or have the troubles already passed the point of no return?

Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jill Drew: In Tiananmen of Games, No Trace of '89 Massacre

Source: Washington Post (8-12-08)

The Tiananmen Square that Liu Xiaobo knows is not the same one Olympics fans are seeing on television.

This Story
In Tiananmen of Games, No Trace of '89 Massacre
Three Killed in Renewed Violence in Western China
Postmark Beijing
With a jubilant, 55-foot-high "Beijing 2008" sign revolving at its center and 1 million newly placed potted flowers, the square this week and next is the scene of graceful dance and sports performances most mornings, a fairyland of colored-light displays each night.

Liu's Tiananmen harks back to June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government deployed troops and tanks to crush pro-democracy demonstrations, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the square and nearby streets.

Though he lives in Beijing, Liu has not returned to the square since that night. It is still too painful.

"It is very hard to change the image of Tiananmen in people's hearts, just by adding green plants, flowers and statues," said Liu, 53, an adviser to the student demonstrators nearly 20 years ago.

But a reinvention of Tiananmen is precisely what the Chinese government is seeking. And of all the public image campaigns it is pushing during the Games -- the green China, the modern China, the harmonious China -- the carefully manicured presentation of a new Tiananmen is the boldest, and perhaps trickiest, of all.

"The theme is 'The whole world happily greets the great events of the Olympics, reform and opening up to create a harmonious period,' " Qiang Jian, the deputy chief of the Beijing office in charge of beautifying the square for the Olympics, told reporters the week before the Games opened.

To preserve its approved picture, the government has limited live broadcasts from the square to certain hours of the day and banned live interviews. Officials also tried to require foreign journalists to register before working at Tiananmen, though that plan seemed to fizzle when many reporters simply ignored the notice.

Police and paramilitary officers patrolling the square are careful to use plainclothes officials and neighborhood volunteers to tussle with the few protesters who have succeeded in staging small demonstrations in recent days, to be sure no photos are taken of those in uniform using force.

The Chinese public knows very well not to mention the events of June 1989. "It is not discussable," said Liu, who knows because he spent nearly five years in prison and labor camps for refusing to remain silent.

The forced amnesia is perpetuated in Chinese schools, where the lessons of the Tiananmen massacre are not taught in history class. If it is mentioned at all, students are instructed that some soldiers lost their lives putting down an unruly anti-government mob.

Instead, students are taught to think of Tiananmen in terms of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong announced in 1949 as he stood atop Tiananmen Gate. The generation of students graduating college these days grew up singing a song with the words: "I love Tiananmen in Beijing, the sun rises from Tiananmen, great leader Chairman Mao guides us to go forward."...


Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Nicholas Riccardi and Maeve Reston: Between a Maverick and a Hard Place

Source: LAT (8-11-08)

John McCain and the adjective "maverick" were once seemingly inseparable, and his quixotic attempt in 2000 to win the Republican presidential nomination helped weld that link.

But now that the Arizona senator is about to become his party's nominee, he finds himself in an uncomfortable spot: having to defend his reputation as a political independent.


McCain's campaign unveiled an ad last week that calls him "the original maverick," and he has retooled his stump speech to remind independent voters disenchanted with Republicans that he defied his party on campaign finance reform, tobacco regulation and the early Iraq strategy.

Democrats, sensing a weakness, have started to chant that this year's John McCain is not the voluble insurgent who terrorized his party's establishment eight years ago.

In Elkhart, Ind., last week, McCain's Democratic opponent hit this theme hard. "The price he paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position," Barack Obama told voters at a town hall meeting. "And now he embraces the failed Bush policies over the last eight years -- politics that helped break Washington in the first place. And that doesn't exactly meet my definition of a maverick."


This debate over McCain's maverick-ness reflects a new challenge in his second bid for the presidency: the dilution of the McCain brand. To win the GOP primary this year, McCain embraced party dogma in ways big and small, from switching his opposition to President Bush's tax cuts, which he had criticized as skewed to the rich, to making amends with religious leaders he once denounced as "agents of intolerance."

The campaign has also undercut McCain's image as a straight-talker by dramatically limiting the national media's access to the candidate, who once charmed reporters and voters alike with his easy, free-wheeling, common-man conversational style on his campaign bus.

And McCain, this time around, faces an opponent who can make a case that, as a 47-year-old black man and first-term senator, he is more of a political outsider with a fresh new voice than the 71-year-old veteran of a quarter-century in Congress.

McCain campaign officials said the increased focus on their candidate's maverick credentials was long planned. "It was always going to have to be a part of our campaign for the general election," top advisor Charles Black said.

But Black acknowledged that the campaign thought it was also important to directly rebut Obama's central line of attack -- that McCain represents a third Bush term.

"Sure he's been in Washington 26 years, but he's always been a reformer, always worked across party lines, sacrificed his own political interests to do so," Black said. "So we were always going to have to tell that narrative, because some people know it, but not everybody."

McCain staffers bristle at Democratic contentions that their candidate is no longer a maverick, pointing to his belief that global warming is caused by pollution and his willingness to criticize Republicans for pork-barrel spending.

Analysts say many voters will probably continue to see McCain as a political contrarian. "He can point to areas where he broke with the Bush administration, where he broke with his own party," said Charles H. Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin. "That part of the maverick image probably isn't going away."

The new emphasis on that image, Franklin said, is to counter possible blow back from the scathing ads the Arizona Republican has launched against Obama. The ads have alarmed some supporters who fear McCain could jeopardize his reputation by appearing to take the political low road.

Last week,McCain's camp released an ad that contends "we're worse off than we were four years ago." The spot calls him "the original maverick," and says he has a record of taking on corruption "in both parties." He followed up Thursday with a Web ad made up of clips of prominent Democrats praising him for forging his own path in Washington.

Democrats immediately shot back.

"The John McCain of 2000 wouldn't even consider voting for the John McCain of 2008," Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, one of the Democrats whose praise of McCain was excerpted in the video, said in a statement. "John McCain has changed: He's taken the low road, leveling false, negative and misleading attacks against Barack Obama."

In 2000, few questioned McCain's maverick credentials. He had stirred anger among conservatives by pushing a ban on the unlimited contributions to the parties that were used to finance campaigns. He locked horns with the tobacco lobby in 1998 when he sponsored an anti-smoking bill that would have raised cigarette taxes and was ultimately derailed by Republicans. He had long rankled colleagues with his campaign against earmarked projects, farm subsidies and pork-barrel spending. And he famously called televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance."

His iconoclastic path continued into the early Bush years.

He opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, he pursued lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates, who were accused of bilking tribes of millions of dollars -- a move that embarrassed some GOP lawmakers who had dealings with Abramoff. He also angered conservatives by working with Democrats in 2005 to stave off a Senate rule change favored by GOP leaders that would have eased the path of the administration's conservative judicial nominees...

Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, August 11, 2008

William Rees-Mogg: Georgia: Another Sarajevo Moment Avoided

Source: The Times (8-11-08)

Who has heard of Freiherr von Musulin, apart from a few historians of Austria-Hungary and students of the diplomatic causes of the First World War? In 1925, he published his memoirs, which were reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement by the eminent historian, Lewis Namier. Musulin called his memoirs Das Haus am Ballplatz, which was the name of the Austrian Foreign Office.

Baron Musulin is not an outstanding figure in the history of European diplomacy; he was infinitely far from being a Metternich or a Talleyrand, yet perhaps he reshaped European history to a greater degree than either of them. From 1910 to 1916 he held the comparatively unimportant post of Chief of the Department for Church Affairs. In the summer of 1913, he took his holiday in Croatia, the country of his birth; on his return to Vienna he wrote a report on the Serbian problem, a subject on which he had not previously been regarded as an expert.

At some time in July 1914 he was asked to draft a diplomatic ultimatum to Serbia: “Wherein, on the basis of Serbia's moral responsibility for the events of June 28 [the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand] certain demands would be addressed to her for the suppression in future of Great-Serb propaganda.” He believed himself to have a reputation for “abilities for office work and stylistic skill”. He drafted the note on the assumption that the Serbians would accept it...

...The new Russia of Vladimir Putin is nationalist in the old tsarist fashion, and is determined to protect Russian interests. In the 1990s, the Yeltsin years, Russia could not assert these traditional Russian positions, because it was too weak. They are being reasserted now, and this reassertion is backed by Russia's growing importance as a provider of oil and gas.

In 1914 Europe had six major powers, Germany, France, Britain, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Russia, all of which had imperial possessions. Most of these countries were coalitions of different nations, with domestic problems of nationalism. Britain, for instance, had the Irish problem.

In 2008, there are six major groupings in the world, the US, China, the EU, India, Russia and Japan. Islam is another matter. These groupings are all, to some degree, concerned about economic or political weaknesses in their own positions.

Some of these groups are rising powers, but others are in relative decline. Russia probably lacks the economic or population base to maintain Putinism in world competition. The US may well have another generation as the leading world power, but its lead is narrowing. Europe has not resolved the cultural differences of its membership. China and India are emerging superpowers. But these groupings are almost as uncertain as the European powers were in 1914, and the scarcity of future energy supplies makes them feel insecure.

In these circumstances, it was rash of the Government of Georgia to try to regain control of South Ossetia by force. How did it imagine that Russia would respond? Georgia is a candidate to join Nato, but the European members of Nato, particularly Germany, may feel that Georgia's Government is too impetuous to be given the Nato guarantee. In a world of uncertainty, the major powers cannot risk minor wars in case they become big ones.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Paul Krugman: The History of the Pursuit of Universal Health Care in America Is One of Missed Chances

Source: NYT (8-11-08)

The draft Democratic Party platform that was sent out last week puts health care reform front and center. “If one thing came through in the platform hearings,” says the document, “it was that Democrats are united around a commitment to provide every American access to affordable, comprehensive health care.”

Can Democrats deliver on that commitment? In principle, it should be easy. In practice, supporters of health care reform, myself included, will be hanging on by their fingernails until legislation is actually passed.

What’s easy about guaranteed health care for all? For one thing, we know that it’s economically feasible: every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of guaranteed health care. The hazards Americans treat as facts of life — the risk of losing your insurance, the risk that you won’t be able to afford necessary care, the chance that you’ll be financially ruined by medical costs — would be considered unthinkable in any other advanced nation...

...First, the Democrats have to win the election — and win it by enough to face down Republicans, who are still, 42 years after Medicare went into operation, denouncing “socialized medicine.”

Second, they have to overcome the public’s fear of change.

Some health care reformers wanted the Democrats to endorse a single-payer, Medicare-type system for all. On the sheer economic merits, they’re right: single-payer would be more efficient than a system that preserves a role for private insurance companies.

But it’s better to have an imperfect universal health care plan than none at all — and the only way to get a universal health care plan passed soon is to inoculate it against Harry-and-Louise-type claims that people will be forced into plans “designed by government bureaucrats.” So the Democratic platform emphasizes choice, declaring that Americans “should have the option of keeping the coverage they have or choosing from a wide array of health insurance plans, including many private health insurance options and a public plan.” We’ll see if that’s enough.

The final hurdle facing health care reform is the risk that the next president and Congress will lose focus. There will be many problems crying out for solutions, from a weak economy to foreign policy crises. It will be easy and tempting to put health care on the back burner for a bit — and then forget about it.

So I’m nervous. The history of the pursuit of universal health care in America is one of missed chances, of political opportunities frittered away. Let’s hope that this time is different.

One more thing: if we do get real health care reform, a lot of people will owe a debt of gratitude to none other than John Edwards. When Mr. Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, I credited him with making universal health care a “possible dream for the next administration.” Mr. Edwards’s political career is over — but perhaps he and his family can take some solace from the fact that his party is still trying to make that dream come true.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Eduardo Porter: Contemplations on Being of Mixed Race in America

Source: NYT (8-11-08)

As a multiracial and somewhat foreign person I have on occasion found myself on the receiving end of the same kind of unease that many Americans seem to have about Barack Obama’s ambiguous identity. He is either not black enough or too black. His name sounds odd. He had a weird childhood with kids who didn’t speak English.

Mr. Obama is not just politically atypical. He is unusual demographically. A recent paper by economists from Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago said that in 2000 only one in 70 births in the United States came from mixed, black-white parents. In the 1980s it was one in 200. In the 1960s, when Mr. Obama was born, there were virtually none.

Black-white teens are so rare today, the researchers argued, that they feel they have to engage in more risky behavior to be accepted by others: drink more, fight more, steal more, do illegal drugs more than either blacks or whites — a pattern of behavior known to social scientists as the “marginal man.”

Perhaps this is true. Yet I would suggest that these outcomes say more about the context in which American multiracial kids grow up than about the kids themselves. The United States practices cleanly defined racial slotting...

...The son of a tallish, white father from Chicago and a short, brown Mexican mother of European and Indian blood, I’m not the same mix as Obama. As a colleague recently told me, I “read white.” Growing up in Mexico City, where power and skin color correlate at least as well as in the United States, I led a privileged existence. Still, being a mix was never an issue; most of my peers were too.

This is not to suggest Mexico has dealt with race any better. Racism just took different forms. European colonizers of modern-day Latin America encouraged the whitening of Indians and blacks. In the century after independence, ethnic loyalties were subsumed under a mixed Mexican identity as a way to merge Europeans and pre-Columbian indigenous nations into a modern Mexican state.

Today the Mexican census doesn’t even ask about race, and it only started asking about indigenous ethnicity in 2000. José Vasconcelos, a politician and philosopher, wrote in the 1920s that Mexicans were of the “cosmic race” — that which included all others. Yet Mexico’s state-sanctioned mestizo identity allowed its rulers to ignore its beleaguered indigenous populations — virtually defining them out of existence.

In the United States by contrast, racially inspired policies, whether they resulted in Jim Crow laws or affirmative action, fueled an urge to define and redefine hard racial boundaries. Close attention to race has forced uncomfortable issues of racial inequity into public debate, but has also gotten in the way of embracing a blended racial identity.

Fortunately, Americans seem to be slowly becoming more comfortable with racial intermingling. Newer immigrant groups with different experiences of race are already chipping away at the racial divide. About 10 percent of Asian Americans ticked two or more race boxes in the 2000 census. More than 15 percent of Hispanics marry non-Hispanics. And Hispanics are so confused about American racial categories that half of them can’t find an appropriate race box on the census form and tick “other race” instead.

For all the mistrust of Mr. Obama’s ancestry and ethnicity, he might even help this trend along, allowing blacks and whites to take a fresh look at each other. Then maybe people like me won’t need to engage in extreme behaviors to fit in.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rebiya Kadeer: Remember the Uighurs

Source: WSJ (8-11-08)

On July 29, I became the first Uighur leader to meet with a sitting U.S. President at the White House. Our meeting sent a message to Beijing on the eve of the Olympics: that the Chinese government's human rights abuses against the Uighur people cannot be ignored.

While it presents itself to the international community as the host of the world's largest sporting event, the Beijing government is quietly committing systematic human rights violations against the Uighurs on a massive scale. Like the Tibetans, Uighurs are subject to land confiscations, a ban on their language in schools and prohibitions on religious activity. In contrast, Han Chinese in Uighur areas receive preferential treatment in securing employment in both public and private sectors.

The approach of the Games has made the situation worse. China claims Uighur "terrorism" poses a significant threat to the security of the Olympics, and has intensified its assault on human rights in East Turkestan, an area China calls the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In recent months, Uighurs have been subjected to an even higher rate of execution and detention, in addition to forced relocation, police monitoring, passport confiscation and the destruction of places of worship. According to Amnesty International, East Turkestan is the only region in China where political crimes can receive the death penalty...

...Last week, China's state-run news agency reported another terrorist incident: two armed Uighur assailants attacked a border post in Kashgar, killing 16 government officers. I condemn all acts of violence. But it is important that the response be proportionate to the act. And again, no evidence has been produced to support the officials' claims.

To secure the Olympic Games during the bidding process in 2001, China made a promise to improve its human rights record. At the time, I myself was imprisoned in a Chinese jail on false political charges. I was released in 2005. When the Games were awarded to Beijing, Uighurs in China and across the world hoped that their human rights aspirations would receive wider notice.

As the free world's leaders gather in Beijing for the Olympics, I ask them to openly raise the terrible plight of the Uighur people in their meetings with Chinese government officials. It has been six years since Lorne Craner, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor visited East Turkestan. I therefore also request the U.S. government to send another high-level representative to go to the region to investigate the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation.

The Olympics have placed a spotlight on China. It's time the Chinese government's little-known campaign of intimidation against a peaceful people was revealed, and reversed.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Najam Sethi: It's Curtains for Musharraf

Source: WSJ (8-11-08)

After months of prevarication, the Pakistani government, led by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, has finally decided to impeach President Pervez Musharraf. Although a fighting man, Mr. Musharraf is expected to quit within the week. He doesn't have enough parliamentary backing to thwart the move, and the army and America, his main sources of support, have abandoned him in the face of popular pressure.

The government has been mulling this move for months. Mr. Zardari, of the People's Party of Pakistan (PPP), and Mr. Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), both hate the president for political and personal reasons.

Mr. Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif from power in 1999, exiled him to Saudi Arabia, and only allowed him to return last year to contest the February elections because of Saudi pressure. Mr. Zardari was imprisoned for six years, then permitted to leave the country to join his wife Benazir Bhutto in exile in Dubai. Thanks to American pressure, she was allowed to return last October to contest the elections, and he only returned after she was assassinated in December.

The popular Bhutto accused Mr. Musharraf of an assassination attempt last October. When she was killed two months later, many Pakistanis remembered that accusation.

The Zardari-Sharif cooperation has been driven by political missteps on all sides. Mr. Zardari's decision to work with Mr. Musharraf -- under American urging -- alienated the PPP's rank and file, which has been historically antiarmy and anti-American. At the same time, Mr. Sharif took an anti-Musharraf and anti-America stance, boosting his popularity. Mr. Musharraf didn't help matters when he tried to oppose Mr. Zardari's prime minister pick. Later, he also criticized the new government's "dysfunctionality" in the face of an "impending economic meltdown."...

...If Mr. Musharraf throws in the towel this week, the current political paralysis might end, but the instability will remain. Mr. Sharif will play to public opinion and press Mr. Zardari to punish Mr. Musharraf for treason. He wants the deposed chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and his erstwhile colleagues restored with full powers.

Mr. Zardari, for his part, may heed advice from the army and Washington and facilitate a safe exit for the president. He will, in all likelihood, refuse to reinstate the chief justice for fear that a reinvigorated judiciary will hold every Musharraf action to date as illegal, including the amnesty from corruption charges granted to him in November. Mr. Zardari also wants to become president himself, a prospect Mr. Sharif cannot stomach.

Pakistan's neighbors India and Afghanistan, and its strategic ally America, cannot be too sanguine about this continuing political instability. Their core interests require Pakistan's civilian leadership to lean on the Pakistan army to rein in and retool the ISI, support the war on terror in Afghanistan, and refrain from refueling Islamist jihad in India-administered Kashmir. But with the army sulking politically and licking its wounds militarily, the Zardari government looks unlikely to deliver on these fronts -- with or without a President Musharraf.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mary Anastasia O'Grady: Chávez Sees Cuba as a Model

Source: WSJ (8-11-08)

It is no secret that Hugo Chávez wants to be just like Fidel Castro someday. And last week he took a step closer to that goal by laying down 26 new decrees designed to eviscerate property rights and further consolidate economic power in the presidential palace. He also nationalized the third-largest bank in the country.

Yet it is not only in the economic realm that Hugo is mimicking his Cuban idol. What has been less publicized is the Venezuelan president's expanding collection of political prisoners, and his other sinister methods of neutralizing opponents.

The economic measures of the Bolivarian Revolution are worrying enough on their own. The government has proclaimed food production and distribution a public good, which means that the state can intervene in any way it wants. Indeed, it already has; and many believe that Mr. Chávez now has the Venezuela food processor and beverage maker Polar targeted for nationalization.

Mr. Chávez has spent nearly a decade trying to transform Venezuela into a centrally planned economy. The results are dismal. There are food shortages, private-sector investment and employment are shrinking, and inflation for the past 12 months was almost 34%. A rising homicide rate suggests that civil order is breaking down...

...More ominous is the growing list of political prisoners. One is Ivan Simonovis, the former chief of the Caracas metropolitan police, who during his tenure earned a reputation as a disciplined professional and dedicated crime fighter. He was the top cop in the city on April 11, 2002, the day of a mass protest that provoked the brief resignation of the president.

Seventeen people were murdered that day, and an independent police force would have tried to figure out who was behind the killings. But Mr. Chávez took over the metropolitan police. Mr. Simonovis was arrested on Nov. 22, 2004, accused of being responsible for three of those deaths.

His wife Bonny is one of his lawyers, and I spoke to her by telephone on Thursday. She told me it is against Venezuelan law to hold a suspect for more than two years, but her appeals for his freedom have been rejected. She also said that during his entire three years and eight months of incarceration, her husband has been held in solitary in a four square-meter cell that has no windows and no ventilation. His health has deteriorated.

His trial, which began on March 20, 2006, is now the longest in Venezuelan history. Closing statements were supposed to be heard last week, but the judge granted the prosecution more time to review the arguments. Mrs. Simonovis tells me that this means the case can drag on for months longer, though no evidence to convict her husband has ever been presented.

Another political prisoner is National Guard Lt. Col. Humberto Quintero, who was responsible for capturing Colombian terrorist leader Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela in December 2004 and turning him over to Colombia. Mr. Quintero ought to be treated as a hero in Venezuela. Instead he has been thrown into a maximum security prison and has been allegedly tortured.

These men are being punished for nonconformity with chavismo. But their arrests also serve as warnings to the rest of the nation: Get in the way of Mr. Chávez's caudillo aspirations at your peril.



Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Albert R. Hunt: Rome Olympics Resonate 48 Years Later

Source: International Herald Tribune (8-11-08)

The U.S. elections will take a small respite during the next two weeks for the Beijing Olympics. Politics won't.

President George W. Bush said he was going to Beijing because he "made a decision not to politicize" the games. Sure. Former Senator Bill Bradley, himself a member of the U.S. basketball team that won the gold medal in 1964, once said that imagining the Olympics without politics was like "trying to keep oxygen out of the air we breathe."

The biggest story, more than any times or scores or controversies, will be China. On the playing fields, the Chinese sports machine aims to win more medals at the 29th Olympiad than the Americans after the spectacularly successful opening ceremonies Friday.

More important is the dominant portrait emerging of China: the dynamic economic powerhouse, the only country in the world that might rival the United States as a superpower in the next generation, or the politically repressive regime that cracks down on dissidents, curtails freedom and acts like thugs on Tibet.

There will be stirring competition: the Americans against the Jamaicans in the sprints; the swimmer Michael Phelps's quest to equal or beat Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals; the U.S. basketball team trying to come back from its devastating losses in Athens four years ago.

If you love sports or politics, then pick up "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World." The remarkable personalities and politics of those Games almost half a century ago and what they presaged are depicted brilliantly in David Maraniss's book.

No Olympics has assembled such a cast of characters, including the American light-heavyweight boxer, Cassius Clay, who went on to become Muhammad Ali, arguably the most renowned athlete in the world. Rome 1960 was steeped in the politics of the Cold War, the issue of race, and the cheating and commercialism that came to dominate much of sports.

Maraniss, author of books on Bill Clinton, the sports legends Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, and the Vietnam War, brings to mind the versatility and depth of David Halberstam.

In Rome, the young Clay burst onto the international scene, showing his boxing genius in defeating experienced Russian and Polish fighters to win the gold. He was boisterously omnipresent in the Olympic Village, regaling people with stories about himself, some true, some not.

"All," Maraniss writes, "were in the service of the mythology of a self-invented character, who became everything his vivid imagination could dream of and more."

The only more charismatic figure was Wilma Rudolph, who was stricken at age 4 with polio, scarlet fever and double pneumonia and wore leg braces for years. By 1960, she was the sprint star of the Tennessee State running Tigerbelles, capturing three gold medals, forever changing the sport for women and black Americans. She captivated Rome and her own then-segregated America, including John F. Kennedy.

The flag-bearer for the U.S. team was Rafer Johnson, still the most memorable decathlon champion in Olympic history. His epic battle with his college teammate, C.K. Yang of Taiwan, right up until the last event, seems as intense and heroic in the book as it must have been in Rome.

The Americans aren't the exclusive focus. There are delicious profiles of Milkha Singh, India's "Flying Sikh," who won a bronze in the 400-meter dash; Armin Hary, the upset victor in the 100-meter dash, and Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, the Soviet broad jumper who socialized with the American runner Dave Sime, pondering defection.

The most compelling story, however, was the obscure Ethiopian, Abebe Bikila, who won the marathon after discarding his ill-fitting shoes.

Bikila running "through the silent night, alone and barefoot down the torch-lit path of the Appia Antica on his way to marathon history" gives you goose bumps.

Two decades earlier, Benito Mussolini's troops had invaded his country, prompting the retort: "It had taken Italy a million-man army to defeat Ethiopia, but only one Ethiopian soldier to conquer Rome."

He was the first of the great African distance runners. In Beijing, the Ethiopians remain strong at the distance events, as Haile Gebrselassie goes for his third 10,000-meter title.

"Rome 1960" also chronicles the agony of defeat through the prism of the American high jumper John Thomas and the sprinter Ray Norton, whose failures marked them for life. That Olympics was the start of the doping scandals - a Danish cyclist, using an illicit drug, died - that have sadly became commonplace.

And there were the great sportswriters, Red Smith, A.J. Liebling, Shirley Povich from Maraniss's Washington Post. It was a different age: "One well-known Norwegian journalist got so drunk," the author recalls, "that he cabled his article to the wrong newspaper, which recognized his famous byline and puckishly published his dispatch on the front page."..

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 9:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, August 10, 2008

William Rees-Mogg: Georgia ... another Sarajevo moment avoided

Source: Times (8-11-08)

[William Rees-Mogg is former editor-in-chief for The Times.]

Who has heard of Freiherr von Musulin, apart from a few historians of Austria-Hungary and students of the diplomatic causes of the First World War? In 1925, he published his memoirs, which were reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement by the eminent historian, Lewis Namier. Musulin called his memoirs Das Haus am Ballplatz, which was the name of the Austrian Foreign Office.

Baron Musulin is not an outstanding figure in the history of European diplomacy; he was infinitely far from being a Metternich or a Talleyrand, yet perhaps he reshaped European history to a greater degree than either of them. From 1910 to 1916 he held the comparatively unimportant post of Chief of the Department for Church Affairs. In the summer of 1913, he took his holiday in Croatia, the country of his birth; on his return to Vienna he wrote a report on the Serbian problem, a subject on which he had not previously been regarded as an expert.

At some time in July 1914 he was asked to draft a diplomatic ultimatum to Serbia: “Wherein, on the basis of Serbia's moral responsibility for the events of June 28 [the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand] certain demands would be addressed to her for the suppression in future of Great-Serb propaganda.” He believed himself to have a reputation for “abilities for office work and stylistic skill”. He drafted the note on the assumption that the Serbians would accept it.

He was surprised when the note was rejected. He comments that: “It is altogether difficult to foresee the effect which any one political action may produce abroad.” Considering that the effect of his miscalculation was the First World War, 20 million dead, and all that has followed, that seemed an understatement.

Since 1914, the major powers have been concerned to avoid another Sarajevo moment, in which the world tumbled into war by accident. However, the war was not altogether an accident or a miscalculation. The more significant memoirs of Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Chief of the Austrian General Staff, a grander and more aggressive figure than von Musulin, provide his real reasons for wanting a war. “Two principles were in sharp conflict: the maintenance of Austria as a conglomerate of various nationalities and the rise of independent national states claiming their ethnic territories from Austria-Hungary... For this reason, and not with a view to expiating the murder [of Franz Ferdinand], Austria-Hungary had to go to war against Serbia.”

No two historic events are identical, but there are disquieting resemblances between the Serbian crisis as it stood in July 1914 and the Georgian crisis as it stands in August 2008. There is the Russian factor that is central to both crises; there are conflicting nationalisms; there is the widespread feeling of anxiety. In 1914, Austria-Hungary was afraid of being let down by Germany, Germany was afraid of the growing strength of Russia, Russia was afraid of being let down by France, France was afraid of being let down by Britain, and Britain was alarmed by the growth of the German Navy. Every major power felt threatened. In the event, Serbia's rejection of the Austrian note pulled all of them into a war that few had wanted. The weakest power took the biggest decision...

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 7:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sam Akaki: Is Africa a Cold War Battleground?

Source: African Executive (8-10-08)

"The last Cold War left Africa on the life-support machine."
Thanks to the dwindling primary natural resources, oil and gas, the West is hounding Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan's al-Bashir, and heaping blame on Russia and China for protecting them; thus setting the stage for a new Cold War to be fought in Africa.

The last Cold War saw the savage murder or violent overthrow by the British, Americans, Belgians, French and Portuguese of nationalist African leaders including Patrice Lumumba, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Luis Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Marcel, Milton Obote, Hamed Sekou Toure, Gamel Abdel Nasser and Ahmed Ben Bella who were dubbed terrorists or Russian and Chinese sympathizers.

The lucky ones - Jomo Kenyatta, Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela were given long prison sentences from which they were never expected to come out, alive. Today, Mandela's statue stands as a monument of British cynicism, in Parliament Square, London. The statue stood there for three years until last week when the USA finally removed Mandela's name from the list of international terrorists!

The human, social and economic wounds inflicted on Africa by the last Cold War are still very raw. Mozambique, Angola and Namibia are littered with millions of land mines and other unexploded military ordinances, which will kill people for centuries to come. Algeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda are fighting self-destruct wars, while Somalia ceased to be a state in 1992, thanks to western weapons.


"China is financing infrastructure projects in more than 35 African countries."
Overall, the last Cold War left Africa on the life-support machine of western food aid administered by the World Food Program, while their leaders pay lip service to cure the patient.

Recently, the Africa Progress Panel (APP), headed by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, issued a report, "Africa Progress Panel responds to the G8 Summit in Hokkaido" which said:

"G8 countries have done little to show how they will fund the shortfall of US$ 40 billion in programmable aid and debt relief identified by the Africa Progress Panel last month...The G8 has yet to present clear timetables outlining future aid provision or to provide increased transparency required to improve the quality of aid."

On "Global food crisis", the report said, "The Panel welcomes the commitment of US$ 10 billion to support food aid and measures to increase agricultural input as a necessary first step... More needs to be done, however, to increase the supply of food to the world's most vulnerable citizens, and immediate measures must be taken to relax export restrictions on commodities such as rice"

On trade, it said "The Panel welcomes the G8 leaders' commitment to the conclusion of an ambitious, balanced and comprehensive Doha agreement... As WTO negotiations enter this crucial period, all parties need to understand that the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals rest in large part on the ability of the continent to trade its way out of poverty."

And in conclusion, Mr. Annan declared "The success in supporting African development will not only result in tangible benefits for her people but ensure a more secure and prosperous future for the world. For G8 leaders, helping Africa to help itself is not a question of altruism; it is a matter of self-interest."

The July 11 UN resolution accused Robert Mugabe of "killing 100 opposition supporters and displacing 2,000", and called for punitive sanctions including imposing an arms embargo, a clear signal for attacks on Zimbabwe. Thankfully, China and Russia, which were not at the Berlin Conference, rejected the resolution, saying it would "open the way for interference by the Security Council in internal affairs of Members States, which is a gross violation of the UN Charter."

To disorganize the AU, the International Criminal Court (ICC), is planning to arrest Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for "leading a campaign of murder, rape and mass deportation in Darfur". The plan is advancing despite the AU statement, which "reiterated the AU's concern with the misuse of indictments against African leaders."


"The Western ruling groups are conceited, full of themselves, ignorant of our conditions, and they make other people's business their business."
Incidentally, the conflict in Darfur started 18 years after the one in northern Uganda which killed over 300,000 civilians, caused the abduction of 20, 000 children and drove 2 million into concentration camps. Yet, the ICC never investigated the role of the Ugandan troops in these attrocities, leave alone issuing an arrest warrant for Museveni.

That is not surprising. The West is less interested in human rights in Africa than in justifying and setting the stage for a new Cold War. The BBC reported on 13th July it "has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan's government militarily in Darfur."

Yet, China's real crime is its dominating investments in Africa which now exceeds British, USA, European Union, World Bank and IMF aid budgets, combined.

A recent World Bank confirmed that China is financing infrastructure projects in more than 35 African countries with Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Nigeria, the Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe among the biggest recipients. In the DRC, China has agreed to build thousands of kilometers of roads, several hospitals and three universities. Unlike the West, China gives Africa quality projects on time and much more cheaply.

In their most direct statements yet recorded, African leaders made their views about the West clear during the Chinese Africa summit, held in Beijing in November 2006. Speaking to Lindsey Hilsum of British Channel Four television, former president Festus Mogae of Botswana said, "I find that the Chinese treat us as equals. The West treats us as former subjects (read slaves). Which is a reality. I prefer the attitude of the Chinese to that of the West."

For his part, President Museveni who is seen as a darling of the West said, "The Western ruling groups are conceited, full of themselves, ignorant of our conditions, and they make other people's business their business. Whereas the Chinese just deal with you, you represent your country, they represent their own interests, and you do business."

And Russia is an enemy because it is sitting on huge gas and oil reserves, and opposing not only the expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to its borders, but also US plans to build Missile Defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Given the devastation of the last Cold War, won't a new one be a double crime against humanity exceeding not only the massacres by the Germans of 6 million Jews, but also the genocide committed by Belgians in Congo in the last centaury, and the slave trade?

Aren't African leaders facing a simple choice: stand firm and tell the west not to touch al-Bashir, or keep silent and wait to be picked off one by one?

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 3:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

James Traub: Russia and Georgia Were Going to Erupt, It Was Really Just

Source: NYT (8-10-08)

The hostilities between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday over the breakaway province of South Ossetia look, in retrospect, almost absurdly over-determined. For years, the Russians have claimed that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been preparing to retake the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and have warned that they would use force to block such a bid. Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, describes today’s Russia as a belligerent power ruthlessly pressing at its borders, implacably hostile to democratic neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine. He has thrown in his lot with the West, and has campaigned ardently for membership in NATO. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, has said Russia could never accept a NATO presence in the Caucasus.

The border between Georgia and Russia, in short, has been the driest of tinder; the only question was where the fire would start.

It’s scarcely clear yet how things will stand between the two when the smoke clears. But it’s safe to say that while Russia has a massive advantage in firepower, Georgia, an open, free-market, more-or-less-democratic nation that sees itself as a distant outpost of Europe, enjoys a decisive rhetorical and political edge. In recent conversations there, President Saakashvili compared Georgia to Czechoslovakia in 1938, trusting the West to save it from a ravenous neighbor. “If Georgia fails,” he said to me darkly two months ago, “it will send a message to everyone that this path doesn’t work.”

During a 10-day visit to Georgia in June, I heard the 1938 analogy again and again, as well as another to 1921, when Bolshevik troops crushed Georgia’s thrilling, and brief, first experiment with liberal rule.

Georgians are a melodramatic people, and few more so than their hyperactive president; but they have good reason to fear the ambitions, and the wrath, of a rejuvenated Russia seeking to regain lost power. Indeed, a renascent and increasingly bellicose Russia is an ominous spectacle for the West too. While China preaches, and largely practices, the doctrine of “peaceful rise,” avoiding confrontation abroad in order to focus on development at home, Russia acts increasingly like an expansionist 19th-century power, pressing at its borders. Most strikingly, Russia has bluntly deployed its vast oil and gas resources to punish refractory neighbors like Ukraine, and reward compliant ones like Armenia.

A senior American official said that while the United States and Russia have common interests, Russia has become “a revisionist and aggressive power,” and the West “has to be prepared to push back.” But the Bush administration also recognizes that Russia has legitimate security interests, and that Mr. Saakashvili has played a dangerous game of baiting the Russian bear. Officials were laboring into the weekend — in vain, they feared — to coax both sides back to their corners. For much of the diplomatic and policy-making world, the border where Georgia faces Russia, with South Ossetia and Abkhazia between them, has become a new cold war frontier.

Georgia ardently aspires to join the peaceable kingdom of Europe; but to talk to Georgians about Russia is to enter a cold war time warp. I was speaking one evening to the owner of a fine antiques shop in Tbilisi when the conversation somehow swerved to Russia. “These Russians are so stupid,” he cried. “They do not know what is friend. They would rather have angry enemies than real friends.” Russia’s apparent hatred for Georgia provoked endless bewilderment, and no little bit of pride. I heard from three different people about a poll in which Georgia had just surged ahead of the United States as the country Russians identified as Enemy No. 1. Georgians insist that they are free of such zero-sum pathologies, though you might have thought otherwise if you had listened to the crowd in Betsy’s Hotel in Tbilisi during the Russia-Holland quarterfinal of the Euro Cup; suddenly the Dutch were everyone’s darling.

The roots of this bitter relationship are deep and tangled, as is practically everything in the archaic world of the Caucasus. Modern Georgian history is a record of submission to superior Russian power. Threatened by the expanding Persian empire, in 1783 the Georgians formally accepted the protection of Russia; this polite fiction ended when Russia annexed Georgia in 1801. The chaos of the Russian Revolution finally gave Georgia a chance to restore its sovereignty a century later. The Georgians were Mensheviks — social democrats, in effect — and for three years enjoyed one of the world’s most progressive governments. The Bolshevik government signed a treaty respecting Georgia’s independence — which Europe, as President Saakashvili pointedly reminded me, naïvely insisted on taking at face value. By the time the Europeans woke up to reality, it was too late.

From the time of Pushkin, Russians viewed Georgia as a romantic, exotic frontier. During the long puritanical deep-freeze of Communism, Georgia served as Russia’s Italy — a warm, lotus-eating sanctuary of singers and poets and swashbuckling gangsters. The elite had their beloved dachas on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. At the same time, Stalin, though himself Georgian, kept the republic subdued through brutal purges. The head of the Georgian Communist party was Lavrenti Beria, a cold-blooded killer who would become the master architect of Stalin’s terror. The Georgians, though helpless, never accepted their Soviet identity, and preserved their language, culture, religious practice and sense of national identity, as they had under the czars. And when, at last, the Soviet empire collapsed as the czarist one had, Georgia immediately broke away and declared its independence, in 1991.

The infant country spent the next decade stagnating under the Soviet-style rule of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former foreign minister to Mikhail Gorbachev. But in 2003, Mr. Shevardnadze was peacefully overthrown in what came to be known as the Rose Revolution. Mr. Saakashvili was elected the following year. Since then, Georgia has become a poster child for Westernization. The growth rate has reached 12 percent. The countryside remains impoverished, but what the outside world sees of Georgia is delightful. Tbilisi is a charming city, its ancient Orthodox churches restored to life, the lanes of the old city lined with cafes and art galleries. Mr. Saakashvili has also made Georgia one of the world’s most — or few — pro-American countries. President Bush received a rapturous welcome when he visited in 2005, and the road to the airport has now been named after him, complete with a large poster of the president.


RUSSIA RESURGENT

It was, of course, at this very moment that another ambitious young figure was reshaping Russia’s politics, economy and self-image. The combination of Vladimir Putin’s reforms and the dizzying rise in the price of oil and gas have rapidly restored Russia to the status of world power. And Mr. Putin has harnessed that power in the service of aggressive nationalism.

Marshall Goldman, a leading Russia scholar, argues in a recent book that Mr. Putin has established a “petrostate,” in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. The author details the lengths to which Mr. Putin has gone to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. “If Georgia collapses in turmoil,” Mr. Goldman notes, “investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline.” And so, he concludes, Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.

But economic considerations alone scarcely account for what appears to be an obsession with Georgia. The “color revolutions” that swept across Ukraine, the Balkans and the Caucasus in the first years of the new century plainly unnerved Mr. Putin, who has denounced America’s policy of “democracy promotion” and stifled foreign organizations seeking to promote human rights in Russia. Georgia, with its open embrace of the West, thus represents a threat to the legitimacy of Russia’s authoritarian model. And this challenge is immensely compounded by Georgia’s fervent aspiration to join NATO, one of Russia’s red lines. Russian officials frequently recall that President Bill Clinton promised Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not expand beyond Eastern Europe. Of course NATO is no longer an anti-Soviet alliance, and the fact that Russia views NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to its security is a vivid sign of the deep-rooted cold war mentality of Mr. Putin and his circle.

Still, they seem to mean it. Both Mr. Putin and his successor as president, Dmitri Medvedev, have reserved their starkest rhetoric for this subject. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has threatened that Georgia’s ambition to join NATO “will lead to renewed bloodshed,” adding, as if that weren’t enough, “we will do anything not to allow Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.”

After Mr. Saakashvili, then 37, became president, Mr. Putin made no attempt to court him, and Mr. Saakashvili, made a point of showing the regional hegemon no deference. The open struggle began in late 2005 and early 2006, when Russia imposed an embargo on Georgia’s agricultural products, then on wine and mineral water — virtually Georgia’s entire export market. After Georgia very publicly and dramatically expelled Russian diplomats accused of espionage, Mr. Putin cut off all land, sea, air and rail links to Georgia, as well as postal service. And then, for good measure, he cut off natural gas supplies in the dead of winter.


ECHOES OF TRAGEDY

This new round of bellicosity struck Georgians as frighteningly familiar. Alexander Rondeli, the director of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, recited to me a thought he attributed to the diplomat-scholar George F. Kennan: “Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals.” Here, for him, was further proof, as if it were needed, that imperialist expansion and brute subjugation are coded in Russia’s DNA. The Georgian elite came to view Russia as an unappeasable power imbued with the paranoia of the K.G.B., from which Mr. Putin and his closest associates rose, and fueled by the national sense of humiliation over Russia’s helplessness in the 1990s. “You should understand,” Mr. Saakashvili said, mocking the Europeans who urge forbearance on him, “that the crocodile is hungry. Well, from the point of view of someone who wants to keep his own leg, that’s hard to accept.”

And yet the crocodile might have been held at bay were it not for Abkhazia and South Ossetia — the first a traditional Black Sea resort area that defined Georgia’s western frontier, and the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region that borders Russia to the north. Georgia is a polygot nation, and views both regions as historically, and inextricably, Georgian. Each, however, had its own language, culture, timeless history and separatist aspirations. When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to separate themselves from Georgia in bloody conflicts — South Ossetia in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4. Both wars ended with cease-fires that were negotiated by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces under the aegis of the recently established Commonwealth of Independent States. Over time, the stalemates hardened into “frozen conflicts,” like that over Cyprus.

But the Georgians are intensely nationalistic, and viewed these de facto states on their border as an intolerable violation of sovereignty. Mr. Saakashvili cashed in on this deep sense of grievance, vowing to restore Georgia’s “territorial integrity.” Soon after taking office, he succeeded in regaining Georgian control over the southwestern province of Ajara. Then, in the summer of 2004, citing growing banditry and chaos, he sent Interior Ministry troops into South Ossetia. After a series of inconclusive clashes, the troops were forced to make a humiliating withdrawal...

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Kate Merkel-Hess: Beyond Beijing, China's Toughest Competition

Source: The Nation (8-10-08)

[About Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is co-founder and regular contributer to The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Red. His books include China's Brave New World (2007) and the forthcoming Global Shanghai, 1850-2010. Kate Merkel-Hess is the editor of The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Read, a graduate student in modern Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine, and a contributor to the Times Literary Supplement (London). ]

Beijing, Beijing: never has this city made so many headlines. Never have so many reviews of books about it, photos of its landmarks, and tips on where to eat and what to see if you go there shown up in English-language publications. If the Olympic Games accomplish nothing else, they will at least ensure that news broadcasters around the world can all find Beijing on a map and pronounce its name correctly, so that references to the anachronistic "Peking" will be consigned to puns in book titles and references to culinary delights, such as the city's storied duck dish.

This explosion of Beijing commentary is natural. And we've done our small part to contribute to it, via our individual writings for The China Beat blog and other venues, where we've talked up new books with titles like Beijing Time and The Last Days of Old Beijing. Still, as central as Beijing is to the tale of the games, it is a mistake to focus too intently on this one Chinese metropolis. Most of the main news stories relating to the games--from how China got the nod to host, to the event's political and economic dimensions--are better appreciated when viewed through a multi-city or national lens than solely through the prism of Beijing.

The most important reason to look beyond Beijing is simple: the Chinese regime realized from the start that domestically, the games cannot achieve what it wants them to achieve if they are seen as a just the capital's affair. It has thus taken many steps to encourage people living far from Beijing--who often view the capital and its residents with suspicion--to feel that they, too, have a stake in and can benefit from the Olympics. Consider the torch relay. International audiences tended to lose interest in it after the flame reached China, perking up again only when it made it to Tibet and then this week the capital, but its passage through Hainan Island and cities such as Fujian and provinces such as Anhui--none of which is near Beijing or Lhasa--were crucial for a government that is constantly trying to convince a population with no faith in its official ideology to give it credit for providing attractive bread and circuses at home and for raising China's profile abroad.

Since most foreign journalists are based in Beijing, people-in-the-street interviews conducted there will be used to assess the domestic success of the games (or lack thereof). But for the Communist Party, what counts just as much as reactions by Beijingers is how the spectacle plays in places like Wuxi and Wenzhou, which we might be tempted to call Peorias with Chinese characteristics, except that the population of the former is almost ten times and the latter almost twenty times that of the Illinois city.

Here are some specific stories that benefit from looking beyond Beijing.

Why China Got the games

When IOC members vote on host cities, they typically weigh the merits of a specific metropolis and a specific country. If nations have hosted the games before, the suitability of a particular city may be particularly important. With first-time hosts like China, though, the vote is more of referendum on the country. And while the decision-making of individual IOC voters is shrouded in secrecy, there are good reasons to assume that in 2001, they were influenced by developments in multiple Chinese cities. For example, when Chinese officials claimed they could quickly transform their then dowdy-looking capital, improving its transportation infrastructure and working with international architecture firms to create stunning new buildings, this notion was given added credence by the spectacular way Pudong (East Shanghai) had evolved from a backwater to a glittering showplace during the 1990s. And when these same officials promised that they could deliver increased press freedom, the degree of media openness in Hong Kong in the immediate aftermath of the 1997 handover gave a degree of plausibility to this notion.

The Athletic Contests

Events will be taking place in multiple cities. Beijing will get the most action, but competitions will take place elsewhere: yachting in Qingdao, soccer matches in Shanghai, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, and Shenyang, and equestrian events in Hong Kong. Lest anyone think that these events will still be basically "local" to Beijing (analogous to some contests at the Atlanta Games being farmed out to other parts of Georgia), note that while Tianjin is a neighbor of the capital and Qinhuangdao is only about 180 miles from it, Shenyang is more than 400 miles to the north, and Hong Kong more than three times that far to the south (further from Beijing than Atlanta is from Manhattan).

Architecture

Beijing has gone all out architecturally for the Olympics, with the construction of the Bird's Nest (National Stadium), the Water Cube (National Aquatics Center) and a fancy new airport terminal. But this monumental urge neither started in Beijing (Shanghai got its urban makeover and a state-of-the-art new airport first), nor is now limited to the capital. Some of the construction money earmarked for the games is being spread around, as lavish new arenas have been built in secondary host cities like Tianjin. And Shanghai's built environment continues to be transformed, often through the sort of splashy joint ventures of foreign and Chinese architects that are getting so much attention just now in Beijing. Not long after the Bird's Nest was completed, for example, the World Financial Center in Pudong became the tallest skyscraper on earth.

Spectacle and Symbolism

Much has been made of how the symbolic layout of the capital has been altered by the games, and global television broadcasts of the lead-up have continually used spectacular shots of sites that are in or near Beijing, from Tiananmen Square to the Great Wall, to stand for China. Within China itself, though, efforts have been made to use more geographically diffuse symbols and spectacles to represent the nation. Consider, for instance, the mascots for the games, the cuddly fuwa or "Five Friendlies" that have been marketed heavily in China for the past few years. Created to be broadly representative of varied regions and ethnic groups within the nearly continent-size land mass that is the Peoples Republic of China, the bobble-headed imps are featured on all kinds of Olympic paraphernalia (available at Olympic stands erected on city street corners and in empty storefronts across China). They are often shown participating in Olympic events, from diving to badminton to wrestling (our personal favorites include the image of pudgy panda Jingjing, handgun cocked, participating in the pistol-shooting events).

Jingjing is an emblem for Sichuan, the antelope Yingying represents the Tibetan and Xinjiang minorities, and so on. To turn the fuwa's diversity into a message of saccharine greeting, while suggesting that the country's people all come together in the capital (a theme likely to be stressed in the Opening Ceremonies as well), the names of the Friendlies spell out "Beijing Welcomes You." Often mocked on the web and elsewhere, some have said that rather than being representative of positive Chinese attributes the Friendlies have been harbingers of 2008's bad luck, from Sichuan's earthquake to the Tibetan unrest.

After the games

One likely assumption is that when it comes to future high-profile international gatherings, the main Chinese city to benefit or be hurt by how the games play out will be Beijing. This is partly true. There is talk already of the city wanting to host the World Cup soon, and this will likely only come to pass if the games go well.

Here again, though, there's a beyond-Beijing angle worth appreciating. The capital has never been the only city in the mix: Shanghai hosted a major summit in October 2001 that brought George W. Bush, among many other leaders, to Pudong, for example; and Kunming was supposed to host a world anthropology conference earlier this year--but the conference was cancelled due partly to official worries about something untoward happening that would affect the games. And where high-profile events are concerned, Beijing will not even be the main Chinese city to focus on during the two years following the end of the games. Why? Because 2010 will be the year of the Shanghai World Expo.

World Expos are still a very big deal in Asia, and this event is billed as the first World's Fair ever held in the developing world. It is being touted as an "Economic Olympics" (one more strategy for ensuring that Olympic fever isn't seen as a purely Beijing thing), and estimated to have the potential of bringing 70 million tourists to Shanghai. One reason residents of cities other than Beijing have a stake in how the games go is that the Olympics will influence the fate of their bids to host future events.

Efforts to use the games to knit the Chinese nation together appear to have been successful, so far--certainly more successful than efforts to use the events to improve Western views of the regime. The recent leg of the torch run through earthquake-damaged Sichuan, the torch's final jaunt before arriving in Beijing, was heralded nationwide, its appearance combined with moments of silence in memory of the earthquake's victims. And in the next week or so, we'll see further uses of the games to promote national unity. The equestrian events taking place in Hong Kong, for example, could help solidify the former British colony's incorporation into the PRC.

But not all of these attempts to use this international spectacle to further national ends have worked out as planned. For instance, when the torch run's path was initially announced, it included a stop in Taiwan--between legs in Vietnam and Hong Kong. The plans sparked accusations from Taiwan that China was using the run to prove that Taiwan was part of the PRC and, despite talks that continued through the summer, the torch eventually bypassed Taiwan. Still, on the whole, the domestic lead-up to the games, even in a year marked by natural and social upheavals, has generally benefited China's leaders.

Foreign media have often focused on Beijing's negatives, from bristling security to smoggy air to rampant, "Chinglish" signage to, most importantly, the lack of improvements in areas such as human rights and freedom of speech. But we should not underestimate the capacity for stunning spectacle and effervescent hospitality in the Northern Capital in the coming weeks to play well to domestic audiences, who are less focused on human rights and dissent than are international viewers, and will hear much less about any protests or government missteps should these occur (though the increasingly assertive Chinese blogosphere won't let these things pass without some caustic comment, especially if official corruption, still the hot-button issue in China, seems to be involved).

The grandeur of the arenas and the ceremonies--and China's medal count--are what domestic journalists and broadcasts and their target audiences focus on. And, if all goes smoothly in Beijing, that may still be what international audiences remember most about the 2008 games. This won't necessarily be a good thing for human rights in China: the court is still out as to the long-term impact the games will have on that front, as a case can still be made that despite the crackdowns and high security, there have been some important positive developments under the radar relating to increased room for maneuver by civil society actors due to the media glare. But if the games are seen globally as well as locally as having been a success, this might open doors for a growing international acquaintance with the local characters of at least a few of the Chinese largest cities, as they get the chance to host international spectacles of their own.

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nick Meo: Georgia ... Roots of the South Ossetia conflict

Source: Telegraph (8-9-08)

[Nick Meo has written articles published in The Daily Telegraph (Foreign Correspondent), The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph.]

For much of recorded history, the people of Georgia co-existed peacefully with their Ossetian neighbours, partly due to being under the thumb of Moscow since Tsarist troops conquered their lands in 1801.

But the fall of the Soviet Union brought ambitious local politicians to power and unleashed bitter rivalries over territory, which exploded into an ugly conflict in 1991.

Up to 100,000 South Ossetians had to flee from a short, bloody war in which hundreds were killed.

Fighting was ended by a peace deal which essentially froze the conflict without solving the underlying tensions, mainly because of fears of provoking the all-out wrath of Moscow. Russian peacekeepers moved into South Ossetia, under the terms of the deal, and Georgia was forced to accept de facto autonomy for parts of that territory. It left neither side particularly happy, and rabble-rousing politicians have thrived on the ensuing bitterness ever since – as too have regional powerbrokers, for whom the area has strategic importance as a gateway between Asia and Europe.

Since the opening of a major oil pipeline through Georgian territory in 2005, the struggle for influence between East and West has given rise to a new "Great Game". America's wish for a Georgian military base, Georgia's ambition to join Nato and Russia's fear of encirclement by former satellite republics that are now hostile, all complicate the region's petty political problems further.

Peace should not be impossible. Ossetians and Georgians speak different languages, but both are Christian and their cultures are similar. However, in the past 20 years, mutual bitterness has grown and Ossetians have identified more and more with Russia, in part because so many fled there in 1991. Most now see Moscow as a protector...

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 7:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Jim Sleeper: Is Obama as Brave as His Black Memphis Supporters?

Source: TPM Cafe (8-9-08)

Last night, a 60%-black Memphis congressional district re-elected its one-term white liberal incumbent, Steve Cohen, despite TV ads by his black challenger Nikki Tinker that associated him falsely with the Klan and asked why Cohen would "pray in our churches" while voting against mandatory prayer in public schools.

Cohen had won in 2006 with only 31% of the vote, probably because several black challengers split the remainder. But last night, given two years to prove himself an effective representative, he won 79 - 19%.

Does anyone realize how important, and beautiful, this is? Emily's List didn't, as M.J. showed here, until it finally shook off its identity politics and saw that not every female candidate is better than every male. Barack Obama was cagey and quiet on this one, and thereby hangs a tale.

More than a decade ago, in Liberal Racism and this article, among others, I tried to persuade liberals how important and valuable it was that white-majority electorates in several Southern congressional districts had just elected blacks, in the 1996 elections.

The civil-rights establishment refused to believe that it had even happened. Obama, teaching about racial districting then at the University of Chicago, read my arguments but never mentioned them in class. (Yesterday, belatedly, he did condemn Tinker's odious ads but didn't make an endorsement.)

The root of the problem of racial districting that recapitulates racism itself was the defensiveness of voting-rights activists, black and white. Having struggled so bravely to pass the Voting Rights Act in the teeth of the more racist, segregationist America of the 1960s, many still cling to the assumption that people will vote only in racial blocs and that, therefore, no black can go to Congress unless districts are drawn to ensure heavy black majorities.

In 1982, the civil-rights industry passed amendments to the Voting Rights Act that forced ever-more absurdly shaped districts to snake across bits of so many different counties, school boards, and other jurisdictions. It thereby carved out black majorities in congressional districts whose residents had nothing else in common except race (or Hispanic surnames). I described the effects of this in New York City in Liberal Racism.

The creation of districts like this only whitened the neighboring districts around them, allowing new Republican challengers to replace the white Democrats who'd been moderate because, under the old configurations, they'd had to answer to more than few black or Hispanic voters as well as white ones. Now, they no longer did. Congress got a few more black representatives (not many), and a lot more white Republicans, along with Speaker Newt Gingrich. Congratulations, race industry!

In their ivory towers, law professors like Pamela Karlan who championed these ideologically, penitentially driven recapitulations of racism concluded only that racism must be rising -- especially when, in 1995, Supreme Court majorities, thanks to Sandra Day O'Connor, invalidated some of the racially drawn districts as the absurdities they were, thereby forcing their new black incumbents to run for re-election in newly drawn districts that were no longer majority black.

Howls of outrage and prophecies of doom came from many of Obama's colleagues in the law schools and from his future friend Deval Patrick, now governor of Massachusetts but then Bill Clinton's assistant attorney general for civil rights.

The New York Times, under editorial-page editor Howell Raines, a penitential Southerner, raged at the Court's supposed attack on voting rights and invoked the specters of segregation. (Yes, the self-righteous Raines set the Times back on race in more ways than one.)

Then election day came in 1996. Five black incumbents whose districts had been invalidated by the Court decided to run again anyway, in majority white or majority white-and-Hispanic districts, in the South. And they all won.

In those elections, it was white voters who discredited the race industry's assumptions of racist bloc voting; last night, black voters did the same, for the umpteenth time, but in an especially dramatic way, given Tinker's ads. They defied both racial demagoguery and the presumptions of their self-appointed caretakers in the race industry, who keep on drawing these districts to allow black voters to elect what the law euphemistically calls, "candidates of their choice." Well, they did choose. Again. Get it yet?

We'll see. In 1996, in a series of almost hilarious denials, the black incumbents' victories were dismissed as flukes by law professors like Karlan (who is still holding out) and by the Times. (Last night's victory was covered by the Times in a story buried in the Politics Page, not in my print edition, where it didn't appear at all, but online. Had a white candidate run racist ads against a black candidate analogous to the ones Tinker ran against Cohen, the story would have made Page 1).

The best quick account of this how voters defied this absurdity in 1996 is this article I wrote at the time. (The pdf may take a minute to come up, but it's worth the wait.) The most effective detailed exposition of what's at stake is Chapter 3. "Voting Wrongs," of my Liberal Racism.

Finally, some professors and activists are coming around, notably the scholar of voting rights Richard H. Pildes of New York University Law School, who has a short, smart reassessment of the Voting Rights Act's amendments in the Yale Law Journal.

I don't suggest that the ubiquity and relentlessness of racism have ended. Part of the problem is actuarial: Obama may lose -- or win only in a squeaker -- because many whites, still able to make it to the polls, will not under any circumstances vote for a black. He could also lose for the subtler reason that even those who consider themselves beyond such racism remain captive to racist stereotypes that help them rationalize the doubts sown by the Republicans' negative ads.

But Obama would never have become the Democratic nominee, against the formidable Hillary Clinton, if a growing part of this country weren't ready for change on this front, at least. Last night's election in a majority-black district in Memphis confirms this just as fully as Obama's victory in Iowa did at the start of this year and as five black incumbents' victories in the South confirmed twelve years ago. I wish that Obama had shown the courage of black Memphis voters' convictions by endorsing Cohen against the trapped and odious Tinker, just as he undoubtedly cheered the black incumbents' victories at white hands in 1996.

Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 3:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jim Castagnera: Of Distant Mirrors, Immediate Omens, and Cautious Confidence

Source: Carbon County Times-News (8-9-08)

[Jim Castagnera is the Associate Provost and Associate Counsel at Rider University. He is writing his 14th book, which is about the impact of terrorism on college campuses, for Praeger.]

“Once Italy had collected the bullion of conquered lands and grown rich on the robbery; now money was migrating to the more industrialized… provinces, and Italy grew poorer while the rising wealth of Asia Minor forced the replacement of Rome with an Eastern capital.”

So wrote historians Will and Ariel Durant about “The Collapse of the Empire” in the third volume of their epic story of civilization. I pulled the volume off the shelf and blew away the dust, after watching the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Reading those words, I felt as if I was gazing into a distant mirror (to borrow the title of another historian’s book).

Thumbing through the Durants’ tome some more, I found this: “The necessity of defense exalted the power of arms and the prestige of soldiery; generals replaced philosophers on the throne, and the last reign of the aristocracy yielded to the revived rule of force.”

I went to bed feeling a little troubled.

I woke up, booted up, and learned from AOL that, while his wife was battling cancer and he was running for president of the United States, John Edwards was having an affair. This conjured a less distant mirror, recalling for me the impeachment of a president for lying about his dalliance with a White House intern a mere decade ago.

The Durants wrote of the notoriously immoral Emperor Caligula, “In [his] imperial frolic, government was an aside, and could usually be left to inferior minds.”

So here I sit on a Saturday morning with visions of McCain and Obama, Edwards and Clinton, strutting around in their togas. They stroll together down the steps of the capitol and admire their own reflections in the pool. Here comes W from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, riding a charger, red cape draped across the stallion’s flanks. black plume flowing from his bronze helmet. And is that Hilary seated on a tiny barge, being rowed around the reflecting pool?

Well, of course, 21st century America can’t be compared to ancient Rome without looking just that ridiculous. Twenty years ago, Yale Professor Paul Kennedy published “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” The dust jacket said it all: Great Britain stepping down, Uncle Sam standing on the pinnacle, but about to follow John Bull, and Japan stepping up. Where is Japan today? Nippon’s economy went into a Nineties tailspin from which it has yet to fully recover. Kennedy made a lot of money from his bestseller. All the same, he got it wrong.

America once more looks like it’s in trouble. The U.S. has gone from being the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor. The Iraq War, even if “won,” seems to have been an expensive blunder. And cynicism about the sincerity of our leaders appears to be well placed. Meanwhile, the Chinese reportedly spent $50 million to produce what was arguably the best opening ceremony ever. China holds something like half a trillion dollars of America’s debt and our trade deficit with the Chinese is a yawning abyss.

On the other hand --- and lawyers always have another hand, thank goodness --- the national debt is a smaller percentage of gross domestic product than it was in 1950. In 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported, “The budget deficit now stands at about 1.4 percent of the nation's GDP, well below the 2.3 percent that's been the norm since 1970, according to economist Michael Darda of MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn.”

As for the Iraq War, the surge seems to have worked. Muqtada al-Sadr says he is disarming his militia. The Iraqi government itself is applying pressure on the U.S. to start withdrawing its troops. Are our Mid-Eastern oil supplies any more secure for our having deposed Saddam Hussein? Only time will tell. At least the price at the pump has eased off a bit.

Last but not least, the less prudish among us will point out that Clinton and Edwards are far from the first politicians, American or otherwise, to stray from their marriage vows. The more sophisticated might add that when a French or Italian president does worse, his constituents simply yawn or smile knowingly.

As for the Chinese, the spectacle in the Bird’s Nest diverted attention from myriad problems and challenges. China’s showcase cities --- notably Shanghai and Hong Kong, both of which I’ve visited --- are much more than mere Potemkin facades. They are the real deal. Go into the hinterlands, however, and you’ll find pollution, poverty and political unrest all too often.

I for one am not prepared to repeat Paul Kennedy’s 1987 blunder, much less to draw too sharp an analogy to the fall of Rome.

There… I feel better already.

Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 2:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: A Novel Approach to Politics

Source: Truthout (8-9-08)

ABC News's political blog, "The Note," points out this week that Paris Hilton is issuing policy statements while John McCain nominates his wife for a topless beauty contest. The world's turned upside down. Who could blame a person for thinking that chronicling such oddness is beyond the skills of simple journalists? This is a job for the novelists....

... Finally, here's one to send Ayn Rand spinning: The White House projects next year's federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion, and that's not counting a possible $25 billion bailout of mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or the total costs of fighting in the Middle East, largely kept in the bottom drawer where they're hard to find. Yet this week, our Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that by year's end, the Iraqi government - the regime in power because we put them there - may have a budget surplus as high as $79 billion.

Iraq, as in "war-torn" Iraq. A surplus! Seventy-nine billion after we've poured $100 billion a year into that country and more than 4,100 American lives - so far.

Seventy-nine billion based on the record prices we're paying at the gas pumps, and they're not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and housing, making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005 and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10 percent of the Iraqi budget went toward reconstruction of their own country, which means that, once again, American taxpayers have been picking up the slack - $48 billion US allocated for reconstruction costs since we rolled into Baghdad more than five years ago.

By the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Admittedly, a lot of those billions doubtless line the pockets of American contractors who've done little if any of what they were hired to do - and endangered Iraqis and our own troops with shoddy, dangerous workmanship. But remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress back in 2003, before the war? "We're dealing with a county that can really finance its own reconstruction," he said, "and relatively soon."

Remember, too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq - you break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as "surplus."

Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 1:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 8, 2008

Economist Editorial: Russian Intellectuals, the Hand that Feeds Them

Source: The Economist (8-8-08)

THEY did not like each other much, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Russia’s liberal intelligentsia. Solzhenitsyn, who in the West was considered its paramount flower, was as rude about it as he was about almost everything else. He refused to use the word intelligentsia, engineering instead the ugly and pejorative obrazovanshchina, roughly “educatedness”. The intelligentsia responded in kind: it paid tribute to his courage, read his works in samizdat but was spooked by his anti-Western attitude and refused to recognise him as one of their number.

His main charge was that the intelligentsia had failed in its most vital task—to speak on behalf of the people suppressed by an authoritarian state. Members had become part of the system, allowing themselves to get comfortable in its nooks and crannies. “A hundred years ago,” he wrote in 1974, “the Russian intelligentsia considered a death sentence to be a sacrifice. Today an administrative reprimand is considered a sacrifice.” He spelt out his commandments in capital letters: “DON’T LIE! DON’T PARTICIPATE IN LIES, DON’T SUPPORT A LIE!”

When Solzhenitsyn wrote in this way, few dared to argue publicly with the great Russian writer-in-exile. But when he returned to Russia in 1994 he became a figure from the past. Few famous writers or artists came to pay respect as he lay in state. The most prominent faces were those of Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

“The Gulag Archipelago”, published in 1973, had shaken the very foundations of the Soviet system, but it did not make the country immune from the restoration of Soviet symbols and elements. Russia today is ruled by the KGB elite, has a Soviet anthem, servile media, corrupt courts and a rubber-stamping parliament. A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was “an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society”. Mr Putin bears a large share of responsibility for all this, but that does not exempt the Russian intelligentsia from its share. Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition.

Shortly before Mr Putin was due to stand down as Russia’s president, Nikita Mikhalkov, a prominent Russian film director, together with a couple of Mr Putin’s other fans, wrote a letter “on behalf of Russian artists” pleading with him to stay in power. The letter provoked indignation and an open letter from an opposing camp, telling Mr Putin to go. The two letters were a blip on the intelligentsia’s cardiogram, which had been showing few signs of life. The death of its greatest intellectual is likely to become another blip on the same largely dormant machine.

The very word intelligentsia is a Russian invention. In the West it usually evokes the image of a talented intellectual, otherworldly, harassed by the state, soulful and conscientious. But the Soviet intelligentsia was different. It was summoned into being by the state for a particular purpose, one that had little in common with its 19th-century antecedents.

In Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals (“The Coast of Utopia”), Alexander Herzen laments that Russia has made no contribution to philosophy and political discourse. “Yes, one! The intelligentsia,” retorts one of his friends. “Well, it’s a horrible word,” comments another. “What does it mean?” asks Herzen. “It means us. A unique Russian phenomenon, the intellectual opposition considered as a social force.”

Mr Stoppard’s characters are strangers in today’s Russia. Their hatred of autocracy, their lacerating criticism and their ability to articulate the concerns of the oppressed seem naive and out of date. Has the Russian intelligentsia lost its social force or its intellectual power? Or does the phenomenon exist only in an authoritarian society with no functioning parliament? Was Solzhenitsyn right in his diagnosis of the Russian intelligentsia, that it amounted to no more than people with diplomas and good jobs?

Solzhenitsyn was certainly not the first Russian intellectual to criticise the intelligentsia. Self-criticism and repentance have long been part of its identity. In “Vekhi”, an important self-reflecting book written in 1909, Sergei Bulgakov describes the sorry state of the intelligentsia, its conceit towards its own people, its lack of discipline and decency. “Russian society, exhausted by preceding tension and failures, is in a state of some numbness and apathy, spiritual disjunction and depression…Russian literature is flooded by a muddy wave of pornography and sensationalism.”

Bolshevik Russia had no need for reflective thinkers like Bulgakov. He was among the first Russian philosophers to be expelled by Lenin in 1922. Many of his readers vanished into prison camps.

Come into my parlour
Lenin and Stalin wiped out the old Russian intelligentsia as a political force. Yet, as culture-centric dictators, they bribed and remoulded the finest examples to their own needs. For example the Moscow Art Theatre, which embodied the Chekhovian intelligentsia, was gradually converted into a Soviet institution. Its actors were showered with privileges and comforts, were allowed to travel abroad and could rest in government sanitariums for as long as they could lend their art to the purposes of the Bolshevik state. In the late 1920s the Soviet government started to give out large plots of land to selected artists, scientists and engineers in a special compound.

Vasily Kachalov was a Moscow Art Theatre actor who played Chekhovian parts. According to his son, he dealt with the ambiguity of his new position by heavy drinking. And when drunk he cursed himself for allowing the state to see him as a symbol of continuity between the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia.

In fact it was scientists, physicists particularly, who were at the core of the Soviet intelligentsia as a social phenomenon. Andrei Zorin, a historian at Oxford, argues that the intelligentsia was largely the product of nuclear research. Stalin needed a nuclear bomb and realised that scientists’ brains do not work unless you allow them a certain amount of freedom. The conditions created for the scientists were close to ideal: they had status, money, equipment and no distractions. “Science was the favourite child in the hands of the government,” says Vladimir Fortov, a member of Russia’s Academy of Science. “It was prestigious and well paid. We could do our research and not concern ourselves with anything else.”

Russian nuclear physicists were settled in closed or semi-closed towns and housed not in barracks but in attractive cottages, which resembled Swiss chalets or small Russian mansions, amid forests. The best Russian scientists were exempted from joining the Communist Party and had direct access to the Kremlin. The fact that Andrei Sakharov was one of Russia’s top nuclear physicists, the father of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, and a man who had direct contact with Lavrenty Beria, the security chief, gave special power and meaning to his dissent.

The scientific colonies were well supplied not only with food but also with culture. The political clout which scientists possessed allowed them to invite artists who were not allowed to perform before larger audiences. Vladimir Vysotsky, an iconic Russian poet, singer and rebel, gave one of his first public concerts in Dubna, a nuclear-research town.

Russia’s military needs led to an overproduction of all kinds of scientists, matched by a hyper-production of culture, says Mr Zorin. The consumers of this culture were the millions of engineers and scientists who worked in research institutes and construction offices with a postbox number for an address. In reality, the Soviet economy could not accommodate them all: as the Soviet joke had it, they “pretended to work and the state pretended to pay”.

A large number of educated, intelligent and underemployed people in their 30s and 40s with little prospect of moving up the career ladder provided a perfect milieu for brewing liberal ideas. With time, they formed a political class. They were not dissidents and they relied on the state for provisions, but they were fed up with the restrictions imposed by Soviet ideology and they were critical of the system.

They wanted to live “like people do in a civilised world”, they wanted to travel abroad, get food without queuing and have access to information. But they neither anticipated nor desired the dismembering of the Soviet Union.

It was this political class of intelligentsia that prepared for perestroika and became the main support base for Mikhail Gorbachev. Perestroika offered everything that the intelligentsia desired while still keeping the Soviet Union in place. The late 1980s were, perhaps, the happiest years for the intelligentsia, combining a degree of freedom of expression with continuing state support. When in August 1991 Communist and KGB hardliners mounted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, hundreds of thousands of the Russian intelligentsia gathered in front of parliament to defend the achievements of perestroika.

“I think of August 1991 with great tenderness and nostalgia. I thought then it was one of the highest moments in Russian history, that it would become a national holiday,” says Lev Dodin, the artistic director of the celebrated Maly Drama Theatre. Boris Yeltsin, tall, handsome, with a shock of white hair, standing on a tank and speaking on Mr Gorbachev’s behalf, was an image made for canonisation...

...The country which had bloodlessly freed itself of communist ideology and had ended the cold war was experiencing a collective inferiority complex. The end of the Soviet Union did not produce anything resembling the artistic energy created by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 or the years that followed. Russian writers failed to fill a linguistic vacuum left by several decades of the devaluation of serious language. The country still lacks the words to describe the scale of events that have taken place over the past 20 years.

Ideological and economic collapse deprived Russia’s intelligentsia of status, money and exclusivity. The very concept began to fall apart. “Capitalism was alien to the intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is a function of monarchy—normal bourgeois societies do not have it,” says Sergei Kapitsa, a respected scientist. It was no surprise that most of Russia’s intelligentsia did not recognise Yeltsin as one of “theirs”. For many scientists, Yeltsin’s were the “lost years”.

This may help to explain why a large part of Russia’s scientific and artistic elite welcomed Mr Putin with open arms. Solzhenitsyn himself refused to receive an award from Yeltsin—whom he saw as a man who had humiliated Russia—but accepted one from Mr Putin, seeing in him a symbol of national resurgence (although he found many aspects of Putin’s Russia unpalatable).

The Putin years have split the Russian intelligentsia. Dissidents and other sharp critics still exist in Russia today, but they have diverged from the country’s cultural establishment, which does not see Mr Putin as alien to their interests. It is not just financial handouts that have made him attractive—although they have helped. The centralisation of the state with an added measure of nationalism has created a new sense of the return of status plus the flattery of the state’s attention.

Mr Putin’s unexpected visits to Moscow theatres and impromptu remarks on productions leave artistic directors, who once symbolised the intelligentsia, mesmerised. When a famous scientist received a medal from Mr Putin’s hands he was astonished by how down-to-earth the former president was.

The Kremlin pays due attention to science and culture these days. Although it bashes non-governmental organisations, it has created a public chamber of approved and loyal members of the intelligentsia, which includes scientists, artists and lawyers. One of the first public appearances of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s newly elected president was as a trustee of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

The sense of success and inclusion is harder to resist than the wrath of the state. Carrots are more corrupting than sticks. This phenomenon is powerfully described in Vasily Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate” (1960). One of its central characters is Viktor, a talented physicist who stoically defends his science in the face of likely arrest, but becomes weak and submissive when Stalin calls him to wish him success. “Viktor had found the strength to renounce life itself—but now he seemed unable to refuse candies and cookies.”

The adaptation of “Life and Fate” for the stage was put on recently by Mr Dodin in the Gulag town of Norilsk. When the powerful production came to Moscow it was played in a richly decorated new theatre built by a famous Russian actor who had signed a letter defending the shambolic and shameful trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil magnate who fell foul of the Kremlin. Unlike Mr Grossman’s character, few people in the audience had experienced the burning shame of Viktor’s choice. The moral qualities of the Soviet intelligentsia have always been exaggerated, says Mr Fortov. He says that scientists and artists happily informed on each other even when nobody demanded it. “They did so of their own volition.” By the same token, nobody had made Mr Fortov sign the letter about Mr Khodorkovsky’s trial or hang Mr Putin’s portrait on his wall.

Russia still produces brave individuals, independent and conscientious enough to speak the truth to the state. But they remain individual voices. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken Russian journalist, raised a few sighs and lamentations—but not street protests. Her funeral, which produced a massive outpouring of sentiment in Europe, was a muted and depressing affair in Moscow. It did not bring journalists together, but exposed the gap between those who serve the state and those who serve the public. Mr Putin callously said at the time that Politkovskaya’s work had minimal impact in Russia. Worse still, he was right. The country was almost deaf to her voice.

See no evil, speak no evil
Russia today is much freer than it was for most of the Soviet era. However undemocratic it may be, it is not a totalitarian state. The room for honest speaking is far greater than Russian intellectuals make use of. As Marietta Chudakova, a historian of Russian literature and courageous public figure, puts it, “Nobody has been commanded to lie down—and everyone is already on the ground.” The media is suffocated by self-censorship more than by the Kremlin’s pressure. Nikolai Svanidze, a Russian journalist who works for a state TV channel, admits: “There is no person who tells [me] what you can and what you can’t do. It is in the air. If you know what is permitted and what is not, you’re in the right place. If you don’t, you are not.”

Yet, as Russia struggles with corruption and abuse of state power, the need for a spiky intelligentsia is greater than ever. As Sergei Bulgakov wrote in 1909, “Russia cannot renew itself without renewing, among other things, its intelligentsia”.


Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Peggy Noonan: Political Cycles

Source: WSJ (8-8-08)

You're in a plane and you're flying over the campaign at a level of about 10,000 feet, and you look down and see: Not much has changed. Battle lines fixed, topography the same, troops pretty much where they were.

But land the plane, walk around and talk to people, and you realize: This thing is moving. Things are shifting around a bit. That's what I see looking back at the past four weeks.

For the first time the idea began to take hold that John McCain can win this thing. You saw the USA Today-Gallup poll this week, with Mr. McCain gaining six points since late June among those Gallup dubbed likely voters. Mr. McCain took the lead, 49% to 45%. Among registered voters, it's still Barack Obama, 47% to 44%. A poll came out saying people are tired of hearing about Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain took the lead in YouTube hits. Small stuff, and there will be a lot of twists and turns before this is over, but there's movement down there beneath the crust of the Earth.

Mr. Obama got tagged the past month as something new, not the candidate from Men's Vogue but arrogant, aloof and somehow ethereal. There is no there there. Everyone I know plays the game of "This election is just like 1932," or '52, or whatever. "It's 1960—the youthful charismatic JFK versus the boring and so Republican Nixon." "No, it's '92 and the youthful charismatic Clinton versus the tired old Bush." This election is, in fact, exactly like the 2008 election. But the other day a friend said something I hadn't heard before: "This is 1948, and Obama is Tom Dewey"—the sleek, well-groomed, inevitable one who lost. I pondered this and said maybe he's Dewey, but Mr. McCain's not Truman, not so far. He is still, on the trail, his scattered self, not "Give 'Em Hell Harry." But the point is, even the clichés have begun to shift.

The daring and exciting European trip was probably a wash, and possibly a mistake in the bridge-too-far sense. During the coverage, pundits were always saying the trip leveled the playing field on foreign affairs between Sens. Obama and McCain. But Mr. McCain isn't Mr. Obama's problem in foreign affairs. Mr. McCain early on positioned himself, reasonably or unreasonably, depending on your view, as the candidate of possible new wars. I don't think people want new wars. Mr. Obama's problem on foreign affairs is his own youth and inexperience. In a time of high stakes, do we want Mr. Untried and Untested?

What Mr. Obama has been doing, and this started before the European trip and continued throughout, is making people see him as president. He's doing this when he ambles back to the back of the plane and leans over the reporters, in his shirtsleeves, speaking affably into their held-up mics and recorders, at the end of the victorious tour. That's what presidents do. He speaks to rapturous crowds in foreign capitals. That's what presidents do...

...Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama's arrogance. I said I didn't think it was arrogance but high self-regard. He said there's no difference. I said no, arrogance has an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way. Mr. Obama doesn't seem like that. He took down a machine without raising his voice. Extremely high self-regard, though, can itself be a problem.

"What's wrong with that?" my friend said. "You want a self-confident president."

I said yes, but it brings up the Churchill question. Churchill had been scored by an acquaintance for his own very high self-regard, and responded with what was for him a certain sheepishness. "We're all worms," he said, "but I do believe I am a glowworm." He believed he was great, and he was. Is Mr. Obama a glowworm? Does he have real greatness in him? Or is he, say, a product of the self-esteem campaign, that movement within the schools and homes of our country the past 25 years that says the way to get a winner is to tell the kid he's a winner every day? You can get some true people of achievement that way, because some people need a lot of reinforcement to rise. But you can also get, not to put too fine a point of it, empty suits that take on a normal shape only because they're so puffed up with ego.

Is Mr. Obama's self-conception in line with his gifts, depth, wisdom and character? That's the big question, I suspect, on a number of minds.

As for Mr. McCain, I think he had the best moment of the month this week at the big motorcycle convention in Sturgis, S.D., when he was greeted with that mighty roar. And his great line: "As you may know, not long ago a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day." Oh, that was good.

There's a thing that's out there and it's big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, "the silent center," "the silent majority," "the coalition," "the base." The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it's big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains. And watching that McCain event—vroom vroom—one got the sense it is perhaps beginning to pay attention to the campaign. I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed, and in ways you can even see from 10,000 feet.



Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Kevin Peraino: Israel's Separation Barrier Has Blocked West Bank Bombers, but May Be Creating a New Threat Within

Source: Newsweek (8-8-08)

Ghassan Abu Tir's favorite television series was a Turkish soap opera called "Noor." The 22-year-old East Jerusalem hard hat rarely missed an episode. The show's setting—a luxurious villa along the Bosporus—is about as far from cramped and conservative Jerusalem as one can get. Some evenings, the Palestinian backhoe driver would sit with his brother on the balcony of their grandparents' stone house, smoking L&Ms and trying to figure out how he could afford his own villa. The numbers never added up. Building a house and buying his own backhoe would cost more than $100,000; on Abu Tir's salary of barely $1,000 per month, it would take forever to save that much.

He met a girl he wanted to marry, but his parents said no. "If you want her," his father said, "you'll have to build your life first."

Despair at that prospect is no excuse for what happened later, but it may be the beginning of an explanation. Around 2 p.m. on July 22, Abu Tir guided his earthmover toward a busy intersection in the heart of Jewish West Jerusalem. Then he plunged the tractor into a line of traffic stopped at the light, crushing and overturning cars, and injuring more than a dozen drivers. The attack ended in minutes when Israeli passersby rushed up to the cabin and shot Abu Tir dead. Such rampages have become something of a regular occurrence this year. Three weeks before Abu Tir snapped, another East Jerusalem construction worker plowed his tractor into a crowd of commuters on busy Jaffa Road, killing three people and injuring 45. Back in March a third East Jerusalemite slipped into the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in West Jerusalem and opened fire in the school library, killing eight students.

Attacks in central Jerusalem were frequent at the height of the second intifada, but in recent years they have been relatively rare. Israeli conventional wisdom has long held that the living standards of East Jerusalemites, which are significantly higher than those of Palestinians in the West Bank, keep residents comparatively docile. But something seems to have changed. According to statistics compiled by Israeli security sources, 13 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians this year in Jerusalem—as many as were killed in all of last year by Palestinians from any region. Already this year, 71 East Jerusalemites have been arrested by Israeli security forces—far more than in any of the previous seven years. The Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service, has warned that Jerusalem's Palestinian population is quietly becoming radicalized.

In the Israeli press, the bloody outbursts have been described either as the acts of lone madmen or, paradoxically, the work of militant conspiracies. Neither explanation satisfies. There is no compelling evidence that the incidents were coordinated, but there are common denominators. All three attackers came from small, provincial East Jerusalem neighborhoods on stony hills just minutes apart. Since the summer of 1967, when East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel, the district has built close ties with both the Israeli economy and Palestinian culture. That combination has been a formula for relative stability, earning East Jerusalemites the trust of Israelis on the city's west side.

But in recent years Israel has dramatically altered the sector's landscape. In 2002, former prime minister Ariel Sharon began building a 460-mile barrier—in much of the city, a 20-foot-high concrete wall—that slices deep into Palestinian territory and divides neighbor from neighbor. A network of new access roads and checkpoints has further chopped the territory into a hodgepodge of Palestinian enclaves. Even as Israeli settlements proliferate in East Jerusalem, building permits for Palestinian homes are becoming a rarity. "We're screwing them royally," says Danny Seidemann, an Israeli rights lawyer. "We've cut them off from the West Bank without integrating them into Israel. We've created a state of limbo, and that's the most radical change since 1967."

The situation is full of uncomfortable ironies. It is by now an article of faith that the separation barrier has kept potential suicide bombers from crossing out of the West Bank. Yet with their blue ID cards, East Jerusalem's 250,000 Arab residents enjoy significantly greater freedom of movement within Israel than West Bank Palestinians. Even as Israeli leaders have been talking more than fighting with traditional antagonists like Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria, violence is spiking in the heart of Jerusalem. And while the biggest sticking point in negotiations with the Palestinians is the issue of dividing Jerusalem—lame-duck Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week that he didn't think a peace deal including the city was possible this year because of the deadlock—the longer the peace process drags on, the more angry the local population is likely to get. Olmert's decision to step down as party leader in September amid corruption allegations makes any possible resolution even more remote.

A few days after the bulldozer attack, I visited Abu Tir's family. His parents' house, ringed with bougainvillea, sits on a high ridge overlooking the controversial Israeli settlement of Har Homa. Abu Tir's 19-year-old brother Bilal also works as a backhoe driver for an Israeli company. Both brothers quit school after eighth grade. East Jerusalem boys often drop out of high school to earn money in the construction business, but the trade-offs can be cruel. Local women tend to stay in school until their 20s, creating difficult marital imbalances in male-dominated Palestinian society. And high salaries can't erase the guilt and bitterness many young Arabs feel about working for Israeli companies. Bilal says he's been working in Har Homa for the past four years. "It's an extremely difficult feeling," he says, "but I need the money. If I don't do it, someone else will take the job." The heavy-handed tactics of Israel's security services following his brother's rampage have only deepened his resentment. Shortly after the incident he was picked up and interrogated by the Shin Bet. According to Bilal, one of the officers who questioned him warned: "If I see you again, I'll kill you."...

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 7, 2008

David S. Broder: A Way Back to the High Road for Obama, McCain?

Source: Washington Post (8-7-08)

The first question I asked John McCain and then Barack Obama was: How do you feel about the tone and direction of the campaign so far?

No surprise. Both men pronounced themselves thoroughly frustrated by the personal bitterness and negativism they have seen in the two months since they learned they would be running against each other.

"I'm very sorry about it," McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.

Obama, in a phone interview yesterday from Elkhart, Ind., argued that "the classic tit-for-tat campaigning" of recent weeks "is part of the politics of the past that we have to move beyond." Ironically, having turned down McCain's proposal for weekly joint town halls, Obama argued that the formal debates, starting in late September, may refocus the campaign on real issues.

On June 4, McCain proposed 10 town-hall-style debates before screened audiences of uncommitted independent voters across the country. Obama countered by offering two such sessions this summer, one on Independence Day and one in August, and the idea died. Three days ago, Obama said he would participate only in the three debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the first of which is scheduled for Sept. 26.

Since the idea of joint town meetings was scrapped, the campaign has featured tough and often negative ads and speeches. They culminated last week in an exchange in which Obama said that McCain and his supporters were calling attention to the Democrat's unusual name and the fact that "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

The McCain campaign in turn accused Obama of playing "the race card."

In the interviews, both candidates expressed indignation at what was being said about them. "I'm not going to be smeared," McCain declared. "I went through that once, and I'm not going to do it again. . . . If anybody says I'm a racist . . . I'm not going to stand for that."

Obama insisted that he had never made such an accusation. And he condemned McCain for suggesting that "I would rather lose a war to win a political campaign. That is patently offensive. When his campaign ran an ad suggesting that I had refused to visit wounded troops because I couldn't have TV cameras with me, reporters immediately said that was patently false. . . . I'm not going to sit back and let my record be distorted."

When I asked Obama how he thought the campaign could be returned to the issues, he said he hoped that the two conventions would "offer each party a chance to showcase its best ideas" and that the three scheduled presidential debates then "will allow people to see Senator McCain and myself interact in a way that keeps people more honest because you're standing there face to face."

I told Obama that McCain made exactly that point in arguing for the early joint appearances. What McCain actually said was: "When you have to stand on a stage with your opponent, as I've done in other campaigns, you obviously have a tendency to improve the relationship. . . . When you have to spend time with somebody, I think it changes the equation."

I asked Obama if he had any regrets about turning down McCain's early June invitation to start the joint appearances back then. He said, "I think the notion that somehow as a consequence of not having joint appearances, Senator McCain felt obliged to suggest that I'd rather lose a war to win a campaign doesn't automatically follow. I think we each have control over ourselves and our campaigns, and we have to take responsibility for that." ...

Posted on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sam Roberts: Rich as Mayor Bloomberg Is, New Yorkers Feel He Cares

Source: NYT (8-7-08)

Seven years ago, Michael R. Bloomberg brashly introduced himself to New Yorkers as a billionaire candidate for mayor. Since then, he has periodically upbraided them for expecting government to solve every problem. At times, he seemed to suggest that constituents bedeviled by adversity just get over it. Meanwhile, he graduated from a mere garden-variety billionaire to possibly the richest person in New York.

But a funny thing has happened: A growing number of Mr. Bloomberg’s constituents, regardless of their own income, say he cares about people like them. The gain is most pronounced among New Yorkers earning under $75,000 a year.

Early in his first term, only about 1 in 20 New Yorkers making less than $30,000 said he empathized a lot with their needs and problems. Now, according to a comparison of New York Times polls, about 1 in 4 do — nearly the same proportion as among people who make more than $75,000.

Put another way, five years ago 44 percent of those in the lower income group said the mayor cared “not at all” about their needs. Now, only 12 percent say so. (Among people who make over $75,000, the doesn’t-care proportion started at 14 percent and has declined to 9 percent.)

And this is a man who has been known to appear out of touch, insensitive and more likely to imply “suck it up” than “I feel your pain.”

He girded for a transit strike in 2002 by buying a $600 24-speed mountain bike (he later donated it for Christmas to a 16-year-old diabetic from Brooklyn). Two summers ago, he did the unthinkable and congratulated Con Edison for its expertise in sparing customers beyond western Queens from a devastating blackout.

In June, when some parents complained about sweltering classrooms, Mr. Bloomberg was quoted as replying: “This is going to come as a very big surprise to you, but people of my generation went to schools without air-conditioners. ...I think it’s fair to say that if we closed the schools, most of the kids would be out there playing in the sun, as would I if I were a teenager or an adolescent.”

Just last month, responding to complaints that black rubber mats and other playground equipment get dangerously hot in the summer, the mayor said: “If it’s hot, don’t sit on it. Air-conditioning the slide is not something we can afford to do.” He later added: “Government can only do so much. Parents have a responsibility. The fact that rubber gets hot when it’s out in the bright sun in July and August shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”

Despite all that, Mr. Bloomberg has managed to project himself as just one of the guys. Just why that is the case remains a subject of some debate among political analysts.

Maybe, while life has gotten better for many, the mayor has succeeded in lowering expectations about how much government can deliver. Perhaps New Yorkers have become more receptive to unvarnished common sense than to political pandering. Perhaps it relates to his focus on public education, his subway riding or the fact that his fortune is self-made.

Whatever the underlying reason, his cultivated “Mayor Mike” persona seems to be sticking.

“Obviously, he cares,” Hilary Marmon, 73, a former teacher who lives in Queens on an income she said is less than $30,000, said in a follow-up interview to the latest poll. “I like what he does for the city. I like his attitude toward the arts, education.”

Kevin Flynn, 44, of the Lower East Side, a former cabbie who said he lives on disability payments of less than $15,000, said: “With just his attitude, that he does a lot with education, I think he looks out for people like us.”

Of course, there is also that 12 percent of people making under $30,000 who say he doesn’t care at all.

“Two years ago we had our food stamps cut, and with grocery prices we can’t keep food on our table,” said Sandy Lampros, 60, of Manhattan, who receives disability payments from Social Security. “Maybe he’s busy with other things to do, but we’re suffering.”...

Posted on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Daniel Lak: The New China, Emerging from History's Humiliation

Source: CBC (8-7-08)

China's contemporary rise from insular poverty to emerging superpower has been meteoric.

In the late 1970s, when senior leader Deng Xiaoping famously proclaimed, "to be rich is glorious," much of the country was poor, ravaged by recent history. Illiteracy was rampant, and few had access to television, radio, books or ideas beyond the thoughts of the late Mao Zedong.

Today, it's safe to say Deng's aphorism is taken to heart by China's 1.3 billion people. Getting rich is all the rage. Chinese goods flood world markets. Students from around the globe study at universities in Beijing and Shanghai. China has arrived.

So has national pride.

The Chinese people are proud of their country's resurgence, and they cheer on its athletes and business executives alike.

Yet many in this vast land worry that the world doesn't respect them as it should.

"A particularly important element in the formation of China's modern identity has been the legacy of the country's 'humiliation' at the hands of foreigners," writes journalist and East Asia scholar Orville Schell in the New York Review of Books.

In Chinese schools, students learn about "100 years of humiliation" by Western powers, from the virtual takeover of Chinese trade by European countries and the U.S. in the 1800s to Japan's brutal invasion of the country before and during the Second World War.

For Canadians, this is ancient history, but Chinese civilization is thousands of years old, and recent centuries seem like yesterday, says Jan Wong, a former Beijing correspondent for the Globe and Mail.

"In Canada, our history is so short," Wong says. "We've never been really invaded or occupied. We don't know what it's like to lose control of our borders. We just don't get it."

After the Communist takeover in Beijing in 1949, the West recognized Taiwan's government as the legitimate representative of China. That, combined with Mao Zedong's zealous drive to mould a revolutionary society out of centuries of feudalism, helped isolate Asia's largest country for generations.

Those memories still smoulder in China and help explain why Western concerns about Tibet, human rights and even pollution in Beijing often raise hackles.

Pro-Tibet protests during the Olympic torch relay to Beijing were to many Chinese yet more foreign interference in their country's internal affairs, just like the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century.

Hosting the Olympics was a dream of China's elite for more than a century, according to sports historian Xu Guoqi of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, a chance to show the world that the country mattered.

"It would mean that China could finally put the 19th-century label 'sick man of Asia' behind it, " Xu told CBC.ca, "and demonstrate that it must be treated as a major international power."

Xu reaches into the subtle and nuanced world of Chinese calligraphy to explain how the Olympics are viewed across his country.

The games, he says, are a weiji, a word formed from two Chinese characters — wei for danger, ji for opportunity. Literally, weiji means crisis, but it also takes its definition from its two root words.

"There are dangers [in hosting the Games]," Xu says, "There's pollution, traffic, the threat of terrorism and the possibility of mismanagement. But there's also great opportunity for China to shine. That's weiji."

Westerners often misunderstand the subtleties and nuances of China, says Daniel Bell, a Canadian who teaches philosophy at Beijing's Tsinghua University, mistaking Chinese nationalism for blind obedience to authority.

"People here are aware of the problems their country faces, now and in the coming years," says Bell, author of China's New Confucianism, Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, "They are very self-critical, and many see the Olympics as a chance to show the world a friendly face, confident, not bullied by foreign powers, but not chauvinistically nationalist either."...

Posted on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jim Yardley: China's Leaders Are Resilient in Face of Change

Source: International Herald Tribune (8-7-08)

As Beijing was starting construction on its main Olympic stadiums four years ago, China's vice president and leading political fixer, Zeng Qinghong, warned the 70 million members of the ruling Communist Party that the party itself could use some reconstruction.

Zeng argued that the "painful lessons" from the collapse of other Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe could not be ignored. He said China's cadres needed to "wake up" and realize that "a party's status as a party in power does not necessarily last as long as the party does."

Zeng, who is now retired, was alluding to the pressures of economic liberalization, political stagnation and globalization that many analysts have argued would ultimately topple one-party rule in China. The Olympics also posed a pressure point, as some analysts wondered whether the expectations and international scrutiny brought by the Games might help crack open another authoritarian political system - as happened in Seoul in 1988.

But if the Olympics have presented unmistakable challenges and crises, the Communist Party has proved resilient. Public appetite for reform has not waned, but the short-term byproduct of the Olympics has been an upsurge in Chinese patriotism that bolstered the party against international criticism after its crackdown on Tibetan protesters in March and the controversy over the international Olympic torch relay.

Economic and social change is so rapid in China that the Communist Party is sometimes depicted as an overwhelmed caretaker. But in the seven years since Beijing was awarded the Games, the party has adapted and navigated its way forward, loosening its grip on elements of society even as it crushes, or co-opts, threats to its hold on political power.
The party has absorbed entrepreneurs, urban professionals and university students into an elite class that is invested in the political status quo, if not necessarily enthralled with it. Private capitalists may be symbols of a changing China. But the party has clung tenaciously to the most profitable pillar industries and the financial system, and it is not always easy to distinguish the biggest private companies from their state-run counterparts in China's hybrid economy.

Faced with public anger over corruption, Chinese officials are now required to attend annual training sessions in a nationwide, if not always successful, program to raise competency and promote accountability. And if officials long since abandoned Maoist-style thought control, the propaganda machine can still stir up nationalist passions or shut them off, depending on the party's priorities. It relentlessly positions the party as the guardian of national pride, proving adept at the task even in the more freewheeling era of the Internet.

"This is a very reflective party," said David Shambaugh, a political scientist at George Washington University. "They are adaptive, reflective and open, within limits. But survival is the bottom line. And they see survival as an outcome of adaptation."

The ultimate question is whether adaptation alone is enough. Many analysts say the lack of democratic reform is constraining China's economic efficiency and that reforms are needed to confront issues like stark inequality and environmental degradation. Thousands of protests erupt every year over illegal land seizures and official corruption.

The Tibet crisis revealed Chinese nationalism as a major political force, even as it exposed unresolved domestic issues about freedom of religion and minority rights. To some analysts, the harsh official response to Tibet revealed an insecure, defensive leadership.

"The party doesn't have self-confidence in its legitimacy," said Zhang Xianyang, a liberal political analyst in Beijing. "So the government overreacts in the face of social turbulence. I think the regime is not as strong as outsiders and the common people think. But they are not as weak as they feel themselves."

For the Communist Party, China's selection in July 2001 as host of the 2008 Olympics was a political and historic coup: a gift they could deliver to a thrilled citizenry and a new focal point, seven years in the distant future, which could be used to rally national pride.

Inside the party, leaders were intently focused on the viability of their system. The party faced no organized opposition; none is allowed. But the leadership, fretting about historical trends, had commissioned exhaustive autopsies of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. By June 2001, a month before the Olympic announcement, the Communist Party's Central Committee organization department, which oversees party promotions and training, published a blunt report that revealed deep public anger and recommended "system reforms" to address official corruption and incompetence.

China's economy was soaring, and the country was preparing to join the World Trade Organization. But if free trade could help China's exports, the party report also warned that deeper integration into the world economy "may bring growing dangers and pressures, and it can be predicted that in the ensuing period the number" of public protests "may jump, severely harming social stability."
The dismantling of the planned economy had already presented an ideological challenge: What to do about the emerging class of capitalists who were rapidly accruing wealth? Admitting capitalists struck old-guard Marxists as apostasy, but it made smart politics for a party leery of any group emerging as a rival for power. Less than two weeks before the Olympic announcement, former President Jiang Zemin chose the party's 80th anniversary to declare that capitalists should be invited to join its ranks...


Posted on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 6:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Katia Bachko: Déjà Vu All Over Again ... Olympics coverage in 1980 and now

Source: Columbia Journalism Review (8-6-08)

[Katia Bachko is a writer, editor, reporter and reader based in New York City.]

The year was 1980, and the United States was boycotting the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Correspondents from the USSR filed stories about the difficulty getting press accreditation, government restrictions on the media, the plight of the local populace and the removal of political dissidents from the cities.

Fast forward 28 years, and dispatches from Beijing ring all too familiar. Here are a few excerpts from articles published in 1980s and their modern counterparts. Meanwhile, fighting in Afghanistan continues.

Communism Can Control the Weather?

Then: Right now the entire village is swept by steady, daily rain. But officials insist even the weather will clear for the games.—Christian Science Monitor, July 15, 1980

Now: But Chinese officials downplayed the forecast and said the games must go on. “Before and immediately after August 8, we will not see persistent heavy rainfall,” said Wang Jianjie, deputy director of the meteorological bureau.—New York Post, August 4, 2008

Locals won’t attend the games

Then: Most will be unable to buy tickets to the Games or to the large program of cultural events planned for Olympic visitors. Although the U.S.-led boycott has cut heavily into the number of Western visitors, thousands of foreigners will still be pouring into the city.—Associated Press, July 14, 1980

Now: I recently asked a good friend, a 60-year-old Beijing chef, if she was looking forward to the Olympics. As we walked down a back alley after a trip to the market, she told me that she did not have tickets to any of the events, and that she did not know anyone who does.

“The Olympics and the lao bai xin” — the common folk — “are two separate things,” she replied. “I’m not concerned with the Olympics. I’m more worried about where I’m going to get my oil, rice, meat and vegetables.”—The New York Times, August 4, 2008

Protestors and other undesirables are removed

Then:About 50 dissident activists, including Dr. Andrei Sakharov, have been arrested, exiled, tried, imprisoned, or otherwise removed from the streets of the five games cities since last November. KGB agents make it clear dissidents may not remain in Moscow during the games.— Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 1980

Now:It is common for Chinese authorities to chase out petitioners during key events, such as the Communist Party congresses, but the intensity of the current effort is unprecedented, petitioners say.

“They are cracking down on us more than ever before. They regard us as enemies who will disrupt the stability of the country,” said Li Li, 44, from Shanxi, who has been petitioning for seven years over her husband’s firing from a management job at a steel plant. —Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2008

Increased police and military presence

Then: The huge members of police, Army, and KGB officials in Moscow is one of the phenomena of the games so far. They are ensuring priority for games traffic and isolating local people from tourists.

Some Soviet sources believe the normal number of uniformed police in Moscow is about 80,000 (1 for every 100 people.) The number seems to have tripled, putting the number of uniformed personnel at 240,000, excluding Army and KGB.—Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 1980

Now:China has laid on massive security for the games that kick off Aug. 8, as much to prevent protests by political or religious dissidents as to stop crime and terrorism. A 100,000-strong force of police and special forces are safeguarding venues.

Hundreds of thousands of Beijing residents have also been formed into voluntary security patrols.

In addition, a force of 34,000 soldiers has been positioned in Beijing and other cities such as Shanghai that are hosting Olympic events, Senior Col. Tian Yixiang, of the Olympics security command center, told reporters. —Associated Press, August 1, 2008...

Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 8:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Asra Q. Nomani: You Still Can't Write About Muhammad

Source: WSJ (8-6-08)

[Ms. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam"]

Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha's life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecstatic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 publication date of "The Jewel of Medina" -- a tale of lust, love and intrigue in the prophet's harem.

It's not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.

Random House feared the book would become a new "Satanic Verses," the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book's Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones's novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it "disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now." He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received "from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided "to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."

This saga upsets me as a Muslim -- and as a writer who believes that fiction can bring Islamic history to life in a uniquely captivating and humanizing way. "I'm devastated," Ms. Jones told me after the book got spiked, adding, "I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored -- silenced -- by historians." Last month, Ms. Jones signed a termination agreement with Random House, so her literary agent could shop the book to other publishers...

...On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for "fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims" and concern for "the safety and security of the Random House building and employees."

All this saddens me. Literature moves civilizations forward, and Islam is no exception. There is in fact a tradition of historical fiction in Islam, including such works as "The Adventures of Amir Hamza," an epic on the life of Muhammad's uncle. Last year a 948-page English translation was published, ironically, by Random House. And, for all those who believe the life of the prophet Muhammad can't include stories of lust, anger and doubt, we need only read the Quran (18:110) where, it's said, God instructed Muhammad to tell others: "I am only a mortal like you."

Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 4:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mark Z. Barabak: Obama, McCain Find Race Issue Isn't Easily Discarded

Source: LAT (8-6-08)

Race has bedeviled this country from the start, when the Founding Fathers ducked the slavery issue for fear of killing the nation in its cradle.

Obviously, much has changed. For one thing, Americans are seriously weighing the prospect of elevating a black man to the White House in November.


But as this past week's debate over "the race card" illustrates, there is still no subject in American politics as fraught as the color of a candidate's skin.

Angered by remarks Barack Obama made to an audience in rural Missouri, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is white, accused the Illinois senator, who is black, of using race as wedge to win support.

Democrats accused McCain of cynically turning things on their head; by crying foul, they claimed, McCain managed to put race front and center just as he was stepping up his personal attacks on Obama.

Both candidates stand to gain -- and lose -- from the testy back-and-forth, underscoring just how incendiary, and complex, racial politics remain more than 200 years after vexing the first set of American politicians.

"It is not to Barack Obama's advantage to make this a big issue," said Dan T. Carter, a history professor at the University of South Carolina, who has written extensively about race and politics. At the same time, McCain cannot afford to be seen as exploiting racial tensions for political gain, Carter said: "It is simply not acceptable to the majority of people, including many of those who may be sympathetic."

That may explain why the candidates acted the way they did: Obama ignoring McCain and leaving his initial response to aides -- who quickly shifted the subject to the economy and foreign policy -- and McCain portraying himself as the victim of a rhetorical mugging...

Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sidney Blumenthal: The Strange Death of Republican America

Source: Huffington Post (8-5-08)

On July 29, President George W. Bush appeared at the Lincoln Electric Company in Euclid, Ohio, where he spoke about energy and then asked the audience for questions. The opportunity for people in a small town in the Midwest to pose a question directly to the president of the United States is a rare one, possibly a once in a lifetime experience. "And now I'd like to answer some questions, if you have any," said Bush. But his request was returned with silence. Bush filled the air with an awkward joke: "After seven-and-a-half years, if I can't figure out how to dodge them, I shouldn't..." The audience tittered nervously. Bush continued, "If you don't have any questions, I can tell you a lot of interesting stories." The crowd laughed again, but no one raised a hand. "Okay," said Bush, "I'll tell you a story."

Despite the daily tracking polls and the back-and-forth of the candidates, the underlying story of the 2008 presidential campaign remains the Bush presidency and how it brought about the end of the long era of Republican political dominance that began in 1968 with the election of Richard Nixon. That story is the subject of my new book, "The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party."

Bush has the lowest sustained popularity among modern presidents. The Republican Party has fallen farther behind the Democratic Party in party identification and favorable ratings than it has in decades. Democrats are poised to make dramatic gains in their numbers in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The previously little-known Senator Barack Obama could have vaulted to become the presumptive Democratic nominee only as a response to Bush. Senator John McCain's emergence at the presumptive Republican nominee is also one of Bush's consequences. Without the crackup of the conservative movement and the fragmentation of the Republican primary field, McCain would not have had his opening. His candidacy is as much a manifestation of the shattering of the Republican phalanx as Obama's. Whatever the outcome of their contest, the party as it was is over. Today no one can even envision when the Republicans will control the presidency and both houses of the Congress as they did just two years ago.

Bush's decline is an end to more than family dynasty; it is an end of political empire. Bush, "The Decider," was the implementer of complementary radical plans for an imperial presidency and a one-party government to be ruled for generations by Republicans.

Dick Cheney, whose Secret Service code name when he was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff, "Backseat," suggested his invisible influence, was the originator of the imperial presidency. It was a overarching idea he took from the Nixon White House, when he was then counselor Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, and elaborated as vice president into a doctrine of an unaccountable and unfettered "unitary executive" that had the right unto itself even to order torture.

Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, whom he has called "The Architect" and "Turdblossom," was the designer of the grand realignment that would lock in Republican control for time immemorial.

But Bush's fiascos, from Gulf to shining Gulf, from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to FEMA in New Orleans, were the culmination of Republican ideology and have unraveled Republican strengths built up over 40 years. I explain the scope of Bush's damage to his party in a talk on July 31 at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., which can be viewed here.

Though the Republican era is drawing to an end, a new Democratic one is not inevitable. Its dawning would require not only winning the White House and the Congress but also governing together successfully, which has not been possible since Lyndon Johnson was president.

In the meantime, the growing intensity of the day-to-day campaign has turned the focus away from the Bush presidency. Bush has achieved the weird effect of being the incumbent, still responsible, and increasingly ignored as somehow irrelevant. The silence that greeted Bush in Euclid, Ohio is symptomatic of his fading while still being present. Dominating politics just a short time ago, his elusiveness can only work to the advantage of the Republicans. If the Democratic campaign allows him to escape from being in the picture it will have forgotten a cardinal law of politics that voters can be led into the future only by making the election a referendum on the past.

Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Hillel Italie: Solzhenitsyn Changed Story of Soviet Union

Source: Moscow Times (8-6-08)

[Hillel Italie is AP National Writer.]

The legacy of Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn serves as a reminder that books can matter as much as life and death.

Solzhenitsyn never stood before a tank in Tiananmen Square, but novels such as "Cancer Ward" and "The First Circle" landed like roadblocks before Soviet might, their power confirmed and magnified by his government's determination to stop them.

"Writers are a problem, they are a great problem, thank God," said Jason Epstein, a longtime editor at Random House who worked with Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and others. "Without them, we would be lost."

Solzhenitsyn's works, many set in Stalinist prison camps, were documents of persecution; his life was an example. Few writers, in any century, so painfully lived through and recorded the events of his time. A front-line artillery captain in World War II, he was arrested for writing what he called "certain disrespectful remarks" about Stalin and served seven years in a labor camp in the barren steppe of Kazakhstan and three more years in internal exile in Central Asia.

A change in leadership -- the 1964 ousting of Nikita Khrushchev -- again made him an enemy. When his epic study of the Soviet prison system, "The Gulag Archipelago," was published, he was arrested and deported. "Anyone who has once taken up the WORD can never again evade it," he once wrote. "Mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone making everything his business; in the people of the East being vitally concerned with what is thought in the West, the people of the West vitally concerned with what goes on in the East."

Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer whose work challenged the apartheid regime, said Solzhenitsyn's death was a "tremendous loss" to literature. "But one can only be glad that there is this marvelous array of work," she said. "The work remains for our times and all times. He was quite extraordinary in bringing to us so many examples of the confusion and pain in the world that we still see today and is very apposite in the early 21st century."

The end of the Cold War means that we may never go back to a time when one writer's fate could set off the superpowers. But the world remains alive with Solzhenitsyns, from Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, put on trial in Turkey for referring to the mass slaughter of Armenians, to Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in 2006...

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

George Walden: How Chairman Mao led China to humiliation

Source: Times (8-6-08)

[George Walden's book China: A Wolf in the World? is published this month.]

The small dramas of the Olympics are tending to overshadow the historic event they symbolise: China's emergence from Maoist autarky and austerity to a great power, active in the world. How did we get here, in three short decades?

Everyone knows about the 1962 Cuba crisis, but it was another near-nuclear war seven years later that did more to change the world, as I have particular reason to remember. In the spring of 1969, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, I was strolling along the hutongs (city lanes) of Beijing, a six-foot, long-nosed imperialist trying to look inconspicuous at a time of raging chauvinism. I was there to check out reports the British mission had received that the Chinese were building a network of shelters and tunnels, Vietnam-style, against a possible Soviet attack. Peering into courtyards I found that, sure enough, they were.

Tensions with Moscow had been high ever since the launch of the Cultural Revolution three years earlier. “The New Disciples of Goebbels” was a typical headline on one of the many anti-Soviet articles in The People's Daily, and Pravda was hitting back in style. To outsiders it all seemed to be so much ideological steam - till the lid blew off.

Suddenly the Sino-Soviet frontier, the longest in the world, erupted in clashes on Damansky island, a disputed stretch of the Ussuri river. According to newly released Russian military reports, 61 Soviet soldiers died in a Chinese ambush, and their corpses were mutilated. The Russians hit back so hard that, in the words of Robert Gates, CIA Director at the time, from American satellite pictures the Chinese side of the river bank was pockmarked like a moonscape.

It is a measure of the fury that the Russians felt towards Mao that Soviet reinforcements (we later learnt) had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons. And that was not all. “How would the United States react if the Soviets solved one nuclear proliferation problem by attacking China's nuclear weapon facilities?” The question was put over lunch by a Soviet GRU (military intelligence) operative to a senior American official in Washington.

The installations in question were in China's northwestern Xinjiang province, handily close to the Soviet frontier. Ironically it was Nikita Khrushchev - the biggest Russian villain in the Cultural Revolutionary canon - who had somewhat thoughtlessly supplied Mao with a nuclear capability in 1957.

Henry Kissinger took the Soviet inquiry seriously. For all the attractions of seeing China's nuclear potential eliminated (China had exploded her first device in 1964), he and President Nixon concluded that the risks of escalating nuclear exchanges outweighed the gains, and declined to give Moscow the nod. In the face of the overwhelming Soviet response Mao in any case backed down, leaving some of his Politburo members concerned about his handling of the crisis, and many a Russian general dismayed, one suspects, by the loss of a chance to hit China where it would hurt.

Still, Mao had received a reality check. “Paper tigers,” he had called nuclear weapons, but the risk of seeing his own tiger go up in flames helped to persuade him to back off smartly.

A Sino-Russian war with a nuclear dimension was averted, but the aftermath was momentous. When Zhou Enlai confirmed two years later that the Chinese were ready to welcome Richard Nixon in Beijing, the White House believed that it was fear of a Russo-American accommodation that was driving China. “They're scared of the Russians. That's got to be it,” Nixon told Kissinger. And he was right...

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

John Pilger: The lies of Hiroshima live on, props in the war crimes of the 20th century

Source: Guardian (8-6-08)

[John Pilger has been a war correspondent, film-maker and author.]

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jon Meacham: The South Just Ain't That Different Anymore

Source: Newsweek (8-5-08)

In a self-interview entitled "Questions They Never Asked Me," Walker Percy once unleashed the frustrations of years of sitting for interviews, particularly with journalists from outside his native South. "Of all the things I'm fed up with, I think I'm fed up most with hearing about the New South," Percy wrote. Why is that? he asked himself. "I would dearly love never to hear the New South mentioned again … If there is anything more boring than the questions asked about the South, it is the answers Southerners give. If I hear one more Northerner ask about good ol' boys and one more Southerner give an answer, I'm moving to Manaus, Brazil, to join the South Carolinians who emigrated after Appomattox and whose descendants now speak no English and have such names as Senhor Carlos Calhoun."

Though I have never weighed fleeing to Brazil, I am a Southerner who sympathizes with Percy's complaint. To its natives, the South can seem the center of the universe, an American Rome to the rest of the country's barbarous provinces. To non-Southerners, the region is, depending on one's mood, a romantic republic of columned porches or a redoubt of redneck reaction. Neither the South's self-referential view of itself nor the outsiders' competing caricatures is especially useful. The internal impression is vain and precious, the external ones overly simplified and incomplete.

At the heart of conversations about the culture and politics of the South is the question that has launched untold numbers of dissertations: Is the South really different, and if so, how? The usual answer—yes, it is, sort of—includes the proposition that Southerners have a special sense of history and of tragedy. Does Boston or Lake Forest strike anyone as a wild-and-woolly, here-today-gone-tomorrow, throw-custom-to-the-wind kind of place? Yes, the South is said to be the only region of the country to have lost a war, which presumably heightens one's sense of the fragility of life, though how we factor our performance in Vietnam into that chestnut mystifies me. Percy's "New South" watchers have long noted the influx of outsiders to major hubs such as northern Virginia (for government and tech), Charlotte (for banking) and Atlanta (for everything), but even most of the region's natives now have no firsthand experience of the defiance of the 1950s and '60s. Majorities of the populations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia were not born until the year Reagan first took office. They are a wholly new generation.

There is no question about the significance of the past in a place that has been so decisively and so brutally shaped by slavery and Jim Crow, but other regions were complicit in both evils. Racism is hardly an exclusively Southern phenomenon; it is a national one. The same is true of redemption. The South, then, while more overtly culturally conservative than many other states, is not another country. It does no good to look down on it or dismiss it. Such condescension may feel good in the short run, but it is as self-defeating as old-style Southern slurs about godless, greedy Yankees or pointy-headed liberals.

The American South, to borrow a phrase from the caricature cupboard, just ain't that different anymore. It was once, but the Civil War is the exception that proves the rule that the South tends not to contradict but to exemplify, if sometimes in an exaggerated way, what much of the nation thinks and feels. Understanding America's politics, then, requires understanding the South's—which is one reason why declaring the 2008 presidential election over is to make the same mistake the hotheads at the barbecue in "Gone With the Wind" did when they thought they could whip the Union forces in short order.

I have been in the South for the past month, occasionally talking politics, and have heard much more about Iraq and the price of gasoline than I have about Obama's race or John McCain's age. Though this is necessarily anecdotal, my sense is that many whites who have been skeptical of Democrats since the civil-rights era are not going to make a reflexive choice in November but will—like many other Americans—carefully weigh Obama against McCain...

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, August 4, 2008

James Rainey: Obama's Crime? Acting Too Presidential

Source: LAT (8-4-08)

America, meet Barack The Arrogant.

Did you hear, this guy's already talking about redecorating the Lincoln Bedroom? Or that a few weeks back, he stood behind a podium bearing a faux presidential seal? The young upstart from Illinois has even got his minions planning a White House transition!
We have reporters, columnists and TV talking heads to thank for exposing these outrageous displays. So apparently the verdict is in: Sen. Barack Obama, too confident to govern.

It all would be quite funny if many people didn't seem to be inhaling this multimedia stink bomb as if it were fragrant truth.

I've spent a few days on the campaign trail with Obama and know people who've traveled with him for months. I wouldn't argue that portrayals of the candidate as occasionally aloof, or a little professorial, are imagined.

But it's a long ways from, in the words of Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, acting like "the presumptuous nominee" whose "biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris."

Milbank, who is often wickedly revealing, last week seemed mostly wicked as he turned benign campaign tableau -- an Obama motorcade, a talk with the Treasury secretary, a "pep rally" with congressional Democrats -- into evidence that Obama thinks he's already the winner.

Milbank at least leavened his thesis with humor, unlike others piling on the campaign to turn Barack into Slick Barry.

Fox News host Sean Hannity told viewers last week how "presumptuous" Obama had become. Proof: The candidate told congressional Democrats that the world had been waiting for his hopeful message and that to some he had become a symbol of a "return to our best traditions."

That may not be humble pie, but doesn't even come close to breaking the narcissism barrier. Don't our politicians routinely boast about how essential they are to the republic?...

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

David Lightman: It's Not About Experience, Experts Say

Source: McClatchy-Tribune (8-4-08)

Many undecided voters have a common concern when they size up Barack Obama: his inexperience.

"I have nothing against Obama. I just think John McCain has more experience," said Steve Viernacki, an Ashley, Pa., restaurant owner.

Experts say that such worries are overblown.

"Experience matters, but its importance is terribly overstated," said historian Robert Dallek, the author of recent books about Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

Presidents with sterling resumes often have turned out to be busts, usually because they lacked the key quality a good president needs: sound judgment.

"John Quincy Adams understood the world, but he didn't have a political gene in his makeup," Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., said of the nation's sixth president, who isn't remembered as successful.

Yet presidents with far lesser credentials have triumphed. John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he took office in 1961, four years younger than Obama. Kennedy's early years were rocky, Dallek said, but "he was a quick learner" and his third and final year as president was masterful.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been a U.S. senator for 3 1/2 years, but since the 110th Congress began in January 2007, he's missed about 45 percent of all votes while running for president. He's never chaired a major committee.

McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987, and has been a senator ever since. He's chaired Senate committees and authored several major bills, notably the 2002 campaign-finance overhaul.


Not accurate predictors
Experts agreed that none of these experiences — or a lack of them — is an accurate predictor of either man's likely White House performance.

"The presidency has too many moving pieces. Trying to gauge whether experience matters really eludes measurement," said Carl Pinkele, a presidential expert at Ohio Wesleyan University, in Delaware, Ohio.

Scholars suggest two yardsticks — executive background and foreign policy expertise — but they also find both flawed.

Herbert Hoover was the widely admired U.S. food administrator in World War I, presidential adviser at the Versailles Conference and secretary of commerce in the 1920s.

"Yet his management of the economy was a disaster," Dallek said of Hoover's one-term presidency, which began months before the Great Depression.

Jimmy Carter also brought a management background, taking office in 1977 after one term as the governor of Georgia and more than 20 years running his family business. But "he was then universally criticized for being a micromanager in the White House," said John Baick, an associate professor of history at Western New England College, in Springfield, Mass.

President George W. Bush has a master of business administration degree from Harvard University, served nearly two terms as the governor of Texas and surrounded himself in the White House with experienced advisers. But after 7 1/2 years in power he holds a dismal public-approval rating rooted largely in the Iraq war and the staggering economy.

Foreign policy also has proved to be an unreliable barometer.

Two presidents regarded as among the nation's weakest — John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan — had extensive diplomatic resumes. Adams held several diplomatic posts, was the secretary of state under President James Monroe and negotiated an end to the War of 1812. But he met difficulty when he tried to improve the economy with a road- and canal-building program and high tariffs, and he was trounced when he sought re-election in 1828.

Buchanan, who served as James Polk's secretary of state in the 1840s, spent the three years before his 1856 election as minister to Great Britain.

Yet "he's quite possibly the worst president in American history, because of his inability to effectively manage Southern secession and the slavery issue," said Chris Dolan, a professor of political science at Lebanon Valley College, in Annville, Pa.

Similarly, Bush's father had been the U.S. envoy to China, United Nations ambassador, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president for eight years.

But he was seen as an ineffective manager of the nation's economy, and the nation spurned his 1992 re-election bid, giving him the lowest popular-vote total of any incumbent president in 80 years.

What matters more than experience, scholars said, is an ability to hone and trust one's instincts.

Dallek and Smith pointed to Kennedy as a key modern example of a president who came to trust his judgment.

The young president made a series of highly public missteps in his early years in power, notably the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the May 1961 summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who found Kennedy weak.

The Berlin Wall went up three months later, followed by the Soviet effort to build missile bases in Cuba.

Kennedy would rebound, starting with his deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, which defused the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.

Smith also pointed to a two-day period in June 1963 as a key turning point. On June 10, Kennedy announced new talks on a nuclear test-ban treaty and called for an end to the Cold War. He'd sign the ratified pact in October...

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Marcus Warren: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Communism’s deadliest foe

Source: Telegraph (8-4-08)

[Marcus Warren is the Editor of Telegraph.co.uk and a former Moscow correspondent who covered Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia from exile in 1994.]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not.

Of course, the tyrants and grey bureaucrats who actually tried to turn Marxism into a working polity contributed as much if not even more to the destruction of the system they ruled over.

But those figures who are usually proclaimed winners of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan and Baroness Thatcher among them, built their victory on the foundations of his life story and testimony from the Gulag.

He transformed a then obscure acronym (standing for “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies”) into a one-word symbol of Soviet brutality which resonated across the world, not least in his own country.

And he managed this at a crucial point in the 20th century. In Russia itself the extremes of Stalin’s terror were an ugly memory, but one in danger of being suppressed once and for all amidst the atmosphere of fear cultivated under Brezhnev. The Russian people themselves seemed resigned to a life of misery and lies.

At the same time the West was pursuing something called détente (appeasement to some) in its relations with the Kremlin. The Left, emboldened by America’s defeat in Vietnam and student ferment, was convinced anew that history was on its side.

Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”, when finally published in 1973, undermined any claims to moral superiority Communism had over its enemies. And it did so in devastating fashion.

Where “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” his first portrayal of life in the camps, was a miniature and avoided judgment, “Gulag Archipelago” was a three-volume denunciation of Stalin’s system and the ideology that powered it. It was a masterpiece of literary endeavour, language and polemic. Once read, it destroyed any argument for accommodation with the Soviet Union beyond that of realpolitik. That was all that remained until Mikhail Gorbachev ended the need for even that by presiding over the country’s collapse...

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 7:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ruth Marcus: The Even-handedness in Professor Obama's Law Exams

Source: Washington Post (8-4-08)

How would candidate Obama answer professor Obama's exams? During his years teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago, Barack Obama favored take-home tests touching on some of the scorchingly hot-button legal issues of the day: gay rights, reproductive freedom, affirmative action and racial profiling.

These exams, unearthed by The New York Times' resourceful Jodi Kantor, are edgy versions of the classic law school 'issue spotter.' Can a state university's law review expand its affirmative action program to include special treatment for gay students as well as racial minorities? Does a man have any right to stop his ex-wife from using their frozen embryos to try to get pregnant? Can parents whose daughter is in a vegetative state be prohibited from trying to clone her?

To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity – perhaps even compulsion – to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.

But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems.

For example, one 2003 question describes the state of 'Nirvana,' where a gay couple, Richard and Michael, want a child. Would Nirvana's laws prohibiting gays from paying surrogate mothers or adopting children, Obama asked, violate the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process?

It's easy to imagine President Obama wrestling with a real-world version of professor Obama's hypothetical. Obama has said that he does not support same-sex marriage. But his exam question involves the same issues that the California Supreme Court addressed in overturning the state's same-sex marriage ban. If the Constitution protects Richard and Michael's effort to have a child, would it similarly protect their right to marry?

In the model answers he provided for students after another exam, Obama refers to 'some persuasive arguments' that homosexuality should be covered by the Equal Protection Clause. How does that square with his opposition to same-sex marriage? Are civil unions a separate-but-equal substitute?

To take a 1997 question, should 'Splitsville,' a city plagued by residential segregation and failing schools, be permitted to create an all-black, all-male career academy, or is the 'Ujamaa School' unlawful discrimination?

Even if constitutional, Obama asked, 'is it good public policy? Put somewhat differently, in light of ... the history of race and gender discrimination in America, is the Ujamaa School a worthy attempt to promote long-term equality, or ... a dangerous betrayal of the American ideal?'...

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 7:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

William Harrison: The other Solzhenitsyn

Source: Guardian (8-4-08)

[William Harrison is a writer and journalist based in Moscow.]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's anti-Sovietism was heroic and influential, but its other side became clearer upon the Union's collapse.

The death of the literary colossus and anti-Soviet dissident has, quite rightly, been greeted with an outpouring of praise for his principled and brave unmasking of the horrors of the Soviet regime. His literary achievements, closely connected with his dissident activities, have also justifiably received much attention.

But there is another side to Solzhenitsyn – one which most obituaries have mentioned only in passing, if at all. Solzhenitsyn's analysis of Soviet communism was based on the notion that the Bolsheviks imposed a totalitarian system on Russia that had no basis in Russian history or character. He laid the blame on Marx and Engels and the Bolsheviks.

Russian culture, he argued, and particularly that of the Russian Orthodox Church, was suppressed in favour of atheist Soviet culture. Persona non grata in the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn lived in exile in the US from 1974, but found western culture equally to his distaste.

His historical writing is imbued with a hankering after an idealized Tsarist era when, seemingly, everything was rosy. He sought refuge in a dreamy past, where, he believed, a united Slavic state (the Russian empire) built on Orthodox foundations had provided an ideological alternative to western individualistic liberalism.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Solzhenitsyn hoped, as he wrote in a Russian newspaper at the time, would lead to the creation of a united Slavic state encompassing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in which this alternative culture would flourish.

On returning to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn opposed the excesses that went with the introduction of capitalism in Russia during the 1990s. In addition, he vociferously opposed Ukrainian independence. But the rise of Putin and the resurgence of nationalism, and the notion of Russia as "unique" and "different" from western liberal culture, gave new currency to his views. Recently, he claimed in an article in a pro-Kremlin newspaper, which was reprinted widely in the west, that to call the 1932-33 Holodomor genocide in Ukraine was a "loopy fable" made up by Ukrainian nationalists and picked up on by anti-Russian westerners. This article came at the same time as the State Duma's ruling to the same effect.

His article contained no serious historical analysis. Holodomor, in fact, coincided with an attack on Ukrainian culture and nationalism, which were considered a threat by Soviet leaders in Moscow. They were frightened of the Ukrainian national movement, terrified of many in the country's desire for independence, and acted to bring it into line. "If we lose Ukraine," Lenin had said, "we lose our head." They, like Solzhenitsyn, considered Ukraine a part of their empire.

The parallels with contemporary Russian leaders' attitudes are striking, and Solzhenitsyn's pan-Slavism, alongside his powerful dissident credentials, made him an ideal ally for those who continue to seek to restrict Ukrainian independence. Ironically – disturbingly, in fact – the self-same unmasker of Stalinist terror with its sacrifice of human lives to a future ideal exhibited a desire to ignore people's desires (Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence in 1991) in favour of an equally fictitious ideal.

Solzhenitsyn's importance as the writer who stripped bare the Soviet regime to reveal its true essence cannot be underestimated. His writings inspired people throughout the Soviet Union and the world with their unflinching revelations. But his credentials as a historian are dubious to say the least, and the fantastical, backward-looking political idealism that led him to support Putin's project is a dangerous relic. Like many of those disillusioned with western liberalism, in Russia and the west, he fancied that "Putin's path" provided an alternative. The reality of this "alternative", involving, for example, the pilfering of resources by Kremlin-backed "businessmen" and the silencing of the media by censorship and killing, is less than promising.

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Donald Rayfield: Solzhenitsyn's literary legacy

Source: Guardian (8-4-08)

[Donald Rayfield is emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University, London.]

Solzhenitsyn's literary career spans more than 60 years, from verse he composed and memorised in prison and the camps before Stalin's death, to the handful of short stories and novellas (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Matriona's Yard) of the 1960s which propelled him to fame, together with Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation, and the major novels, In the First Circle and Cancer Ward (both 1968), composed simultaneously with the monumental historical documentation of Stalin's political penal system The Gulag Archipelago (1973-8).

After his deportation, by the more consistently intolerant Brezhnev, to Frankfurt and then the USA in 1974, he continued for 15 years writing a massive cycle of historical novels, Red Wheel, of which the first, August 1914 (1971), is perhaps the only one that more than a handful of readers have ploughed through. Returning to Russia in 1994, at first to loud acclaim, he became more of a political pamphleteer, the only significant work being his controversial two volumes about the Jews in Russia, Two Hundred Years Together (2001-2).

A literary assessment of Solzhenitsyn's life work will be selective and sometimes harsh. The short stories and novellas of the 1960s are written very powerfully, combining personal witness with forthright clarity. Their bias is as much against the intellectuals who collaborated (even if they too paid for it) with the system, as against totalitarianism itself, and an underlying Christian asceticism informs them. They will last as examples of the most courageous prose ever published in the USSR. The novel (published abroad) In the First Circle deals with awkward intellectual dissidents very like the author, faced with the moral quandary of helping the authorities devise more effective means of oppression, or going to probable death in the camps. Its tour de force is in the best tradition of Tolstoy, a portrait of the tyrant, Stalin, as an inadequate psychopathic bully. Cancer Ward has a solitary hero defeating cancer just as he survives repression: an ode, like A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, to the innate vitality of the Russian. The novels' weaknesses lie in their lack of subtlety, particularly in dealing with the female characters; their strength in the simplicity of their allegory. One deals with stoicism, classical and genuine, the other with the totalitarian world as a hospital from which very few, including the doctors, will come out alive.

Certainly the volumes of The Gulag Archipelago will stand out as a unique and badly needed monument to Stalinism, compiled from thousands of accounts of how victims (but not their relatives) perished and survived over more than 30 years of horrific oppression. The stories of Varlam Shalamov, based on decades in the Kolyma camps, may be more honest (and depressing) still because they lack Solzhenitsyn's insistence on Christian hope and the work ethic. But Gulag Archipelago remains a towering achievement, and its composition a Herculean task that no other single person could have undertaken.

Abroad, Solzhenitsyn appeared to stop developing, or even observing. The historical cycle Red Wheel is, even to admirers almost unreadable in its mass of detail and its tendency to rant, not narrate. Solzhenitsyn's political views, scattered in hundreds of newspaper articles, are naive, offensive and often ignorant. After 1974 he came to despise the west as much as he hated Stalinism and almost turned into a Russian chauvinist and admirer of Putin. One exception is his study of the Jews, Two Hundred Years Together, where despite trying to blame others, such as Moldavians, for the pogroms, he made a brave, competent and very readable attempt to tackle a theme too sensitive for most Russian writers. It will remain a canonical text until someone even more self-assured braves the prejudices of Russian anti-Semites, Jews and communists.

Solzhenitsyn's verse and drama will always remain secondary to his prose. His memoirs, notably A Calf Butted an Oak (1975 and 1996), are a valuable document of his battle with the Soviet authorities after Khrushchev's fall, but are marred by a cantankerous refusal to acknowledge others' good deeds and motives.

Solzhenitsyn's influence will lie exclusively in his moral courage, which inspired younger dissidents to carry on the struggle, both in literature and in the defence of human rights. As a writer, Solzhenitsyn was wholly locked into 19th century traditions, particularly the forthright, lapidary, moralising style of Lev Tolstoy. He also used the Russian classical tradition of testing among modern characters in a closed space the tenets of philosophy, and finding them wanting. His mix of fiction and history in The Red Wheel is derived from Tolstoy's War and Peace. Even his Gulag Archipelago has its literary roots not in 20th century prison literature, but in Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead. In purely literary terms, then, Solzhenitsyn is a teacher without disciples.

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 6:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Michael Scammell: Russia's literary light who illuminated dark world of Soviet regime

Source: Guardian (8-4-08)

[Michael Scammell has translated the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among many others. In 1985, Scammell's biography of Solzhenitsyn won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and an English PEN Center prize.]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has died aged 89, was a prolific novelist and memoirist, whose life's work, in the best traditions of Russian literature, transcended the realm of pure letters. He was a moral and spiritual leader, whose books were noted as much for their ethical dimension as for their aesthetic qualities. Between 1968 and 1976, he was a towering figure in the twin worlds of literature and politics, expressing the pain of his long-suffering people and single-handedly challenging the autocratic government of one of the world's two superpowers.

Solzhenitsyn's moral authority was not easily earned. It was the fruit, in part, of bitter personal experience in Stalin's labour camps. But the lessons he drew from his experience, and the manner in which he voiced the sufferings of three generations of Soviet victims in powerful novels such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle that secured for him the role of conscience of the nation.

Later, he showed unmatched physical and moral courage in writing and publishing his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago, a torrential narrative mixing history, politics, autobiography, documentary, corrosive personal comment and philosophical speculation into one of the most extraordinary epics of 20th-century literature...

Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 6:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Juliet Eilperin and Jonathan Weisman: Race Proves to Be Unwelcome but Persistent Issue

Source: Washington Post (8-2-08)

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama tried yesterday to step back from a divisive debate over race, with each candidate denying that he was the first to inject the issue into the campaign.
Nonetheless, the candidates and campaigns battled throughout the day over the issue and over which side was engaged in "low road" politics, an indication that race is likely to remain a major point of contention in what is becoming an increasingly bitter contest.

For Obama, the argument was an unwelcome distraction that could complicate his efforts to win over voters who may be skeptical of a relative newcomer with an atypical background. It also pulled the focus away from his efforts to stress bread-and-butter economic issues. For McCain, any hint of racist tactics would hurt his efforts with the moderates and independents he needs to win in November.

Yesterday showed how hard it will be for both to avoid the issue now that it has burst into the public sphere. Obama was heckled in St. Petersburg by black nationalists who accused him of not doing enough for the African American community. In Florida's Panhandle, McCain faced a barrage of questions from reporters and asserted that he is not running a negative campaign "in the slightest," even as his aides launched their latest online attack ad mocking Obama as a candidate with a messiah complex.

"I don't think it's negative. I think we're drawing differences between us," McCain said, adding that Obama "brought up the issue of race," and, "I responded to it. Because I'm disappointed, and I don't want that issue to be part of this campaign."

In response to questions about his recent attacks against Obama, McCain said he has been waging "a very respectful campaign." McCain has compared Obama to celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, said he is willing to lose a war to win a campaign, said he would rather play basketball than visit wounded troops, and, on Thursday, accused him of playing "the race card" and playing it "from the bottom of the deck."

McCain, who defended himself against tough policy questions from African Americans yesterday at the National Urban League's annual meeting in Orlando, suggested the media should "move on" from the issue of race because Obama had "retracted" his allegations that he and other Republicans were using his appearance to intimidate voters.

But while Obama has toned down some of the language that the McCain campaign criticized, he did not retract his allegations or back away from his contention that Republicans were trying to scare voters about him. Obama and his aides yesterday faulted McCain for not working hard enough to quash state Republican attacks based on race, saying the candidate was merely stating the obvious when he told Missouri voters Wednesday that some of his opponents were insinuating that he does not fit the mold of a traditional presidential candidate.

"I was in Union, Missouri, which is 98 percent white -- a rural, conservative [community], and what I said was what I think everybody knows, which is that I don't look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates," Obama told the St. Petersburg Times. "I think that what people are really concerned about, what they're looking for, is fundamental change on the economy, things that are going to help their families live out the American dream. There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this. What this has become, I think, is a typical pattern from the McCain campaign, whether it's Paris Hilton or Britney or this phony allegation that I wouldn't visit troops. They seem to be focused on a negative campaign; what I think our campaign wants to do is focus on the issues that matter to American families."

The Obama campaign could produce no evidence that McCain's campaign was responsible for any attack that directly cited his race or his name. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama adviser, said the candidate probably regretted evoking McCain's name when he talked about Republican scare tactics.

But adviser Anita Dunn said Obama was more than justified in lodging accusations Wednesday that prompted McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to say Obama had "played the race card." The North Carolina Republican Party has already used inflammatory images of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and the Tennessee Republican Party mocked Obama's middle name, Hussein. Although McCain decried those efforts, Dunn said it was hardly the full-throated, angry denunciation McCain has shown himself capable of, she said.

"The McCain campaign has clearly made the decision that there really is not a road too low for them to travel," she said.

Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ralph Peters: American Calcutta

Source: New York Post (8-2-08)

ONE of the best ways to see a city's bones is to take a long jog in the hour before dawn. That's what I did in San Francisco this week.

The city reminded me of Calcutta.

By day, the camouflage of color and crowds makes the multitudes of homeless less apparent. At the chilly end of the night, though, they lie strewn on the sidewalks like plague victims, wrapped in filthy blankets and abandoned.

New Yorkers have no idea how bad a homeless crisis can be.

I didn't even run in the rougher sections, where old garbage fills the alleys and druggies prowl. My course ran from the slopes of Nob Hill, south of Union Square, down to the Embarcadero, up to North Beach and back. That's the better part of downtown.

My new symbol of San Francisco is a man with ulcerous calves exposed, head and torso thrust into a cardboard box in front of a Prada boutique.

What I saw as I sidestepped bodies wasn't just the failure of social policies, but a collective flight from responsibility. Shrugging our shoulders and declaiming The homeless deserve the right to make their own choices! just lets us all off the hook.

I refuse to romanticize the homeless - unlike those who live in San Francisco's multimillion-dollar Victorians and idealize the homeless from a distance, then cross the street to avoid giving a deranged beggar a quarter.

When it comes to the capable-but-unwilling homeless, John Stuart Mill's rule applies: The individual is entitled to the maximum individual freedom compatible with the freedom and well being of others. As long as he or she poses no criminal, health or aggravated-nuisance threats, the rest of us just have to suck it up.

My problem lies in our moral cowardice regarding those who aren't capable of making sane decisions. When we write off a man or woman who is clearly disturbed, incapable of basic sanitary practices and living at a level below that we accord our pets, we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back for giving him or her a handout now and then.

We're avoiding the hard moral choices, the questions whose best answers still leave us uneasy: We worry more about stray dogs and cats than we do about stray humans...

Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 9:45 PM | Comments (1) | Top

David Brooks: Missing Dean Acheson

Source: IHT (8-1-08)

[David Brooks is a Canadian-American political and cultural commentator.]

We Americans are about to enter our 19th consecutive year of Truman-envy. Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, people have looked at the way Harry Truman, George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and others created forward-looking global institutions after World War II, and they've asked: Why can't we rally that kind of international cooperation to confront terrorism, global warming, nuclear proliferation and the rest of today's problems?

The answer is that, in the late 1940s, global power was concentrated. The victory over fascism meant the mantle of global leadership rested firmly on the Atlantic alliance. The United States accounted for roughly half of world economic output. Within the United States, power was wielded by a small, bipartisan, permanent governing class - men like Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, John McCloy and Robert Lovett.

Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem.

This week, for the first time since World War II, an effort to liberalize global trade failed. The Doha round collapsed, despite broad international support, because India's Congress Party did not want to offend small farmers in the run up to the next elections. Chinese leaders dug in on behalf of cotton and rice producers.

In a de-centered world, all it takes is a few well-placed parochial interests to bring a vast global process tumbling down.

And the Doha failure comes amid a decade of globosclerosis. The world has failed to effectively end genocide in Darfur. Chinese and Russian vetoes foiled efforts to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. The world has failed to implement effective measures to deter Iran's nuclear ambitions. The world has failed to embrace a collective approach to global warming. Europe's drive toward political union has stalled...

Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Richard Byrne: The Selling of the President 1968 remains a vital cultural and historical document

Source: American Prospect (8-1-08)

[Richard Byrne is a journalist who lives in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Balkans via Bohemia.]

The original dust jacket of Joe McGinniss' The Selling of the President 1968 has Richard Nixon's face emblazoned on a package of cigarettes.

To value that image at a thousand words is parsimonious. It elicits a multiplicity of responses to Nixon and to his 1968 campaign: clever, slick, amoral, dangerous, familiar, branded, and addictive. (Yes, addictive. How long was Nixon in American political life?)

In sum, Richard Nixon was very, very bad for America -- and some very skilled men persuaded voters to buy him anyway.

As an eight-year-old caught up in Watergate in the summer of 1974, that dust jacket induced me to pluck The Selling of the President 1968 from my parents' bookshelf. I didn't understand everything McGinniss was peddling on that first read, of course, but his brisk, energetic prose did let me get at some of what the book was about even then.

It has become fashionable to dismiss The Selling of the President 1968 as a shallow and cynical book written in the breezy New Journalism of its moment. In the November 2006 issue of Smithsonian magazine, Jonathan Yardley took just this tack, arguing that the book's pivotal role in stoking American political cynicism "helps explain why the book remains in print today, for the truth is that otherwise it doesn't hold up very well."

Yardley's right about one thing. The book's strengths do not lie in its analysis. The book's second chapter -- which functions as the literary equivalent of the journalistic "nut graf" -- is rife with glib formulations. Politics is a "con." The voter is a "willing victim" of advertising persuasion.

Yet there's much that's incorrect and ungenerous in Yardley's assessment. It seems almost absurd to assert that the work of a 26-year-old journalist, written in a few months directly after the 1968 election, had as much of a catalytic effect on public cynicism as the events of that tumultuous year and the campaigns themselves.

More ungenerous, however, is to assert that the book's continued longevity is rooted largely in that cynicism. Whatever its deficiencies, The Selling of the President 1968 remains a vital cultural and historical document -- and a playbook of sorts with lessons for our current presidential campaigns...

Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 1, 2008

Alan Cowell: Churchill's definition of Russia still rings true

Source: IHT (8-1-08)

[Alan Cowell writes for the International Herald Tribune.]

Somewhere in Central Europe, at a secret hideout, the chief executive of a huge oil company struggles against the maneuvers of Russian partners to depose him. At the headquarters of NATO in Brussels, a Russian diplomat lays out a plan to sideline the alliance set up decades earlier to contain and repulse Soviet power. Within the United Nations Security Council, a Russian envoy casts a veto backed by China to thwart Western diplomacy in Africa.

Famously, Winston Churchill defined Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and his words in 1939 spoke eloquently to the Western sense of Moscow as the "other" - an inscrutable and menacing land that plays by its own rules, usually to the detriment of those who choose more open regulations.

In the past few weeks, events at the TNK-BP oil company, at NATO and at the United Nations have all reaffirmed that sense of hostile otherness, albeit with some 21st-century qualities. If Churchill's description were to be recast for the present day, then Russia would still be a riddle and an enigma lodged, like the innermost core of a matryoshka nesting doll, in a diplomat's pinstripe folded round a pugilist's muscle and an oil baron's checkbook.

But Churchill's analysis was only part of a formula that seems as relevant now as it was then. Perhaps, he said, "there is a key" to the riddle of Russia, concluding, "That key is Russian national interest."..

Posted on Friday, August 1, 2008 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

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