Emphasis Added

Monday, March 17, 2003

Carrot and Stick

Over the last week, I have read nearly a dozen well-thought-out commentaries on the direction of US policy as we head toward war, and they all find different ways of saying the same thing: Bush may be right on Iraq, but his conduct of diplomacy has made it difficult and humiliating for anyone to be our ally. Here's another piece (well worth reading in its entirety) in that bastion of radicalism, Newsweek, contrasting the post WWII policy as conducted by both parties for 50 years with the arrogance and unilateralism of the Bushies:

For decades [after the end of WWII], the United States has provided aid, technical know-how and assistance across the world. It has built dams, funded magazines and sent scholars and students abroad so that people got to know America and Americans. It has paid great deference to its allies who were in no sense equals [emphasis added]. It has conducted joint military exercises, even when they added little to U.S. readiness. For half a century, American presidents and secretaries of State have circled the globe and hosted their counterparts in a never-ending cycle of diplomacy.
Of course, all these exertions served our interests, too. They produced a pro-American world that was rich and secure. They laid the foundations for a booming global economy in which America thrives. But it was an enlightened self-interest that took into account the interests of others. Above all, it reassured countries—through word and deed, style and substance—that America’s mammoth power need not be feared.

Compare with today:

In its first year the administration withdrew from five international treaties—and did so as brusquely as it could. It reneged on virtually every diplomatic effort that the Clinton administration had engaged in, from North Korea to the Middle East, often overturning public statements from Colin Powell supporting these efforts. It developed a language and diplomatic style that seemed calculated to offend the world... Key figures in the administration rarely traveled, foreign visitors were treated to perfunctory office visits, and state dinners were unheard of. On an annual basis, George W. Bush has visited fewer foreign countries than any president in 40 years. Still, he does better than Dick Cheney, who has been abroad only once since becoming vice president.

...In almost every case, the administration comes to multilateralism grudgingly, reluctantly, and with a transparent lack of sincerity.

People all over the world recognize in George Bush and his crew the swaggering frat boy bullies who are accustomed to privilege and lord it over everyone else with a proud air of ignorant entitlement. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush himself look to the rest of the world like the self-satisfied rich kid villains of every teen comedy, so broad in their obnoxious arrogance that most of the audience can't wait to see them get taken down a peg. Sure, we're playing for higher stakes in international politics, but it's a natural human reponse to chafe at disrespect and transparent disregard for the wishes and priorities of others. Right or wrong about Iraq or whatever else, when you're that big of a jerk, people start looking for ways to sabotage and undermine you.

Defenders of the Administration say, "So what? We don't need them and we are better than them - why be shy about it?" Lacking patience for dissent and disdainful of "fancy manners," Bush and company ride the world like a bunch of drunk Texas businessmen on a honky-tonk mechanical bull. Sure, things may get better if we manage to rid ourselves of this mob, but the damage is done. We've shown the world that the generous, sophisticated and principled America they know can, on the basis of 250 disputed votes in Florida, transform in a heartbeat into a smirking bully who can sweep away 50 years of precedent with no inhibitions and nothing to call him to account. No wonder they're scared. Hell, I'm scared.

4:46:15 PM

Emphasize This! []

Elvis Has Left the Building

Last night, my brain tired from all the garbage I wrote yesterday, I tuned in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on VH1 to see two of my all-time favorite artists - Elvis Costello and the Clash - honored and institutionalized by the very establishment that they tried to destroy 25 years ago. As these kinds of things go, it wasn't bad. I laughed (at AC/DC's Angus Young, still cavorting in his schoolboy uniform into his 50s), I cried (at the tragic absense of main Clash man Joe Strummer, who died several months ago, just when we need him most), but mostly I got chills when Elvis Costello wound up a lackluster rendition of "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," strapped on his Fender stratocaster, and led his band through a scorching version of "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?" (ironically, one of the few songs in his repetoire written by someone else - Nick Lowe in this case). Quoting rock lyrics is, in my view, usually the last refuge of the pretentious scoundrel, but I simply can't help myself.

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

There's one other Elvis lyric that sums up my mood, from 1979's Oliver's Army: "I would rather be anywhere else but here today."

9:00:09 AM

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"A Coalition of the Thinking"

Journalist Arthur Kent, interviewed in Salon today, is worth quoting at length on his views about the Bush Administration's profound diplomatic incompetence:

I'm still trying to shake from my mind the disbelief that a modern American administration can be as clumsy, as brusque and as crude as this one. Think back to Sept. 12, 2001: Kids in Paris were wearing American flags out of solidarity with the American people. Countries were lining up, tripping over one another, to come and touch the hem of the cloak of power in Washington D.C. The Bush administration had allies and support and emotional empathy from people around the world. It's gone. Where has it gone? It hasn't disappeared by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein pouring a potion over people. It's gone because the administration has so offended the sensibilities of peace-loving, democracy-loving people that they simply have to take to the streets, or demand of their leaders to tell the Bush administration to stop and to think.

I don't want to see a "coalition of the willing." We need a coalition of the thinking. We need countries and leaders to get together and think. The campaign against terror is a battle of ideas. We have better ideas; we have better societies. You outthink terrorists and you outmaneuver them, economically, socially, politically, diplomatically, as well as militarily. We have got to get into the Muslim world and the Third World in a nonviolent fashion and outperform the al-Qaidas and Saddam Husseins of the world with the promise of a better tomorrow for those people, as well as our own. Otherwise, we lose.

8:33:58 AM

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