The American Conservative

Andrew Roberts, still apparently grooming himself as Bush’s ghost writer, has written a strange review of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World for the First Post.

Most reviewers–including Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the latest issue of TAC–have stressed that, contrary to what the title might suggest, Zakaria’s outlook is not at all pessimistic about America’s future. Yet Roberts describes the book as “pretty gloomy”.

This is odd. Zakaria himself makes clear that his book “is not about the decline of America but the rise of everyone else”. He is in fact distinctly positive: he emphasizes the endurance of U.S. military might, and the lasting strength of American “soft power”. His point is that the rise of China, India, and others does not mean the end American prosperity and growth.

For Roberts, though, any hint that America’s unipolar moment has passed seems to be unwelcome. “America’s time of reckoning is still far off,” he insists.

Yet once isolationism and protectionism returns to America, the rest of us will worry about a world in which America does not wield its enormous power for good.

This is exactly what President Bush keeps talking about. Are they working from the same script?

In today’s Washington Post, Op-Ed journalist and Neocon scholar Charles Krauthammer reminds us that, when dealing with instability in far corners of the planet, nothing beats a good military intervention. He begins by explaining the rescue of Columbian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt–who was held captive for six and a half years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC)–earlier this month. The hostages were freed by Columbian security forces posing as a leftist organization. A simple story of the Columbian government dealing with the crimes of a revolutionary faction in its own country, it would seem. But to Krauthammer, their are lessons to be learned:

Betancourt languished for six years in cruel captivity until freed in a brilliant operation conducted by the Colombian military, intelligence agencies and special forces — an operation so well executed that the captors were overpowered without a shot being fired.

This in foreign policy establishment circles is called “hard power.” In the Bush years, hard power is terribly out of fashion, seen as a mere obsession of cowboys and neocons. Both in Europe and America, the sophisticates worship at the altar of “soft power” — the use of diplomatic and moral resources to achieve one’s ends.

To Krauthammer, Betancourt’s rescue is a perfect example of how “soft power” is an ineffective foreign policy strategy meant for left-wing wimps, pinkos, and appeasers, while “hard power” is for the brave, vigilant, and realistic hawks. While European powers pleaded for negotiations, Columbian president Alvaro Uribe decided enough was enough, sent in the cavalry, and saved the day. Think the Clinton Justice Department’s Waco raid of the Branch Davidians without all the dead bodies. This, to Krauthammer, is how things get done.

[Betancourt] was, however, only one of the high-minded West’s many causes. Solemn condemnations have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness — the European Union, the United Nations, the G-8 foreign ministers — demanding that Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe stop butchering his opponents and step down. Before that, the cause du jour was Burma, where a vicious dictatorship allowed thousands of cyclone victims to die by denying them independently delivered foreign aid lest it weaken the junta’s grip on power.

And then there is Darfur, a perennial for which myriad diplomats and foreign policy experts have devoted uncountable hours at the finest five-star hotels to deplore the genocide and urgently urge relief.

What is done to free these people? Nothing.

Krauthammer goes on to outline how–as evidenced by the Columbian government’s military actions within its own borders and the campaign to weaken FARC, the government’s main domestic enemy–hard power must be used to save Zimbabweans and Sudanese, and as soon as possible. And who are the ones who must do the saving:

The only country that could is the country that in the past two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor — the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy — and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

To Krauthammer’s credit, he does finally get something right. With the needless expense of blood and treasure in the broader Middle East, America has no appetite for costly military intervention divorced from national security. Innocents languish in Zimbabwe and Darfur, and in both cases the suffering is terribly unfortunate. But what has become apparent is that middle-America, where most of the dying is done for Krauthammer’s liberation interventions, just isn’t as high-minded as he is. When dealing with Darfur or Zimbabwe, most Americans will chose soft power over hard power because it means less folded flag-carrying widows and less “Taps” playing buglers.

How selfish of us.

From the Telegraph:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Good to see Bush still believes that America is number one.

After being fiercely attacked for not knowing enough about water rights, Matthew Yglesias takes a melancholic turn,

[B]log reading is a completely worthless exercise and nobody should really engage in it. I started writing this blog as a hobby; I thought it would be a fun thing to do. And I not only continue to enjoy writing it, but people pay me to write it. But the mere fact that I’m writing it doesn’t make it a worthwhile thing to read, which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans have never read this blog and never will.

Such honesty from a leading young light of the blogosphere is touching and refreshing. And what he writes is mostly true. Yet Yglesias is being unnecessarily harsh on himself. As one of the most popular liberal bloggers, he is almost invariably worth reading. And, importantly, he has that remarkable ability to write about something every few minutes–a skill not to be sniffed at.

We all know that blog-world is grossly self-absorbed, silly, presumptuous, vain, and probably futile. But then so is most human endeavor, is it not? Chin up, Mr Yglesias, and blog on.

In May 2007, a Marine — known as “the Lion of Fallujah” by anyone aware of his legendary feats of bravery in what is now considered some of the thorniest — and bloodiest — American combat with insurgents in the war, was cut down during a Baghdad raid. Major Douglas A. Zembiec, 34, who had earned V for Valor and Purple Heart medals for his service in Fallujah, was on his fourth tour. He left behind a wife Pamela, who I have the privilege to know, and a tiny daughter.

The day after his memorial at Arlington Cemetery, the Washington Post landed on my front lawn. Glancing down, the photo hit me in the gut: there was Pamela, clutching the flag a Marine had just handed her (this photo of Pamela is not the same one. No amount of Google surfing was retrieving it). A confluence of emotions frozen on her face, she was clearly aiming to keep it together, just for a little longer. The photo was so haunting, so compelling, it followed me throughout the house the entire day.

The story of Major Zembiec that accompanied this photo was equally riveting. Whether you are for the war or against it, there is no greater impact than getting a “human face” on a story that is usually told with cold statistics, sanitized television footage and Pentagon press releases. Perhaps it was the personal testimony shared with the reporter under a tree at the historic cemetery that set the right tone and assured Zembiec’s place in the nation’s heroic canon:

About 40 enlisted men gathered under a tree, telling stories about their former commander. Some had flown in from as far away as California, prompting one officer to observe: Your men have to follow your orders; they don’t have to go to your funeral.

The men knew firsthand how Zembiec, who lived outside Annapolis, had come to be known as the Lion of Fallujah.

The story is one of their favorites. It was 2004, in the Jolan district of Fallujah, and Zembiec was a captain. They were on a rooftop, taking fire from AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They tried to radio an Abrams tank below to open fire in the direction of the enemy. No good.

Zembiec raced down the stairs and out to the street and climbed onto the tank. Gunnery Sgt. Pedro Marrufo, 29, who watched from the rooftop, remembers Zembiec getting a Marine inside the tank to open the hatch. Insurgents shot at Zembiec as he instructed the men in the tank where to fire.

Cpl. Chad Borgmann, 28, who went to Zembiec’s funeral from Camp Pendleton, Calif., said yesterday that boarding tanks during firefights and similar actions is typically the work of enlisted men. If a lance corporal falls, there are 40 to take his place. But there are fewer captains, Borgmann said, and fewer still who always seemed to be out in front.

“He let us know it was his privilege to lead us,” Borgmann said, walking back to a car through the graves of Arlington before heading out to meet up with his Marine buddies at the Clarendon Grill.

Last month I posted a brief critique on the Army’s restrictions on reporters covering “ramp up” ceremonies from the battlefield and the flag draped coffins of our war dead when they arrive back in the states. Now it seems that if Arlington Cemetery has its way, reporters may be kept so far from military funerals, that finding a bunch of mourners under a tree to flesh out a story might not even be possible. No more emotionally arresting photographs of war widows and their families and the enormous crowds of mourners behind them (there were more than 1,000 to send Zembiec off). Well, unless the photog has an amazing zoom lens.

According to a column by Dana Milbank yesterday, young Arlington Cemetery director Gina Gray — herself an Army veteran of Iraq — was given “the boot” by the Army, and she thinks it’s because she complained about what seems to be new restrictions on media coverage at Iraq war memorials.

Just 10 days on the job, [Gray] was handling media coverage for the burial of a Marine colonel who had been killed in Iraq when she noticed that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery’s deputy superintendent, had moved the media area 50 yards away from the service, obstructing the photographs and making the service inaudible. The Washington Sketch column on April 24 noted that Gray pushed for more access to the service but was “apparently shot down by other cemetery officials.”

Milbank charges media access to military funerals has “eroded, and Gray arrived to discover it was gone.”

Furthermore, Gray contends that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery’s deputy superintendent, had been calling each of the war dead’s families before their scheduled memorials to “encourage them not to allow media coverage at the funerals.”

I am not convinced that any family that has had media coverage of their son’s or daughter’s memorial services — whether it be at Arlington, or the church back home — has ever complained that reporters or photographers have displayed anything other than respect and sensitivity. As a reporter, I know how difficult it is to insert oneself into these things. The mourning may be public, but the energy is raw and personal. Therefore the coverage, particularly of soldier families, is always respectful, if not generous and poetic. It is with pride that families and friends find their loved one memorialized in a paper of record, as heroes and angels, their sacrifice posted for the community to bear witness.

Tomorrow is the Revolution March and Rally in Washington D.C. It’s good to remember that the loss of liberty not only comes at the hands of shocking Executive Orders, Patriot Acts or congressional capitulation to demands for more surveillance powers. It comes, too, at the loss of access to our government, not being able to see what it is up to. Photographs like the ones at Arlington Cemetery not only remind us of who we are, but what the government is doing in our names.

When will these guys and these guys and these guys and especially this guy recognize that democracy and free elections are not a cure to all the world’s ills. That they end up bringing to power people like this and this and this and this and this who don’t share our values and who certainly don’t support our policies.

Remember Sprint’s sticking to the man television commercial? We see a pompous business executive discussing the Sprint plan and then telling his assistant that joining the plan is his way of “sticking it to the Man.” The assistant is shocked: “But, sir, you ARE the Man.” “I know,” responds the executive “So you’re sticking it to yourself,” his aide ask. The executive: “Maybe.” Which is exactly what America’s Freedom Agenda has achieved in the Middle East — sticking it to itself –empowering Iran’s allies in Iraq, the Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine — the same forces that oppose U.S. policies in the Middle East.

More recently, we had an opporunity to celebrate once again the renaissance of African Democracy, like in Zimbabwe and Kenya.

And now after what our democratic freaks got exactly what they had wished for — elections in Pakistan — we basically have the country ruled by by two crooks, Benazir’s Bhutto’s widower and an incompetent ex-PM. And this is what the Financial Times reports on this great South Asian democracy:

Pakistan’s uneasy ruling coalition between the party of Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated former prime minister, and that of Nawaz Sharif, her erstwhile rival, is facing mounting criticism for its failure to deal with pressing issues, five months after taking power.
Critics say the alliance is practically ignoring worsening political and economic conditions while it focuses on forcing out Pervez Musharraf, the pro-US president who built up his credentials as Washington’s main ally in fighting terrorism.
His removal would avenge the 1999 coup led by Mr Musharraf, then the chief of army staff, when Mr Sharif, then prime minister, was arrested and exiled to Saudi Arabia.
Such political score-settling is troubling for Pakistan’s allies, particularly the US, who are keen to see the government tackle the deteriorating economy and the fast-spreading influence of Islamic extremists. Meeting such objectives is certain to be compromised in a leadership vacuum.
Other US officials go ­further, warning that the country is becoming directionless. “The problem is that Pakistan needs some kind of centralised control and authority. The challenges faced by Pakistan are so huge that we need a strong central voice. That central element of leadership appears to be increasingly missing, especially when you have so much infighting,” says a Washington official.

And it sounds like we are now all hoping, and wishing and praying for a military coup in Pakistan:

 Meanwhile, the military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half its 61-year existence as an independent state, is showing some signs of moving towards a more neutral political role. In December, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, Mr Musharraf’s successor as army chief, ordered all officers serving in civilian positions to return to their units, reversing eight years of ­military involvement in civilian affairs.
“The military and President Musharraf should have had a strong say in daily decision-making. They don’t have the clout they did before,” says a western ambassador in Islamabad. “With the new government showing few signs of becoming active on vital issues, it is almost as if nobody is running Pakistan full-time.”

As I suggested in a policy analysis Pakistan in America’s War against Terrorism: Strategic Ally or Unreliable Client? that was published in 2002, predicting all the problems America is now facing in its relationship with Pakistan, our main concern in South and Central Asia should not be promoting democracy and free elections but securing core U.S. national interests. That rule applies also to other parts of the world. The problem with Musharraf wasn’t his anti-democratic tendencies — but the fact that he has failed to deliver.

I recently spoke with a TAC contributor from Maine. The sun is high, the days are long, and the population is enjoying its usual summer boost. But in his hometown, conversations keep circling back to an unseasonable subject: kerosene. In the middle of July, people are worried about winter. Even with demand low, heating oil prices are setting new records—topping $5/gallon in parts of a state where winter doesn’t loosen its grip until May. Nervous Mainers have done the math, and this year they can’t afford to keep the cold out.

Thankfully, John McCain’s top economic adviser has an answer. Former Sen. Phil Gramm tells the Washington Times that this “nation of whiners” is imagining its difficulties. Disregard all those downturned arrows: “this is a mental recession.”

Now as the vice chair of Swiss banking giant UBS, Mr. Gramm is probably too busy to shop for groceries or fill up his own gas tank. Maybe he hasn’t tried to sell a house in a stalled real-estate market or checked on his retirement account lately. He does, however, manage to watch the news and is convinced that grim reports are a media concoction. “Misery sells newspapers,” he says. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”

So there’s the solution to July’s deep chill: stop reading and think positive. Clearly Mr. Gramm is more in touch with the American experience than a bunch of paranoiacs making up a recession. While they’re hunkering down in their cold, devalued homes, he’s thinking big: the interview closes with a pitch for immigration “reform” including “no limits on scientific and technical workers and a generous sized guest worker program.” Since the recession isn’t real, we’ve got jobs to spare. Just make sure the new arrivals know to settle someplace warm.

After some enterprising kids in Greenwich Connecticut built a Wiffle-ball field out of some public land, fashioning it to resemble Fenway Park, the busybodies descended. They included “angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes” And here is the most dispiriting quote I’ve read in a long time:

The regular players, mostly high school boys but including Tara Currivan, 15 (who swings a mean bat and brings lemonade to the field), and Scott Atkinson, 13, seem a little befuddled by the whole thing. “They think we’re a cult,” said Jeff Currivan, 17. “People think we should be home playing ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ ”

Of course, I understand this is public property. And there are good reasons to require permits for construction. And of course there are property values to consider – the lot itself is valued at over a million dollars. We should be concerned about the boys too. Will they just play until the sunset forces them away? How will they know when they should stop? Also, though it may be Wiffle-ball, it seems reasonable to expect that they’d have some kind of coach, maybe even a pitching coach, a stretching coach, and, a sports-therapist to prevent self-esteem issues. We don’t want anyone’s efforts to be disparaged.

And the human cost to the community: what futures-trader, after a long commute, can withstand the sound of boys trotting around in the dirt, or the sight of them imitating Kevin Youkilis’ batting stance in the friscalating dusklight.

Over the past decade or so many terms have been attached to politicians and other public figures–ranging from the profound to the profane–but none have been more commonly known to deal political damage than being branded a “flip-flopper”. Whether this term has more history in the political discourse I do not know, but even with as little experience in the political world as I have, I know enough to know that the term, especially when used to describe politicians, is absurd.

The latest examples of the insult are attacks directed at Barack Obama and his alleged flip-flop on the new FISA bill. By most accounts, the accusations seem sound. But does the political class really hope to win votes by claiming that the opposing politician is behaving in a profoundly political manner? Examples of each candidate being accused of flip-flopping on one issue or another can be found in countless places just over the past few days. Is the duplicitous nature of the political class a 21st century revelation?

Of course not. Everyone from Charles de Gaulle (“Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word”), to Oscar Levant (“[A politician] will doublecross that bridge when he comes to it”), to Maureen Murphy (“The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces”) has understood that politicians will twist in the political winds at least as often as Old Glory. So why have Americans become suddenly so prude in their judgment of presidential candidates’ verbal miscues?

Beats me. Most Americans have little interest in holding even the highest elected officials accountable for their words and actions once in office. As certain as death and death taxes, politicians will keep lying and keep claiming their own piety. And journalists will keep taking the bait.

This Saturday is the grassroots-organized Ron Paul Revolution March on Washington D.C., and it promises to be one of the most eclectic and interesting things this town has seen in a while. The march, from the north lawn of the Washington Monument down Connecticut Ave. to the west side of Capitol Hill, begins at 9:30 a.m. and is followed by a rally at 11 a.m. That’s where Naomi Wolf, Michael Scheuer, Tom Woods, and Dr. Paul himself, among many other speakers, will be sharing a stage.

There’s also a book signing, featuring Woods, Wolf, Scheuer, and others, at 6 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Washington-Capitol (550 C Street).