Image makeover?

The proverbial lipsticked (stuck?) pig

"What does (Obama) offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy." Andrew Sullivan, Atlantic

"Last year, there was no question at all about the way Wall Street’s financial contributions to the new Democratic majority in Congress helped preserve, at least for now, the tax loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Now, the securities and investment industry is pouring money into both Mr. Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s coffers. And these donors surely believe that they’re buying something in return. Let’s hope they’re wrong." Paul Krugman. New York Times

David Seaton's News Links
Although my readers may have long since wearied, I never tire of repeating that George W. Bush is a symptom of America's decline, not its cause. When a major country becomes decadent, defined as "marked by excessive self-indulgence and moral decay", the reasons are very complex, their roots are hard to trace. The society produces the leaders, not the other way around.

My favorite example of this complexity is the theory that Rome’s decline was brought about by the lead pipe plumbing of the Roman patricians that caused their women to become infertile, thus leaving the empire without leadership cadres.

Following the Roman model, Bush is Caligula’s horse.

Finding the reasons for America’s decline is something that will provide doctoral thesis material for generations of Chinese historians: at his moment, however, we are simply caught in the middle of it.

We have practically no control, or no control at all, over the general situation. In the midst of decadence, anything we can realistically demand, we can only demand of ourselves: stoic lucidity and a human heart. These are times for not only the "inner Lenin", but also the "inner Seneca".

The idiotic Democratic primary race seems to have drained what little seriousness the disastrous Bush presidency had provoked among progressive minded Americans. At this moment the possible knock on effects of the financial sector's meltdown and the Middle East quagmire are certainly more important than the "super delegate" count... Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. But those who had begun to read Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt, Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevich, Jimmy Carter, Mearsheimer & Walt, etcetera in record numbers now seem solely concerned with the ruined and creaking structures of Franklin Roosevelt's coalition's smoking debris. The result of all of it will be simply another layer of lipstick on the pig.

Are citizens asking the correct questions?

• Does anyone really believe that any topflight, professional, national politician, with what national campaigns cost these days, is ever going to confront or bring down a major source of funding like Wall Street?
  

• Does the deregulation of the financial sector that has brought about the present meltdown have anything to do with that sector's campaign contributions to both political parties?

• Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

• Does anyone really believe that any professional American politician of national stature is ever going to apply enough pressure on Israel to insure compliance of UN-242? ...And speaking of Israel and American politicians: where is the little bird brave enough to push that cuckoo's egg out of America's nest?

Is there any solution to any of this?

Good news, bad news.

The good news? Yes there is.

The bad news?

It will take a long time... about twenty years if we start right now.

I believe the possible solution lies in local politics and in the US House of Representatives: politicians that are near to the actual people who vote for them and whose every move can be watched closely by local progressive activists interconnected nationally through countless Internet forums. Politicians whose campaigns would get cheaper as their local reputations grew.

Congresspersons in this movement should be politicians whose greatest ambition is to rise by seniority (that means getting reelected from their district many times) to sit on and to eventually chair the powerful key House committees. Here is power that could be truly controlled by the voters if they kept their elected representatives under a powerful magnifying glass. This movement could be independent of both the Republicans and the Democrats and a President or Senator of either party that defied these powerful Congresspersons would do so at his or her peril. In this way a practical progressive agenda could be pushed forward without submitting itself to the national corporate media circus.

To my mind this is probably the only way real progressive change can ever occur in our present system. DS

Kouchner's call: the thrill has gone

Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, "It will never be as it was before." "I think the magic is over," he continued, in what amounted to a sober assessment from one of the strongest supporters in France of the United States. Bernard Kouchner, French Foreign Minister

David Seaton's News Links
I've been living abroad for many years and have had a good opportunity to evaluate America's image in the world. I think it is important to note that, although Bush has aggravated the situation and hastened the deterioration of America's image, he was not a primary cause, only another symptom.

Symptom of what?

In one word, "decadence".

The general view is that the United States is a power in decline. Some are happy at this decline, while others are saddened by it, and still others, like the Israelis, are terrified by it, but all are in agreement that the USA is decadent.

What Bush has done is to cause a significant number of people to evaluate the USA in a Chomsky like manner. It could be said that Noam Chomsky's critique of American power is now mainstream. We owe that to Bush's clumsiness. A majority of people in the world (if we are to believe the polls) see America as the "problem", not the "solution". Its desire to project its power by any means is considered the prime destabilizing factor in the world.

To compare the foreign policies of Clinton to Bush II, would be like comparing two magicians: Clinton would be David Copperfield, brilliant, perfect execution, but only smoke and mirors in the end and Bush would be like a children's birthday magician that reaches in his top hat and instead of a rabbit, come up with only a handful of rabbit poop. Both are fakes, but one is a pro and the other is incompetent.

It would behoove the United States to not think about ordering and cleaning up other people's messes, but to engage with all its resources in cleaning up its own mess: health, education, infrastructure, governance, corruption, etcetera. It would be good if it reduced its military spending and reconstructed its manufacturing sector. The list is endless. In the meanwhile America's foreign policy should be minimalist, realist, and not engaged in Wilsonian tilting at windmills.

If Bernard Kouchner, who is one of the world's most enthusiastic "liberal interventionist", thinks the "magic" is gone, believe me that the magic is gone: gone to where, to use a Spanish expression, "the wind turns around to come back." DS

Losing it

"You run this town because people think you run it."
Miller's Crossing - quoted by Tony Karon in Haaretz

David Seaton's News Links
When we talk about the war in in Iraq being a disaster, we are talking about a lot more than the terrible suffering of the human beings directly involved, we are talking about the crumbling of a system in which we are all stakeholders. Make no mistake: this massive loss of international influence will directly affect the average American's wallet. He or she is going to be sore as hell. DS

Zakaria: Preview of a Post-U.S. World - Newsweek
Abstract: Two things were missing from this year's world Economic Forum at Davos: snow (which arrived eventually) and America-bashing (which did not). There were, of course, lots of American businessmen, activists and intellectuals filling the panels and halls of the conference. There were even a few senior American officials—though no star speaker. But, for the first time in my memory, America was somewhat peripheral. There were few demands, pleas, complaints or tantrums directed at the United States. In this small but significant global cocoon, people—for the moment at least—seemed to be moving beyond America. "There has always been a talk by a senior American official as one of the centerpieces of the Forum," said a European who has advised the Forum for many years—and who asked to remain anonymous because of his relations with U.S. officials. "And in the past, people eagerly anticipated who that would be—Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice. This year, almost no one inquired. We expected disappointment. But there was none. No one even noticed."(...) The ball for every problem is in everybody's court, which means that it is in nobody's court. The problem is that this free ride probably can't last forever. The global system—economic, political, social—is not self-managing. Global economic growth has been a fantastic boon, but it produces stresses and strains that have to be handled. Without some coordination, or first mover—or, dare one say it, leader—such management is more difficult. The world today bears some resemblance to the 1920s, when a newly globalized economy was booming, and science and technological change were utterly transforming life. (Think of the high-tech of the time—electricity, radio, movies and cars, among other recent inventions.) But with Britain declining and America isolationist, that was truly a world without political direction. Eventually protectionism, nationalism, xenophobia and war engulfed it. In a provocative essay in Foreign Policy three years ago, the British historian Niall Ferguson speculated that the end of American hegemony might not fuel an orderly shift to a multipolar system but a descent into a world of highly fragmented powers, with no one exercising any global leadership. He called this "apolarity." "Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age," Ferguson wrote, "an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism, of economic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions, of economic stagnation, and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves." That might be a little farfetched. But for those who have been fondly waiting for the waning of American dominance—be careful what you wish for. READ IT ALL

USA tanks in world poll... the beginning of the beginning

In the 18 countries previously polled by the BBC, people who said the United States was having a generally positive influence in the world dropped to 29 percent, from 36 percent last year and 40 percent the year before. "I thought it had bottomed out a year ago, but it's gotten worse, and we really are at historic lows," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

David Seaton's News Links
What appears here as a catastrophe, is in fact, good news. This is not a "every cloud has a silver lining" exercise in mental self-abuse, but a simple statement of fact.

The result of this world wide poll taken by the BBC is not so much a failure of US policy or even its "packaging" (public diplomacy) but rather the triumph of the new technologies of communications and the social networks they are forming.

The fact is that very little has changed in the way the USA operates since the 1980s, and even many of the names are the same: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Abrams. It could be argued that much of what the United States did in Central America during the 1980s was as bad or even worse than what America is doing today in Iraq. The USA was even condemned by the World Court for its actions in Nicaragua, and walked out in a huff when the case went against it. Nothing much happened, Noam Chomsky wrote and lectured tirelessly about all of it to a tiny public, to no avail.

What has changed? The way information moves, that's what. Simply put, in those days of the cellphone-video and the blog it's getting harder and harder to get away with that kind of shit any more. This is wonderful news!

And some of the best news in the WP article I'm quoting below, is the following, "Views of U.S. foreign policy are also becoming more negative among U.S. citizens (...) 57 percent said the United States is having a mainly positive influence in the world, down from 63 percent last year and 71 percent two years ago." One of the most exasperating things for any informed person anywhere has always been the naive-smug attitude of the American people, that somehow they were wonderfully benevolent, generous and universally admired for it. With that mind set, nothing was ever going to change for the better.

If Americans ever change their way of looking at the world and their role in it... If that 57 percent goes down to 40 and the 60 percent that would be in doubt was moved to get together to do something about it, we would be looking at a political renaissance, even a re-founding of the Republic that would benefit Americans and the entire world exponentially. The wonderful thing about this is that the technology and the social networks they generate are quintessentially American, deeply rooted in the oldest cultural and political traditions of its history... (any pioneer family would have understood Craigslist in a minute) there is nothing foreign in this technology and its application to politics, it is rather a return to the roots, a return to the best traditions of the country. Cleaning up America's act would be America's true gift to the world, and believe me the world would be forever grateful. DS

Views on U.S. Drop Sharply In Worldwide Opinion Poll - Washington Post
Abstract: Global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years, according to a BBC poll released on the eve of President Bush's annual State of the Union address.(...) Nearly half of those polled in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East said the United States is now playing a mainly negative role in the world. More than 26,000 people were questioned for the survey. "It's been a horrible slide," said Doug Miller, president of GlobeScan, an international polling company that conducted the BBC survey with the Program on International Policy Attitudes, an affiliate of the University of Maryland. He said views of U.S. policy have steadily declined since the annual poll began two years ago. In the 18 countries previously polled by the BBC, people who said the United States was having a generally positive influence in the world dropped to 29 percent, from 36 percent last year and 40 percent the year before. "I thought it had bottomed out a year ago, but it's gotten worse, and we really are at historic lows," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes. Kull attributed much of the problem to a growing perception of "hypocrisy" on the part of the United States in such areas as cooperation with the United Nations and other international bodies, especially involving the use of military force. "The thing that comes up repeatedly is not just anger about Iraq," Kull said, adding that the BBC poll is consistent with numerous other surveys around the world that have measured attitudes toward the United States. "The common theme is hypocrisy. The reaction tends to be: 'You were a champion of a certain set of rules. Now you are breaking your own rules, so you are being hypocritical.' " The BBC survey found that a majority of those polled hold negative views on U.S. policies on a wide range of issues. Sixty-seven percent disapproved of U.S. handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sixty-five percent disliked the U.S. stance on last summer's military conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, 60 percent opposed U.S. policies on Iran's nuclear program, 56 percent opposed Washington's position on global climate change and 54 percent disapproved of U.S. policies toward North Korea. "If this keeps up, it's going to be very difficult for the United States to exercise its moral suasion in the world," Miller said. The survey of 26,381 people was conducted in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The polling took place from November to January. Although Prime Minister Tony Blair has been Bush's chief foreign ally in the Iraq war, British views of U.S. policies were particularly negative. Fifty-seven percent of Britons surveyed said the United States plays a mainly negative role in the world; 33 percent said the U.S. influence was mainly positive, down three percentage points from last year. Eighty-one percent of Britons opposed U.S. actions in Iraq, while 72 percent said the U.S. military presence in the Middle East provokes more conflict than it prevents. Just 14 percent of Britons said the United States was a "stabilizing force" in the region.(...) Views of U.S. foreign policy are also becoming more negative among U.S. citizens, the poll found. Of the 1,000 Americans surveyed, 57 percent said the United States is having a mainly positive influence in the world. That is down from 63 percent last year and 71 percent two years ago. READ IT ALL

Kucinich Calls for Cutting Off Iraq War Funds - Democracy Now

David Seaton's News Links
If the tooth fairy ever gave me three wishes, I think that one of them might be that Dennis Kucinich be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. DS

Abstract:"I want to say that there's one solution here, and it's not to engage in a debate with the President, who has taken us down a path of disaster in Iraq, but it's for Congress to assume the full power that it has under the Constitution to cut off funds. We don't need to keep indulging in this debate about what to do, because as long as we keep temporizing, the situation gets worse in Iraq. "We have to determine that the time has come to cut off funds. There’s enough money in the pipeline to achieve the orderly withdrawal that Senator McGovern is talking about. But cut off funds, we must. That's the ultimate power of the Congress, the power of the purse. That's how we'll end this war, and that’s the only way we’re going to end this war.(...) We have to take a whole new approach. We’re spending over $400 billion a year, money that's also needed for healthcare, for education, for job creation, for seniors. We have to take a new look at this. We need to be a strong country, but strength isn't only military. Strength is also the economic strength of the people, their chance to have good neighborhoods. We spend more money than all the countries of the world put together for the military. "It's time for us to start to shift our vision about who we are as a nation, because if we don't do that -- we’re borrowing money right now to wage the war in Iraq. We’re borrowing money from China. We’re not looking at our trade deficit. We’re not looking at conditions, where people are going bankrupt trying to pay their hospital bills. We need to shift our direction, and the direction has to be away from the continued militarization of the United States society." LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Martin van Creveld: The coming U.S. withdrawal from Iraq - International Herald Tribune

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Martin van Creveld is probably the world's most important military thinker and historian. Here is a link to read up on him. He thinks that Bush should be put in jail for invading Iraq. He famously said it was, "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them". Here is his analysis of the situation as it stands today. DS

Abstract: Now that the American people have recognized that the war in Iraq is hopeless, what comes next? The United States is going to cut its losses and withdraw. Most likely, the withdrawal will start within months and be more or less complete by autumn 2007. If not, then the war will dominate the next U.S elections as it has the recent ones, and that is something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want.(...) whatever equipment is left in Iraq is likely to fall into the hands of America's enemies. Thus the Pentagon will have no choice but to evacuate millions of tons of war matériel the way it came - in other words, back at least as far as Kuwait. Doing so will be time-consuming, enormously expensive and dangerous, as road-bound convoys making their way south are attacked. The Iraq that the American forces leave behind them has been devastated. Its infrastructure has been wrecked. The oil industry, which used to account for 90 percent of its income, is in ruins. A recent estimate puts human losses at 150,000 dead. Worst of all, a government that can master the situation is not in sight. In its absence, Shiites and Sunnis are almost certainly going to fight each other for a long time to come; Shiites may also fight other Shiites. The beneficiaries are going to be the Kurds, who have been quietly expelling Arabs from northern Iraq, laying the foundation for their own state. A reunited Iraq will take a long time to rise, if it ever does. A fragmented Iraq will greatly strengthen the position of Iran. To make sure some future American president does not get it into his or her head to attack Iran, the Iranians are going to press ahead as fast as they can in building nuclear weapons.(...) An Iraq that is in a state of chronic civil war will present an ideal breeding ground for terrorists of every sort. Most will probably operate within Iraq, but some will almost certainly take on the regimes of neighboring Arab countries, such as Jordan and Kuwait. Some may reach Lebanon, others Israel. Others still will try to extend their activities into the West. Another Osama bin Laden, setting up his headquarters somewhere in Iraq and directing his operations from there, is a distinct possibility. Before 2003, many people looked at the United States as a colossus that was bestriding the earth. Whatever else, the war has left America with its international position weakened. The first task confronting Robert Gates, nominated to be the new secretary of defense, and his eventual successors must be to rebuild U.S. forces to the point where they may again be used if necessary. Above all, America must take a hard look at its foreign policy. What role should the strongest power on earth play in the international arena, and just what are the limits of that role? How can U.S. power be matched with its finite economic possibilities and under what circumstances should it be used? If American power is used, what should its objectives be? The answers to these questions may well have to wait until the 2008 elections sweep what remains of the Bush administration into the dustbin of history. READ ALL