A clear picture of American International Policy Errors

Havelock · 03-09-2003 10:34AM #1

At least one American Journalist is getting the picture of the real world publihed. From Todays New York Times

Empire of Novices
-By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

The Bush foreign policy team always had contempt for Bill Clinton's herky-jerky, improvised interventions around the world. When it took control, it promised a global stewardship purring with gravity, finesse and farsightedness.

But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel.

When your aim is remaking the Middle East, you don't want to get stuck making it up as you go along.

Even officials with a combined century of international experience can behave with jejeunosity — if they start believing their own spin.

The group that started out presuming it could shape the world is now getting shoved by the world.

Our unseen tormentors are the ones who seem canny and organized, not us. As they move from killing individual U.S. soldiers and Iraqis to sabotaging power plants, burning oil pipelines, blowing up mosques, demolishing the U.N. headquarters and now hitting the Baghdad police headquarters, our enemies seem better prepared and more committed to creating chaos in Iraq — and Afghanistan — than we are to creating order.

They've also proved more adept at putting together an effective coalition than the Bush team: a terrifying blend of terrorists from other countries, Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam fighters, radical Shiites and Saddam remnants, all pouring into Iraq and united by their hatred of America.

If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim:

• We wanted to get rid of Osama and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We didn't. They're replicating and coming at us like cockroaches. According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet?

• Bushies thought freeing Iraq from Saddam would be the first step toward the Middle East road map for peace, as well as a guarantee of greater security for Israel. But the road map blew up, and Israel seems farther away from making peace with the Arabs than ever. The U.S. has now pathetically called on Yasir Arafat to use his power to help after pretending for more than a year that he didn't exist.

• Rummy wanted to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam and prove you could use a lighter, faster force. But our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may not banish our fears of being mired in a place halfway around the world where we don't understand the language or culture, and where our stretched-thin soldiers are picked off, guerrilla-style.

• The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past it into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq.

• Dick Cheney and Rummy wanted to blow off multilateralism and snub what Bushies call "the chocolate-making countries": France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. But faced with untold billions in costs and mounting casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are beginning to see the advantages of sidekicks that know the perils of empire.

• The Pentagon wanted to sideline the C.I.A. and State and run the war and reconstruction itself. Now, overwhelmed, the Pentagon's special operations chiefs were reduced to screening a 1965 movie, "The Battle of Algiers," last week, as David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post, to try to learn why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers.

• The neocons hoped democracy in Iraq would spread like a fever in the Mideast, even among our double-dealing friends like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But after the majestic handoff of democracy to the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, it seems the puppets (now nervous about bodyguards) don't even want to work late, much less govern. As one aide told The Times, "On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home."

• The vice president wanted to banish that old 60's feeling of moral ambivalence, of America in the wrong. Our unilateral move in Iraq, with the justifications on W.M.D. and Qaeda links to Saddam getting shakier each month, has made us more hated around the world than ever.

bloggs · 03-09-2003 10:53AM

I think the US election system needs to be totally overhauled. A PR system would make much more sense, instead of a two party system, where both parties are much the same. More parties from both the left and the right would make for better government. A better government in the US would mean a better world (imo)

DadaKopf · 03-09-2003 11:21AM

I never thought I'd see the word 'jejeunosity' in an article - ever!

bonkey · 03-09-2003 11:29AM

Not only that, but a standard google search for it returns exactly one hit!!!

dictionary.com hasn't a clue what it is either.

Can someone enlighten me?

jc

Mark · 03-09-2003 11:30AM

Originally posted by DadaKopf
I never thought I'd see the word 'jejeunosity' in an article - ever!

Considering it doesn't seem to be a word, I'm not suprised.

Vader · 03-09-2003 11:31AM

PR is one of the purest forms of democracy(the purest being devolution and power-sharing) but it is only relevant in a parlimentary society. The US presidancy is a dictatorship(if you take the word in its origional meaning in ancient rome and not in the modern sense) and as such needs a strong universal leader

DadaKopf · 03-09-2003 11:34AM

I only know the word from a Woody Allen movie, 'Love and Death'. His best early film ever!

From the word 'jejune':

je·june ( P ) Pronunciation Key (j-jn)
adj.
Not interesting; dull: “and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases” (Anthony Trollope).
Lacking maturity; childish: surprised by their jejune responses to our problems.
Lacking in nutrition: a jejune diet.

No entry for 'jejeuneosity', buh.

DadaKopf · 03-09-2003 11:36AM

Originally posted by Vader
PR is one of the purest forms of democracy(the purest being devolution and power-sharing) but it is only relevant in a parlimentary society. The US presidancy is a dictatorship(if you take the word in its origional meaning in ancient rome and not in the modern sense) and as such needs a strong universal leader

Is that some kind of excuse?

No, the US is a plutocracy. But, ironically, with heavy injections of local governance. Still a plutocracy, though.

shotamoose · 03-09-2003 11:54AM

Originally posted by DadaKopf
I never thought I'd see the word 'jejeunosity' in an article - ever!

I don't see why - it's a perfectly cromulent word ...

Hairy Homer · 03-09-2003 01:05PM

Originally posted by DadaKopf
I never thought I'd see the word 'jejeunosity' in an article - ever!

Nearest I can find from Collins English Dictionary is an entry for:
Jejune adj
1 simple; naive; unsophisticated
2 insipid; dull; dry
3 lacking nourisment; insubstantial or barren

Seems like she's got them all there. Why she couldn't have just said naivety I'll never now.

dahamsta · 03-09-2003 01:54PM

Funny, I was only thinking myself this morning, when reading the piece below from the LA Times, how surprising it was to see such a forceful opinion in a major Stateside publication. A couple of months ago the editor would have needed to sack the author a day or two after publication and offered to resign themself too.

adam

Robert Scheer:
Bush Was All Too Willing to Use Émigrés' Lies
American experts urged the White House to be skeptical, but they hit a stone wall.

Oops. There are no weapons of mass destruction after all. That's the emerging consensus of the second team of weapons sleuths commanded by the U.S. in Iraq, as reported last week in the Los Angeles Times. The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group found what the first wave of U.S. military experts and the United Nations inspectors before them discovered — nada.

Nothing, not a vial of the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin or the 25,000 liters of anthrax or an ounce of the materials for the 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent claimed by George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech as justification for war. Nor any sign of the advanced nuclear weapons program, a claim based on a now-admitted forgery. Nor has anyone produced any evidence of ties between the deposed Hussein regime and the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11.

The entire adventure was an immense fraud.

"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," a senior U.S. weapons expert who worked with the Iraq Survey Group told The Times. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions."

[...]

The Saint · 03-09-2003 02:17PM

The LA Times is seen by many conservatives to be a highly liberal publication and it is also attacked as being anti-semetic in its reporting of Israel.

The Corinthian · 03-09-2003 03:09PM

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Why she couldn't have just said naivety I'll never now.

Bloody journos...

The Beer Baron · 03-09-2003 04:43PM

Funny, I was only thinking myself this morning, when reading the piece below from the LA Times, how surprising it was to see such a forceful opinion in a major Stateside publication. A couple of months ago the editor would have needed to sack the author a day or two after publication and offered to resign themself too.

I guess the winds of change are blowing, and chilling the Bush administration to the bone. On a national level they face a lot of pressure, their allies (Blair, Howard) look like they're about to be skinned alive in the streets, Israel are certain to bear the brunt of their arrogance as the entire Arabic world seems allied in hatred and as for the rest of the world...well.

The long windy, pick-up truck-lined road to the next election has begun. Democrat candidates are already spitting bile at Bush from their soapboxes, I might be calling it early but I'm almost sure it'll be the Republicans again but perhaps the editors of the LA Times, as well as others are either gambling on the contrary, or know something the rest of us don't. Or perhaps just selling papers to their steady demographic- California ain't like the rest of the US is it?

Anyways- I'll reserve judgement on that matter, at least until Fox News begins to change their tune- that'll be the day though- won't it!?

dahamsta · 03-09-2003 05:08PM

Originally posted by The Saint
The LA Times is seen by many conservatives to be a highly liberal publication and it is also attacked as being anti-semetic in its reporting of Israel.

A couple of months ago the editor would have needed to sack the author a day or two after publication and offered to resign themself too.

Havelock · 04-09-2003 09:13AM

Just noticed something as I re-read the article, she compares Clinton to Rommel, does that suggest Bush is Hitler adn teh Republician Nazis?

Anyway, on the topic of Fox changing its view, ha!

We could always hope for the Mountain Men to over throw the government, at least they have no interest in foreign policy.

Hairy Homer · 04-09-2003 09:26AM

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Why she couldn't have just said naivety I'll never now.

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Bloody journos...

Pretentious? Qui, moi?

Xhen · 04-09-2003 08:25PM

"Funny, I was only thinking myself this morning, when reading the piece below from the LA Times, how surprising it was to see such a forceful opinion in a major Stateside publication. A couple of months ago the editor would have needed to sack the author a day or two after publication and offered to resign themself too."

This is the kind of nonsense that makes Americans think that Eurolefties have gone completely off their nut.

Robert Scheer and Maureen Dowd have been howling and tossing feces at the Bush Administration since the day he was inaugurated and their editors haven't yet been forced into industrial shredders. The US media has never stopped yapping, debate has never ceased, and the diversity of information sources in the US has never been greater. Your shallow stereotypes of America may be a hit at your local pub but you need to shed them if you want any greater understanding of the truth. I doubt some of you do.

Speaking of Dowd, she's widely seen among American conservatives as a petulant lightweight whose air-brained commentary is more likely to produce laughter than anger. Here's Exhibit A:

"According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet?"

Hairy Homer · 05-09-2003 02:09PM

Originally posted by Xhen
she's widely seen among American conservatives as a petulant lightweight whose air-brained commentary is more likely to produce laughter than anger.

Seems like an ideal counterbalance to your average Nutty Neocon then.

sovtek · 05-09-2003 08:11PM

Originally posted by Xhen

The US media has never stopped yapping, debate has never ceased, and the diversity of information sources in the US has never been greater.

Debate has never ceased, but the quality of it has seriously declined. The Reps and Dems wont even have debates with other political parties nor allow "town hall" type debates where members of the public can ask them questions.
Actually a few companies have managed to buy up most of the major TV stations in America over the last few years.
One example being AOL/Time Warner merging with Colin Powell at the helm (meanwhile his son Michael is the head of the FCC that oversaw the merger...no conflict of interest there!)
Deregulation in radio led to one company, Clear Channel, owning half the radio stations in the country (who also gave heavily to the Bush campaign, as well as giving the Dixie Chicks hell)).
Similar de-regulation of TV/Cable took effect in June of this year urged by Michael Powell. It's expected to also lead to the same situation as radio. Fortunetly, because of the huge opposition to it, it's possibly going to be head off by Congress. That's despite Bush saying he will veto Congress if it does so.
They are now working on the internet.

TomF · 05-09-2003 09:09PM

Maybe Maureen Dowd used "jejeunosity" but at least she didn't use "row", "scheme", or "launch" which are used daily in almost every edition of every broadsheet in Ireland

(And what about "eponymous". Can we get a little relief from that word here, too?)

Anyway, Dowd's strictly a one-note anti-Bush columnist, and her one note is usually flat.

Xhen · 05-09-2003 11:57PM

Sovtek:

Lots of disinformation that you're trying to pass off as fact. I'm no fan of Clear Channel but they never banned the Dixie Chicks. In fact in the two weeks after their controversial statement Clear Channel stations played Dixie Chicks songs 10,069 times - more than any other major broadcaster. A few Clear Channel stations, along with some non-Clear Channel stations, did boycott the Chicks for awhile but it was strictly a station-by-station decision and was driven mainly by listener complaints.

Oh, and that quote by Bush in your signature is amusing but there's one problem with it - there's no evidence he ever said it. Not that facts are likely to deter you from using it.

The Corinthian · 06-09-2003 12:30AM

Originally posted by Xhen
Oh, and that quote by Bush in your signature is amusing but there's one problem with it - there's no evidence he ever said it.

Believe or dismiss as your conscience and/or ideology will allow:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47246-2002Jul10?language=printer

Geromino · 06-09-2003 12:43PM

Originally posted by bloggs
I think the US election system needs to be totally overhauled. A PR system would make much more sense, instead of a two party system, where both parties are much the same. More parties from both the left and the right would make for better government. A better government in the US would mean a better world (imo)

Well, the system needs to be overhauled in campaign finance reform, not in the manner in which you described. The US is a representative republic. If you take a look at the Presidential election system, the person who wins a majority of the electoral college wins the presidency. This is usually defined as a majority of the population, but with Clinton winning a plurality (44% of the popular vote), and winning a majority of electoral seats, a candidate can win without a majority of the population. The government is based on federalism, a system that is defined with clear roles for the local branch, state branch, and federal branch. It is not the most efficient form of government, but it works 100% of the time even with Watergate, a civil war, two world wars, and countless scandals over the past two hundred plus years. The primary reason for the electoral college is so that the candidates can represent the entire US, not just the major cities. Otherwise, citizens in states like Montana, North and South Dakota, Idaho, and other small population states can have an equal vote from someone in a populated state. The founding fathers had a big problem with mob rule as it was evident with Cromwell, the Thirty Years War, and other historical events. But then again, you can have a democracy like India, former Hong Kong, England, Israel, France, Japan, South Korea, and Liberia. Each has its own political problems and unique solutions. To adapt those problems and solutions into a country that has no historical basis is just writing for disaster.

The Corinthian · 06-09-2003 03:26PM

Originally posted by Geromino
The primary reason for the electoral college is so that the candidates can represent the entire US, not just the major cities.

As an aside, the US Electoral College was originally loosely based upon the Roman Republic’s electoral legions, AFAIR.

But then again, you can have a democracy like India, former Hong Kong, England, Israel, France, Japan, South Korea, and Liberia.

Hong Kong is not a democracy.

Xhen · 06-09-2003 07:45PM

"Believe or dismiss as your conscience and/or ideology will allow:"

Like I said, there's no evidence he ever said it. The only source is Shirley Williams who heard it second-hand and it has been denied by Blair's spokesman. Not that it's going to convince people determined to believe that Bush is a moron otherwise.

Geronimo is right that the electoral college is beneficial to smaller, less populous states which is why there's no real push to change it.

The Corinthian · 06-09-2003 08:14PM

Originally posted by Xhen
Like I said, there's no evidence he ever said it. The only source is Shirley Williams who heard it second-hand and it has been denied by Blair's spokesman. Not that it's going to convince people determined to believe that Bush is a moron otherwise.

The story, or anecdote, originates from a British politician and peer (who despite Lord Archer, would tend not to be in the business of lying about these things), who in turn got it (allegedly) from Blair. Furthermore the story was posted by the Washington Post, which is hardly the National Enquirer, is it?

I would treat such a story with a healthy dose of scepticism, but to deny that there is no evidence is frankly unhealthy denial also. It’s not great evidence, IMHO, but evidence nonetheless, and arguably better than that presented as proof of WMD in Iraq

Blue Candrel · 06-09-2003 08:18PM

Epitah Of The World (Excluding America)

“Death to them all”, says the little plump figure standing at his podium. Surrounded by his subjects he makes bloodthirsty pleas to millions who watch. “Death to them all”, says the little plump figure standing at his podium. Surrounded by his subjects he tries to convince the millions to end the foreign threat to the great capital of our world America. “Death to them all”, says the great leader of our times. Surrounded by his subjects he tries to conjure hate against all brown, black and yellow skinned persons that do not live within America’s great shores. The little Texan has his say, retreats from the podium and leaves re-runs of CNN reports of 9-11 fill the screens. “Death to them all”, is the message which vibrates the speakers across countless countries – (How I’d like to stand at the sidelines but ‘No man is an island’.)

Peter D. Sullivan

Think that sums it up. America are the real terrorists. :ninja:

Éomer of Rohan · 06-09-2003 08:25PM

Just on another note, possibly off the the so-far beaten track since I have not read the first page of this thread, does anyone think that the US/UK idea about a new resolution to deploy international troops to Iraq is a bit rich?

I mean, the unilateralists in the Wolfowitz mould were screaming themselves blue before the war began and now they need cannon fodder so that Bush and co can point to the lack up body bags in the upcoming election. Or maybe I am just being too cynical.

What movie was it in which I heard the first rule of robbery; get a partner so that if things screw up, you have someone to dump in the kaka?

swiss · 06-09-2003 09:40PM

American foreign policy has always been a giant contradiction in terms. It's stance on Iraq has shifted from the removal of the WMD threat to "regime change", depending on which becomes the more plausible and acceptable excuse to start a war. On both counts, there are both other countries that either pose a greater threat to US security (namely N. Korea) and those that are guilty of human rights abuses (China, Zimbabwe etc). The US does not pursue war with these countries because it is not convenient to do so.

However, it is most especially the selective manner in which the US cooperates with the UN that makes me especially distrustful of their foreign policy. When Israel contravenes several UN resolutions, it should be treated in the same manner as Iraq, if the excuse of being in contravention of UN resolutions is what arguably precipitated the war in the first place. When the opposite is in fact the case, it is little wonder that the arab world in particular should look to this disparity and realise the hypocrisy of the United States administration. This is but one example of the litany of intervention and pseudo-imperialism of which the US is guilty.

Geromino · 06-09-2003 09:51PM

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Hong Kong is not a democracy.

Up until 1997, Hong Kong was. Now, it is a cross between a democracy and communism. The Chinese phrase is "one China, two systems." This has more relevance in the economic spectrum, but it also has influence in the political spectrum. The mayor of Hong Kong tried to push a refrendum through the governing body in Hong Kong. It was soundly defeated by the protests of various sub-groups that used to be recognized political parties. These "independent" voices are keeping Hong Kong from going completely communist.

A clear picture of American International Policy Errors

Comments