Posts Tagged Under ‘International Affairs’

Obama’s Biggest Trip Gain: Quality Stock Footage for Fall

“Does this make me look West Wing?”

The hot-spot, Central Command phase of Barack Obama’s foreign-policy tour is winding down, and so far he seems to have hit all the right political notes. Hooping it up was a particularly swift move, but even more fortunate was the fact that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki came right out and supported a timetable for withdrawal nearly in line with Obama’s 16-month plan. There’s plenty to the argument against a timetable and the realpolitik strategic importance of Iraq over Afghanistan, particularly the fact that the Iraqi Sunnis don’t support a timetable, but from a political point-scoring perspective that’s a little irrelevant. Arguments from McCain or Bush against an American-favored Iraqi leader’s statements about what’s best for his own country are now going to face criticisms of tone-deafness and arrogance.

I don’t envy anyone making the Israel / Palestinian political trip, but I think the best Obama can hope for is to play perhaps the only role that America can play towards Israel to improve the situation: that of the friend who takes the keys when someone’s too wasted to realize he’s going to mess himself up if he keeps going.

But to bring things back to the title: it’s still summertime, the public and the media have long since put the blinders on for Iraq and Afghanistan, and most voters are on a break until the real campaign starts with the fall. Obama managed to score himself plenty of presidential-looking video filler for newscasts about his foreign-policy experience this fall, and that likely counts for more with the TV-influenced voting public than anything else on this trip.

Pointing Out David Addington

John Yoo got the bulk of the negative publicity for his torture memo, but I’ve read many times that David Addington has been the real advocate for scrapping the rule of law in the Bush Administration. This Bob Herbert column on Addington makes that point better than I can.

What About Burma?

With the immense humanitarian disaster occurring in Burma / Myanmar right now, there’s been a great deal of frustrated commentary from people appalled by the situation and desperate to come up with feasible ways to help. Watching the Burmese junta keep ample international stocks of food from its own people only to incompetently protect itself is sickening, and with the government’s past history from last September’s protests and the disregarding of the 1990 election, an honest person naturally wonders what can be done to overcome such a horrific government.

The all-important concept in such a situation is the idea of Responsibility to Protect, first proposed by the Canadian government. This doctrine states that national sovereignty takes a backseat when a government is committing massive abuse of its population, and that foreign governments have the right to intervene on behalf of that nation’s people’s well-being. Following the letter of this theory, other governments could ignore borders and sovereignty when the population is under grave threat and the subject nation’s government refuses to help or actively contributes to the problem.

Despite the poisoning association of this concept with the Iraq war — one where idealism trumped realistic potential — Responsibility to Protect does not have to mean the complete military overthrow of a government. While in a utopian martial world we could go real-life Rambo IV, the idea is both out of the question for the overstretched U.S. military and frought with internal problems similar to Iraq. (Even though Aung San Suu Kyi represents an established, popular democratic leader to take charge of a new government, the inevitable guerrilla war against the junta dead-enders — the bad guys like them are familiar with the only way to fight more powerful armies — and the management of pre-existing ethnic conflicts within Burma make for a potentially ugly situation for any foreign power.)

That said, to me it seems that the only workable option involves a series of military and humanitarian steps around air delivery of supplies:

1. The UN Security Council or another large, international group — a reunion of SEATO? — should publicly declare its intention to enter Burmese airspace to deliver aid to the Burmese people, even over the objections of the Burmese government. This isn’t something that could possibly be done unilaterally; it needs to come from many governments. It’s a lot easier to demonize one or two countries than 20.
2. The member states should announce all-out flyovers and supply drops to the region. Fighter or gunship escorts would be a must, because even though the intentions would be publicly announced as peaceful, it would be ridiculous to rely on a hostile government’s goodwill.
3. Air deliveries avoid the pratfalls of a ground occupation, but still provide a sizable lifeline of aid. Militarily, the Burmese army and air force could do very little against a multinational air force — their only hope would be a guerrilla ground campaign, one that’s not an option here.
4. Aid can be delivered by air on a large-enough scale to, at the very least, force the Burmese government to acknowledge the necessity of outside help and open up its borders to more effective land- and sea-based assistance.

All of this needs to happen quickly, before things hit the post-disaster diseases and get exponentially worse. This is also just the immediate aid: the fact that one of the world’s famous rice-producing regions is now under saltwater is another huge, complicating factor that will only add to the food problems hitting Burma and the world. There are no easy choices, but flyovers, to me, seem like the best option in a worsening crisis. In the meantime, there’s always Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, Unicef and Doctors Without Borders.

Olympic Protests

The Olympic torch relay has already been disrupted in two countries, first by Reporters Without Borders in Greece and now by assorted Tibetan-rights protesters in London. I also saw a big group of protesters chanting outside the Chinese embassy on Saturday. This news is the hotness.

My uncle worked as a major planner on two Olympic torch relays, so I feel for his counterpart in this Olympics who must be flipping out right now. But this choreographed parade of Olympic-torch happiness is just like the 2008 Olympic organizing effort itself: a papering over of serious issues that directly contradict the Olympic brotherhood-of-mannish spirit. As a result, I think it’s great to see these real problems brought to the forefront at the same time that China and the world that’s participating in its Games are going with the “We love everything!” theme.

I worked at the 2002 Olympics, and I think the Olympics are great, but being there you really get a sense of just how over-the-top the whole thing can become. There’s an amazing amount of money flying around; it’s good that this is used to celebrate humanity coming together, but it’s a bummer that none of it is used to recognize the challenges we need to fix. If protests have to get this into people’s headz, then bring it.

Here’s Hoping This Election Comes Through

Optimism isn’t in great supply for this Zimbabwean election, because even though the opposition party has apparently defeated the 28-year incumbent Mugabe, I don’t see him giving in to any concept of fairness when he could simply rig the vote on a massive scale. Already the vote results are being delayed, so there’s that. And as for democratic leverage, what is the West going to do, devalue the currency?

Still, I’m a sliver hopeful that the Zimbabwean Howard Beale vote will prove powerful enough to triumph this time, giving such a strong “F this” vote that it’s too embarrassing even for Mugabe to rig things. The country has a deep pit to climb out of, but dropping the shovel is a good start.

The Men Running America (In the Wrong Direction)

Two great moments in quotations today, both from men with the power to influence and shape America’s economic and political situation. The first comes courtesy of Aron Wilder, the CEO of HTFC, a small firm that takes loan applications and sells residential mortgages to larger lenders like GMAC. They’re one of many direct players involved in the subprime mess engulfing the economy. Here’s Mr. Wilder in response to a question from the lawyer representing GMAC, in GMAC’s lawsuit against HTFC for selling improperly underwritten loans [link]:

Q: This is your loan file. What do Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald do for a living?
A: I don’t know. Open it up and find it.
Q: Look at your loan file and tell me.
A: Open it up and find it. I’m not your fucking bitch.
Q: Take a look at your loan application.
A: Do it yourself. Do it yourself. You want to do this in front of a judge. Would you prefer to [do] this in front of a judge? Then, shut the fuck up.
Q: Sir, take a look—
A: I’m taking a break. Fuck him. You open up the document. You want me to look at something, you get the document out. Earn your fucking money, asshole. Better get used to it. You’ll retire when I’m done.

That’s usually not the sort of guy whose ilk you want as a huge force in your national economy.

Second, we have Vice President Dick Cheney, the No. 2 member of the United States executive branch. He is thus responsible for executing the will of the people, as written by the people’s representatives in the legislative branch. Here he is being interviewed by ABC News’ Martha Radditz about the Iraq war [link]:

Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

Cheney: So?

Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?

Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. There has, in fact, been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That’s a huge accomplishment.

That is an awful lot about the Vice President summed up in the one-syllable clause “So?” The man is concise!

Great Afghanistan Piece

I think this has floated around the web a bit, but if you haven’t read it, check out this NY Times magazine piece:

Battle Company Is Out There

It’s very heavy, but gripping. I’ve read a few people complaining that it’s biased or gives an incomplete picture of the war, but that’s not what it’s about; it’s a piece about one particular piece of the Army in one particular part of Afghanistan, and does a great job of painting that with a sympathetic eye toward the soldiers. Endorsed by my friend Jeff, recently of the Army himself.

Quick Hits

• Barack Obama’s speech today was a good one, but I don’t quite know why it’s being presented as a game-changer. He had some really intelligent things to say, but he said them over half an hour. Now he’s dependent on a soundbite media to convey that message to voters who won’t otherwise seek him out, those being the ones he’s trying to win over in PA and in the general election. Rev. Wright, meanwhile, offers plenty of soundbites.

But maybe I’m still wrong and voters this election cycle want broader information from their candidates. This dude’s grasp of things is certainly encouraging. (The best part is how the interviewer gets completely owned after expecting some sort of dumb-ass answer.)

• On that note, why does the man-on-the-street interviewer in that clip come at his subjects with such a chip on his shoulder? I always followed the “catch more flies with honey” principle when doing man-on-the-streets. Considering you’re going up to a complete stranger and asking them to give you honest opinions, that seems like the only way to do it.

• There are some things that Rev. Wright says amidst the vitriol that make sense and are legitimate criticisms. Certainly the United States has serious issues with how it’s treated its minorities. But how much positive change are you really going to affect by turning all of your listeners off of the very system that needs to be fixed? This is my problem with many leftists: conservatives jump in and take control of societal institutions, but so often liberals prefer to sit on the sidelines and wait for some perfectly fair system to magically evolve — while they leave control of that system to the aforementioned conservatives, mind you. I’m a liberal and I’m heading off to get my MBA in part because I believe you can only change things by engaging them. And yes, I know that the media exists to spotlight things for scrutiny, but it’s a powerful societal institution that can’t be ignored.

Criticism is always more fun, but so often ineffective.

P.S. - did you know Wright was in the USMC?

• Should the U.S. boycott the Olympics this summer because of China’s brutaltreatment of Tibet? I really don’t know. I do know that it would be the greatest thing in years to see the entire U.S. Olympic contingent walk in to the stadium in “FREE TIBET” T shirts.

I Come to Praise the Irish-Food Quarter-Aisle

Erin Go Bragh, dudes.

It being St. Patrick’s Day — at least in one hour — I’d like all of you still living in NYC to take a moment at your local grocery establishment and appreciate the 1/4 of an aisle devoted to feeding the Irish immigrant masses, those still moving to New York after all these centuries. It’s one of the things you don’t really get here in D.C. — the last one I saw was when I went to visit Boston a few weeks back — and it’s much missed by your correspondent. Having lived in Queens, where there’s an immigrant community for every nationality known to man, I’ve gotten to know and love the Irish-food section while perusing the aisles of Sunnyside, Astoria and Woodside.

You’ll know you’ve found the aisle when you see Barry’s Tea, in the familiar red box at the top of the section. It’s meant to be drunk in the Irish style, meaning strong enough that you mistake it for coffee. Also known as “the bomb”. Next to that they’ll keep the breakfast theme going with some McCann’s Irish Oatmeal. They should probably change the name from “steel cut” to “oat gravel”. For real, it’s stony. For those who like their biscuits named for what happens after you eat them, we have my grandma’s favorite Digestives tea cookies from Burton’s. It all finishes off with some Chivers jam and Fruitfield Orange Marmalade. We in America eat normal fruit preserves like grapes, peaches or strawberries, but in Ireland they like to invent weird fruits like “gooseberry”, “bramble” and “lemon curd” (?), pack them in sugar and sell them to toast fans who don’t know better. Watch out for these, they’re strange.

Under your breakfast stuff comes the Knorr and Erin soup. I’m down with Irish potato, but a little wary of the brown tomato. You can top your soup off with some HP Curry Sauce or maybe some Bisto White-Sauce Granules — what discerning eater doesn’t love granules? Also a winner is Chef brown sauce, which comes in a handy 2.5 liter (or “litre”) container for those times when you need to dip 200 dozen french fries (or “chips”) at once.

Below the Cadbury chocolates, the beauty of which I have already described, you have the junk food — a personal favorite. We all enjoy Tayto cheese ‘n onion crisps, but the real pleasure is washing it down with a cool, sugary glass of Club orange. This stuff is definitely the best-tasting orange pop in the universe, but I will concur with my friend John who said it probably shouldn’t be drunk out of the bottle, lest the world’s most well-fed bacteria colony grow in its incredibly high-fructose medium. Club lemon and Club rock shandy (again, ?) are a little disappointing, but you won’t go wrong with pop made from real orange juice. Fizzy orange: favorite of both me and my bro.

On another Irish food note, the one thing missing from the Irish food aisle is the best Irish food of all, the breakfast bangers. You have to special order them in the U.S., but they make a great gift for your family porkosseur this March.

To end on another Queens food note, the poultry market in Flushing, across the street from the U-Haul, is the proud home of the worst smell in the world. That is all.

One More Pakistan Thing

For a note on just why this stuff matters, you can read this paper, particularly the last paragraph.

Bhutto

Pakistan really can’t catch a break.

If you were Musharraf, would you go ahead with January’s elections knowing that everything is in even more turmoil than before, or would you risk the nation getting even more pissed after another suspension of democracy? (Or here, “democracy”, considering that independent media had been banned from election coverage.)

I think he might come out ahead if he allows the elections to continue: if Musharraf can pin this on Islamist sympathizers — not a given since his own sympathy for Bhutto was more forced than genuine, and the attack may instead feed anger toward Musharraf — then he might see more of the country turn towards him as the man most able to restore order, no matter how un-democratic that order might be.

Not that India is doing a much better job recently with the factional reconciliation thing.

Busch-Swilling Bolsheviks

This one goes out to my senior-year apartment crew.

I was once discussing political philosophy with my dad, and we both agreed that under ideal theoretical conditions, a socialist utopia could be pretty cool: from abilities according to needs and all that lot. (Before someone from the future reads that and declares me a godless pinko, keep going.) But as dad pointed out, the fact that every utopian philosophy throughout history has failed applies just the same to communism, and the millions who were starved, repressed, detained and killed by benevolent guardians of the proletariat like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge indicate that, hey: communism hasn’t had such a great track record.

The conservatives among us argue that socialism fails because human nature is inherently corrupt, and thus people are always out to get theirs no matter what the system. Then they see the wealth generated by capitalist societies, and naturally want it for themselves. The leftist argument states that communism failed because of constant foreign anti-communist interference, and that capitalism’s economic impact on the lower classes has been too effectively degrading for them to rise up in revolution.

Those theories both have some truth to them, but that’s some heavy theory. For a simpler explanation, here’s one from personal experience.

Yeah dude, I’ll get in on that five-year plan next week, for real.

Senior year of college, five friends and I lived in a big apartment just off campus. We had just spent a year living in our fraternity house — still easily claiming the No. 1 spot as the filthiest place I have ever lived — and we thought, “F this, we’re seniors and men with standards: instead of nothing but Busch Light, we’ll now keep Rolling Rock or Miller Genuine Draft in the fridge in addition to the Busch Light. And while we’re at it, we’re going to keep our apartment in great shape. Not only do we deserve a clean living space, but you never know when some fine ladies will be stopping by to be flattered by our well-groomed apartment and Carlo Rossi wine.”

Planning for the glory of this collective effort, we made up a chore wheel that rotated each week so that each person would cycle through bathroom duty, floors, kitchen, trash, etc. We were pumped, we were planned, and we were in full agreement on just what we had to do to achieve our collective goal.

Then the next weekend came along, and that was pretty much the end of that.

There’s no good reason this plan shouldn’t have worked out. We all clearly wanted a clean apartment, and were smart, motivated dudes. The tasks were divided fairly, so that nobody felt an undue burden. This was a big group payoff for a relatively small amount of effort, and yet it still didn’t get done, mostly for a variety of personal reasons. Some of us laxly defined “clean” as only leaving boxers on the bathroom floor for three days instead of a week; others were so stringent about standards of cleanliness (substitute this for “party loyalty”) that several dudes stopped cleaning altogether in protest. Now we had the infamous free-rider problem, and it was back to growths in the refrigerator before you knew it.

Perhaps we could have increased each person’s stake in the outcome somehow and things would have worked. But to me, when you can’t get people to participate in a collective effort on something that is right there, solvable, in front of their freakin’ face every day, how in the hell are they going to do it when the impacts are esoteric and spread among millions? Moral of the story is that planning is one thing, but level of involvement is wildly variable.

And college is awesome.

Divisive

Last night I was hitting the new gym — this one has TVs on the treadmills, so I rocked the informative running action — when this story came on CNN:

Saudi Court Ups Punishment for Gang-Rape Victim

The gist of the story is that a woman was gang-raped by seven Saudi men, yet the Saudi court’s sense of justice resulted in 10-month to five-year sentences for the attackers, while the victim got 90 lashes with a yard-long bamboo reed for committing the ultimate sin of talking to a dude. (Thankfully, her hair must have stayed covered during the process, as the misogynistic nature of this sentence would seem to indicate that a stray tress would see her locked her up for 25 to life.) But, it gets worse: When her lawyer — seemingly the only sane person affiliated with the Saudi Shari’ah legal system — appealed the lenient sentences for the attackers, the court agreed with him and gave the attackers two to nine years, but it also decreed that the lawyer be disbarred and the rape victim now get six months in jail and 110 more lashes. This is all for taking the incredibly selfish action of being raped and then following proper legal channels to complain about the lack of justice.

I knew the U.S. government would be leery of angering King Abdullah because of both oil and any Saudi anti-terror efforts, but not to the level of calling the punishment only “astonishing” and going no further:

QUESTION: Just to be clear, you’re in no way condemning the sentence at all?

SEAN MCCORMACK, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: I’ve said what I’m going to say about it.

We all know that governments say things in public that are not followed up in action, but here the U.S. government isn’t even making the public statement. I can think of many better words than “astonishing”; “savage miscarriage of human decency” comes to mind.

Suffice it to say that this is exactly the sort of thing that al-Qaeda and its sympathizers believe in, and exactly the reason I believe that such fundamentalists need to get utterly wrecked. Tuesday the Saudi government released a statement “clarifying” things by saying the victim received the extra punishment because she illegally talked to the media. I can’t say that 110 extra lashes for contempt of court makes any sense to me as a rational human, but this statement doesn’t even address the gross miscarriage of justice that is the original 90-lash sentence except for a weak non-explanation.

Today I was looking for more on this story and on Iraq when I came across this blog post — on a side note, Reuters, you’re really sending mixed messages by saying you don’t approve of any third-party BlogBurst opinion items but then wrapping them in your own site branding — echoing the usual “The Democrats want America to lose in Iraq” sentiment. Sure, a detached analysis of the situation would find that yes, the more anti-war party will do better if the war is going badly, and therefore would potentially lose ground should the war effort improve. But, we aren’t operating in a vacuum; Democrats are paying the same costs in blood and treasure as Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, Lyndon LaRouchers and any other party that lives under the American government, and therefore Democrats too ultimately rise and fall from the war’s effects just the same as Republican war supporters. Do they want to lose? No, they want to see success for all the sacrifice, and perhaps demand it even more having opposed the invasion in the first place.

It’s ill to see someone make that kind of circa-2004 divisive statement because this Saudi thing is a clear example that the real fight is much broader than what’s happening in Iraq — remember that Saudi Arabia is an American ally, yet does these things and produced the 9/11 hijackers — and that wasting energy condemning an anti-stable-Iraq sentiment that doesn’t even exist outside of the fringes displays a failure to grasp that global reality. I agree with this piece by Anne Applebaum that explains how invading Iraq did more damage than good to the anti-fundamentalist fight by shoving away our potential allies and hurting long-term American strategic goals. There’s never a need for “We told you so” here — lots of us opposed the Iraq war for realist strategic reasons instead of childish fringe anti-Americanism, and an improved Iraq would help those interests that have been so heavily damaged by the invasion in the first place. The Saudi verdict shows that the bigger fight is both larger than Iraq and more complicated than supporting one thing or another.

In regards to the Saudi non-condemnation, perhaps the government wrongly skipped the public shaming part but is somehow working on the private part I’d love to see: massive scientific alternative-fuel projects to get us out of the Saudi stranglehold. It’s doubtful. If not that, then the government needs to offer amnesty to this woman and allow her to live in the U.S. At least we’d be showing the sense of justice that’s so sorely lacking in our ally.

Not the Time to Attack Iran

The U.S. government says attacks in Iraq are down 55 percent since last summer, thanks to the American surge and better cooperation with Iraqi police. (Although the fact that the surge is about to end is worrying.) The interesting and hopeful side note in the piece, which I’ve read in a few places, are the claims that Iran is stemming the flow of weapons into Iraq.

I hope this is true, because it represents two potentially good outcomes: one, it dents Shi’ite militias’ ability to kill Americans and other Iraqis; and two, it would be a good-faith gesture by Iran indicating that they’re not hell-bent on destroying America at all costs, as right-wing dudes would have us believe.

TIME editor/soulja Tony Karon wrote a while back of the importance of reaching an agreement with Iran to promote Iraqi stability, and this reduced weapons flow would seem to be an opening to approach such an agreement. As much as many Americans believe we shouldn’t negotiate with the Axis of Evil (despite it happening exactly that way in North Korea), reaching a stabilizing agreement with Iran would do far more for America’s interests–a calmer Iraq, a calmer region and, let’s face it, undisrupted oil supplies–than a bombing campaign. We’d also have more legitimacy to pressure them should they break the agreement in the future, and the evidence from North Korea seems to be that negotiation is the best way to prevent what the world really fears: nuclear Iran.

What To Do With $611 Billion

Here is a link from the Boston Globe detailing ways the U.S. government could alternatively spend the amount of funds that has gone to the Iraq war.

I think I would take Forbes.com’s example and outfit 4,073,333,333 people in custom-made leather underpants. That way, nearly 2/3 of the Earth’s population would be just a little more rock ‘n’ roll.