Month: February 2003

Tom Friedman seems to think so. I wish I thought that the visceral hostility of Chirac and Schroder were a function of George Bush’s bad diplomacy. But I fear their positions would be the same whatever president was in power, if he were trying to accomplish the magnitude of what Bush is aiming for in the war on terror. Bush’s rapport with Blair, an ideological opponent, and his relationship with Putin suggests no lack of diplomatic grace in the White House. And does Friedman think Colin Powell’s ceaseless efforts around the globe were window-dressing? In truth, the positions of France and Germany have as much to do with their own precarious positions within Europe as they do with the policies of the United States. For a while now, I have harped on the importance of EU politics for American foreign policy – and largely been ignored. It seemed so boring. It may seem less boring now. There is a huge struggle going on in Europe between those who want to forge an anti-American socialist super-state and those who want to unite Europe around principles of nation-states, a trans-Atlantic bond and free trade. Imagine in the current crisis if Britain’s foreign policy were subservient to Brussels and you get an idea of the stakes.

EUROPE’S CHANCE: Until now, Britain has been waging a lonely and largely reactive campaign against the centralizers and dirigistes. But as the EU has enlarged since the end of the Soviet bloc, and as the central euro-area continues to be bested by the more dynamic economies on the periphery, Britain stands a chance of reshaping Europe along far more pro-American and classically liberal lines. Chirac and Schroder must now realize that this war, if successful, could bolster Blair further in Europe and isolate them for a long time within their own pet institution. Hence Chirac’s loss of temper at the East Europeans. Hence Schroder’s accelerating political collapse at home. Great things are afoot. This war might not only change the Middle East in ways conducive to liberal democratic institutions. It might do the same for Europe.

Read this hilarious and touching obit of famous British eccentric Lady Bindy Lambton, survivor of enormous feet, go-karting crashes and cocaine.

Thanks for the tidal wave of BBC snippets. I’m even more struck by the anti-anti-Saddam slant. Here’s a recent one, to give you a flavor: a piece posing as journalism focussing on a handful of liberal churches in the U.S. supporting a non-violent removal of Saddam. How would such a removal be accomplished? By encouraging civil disobedience among Iraqis. Here’s the piece. Try not to laugh or cry. Not a skeptical note in it. As a reader noted, the last time the West urged a similar mass protest against Saddam – with leaflet drops in March 1991 – the dictator’s response was to massacre 20,000 Kurds in the North and between 30,000 and 60,000 Shi’ah in the South within a month. For balance, the outside “expert” who gives his take on the idea is a leading former member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (which, of course, doesn’t want to disarm Saddam). It’s a classic Beeb piece – not really news, utterly slanted, with a patina of easily-debunked objectivity.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION II: Check out this piece of “vox populi” boilerplate from the BBC, going around the world asking people what they think about the Iraqi situation. Barely a single voice in favor of using force to disarm or depose Saddam. No surprise there. But more objectionable are the voices of people in Iraq, presented with no context in exactly the same format as interviews in Paris and London and Washington. As if there weren’t a gun pointed at the back of their head. Yesterday, Paul Krugman blamed the Fox News Network, with an audience in the hundreds of thousands, for slanting America’s views in favor of war. It was the only way he could understand the difference in public opinion between the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, the BBC, with a quarter of a billion worldwide listeners and viewers, and a semi-monopoly of television and radio in Britain, churns out anti-American propaganda by the truckload. Hmmm.

Check out this BBC interview with Tony Blair on Newsnight, hosted by Jeremy Paxman. Now, Paxman is a notoriously rude and offensive interviewer in what is a ruder and more offensive political-media culture in Britain. But this grilling of Blair took things to a new level. Look at this exchange:

TONY BLAIR: Well I can assure you I’ve said every time I’m asked about this, the [sanctions] have contained [Saddam] up to a point and the fact is the sanctions regime was beginning to crumble, it’s why … we had a whole series of negotiations about tightening the sanctions regime but the truth is the inspectors were put out of Iraq so –
JEREMY PAXMAN: They were not put out of Iraq, Prime Minister, that is just not true. The weapons inspectors left Iraq after being told by the American government that bombs will be dropped on the country.
TONY BLAIR: I’m sorry, that is simply not right. What happened is that the inspectors told us that they were unable to carry out their work, they couldn’t do their work because they weren’t being allowed access to the sites. They detailed that in the reports to the Security Council. On that basis, we said they should come out because they couldn’t do their job properly.
JEREMY PAXMAN: That wasn’t what you said, you said they were thrown out of Iraq –
TONY BLAIR: Well they were effectively because they couldn’t do the work they were supposed to do
JEREMY PAXMAN: No, effectively they were not thrown out of Iraq, they withdrew.
TONY BLAIR: No I’m sorry Jeremy, I’m not allowing you to get away with that, that is completely wrong. Let me just explain to you what happened.
JEREMY PAXMAN: You’ve just said the decision was taken by the inspectors to leave the country. They were therefore not thrown out.
TONY BLAIR: They were effectively thrown out for the reason that I will give you.

Note the complete contempt for Blair. Note the silly semantics treated as if it were a real point. Not the insufferable pomposity of Paxman. And the audience was drawn entirely from people opposed to the Blair policy. Not a single affirmative question or sympathetic comment was allowed. Fair and balanced. That’s our Beeb.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION IV: Some more recent quotes from the BBC’s reporters and correspondents. From Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, at a Hamas rally – yes, a Hamas rally – in 2001: “Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.” The BBC still won’t characterize Hamas as a terrorist group. From John Simpson, World Affairs editor, the man who claimed to have liberated Kabul: George W. Bush is a “glovepuppet of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” Simpson also said of Americans he met in New York after 9/11: “Thank God I don’t have to broadcast to them.” There is, of course, one extraordinary exception to the BBC’s slide toward leftist agitprop. And that’s Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, a broadcast I grew up on and from which I learned my first lessons about America. Decades later, Cooke is still invaluable.

Josh Marshall picks up the baton on the growing story that German officials deliberately concealed evidence of Saddam’s smallpox stockpiles last summer to avoid any campaign distraction from the notion that it’s the U.S. that’s the main threat to world peace. Josh cites this Deutsche Welle piece with the following astonishing sentence:

In the interviews, two German government ministers let readers know that there is little danger now that American-hating terrorists could unleash the small-pox virus on the German population.

Don’t worry, in other words. By appeasing these thugs, we could deflect the horror toward the Brits and Americans. I do think that’s an underlying assumption on the part of Germany and France. By taking the anti-American line, they risk nothing. They know the US will deal with the threat; but by appeasing the Islamofascists, the Franco-German axis hopes to avoid any blowback. This is what they call being an ally.

In an encouraging sign of non-p.c.-ness (what a word), Harvard students busied themselves over the weekend building a large penis out of snow. It was quite a work of art, apparently, and was featured in the Crimson, under the headline, ‘Winter Wonder.” But now the photo is nowhere in the web and the usual suspects are “offended.” A letter-writer to the Crimson wondered whether the Crimson would ever show a photo of a snowy vagina. I think this deep and troubling issue cannot be fully understood or debated until we actually have a picture online of the great white monster, don’t you? C’mon, fellow Harvardians. Post it!

You’d think they’d be a little queasy about shipping vast quantities of sodium cyanide – a percursor of nerve gas – to the rogue state of North Korea. They have signed an agreement saying they wouldn’t. But Germany is now in a position of selling the chemicals for international chemical and biological terrorism, while disavowing any military attempt to deal with the global threat these weapons pose. Is it still possible to think of Germany as an ally? Or France?

A Times of London writer, Stephen Pollard, lets it rip today in words that certainly echo for me:

In all my 38 years, I have never before felt such a sense of personal shock. I am shocked that so many of my friends would rather a brutal dictator remained in power – for that would be the direct consequence if their views won out – than support military action by the United States. I am ashamed that they would rather believe the words of President Saddam Hussein than those of their own Prime Minister. I am nauseated that they would rather give succour to evil than think through the implications of their gut feelings. It is a shocking experience to realise that your friends are either mindless, deluded or malevolent.

He doesn’t mince words, does he? And yet he’s right. He’s particularly good on the self-righteousness of the masses in London on Saturday, and their facile, asinine support for “peace”:

I have tried to point out that saying you are in favour of ‘peace’ is meaningless. Which sane person is not? The question is: peace on whose, and what, terms? If it is peace on the terms of brutal dictators, secured by allowing them to build up whatever weapons arsenals they wish, then that is not peace. It is suicide.

Read the whole thing.

At the E.U. meeting, it seems responsibility took over from showmanship, as Chirac, of all people, became cornered in the discussion over his deeply duplicitous dealings with U.N. Resolution 1441. His response? He emitted bullying noises towards the smaller Eastern European powers that have had the temerity to side with Washington in the war on terror. It was, of course, way over the line. But his very frustration implies that among European governments, there is not now and almost surely never will be unanimity in defense of the French position on Iraq. Chirac’s petty and self-interested posturing is a game, and that game will soon be over. But we shouldn’t forget the vision that sustains Chirac. As a reader put it:

What we have been witnessing since the Blix-Chirac-Schroeder “let the inspections go on” joint press conference in mid-January is nothing short of an attempted “preemptive strike” on the part of our putative allies. By binding together with one another, the goal is to pull the rug out from under the Bush and Blair administrations in an effort to sow domestic dissent in the US and Britain, to stop the war, and ultimately to trigger “regime change” in both the U.S. and Britain. That, my friend, is the gambit.

A little hyperbolic perhaps but not unconvincing. Chirac and Schroder particularly want to destroy Blair. He represents an alternative vision of Europe – more decentralized, more liberal, more flexible, more Atlanticist. And they would love to wound Bush. It seems to me the U.S. policy should now be a new deadline with clear guidelines as to what constitutes Saddam’s cooperation – destruction of the al Samoud missiles for a start. Then we need to focus entirely on the war itself – minimizing casualties while trying to make it as speedy as possible, above all, ensuring a democratic structure post-Saddam. Nothing else will undermine the current Franco-German position as effectively – both within Europe and with respect to the wider world. Then we have to cut France out of post-war Iraqi reconstruction.

The sheer litany of personal smears in Edward Said’s latest rant touches every crass populist chord. From questioning the patriotism of Ari Fleischer – “(who I believe is also an Israeli citizen)” – to the pathetic “chicken hawk” slur assigned to vice-president Cheney and others, the piece is a sign of how desperate the anti-anti-Saddam left is. Notice in particular Said’s outrage at the hopes of Wolfowitz et al to bring democracy to the Arab world:

Isn’t it outrageous that people of such a dubious caliber actually go on blathering about bringing democracy, modernisation, and liberalisation to the Middle East? God knows that the area needs it, as so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals and ordinary people have said over and over. But who appointed these characters as agents of progress anyway? And what entitles them to pontificate in so shameless a way when there are already so many injustices and abuses in their own country to be remedied?

Said gets it exactly wrong. What matters is not who brings democracy to the Arab world. What matters is that it might actually be on the brink of happening at all. Why, one wonders, should that be such a sad day for the left?