World Affairs: July 2003 Archives

Senator Joe Biden gave a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institute today and though I'm loath to consider voting for someone who came up with the RAVE Act and was involved in most other major legislative aspects of the drug war, this is the most sensible beginnings of a foreign policy platform I've seen from any of the potential candidates - other than Hart of course. He takes both the multilateralists and the neo-cons to task and proposes a middle ground of "enlightened nationalism":

one that understands the value of institutions but allows us to use military force, without apology or apprehension if we have to, but does not allow us to be so blinded by the overwhelming power of our armed forces that we fail to see the benefit of sharing the risks and the costs with others.

In my view, the stakes are too high and the opportunities too great to conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

It's somewhat long but you should read the whole thing if you want to know how things should have been done and need to be done from here on out.

Some in my own Party have said it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place, and the benefit is not worth the cost. I believe they're wrong. The cost of not acting against Saddam would have been much greater, and so is the cost of not finishing the job. The President is popular. The stakes are high. The need for leadership is great.

I wish he'd used some of his stored-up popularity to make what I admit is an unpopular case. I wish the President, instead of standing on an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that said: "Mission Accomplished" would have stood in front of a banner that said: "We've Only Just Begun." I wish he would stand in front of the American people and say: "My fellow Americans, we have a long and hard road ahead of us in Iraq, but we have to stay in Iraq. We have to finish the job. If we don't, the following will happen. Here's what I'll be asking of you and, by the way, I'm asking the rest of the world to help us as well. And I am confident we'll succeed and as a consequence be more secure."

I'm waiting for that speech.

Me too.

[via Political Wire]

This week's TNR has a disturbingly fascinating "insider" story (subscription only - 4 week free trial) about the "traditionalist" agenda behind Mel Gibson's new film, The Passion.

Mel Gibson's newest historical drama, on the death of Jesus Christ, is not anti-Semitic. So complete is his commitment to historical authenticity that he has eschewed subtitles, and will tell his story entirely in its original ancient languages, Aramaic and Latin. Gibson bankrolled the entirety of his forthcoming film, and he co-wrote the script; but the Holy Spirit directed it. "The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film," Gibson has recounted when asked about The Passion. "I was just directing traffic." Unfortunately, a group of Catholic and Jewish scholars, alert to Gibson's effort, engaged the services of a mole, ... illegally obtained a copy of the script, and then began to pressure Gibson to revise his story to conform to their own ideas about history and theology. Gibson's lawyers quashed their attempted extortion, however. The scholars withdrew their criticisms. And Mel's movie, in various private screenings, has already begun to move hearts and minds.

All the sentences above are culled from recent articles in assorted media--The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NewsMax.com, Zenit, Religion News Service, the New York Daily News, Australia's Sun-Herald. Some of the statements are true. Gibson did co-write the script. His company, Icon, did produce it. His attorney did accuse critics of attempting extortion. And at least one viewer at a private screening in June, moved to tears and prayer, has called the film "a miracle." Whether the Holy Ghost helped out during the shoot I cannot say. All the other statements, I do know, are false.

TNR's Montreal Diarist updates us on whats been going on in Canada the last 6 years or so. (subscription only)

The results of these economic and political changes have been impressive. Canada posted the highest growth rates of any industrialized country last year, it added over 500,000 new jobs in 2002, and it has become the only deficit-free Western nation. While Boeing's planes pile up unused, Bombardier, Montreal's innovative small-jet manufacturer, has been swamped with orders. While U.S. movie capitals have struggled, Canada, which is cheaper and offers filmmakers incentives, has emerged as the locale of choice. Nearly 60 films that supposedly took place in Chicago have been shot in Canada since 1985. In fact, though many Americans view their northern neighbor as an unchanging, frozen morass, Canada has emerged as a serious rival to America's role as the hemisphere's economic dynamo and champion of liberal political ideals. In posting strong growth while the United States struggles, Canada is demonstrating an alternative economic model: a major economy where, unlike in Europe, leaders reduce the power of the state and, unlike in the United States, maintain enough of a safety net to give the poor a fighting chance. Canada has always boasted a larger welfare state than the United States, but, in the past, state intervention hindered growth so much that Canada could hardly claim to be a true rival. Now, perhaps it can. According to The New York Times, Canada's five major banks have spent more than $8 billion acquiring U.S. companies since 1996. 

Ronald Asmus and Ken Pollack have a good editorial in Tuesday's Washington Post regarding some of the issues I touched on in comments yesterday.

A consensus is emerging in Washington that the greater Middle East constitutes the primary strategic challenge of our time and that the West must fundamentally rethink the way it approaches this region. In the past, Washington assumed it didn't have to care about the internal order of these countries so long as they accommodated our interests in their foreign policies. If things got really bad, Washington would step in and intervene, in a modern-day version of the popular game whack-a-mole.

But whack-a-mole isn't a very good game, and it's an even worse foreign policy. Sept. 11, 2001, taught us the price we pay for ignoring the underlying problems of the region. The question now is how best to transform the Middle East so that it no longer produces people who want to kill us in great numbers and increasingly have the ability to do so.

The next few days should be interesting. The 9/11 Commision report comes out tomorrow and amongst many other things it concludes there are no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida (previous to us declaring war presumably). I wonder why the Administration delayed this report for so long?

[via Talking Points Memo]

Josh Marshall cuts through all the bullshit coming from both sides regarding the Little Yellow(cake) Lie and does a fine job of explaining what the REAL problem is with lying for a potentially good cause. The problem in this case isn't so much the lie, as it is the lack of expectations setting that might occur in a public debate over the "Pagano Doctrine" - aka the neo-con domino-theory of Middle East realpolitik. I include an excerpt to give you an idea, but be sure to read the whole thing.

Now, a few points about the dishonesty at the center of all this. It's bad just on principle not to fundamentally level with the public about why you're getting into a war and just what sort of war you're getting into. Quite apart from that, however, doing so gets you into some practical difficulties. If you don't level with the public that you're getting into a very long-term, extremely costly enterprise you may find that your tough talk about having the staying power to finish the job isn't matched by public sentiment, or that you face a backlash over getting the country into far more than you led voters to believe. You may find that the public really isn't on board for what you're trying to accomplish. And that's a big problem if the public doesn't have the staying power and you have to leave the task half-finished, because this is one of those things that is better not to have tried at all than leave half-done.

So, why is this little matter of the uranium statements such a big deal? Because it is a concrete, demonstrable example of the administration's bad faith in how it led the country to war. To date that bad-faith has been all too apparent on many fronts. But the administration has cowed much of the press into remaining silent or simply not scrutinizing various of the administration's arguments for the war. And success makes up for many sins. No doubt it's painful for the president's partisans to see this stuff dug into. And it produces glee for Democrats who think -- rightly or wrongly -- that it gives them a potent issue to use against the president in the 2004 elections. But quite apart from partisan considerations on either side, we're never going to figure out what we're doing in Iraq, do it well, or accomplish anything good for the future security of the United States unless and until we start talking straight about why we're there, what we need to accomplish, and how we're going to do it.

Good news! Saddam hopefully won't be far off.

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday, were killed Tuesday in a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq said.

Will Saletan artfully (as always) breaks down the Bush defense on the State of the Uranium issue:

1. It's the CIA's fault
2. It's the speechwriter's fault
3. It's true that Britain said it
4. It's part of the larger truth
5. It's time to move on

In Will's words:

When George W. Bush ran for president, one of his big selling points was responsibility. Americans were tired of Bill Clinton's fudges and legalisms. They were tired of hearing that the latest falsehood was part of a larger truth, or that it was OK because the president had attributed it to somebody else, or that the country should "move on." Bush promised to end all that. He promised an "era of responsibility" in which leaders and citizens would no longer "blame somebody else."

The American people have given the Bush administration great leeway to combat terrorism. So far they have given the President the benefit of the doubt. But our tolerance is being strained and our credulity sorely tested. I sense we’re reaching the “tipping point” where it all starts going south.

More is at stake than George Bush’s future or partisan advantage. The honor and reputation of the United States is now at stake. We cannot claim to be “the world’s leading democracy” and commit the power of the United States to a war that, so far, has been justified on false grounds. The wheels of justice grind exceeding fine. And judgment day is coming.

The Senator is still feisty and his latest posting sums up my feelings on the issues of the day.

"I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I...look forward to working with them," Bush said in Abuja during a visit to Nigeria.

Asked whether he considered the controversy over, he said: "I do."

 Well, guess we should all stop talking about it then.