A well-informed correspondent writes in with another view of the conclusions we should draw from Bush at War than mine, a much more optimistics view than mine:
Posted by DeLong at January 08, 2003 09:10 AM | TrackbackBush at War made me much less afraid.
We have far more allies in middle eastern governments and elites than I had thought possible.
The CIA staff has a much better grasp of our capabilities than I thought they did.
Tenet and relatively intelligent CIA people were (and are) on top of some domestic security issues, which means they can give the sub-par poorly-performing FBI some guidance.
CIA money goes a lot further among other intelligence services than I thought.
The National Security apparatus understands this is a long, long struggle and appears to be girding for one.
Wolfowitz and the rest of the "Pearle" clique are being kept far away from the trigger.
The President understands that this war is political (e.g. must drop food before bombs)
The President seems to dislike leaders who kill lots of people. Although this may appear banal, I would point out this is a welcome improvement over Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Haig, and company.
The President has a solid wife who will keep him centered during war--far superior to Lady Bird, Pat, Rosalynn or Nancy.
As far as being rendered worried by the President's lack of knowledge of the world and of its history . . . well, (as Austin Powers would say) I'm afraid that ship left the station long ago.
What did you have for breakfast today, Professor DeLong? Mimosa (aka Organge Blossom) and Eggs Florentine with Norwegian lock? :)
I only have one serious question: In the event of Democratic win in 2004, how would you go about repleting the worldwide stock of political sympathy for American(ns)? I don't think Americans have a good sense of the level of contempt and disgust prevailing with most citizens around the world, from Latin America, Europe, Africa to Central and East Asia (you name it.) (And no, it's always been as bad, far from it.)
Someone still has to tell why the rest of the world has to accept all this arrogance and disrespect (ranging from "you're either with us or against us" to threats to take down the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, etc. etc.) Is this collective punishment for 9-11?
Vive le leadership!
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 8, 2003 02:51 PMFrom the Times on Line:
"January 08, 2003
The hatred of America is the socialism of fools
Michael Gove
Confronting Yankee-phobia on the Left will be Tony Blair's toughest task yet Tony Blair appears to have set himself his toughest task yet. Neither reforming public services nor maintaining economic stability compares in difficulty to the mission he took on yesterday. For a Labour politician to confront anti-Americanism is to set himself up in opposition to the dominant ideology of the contemporary Left.
Knocking America off its superpower pedestal has long supplanted taking control of the commanding heights of the economy as the idea which holds the Left together. Forget Clause Four. That was a dead red letter. It’s opposition to Uncle Sam which is the glue in the Left coalition, the brew which puts fire into bien-pensant bellies, the opium of radical intellectuals. And the crack in Osama bin Laden’s pipe.
Anti-Americanism provides the drumbeat for the protesters who march at every significant left-wing rally. Whether the protest is nominally against war, global capitalism or environmental degradation, the real enemy is Washington. Every significant Left intellectual, from Harold Pinter through Dario Fo to Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky has made criticism of the American imperium his defining belief. But Yankee-phobia now extends far beyond the protest march and the academy.
The German Social Democrats and Greens put opposition to US foreign policy at the heart of their, successful, re-election strategy last autumn. The Liberal Democrats here have made criticism of US policy towards Iraq the single biggest dividing line between themselves and the Blair Government.
The cultural popularity of anti-Americanism, particularly among Britain’s intelligentsia, is striking. The surprise publishing hit of last year was Why do people hate America? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, a work which set out to reassure readers that hatred of America was more than a rising sentiment, it was a moral duty. The top of the UK bestseller list is Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, a furious polemic against US foreign, domestic and economic policy by one of its own citizens.
The widespread prevalence of anti-Americanism, the cachet accorded to its advocates, the reflexive sniggering triggered by any favourable mention of America’s President, all make opposition to this trend unpopular. But vitally necessary. For Yankee-phobia is, at heart, a dark thing, a prejudice with ugly antecedents which creates unholy alliances. And, like all prejudices, it thrives on myths which will end up only serving evil ends.
It is a myth that America is a trigger-happy cowboy state over-eager to throw its weight around, a myth that America seeks to use its undoubted military power to establish an exploitative empire, and a myth that America thrives by impoverishing and oppressing other nations.
A trigger-happy starter of wars and provoker of enemies? The truth is that the US has been painstakingly slow to involve itself in foreign conflicts. It hung back from involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo until it was clear that Europe could not manage alone. It refrained from dealing properly with al-Qaeda when that network attacked US embassies in 1998 and, even after 9/11, it waited until a huge international coalition had been assembled before striking back. In Iraq, it refrained from finishing off President Saddam Hussein in 1991 out of deference to its Arab allies. And with North Korea, it has practised diplomacy in the face of nuclear provocation since 1994, out of respect for its regional allies. Even now, in dealing with the dangers posed by Iraq and North Korea, the diplomatic route is followed out of deference to others.
An imperial exploiter? The truth is that America seeks to disentangle itself from anything which smacks of neocolonial occupation. It is anxious to bring the boys back home from the Balkans and Afghanistan. The real criticism of weight is that the US should do more on the ground to help failed states rebuild, as it did in Japan and Germany after the Second World War.
Which takes us to the myth of America the locust state, the predator on the poorest nations of the Earth. The truth, as the US writer Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, is that America’s influence for good in suffering states is directly measurable in three very different examples. After the Second World War three devastated nations were divided. In each case one part of a culturally unified nation fell under America’s political influence. And in each case — South Korea versus North, West Germany as against East, Taiwan as opposed to Communist China — the territory which took the American path enjoyed greater freedom and prosperity.
Why then do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now.
It should not therefore be surprising that those on the populist Right who share the Left’s antipathy towards the US are those, like the Austrian Freedom Party or the French National Front, who are heirs of anti-Semitic traditions. Nor should it be remarkable that the other tie which binds these allies of new Left and old Right together, the thread linking those such as George Galloway and Jörg Haider, is their hostility to Israel.
Both America and Israel were founded by peoples who were refugees from prejudice in Europe. Europe’s tragedy is that prejudice has been given new life, in antipathy to both those states."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-536072,00.html
Question #1: Is anti-Semitism also supposed to explain the rise of resentment towards the US in countries like South Korea, Mexico, Canada etc? What kind of folk-sociology law demands that every kind of dissent with US foreign policy boils down to anti-Semitism?
Question #2: Would the victims of the Holocaust be happy to know how much political mileage some right-wingers (please note the irony!) have gotten from their suffering and death? Isn't it somehow immoral to appeal to the Holocaust to justify resentment towards American unilaterism? I am not going to give David Thomson a free ride on this since he confessed to be an ex-Catholic (and a believer, but no Christian - pardon my confusion given that I am ruling out a conversion to Islam...)
Question #3: Can someone remind me of who said "We are not into nation building?" And exactly how many innocent Iraki people have died since 1991 because of actions taken by the US? A million and a half? Now, that's about 5 hundreds 9-11's... Gee, that's a big number! (I must be missing a piece of Western rhetoric.) Isn't it a joly good thing those Arabs are not as blood-thirsty as we Stupid White Men are, uh?
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 8, 2003 04:51 PMNow re:Europe. Solana is the EU's foreign policy chief and a, US-trained, committed Atlanticist!
Solana fears widening gulf between EU and US
By Judy Dempsey for the Financial Times (01/07/02)
The public face of Javier Solana rarely changes.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, or High Representative, is adept at schmoozing, smiling and patting colleagues on the shoulder, reluctant to utter a controversial word. It has been his official image since taking office in October 1999.
But increasingly a more pensive, private side to this restless former Spanish foreign minister and former secretary general of the Nato military alliance has emerged. As if throwing caution to the wind, he was more than willing recently to speak openly about an issue that increasingly preoccupies him: the complexity of the transatlantic rift, deepened by a possible US-led military strike against Iraq, nuclear sabre rattling by North Korea and a worsening Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
And despite rhetoric about the values that bind both sides of the Atlantic, Mr Solana says Europe and the US are growing further apart. The reason, he says, is a "cultural phenomenon", one that goes beyond the pattern of US foreign policy swinging between unilateralism and multilateralism. This time the unilateralist pendulum is different. It is, says Mr Solana, being swung by religion.
The US was increasingly looking at things as if in a religious context. "It is a kind of binary model," says Mr Solana, reverting to language he used when he was a professor of solid-state physics. "It is all or nothing. For us Europeans, it is difficult to deal with because we are secular. We do not see the world in such black and white terms."
Although well aware of the strength of the religious right in the administration, Mr Solana is surprised at how religion has permeated the White House's thinking.
Nowhere is this more obvious, he says, than in the language used by the Bush administration since the September 11 attacks: with us or against us, rogue states, axis of evil, right and wrong, good and bad.
"The choice of language on the two sides of the Atlantic is revealing," says Mr Solana - and he is in a strong position to assess it. Born in Madrid in 1942 soon after the start of the Franco era in Spain, he studied at US universities as a Fulbright scholar, becoming a committed Atlanticist.
For the Bush administration, he says, the September 11 attacks were an act of war and an expression of evil. Europeans, who unreservedly condemned them, saw the attacks through a different lens: as the most extreme and reprehensible symptom of political dysfunction, operating from within failed states such as Afghanistan.
"What for the US is a war on terrorism, for Europe is the fight against terrorism," he says. The Europeans, continues Mr Solana, have tried to persuade the US to move beyond this binary view of the world by going through multilateral institutions, in particular the United Nations, to explore and exhaust diplomacy before deciding to launch a military attack against Iraq.
While that binary view has been compromised by North Korea - where in the face of outright aggression Mr Bush has chosen negotiation over confrontation - Mr Solana senses Washington will stick to its black and white world view. The moral certainty of religious America, he argues, is difficult to replicate in a largely secular Europe. A religious society, he theorises, perceives evil in terms of moral choice and free will while a secular society seeks the causes of evil in political or psychological terms.
Just as important, the White House world view has enormous implications for foreign policy. It explains why US and European foreign policy - when the Europeans actua lly manage to achieve a united stance - are often so far apart. The US, for example, sees terrorism as the overriding threat to international security and order. This partly explains why the Bush administration, backed by an influential Israeli lobby, is unwilling to deal directly with Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Many in Washington see him as a terrorist; and the Europeans, by trying to keep a door open to the Palestinian leadership, are often accused of being anti-Semitic or even supporting terrorists.
"We just have a very different political analysis over how to deal with Arafat or indeed Iran, where we try to pursue engagement rather than isolation," says Mr Solana.
The differences go further. Europeans argue that terrorism is one of many threats that also include poverty, regional conflicts, diseases and climate change. And unlike the US administration, they also talk about conflict prevention, crisis management - such as in the Balkans - and sustainable development as ways to increase security.
But Mr Solana slowly returns to his public persona anchored in optimism.
"Let me tell you," he says, "I do not despair. Some of us profoundly disagree with Bush. But it may push the European Union to become much more of an actor in the world. We have an obligation to do so."
http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/international/FT1039524267385.html
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 8, 2003 05:54 PM"Question #1: Is anti-Semitism also supposed to explain the rise of resentment towards the US in countries like South Korea, Mexico, Canada etc? What kind of folk-sociology law demands that every kind of dissent with US foreign policy boils down to anti-Semitism?"
Someone obviously needs to increase their reading comprehension ability. This is the exact words of the author: “In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now.”
The rise of resentment in countries like South Korea, Mexico, Canada etc, is almost always due to their jealousy and justified feelings of inferiority . Also, in the case of of South Korea and Canada we are talking about parasites who leach off of the United States. Parasites inevitably will despise their host.
"Question #2: Would the victims of the Holocaust be happy to know how much political mileage some right-wingers (please note the irony!) have gotten from their suffering and death? Isn't it somehow immoral to appeal to the Holocaust to justify resentment towards American unilateralism? I am not going to give David Thomson a free ride on this since he confessed to be an ex-Catholic (and a believer, but no Christian - pardon my confusion given that I am ruling out a conversion to Islam...)"
America is not acting unilaterally. We are somewhat like the sheriff portrayed by Gary Cooper in the movie “High Noon” where we must act “unilaterally” because the rest of the town’s people are cowards, and refuse to cooperate in a “multilateral” fashion. In other words, they are similar to the French government.
"Question #3: Can someone remind me of who said "We are not into nation building?" And exactly how many innocent Iraki people have died since 1991 because of actions taken by the US? A million and a half? Now, that's about 5 hundreds 9-11's... Gee, that's a big number! (I must be missing a piece of Western rhetoric.) Isn't it a joly good thing those Arabs are not as blood-thirsty as we Stupid White Men are, uh?"
This is an incredibly stupid assertion. The United States government is not morally responsible for the loss of life in Iraq. Our role in these deaths is, at worst, analogous to the the situation where innocent bystanders are killed during a gun fight between the police and the criminals. Last but not least, America will be compelled to engage in nation building whether we like it or not. It’s what we had to do after WWII regarding the Germans and the Japanese--and we will have to do likewise with some areas of the Islamic world.
Posted by: David Thomson on January 8, 2003 09:15 PMMr. Thomson's assertions are laughable. I am a mexican citizen and I can assure him that Mexicans have a general dislike of the US because of 150 years of meddling in our country. And most recently, Mexico and Latin America in general are disgusted by the inept diplomacy of the Bush administration's feeble attempts at foreign policy. The US Empire is naturally going to attract a lot of ill will, as it always has; but this used to be tempered by a respect for its institutions and entrepreneurial spirit. Now all we see are the divisive screeds of party hacks like GWB II, and persons like Thomson who so blindly follow the line as to be a caricature of the ugly american in the eyes of anyone who has a broader perspective into the effects that US actions are currently having on the world. Thomson, go back to the library and hit the books. Better yet, spend about a year talking to real people from other countries. I don't think you will be able to maintain your smug self-righteousness for too long after that.
Posted by: Jose Campia Romo on January 9, 2003 08:23 AMIt seems to me that Mr. Thomson has missed the point. It is the rhetoric and policies of the current administration that have changed the perception of the United States in much of the world. To blame this on "leftists" and "justified feelings of inferiority" does not exactly ameliorate the problem. While I can't speak for everyone, I seriously doubt that many citizens of Canada, France, Great Britain or Germany feel "inferior" nor do I think that most would qualify as "leftist" except to someone who defined the term to include anyone who thought much of the policy and rhetoric of this administration to be at best ill advised. If the objective of many of the policies and and much of the rhetoric was to reinforce negative sterotypes about our not perfect but basically decent nation, it has succeeded admirably.
Sam Taylor
Posted by: Sam Taylor on January 9, 2003 09:45 AMFrom Mr. Thomson's comments, it is obvious either he has spent little time outside the US, or he confuses the reaction to his arrogance as jealousy.
Posted by: Rich Phillips on January 9, 2003 12:17 PMJosh Marshall on strategic ridiculousness... How long before Russia, China, etc. realize that they can take advantage of the fact that the Bush Administration has no coherent geopolitical strategy?
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 9, 2003 03:50 PM“I am a mexican citizen and I can assure him that Mexicans have a general dislike of the US because of 150 years of meddling in our country. “
Mexicans like yourself are simply scapegoating the United States for your own self destructive actions. You must accept responsibility for embracing socialist policies which have kept your nation impoverished. This is your problem and not ours. It is hardly “meddling” when vast numbers of Mexicans abandon your country for our own.
I recent viewed the movie concerning Frida Kahlo, the pro-Communist dupe. Mexico is paying a terrible price for honoring such fools as Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Of course, I’m sure that you will find some way to blame America for their silliness. Gosh, do you thibk that they might have been American agents working for the CIA?
Posted by: David Thomson on January 10, 2003 04:40 AMGod Bless America!
Posted by: on January 11, 2003 04:05 PM