WhirledView

America's Unsuccessful War in Pakistan

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Pakistan is the world’s sixth largest country, with a population of nearly 168,000,000 people, most of them Muslims, which means there are multiple deeply held divergences in the interpretation and practice of Islam, although these chasms may disappear when outside force is applied—U.S. force included. To understand this dynamic, Americans might remember how bipartisanship crops up when external threats appear. So Americans should not be surprised that even relatively secular urban Pakistanis are not enthusiastic about American efforts to vigorously pursue or eradicate “Islamist insurgents” within their northern borderland. There is certainly a problem of law and order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a problem that is acquiring urgency because the ferment is spilling out and into other parts of Pakistan. Terrorists have threatened Islamabad and Lahore as well as the ever volatile megacity of Karachi, for example. Above all, longstanding, largely tacit understandings about cultural autonomy and spheres of influence within and across national boundaries have been abused and violated by many players.

But employing the Pakistani Army to slaughter unruly tribals by the hundreds or thousands in order to pluck Osama bin laden, America’s Enemy Number One, out of his mountainous safe haven would appear, to most Pakistanis, like swatting a fly with an atom bomb: a strategy certain to do more harm than good. And Pakistan is jealous of its sovereignty.

“Half of all Pakistanis want their government to negotiate and not fight Al Qaeda, with less than a third saying military action by the Pakistani government is called for,” according to a recent poll by Terror Free Tomorrow. They'd prefer to negotiate with the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, too. Some 73 per cent of those polled said that “the real purpose of [America's] war on terror is to weaken the Muslim world and dominate Pakistan.” Part of me wonders if a more effective Public Diplomacy effort might have led to less negativity. Part of me replies, "It's the policy, stupid."

American policymakers should pay attention to such disheartening poll results. Pakistan, as a semi-cooperative ally, is endlessly exasperating to American policy makers. Pakistan as a sullen ex-ally would be far worse, and all it would take to accomplish such a divorce is the capture and public parading of a few U.S. special forces operatives nabbed on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The furor over America's border-crossing bombs, called in to kill alleged insurgents who turned out to be Pakistan Border Corps troops, of whom 11 died, gives a tiny hint of the likely reaction. American popularity in Pakistan is at an all time low these days, while sympathy for Al Qaeda’s goals, if not the violence with which those goals are pursued, is rising. Thus, the secular elite that has been governing Pakistan since its inception is increasingly under siege. To stay in power the non-religious parties must maintain their nationalist if not their Islamist credentials. A popular way of criticizing Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush’s increasingly marginalized ally in the “war against terror,” is to call him an American tool.

Hands Across the Border

Once upon a time India served as the juicy scapegoat for Pakistan’s nationalists, and not so long ago outside observers worried that India (or Pakistan) might inadvertently (or intentionally) lob a nuclear device across the border. To defend the brand new country against the threat of Indian irredentism is what the Pakistan army was created for. And why did Pakistan originally encourage the activities of violent Islamists who are now, in classic blowback fashion, threatening a form of Islamic revolution within Pakistan itself? Why, to weaken India on the cheap, by forcing New Delhi to deal with incessant insurgency in Muslim majority Kashmir.

But things may be changing on the Indian front. When asked the tired old question as to whether a “foreign hand” might be “fanning trouble in the tribal belt,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani replied “yes.” Yet India wasn’t named this time. The alleged culprits were “some foreigners from Central Asian States.” No doubt American policymakers would have preferred a Gilani diatribe against Arabs, as in Osama bin Laden, or Egyptians, as in Aymen Al Zawahri, but the latest series of talks between India and Pakistan seem to be achieving some degree of trust between the traditional enemies. The still wary neighbors are discussing peach and security, confidence building measures in Kashmir, economic ties, prisoner exchanges and anti-terrorism.

Better yet, from that point of view, a recent editorial in Dawn applauds the new sanity:

....detente between Indian and Pakistan will impact positively on global politics. With no signs of Islamabad winning the “war on terror” in the immediate future and the militants recognizing no borders, a wise strategy demands that India and Pakistan join hands in their security endeavour.

However, the Dawn editorial ends with a twist that may not please Washington:

In that context their agreement...to hold meetings of their anti-terrorism mechanism regularly is encouraging. It would also reduce Islamabad’s dependence on Washington in world politics.

Speaking of Washington, when asked about making Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, available for further interrogation from IAEA as a result of recently uncovered evidence that his one-man proliferation operation was even more generous than previously known, Gilani said, “the issue of Dr. Qadeer is over.” This will displease the Americans. So will Gilani’s present position on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program: “we are not a rogue state and are neither indulging in an arms race with any one” although “minimum deterrence will be maintained in this regard.

Desperately Seeking Bin Laden

Above all, the Americans are definitely not happy with Pakistan’s failure to nab Osama bin Laden or to permit American forces to nip over the border from Afghanistan to do the job for them.

Cleaning Up the Shenanigans and Reinstituting The Golden Rule

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A year ago, the little known U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, created to protect whistle-blowers, ruled against the State Department in a civil service hiring case in which the OSC charged that the Department had clearly violated the Prohibited Personnel Practices law. The term used in the OSC press release announcing the decision referred to State Department “shenanigans.” The Department was ordered to cut them out.

But has it?

I now understand that outside investigators are looking into allegations that current and past senior officials in the Department’s Division of Human Resources (HR) have tampered with the results of Foreign Service promotion panels (apparently State has been dodging requests from Congress for such an investigation for several years). If so, this is likely to be just one more example of the Department’s continuing mismanagement of its single most precious resource: its cadre of highly skilled professional diplomats who represent America’s interests abroad. But the Department’s administrative record over the past several years – from last year’s breakdown in passport services and its highly publicized and needlessly embarrassing approach to Iraq assignments to the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction project – makes this oldest and once-upon-a time flagship department of the U.S. government resemble a decaying hulk.

Has something gone wrong with State’s corporate culture? How and why have things been allowed to spin so far out of control? And what will it take to repair the listing Ship of State?

Let’s begin with Human Resources: HR knows how to look after its own.

In my two previous posts on Foreign Service Ambassadorial assignments, I stressed that Human Resources has done outstandingly well in taking care of its own – especially in contrast with its handling of State’s war zone vets. What is particularly striking is that not one Ambassadorial assignment has been made for any career officer who has served in either Afghanistan or Iraq and HR. What is also striking is that proportionally more Ambassadorial assignments have gone to individuals serving in HR or who had recently served in HR than those who have served in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Since far more senior officers have served in both of these large posts since 2001 (in the case of Afghanistan) and 2003 (in the case of Iraq) than in HR, something is wrong with this picture.

Here’s how I reached my conclusions.

I compared the nominees who had had recent (previous one to two tours) in HR* to those with recent Iraq** and/or Afghanistan experience.*** In my first post, I did not count Afghanistan veterans – although they appear to have fared far worse than Iraq vets. I did, however, count Afghanistan service in my second post. In my first post, I also included two officers who had served TDY in Iraq and two others who had served on the Iraq desk because I assumed, in the latter case, the desk officers had traveled frequently in and out of the country at the time – dangerous duty in and of itself.

I relied on publicly available data from the following websites: State, the White House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since not all of the information on the three sites agreed 100 percent, I cross-checked the nominees biographies among those three websites. State may quibble around the margins, but the fact remains the trend is obvious, overwhelming and, frankly, appalling.

I suspect – but do not have the figures to prove – that the pool of eligible senior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined is several times greater than the number of eligible officers in HR at any given moment. First, because there are so many people of all grades including the Senior Foreign Service - assigned to those two posts. And second because Iraq and Afghanistan positions turn over annually due to the high personal danger whereas a far larger percentage of jobs in HR would normally turn over every two-three years.

Scandal Ridden State

Over the past 18 months, the State Department has been rocked by administrative and personnel scandals. The first to break concerned its cavalier attitude towards personnel returning from war zones with PTSD – a story that first appeared in USA Today May 2007 but only after Iraq vet Rachel Schneller went public due to lack of departmental support for help overcoming her trauma. Schneller, by the way, just received the American Foreign Service Association’s constructive dissent award for her efforts in battling the Department on behalf of others returning with similar afflictions. Then came the denouement of Inspector General Howard “Cookie” Krongard who “resigned” in disgrace in December 2007 but not before 20 of his 27 investigators had quit and two had gone to Waxman’s oversight Committee on the Hill to ask for an investigation.

This was followed by the dismissal of the head of Diplomatic Security over the Blackwater contracting affair and the resignation of General Williams who had overseen the disastrous Embassy Baghdad construction effort. Thankfully, Henrietta Fore – the Under Secretary for Management who had overall responsibility for all these problems – was kicked upstairs. Unfortunately, she also went off to head USAID, an agency with major problems of its own. Finally, there was the March retirement of Consular Affairs Bureau chief Maura Harty who had reined over last spring and summer’s passport issuance (or actually non-issuance) fiasco and the far more serious alleged used of passport data to perpetrate credit card fraud.

To Top It Off: Visas for Sex?

Three Stumbles and (Maybe) He's Out

By Patricia L. Sharpe

For about 48 hours I tried to feel good about the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, but I wonder now.

Support Barak!

Not that I won’t vote for Obama in November. No matter what. Here’s one very strong reason why. The most recent Supreme Court rulings extend habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, but the vote was five to four, a close call, and Bush-appointees Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alioto dissented. Should a Bush clone be in a position to fill the next vacancy on the Supreme Court, these welcome decisions could be reversed. In fact, the differences between Republicans and Democrats are clearly drawn on a whole host of important issues. So there is no way I could back John McCain, and I was going to argue that strongly with other high-and-dry Hillary supporters.

A Wobbly Supporter

Then, last weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. An early and staunch Obama supporter, she astonished me by expressing the fear that Obama himself might be a little wobbly on foreign affairs.

“But,” she said, quickly, “that doesn’t matter. He has good advisers.”

Not Just a Pretty Face

My reply had several parts. First of all, I don’t want a president elect who comes to the Oval Office as a naif when it comes to foreign affairs. We've seen where that leads. I want a president who already knows a lot about the world, its current state and how it got here. I want a president who already knows plenty about the ways in which the U.S. has acted in the world—and why. I want him to have some vision of where he’d like to take us, a vision he can articulate in reasonable detail. In short, I don’t want a president who’s dependent on advisers for the whole shebang. Why elect an empty suit? Furthermore, in order to evaluate advisers, you have to know something. In order to choose between good and bad advice, you have to know a good deal. Too bad Joe Biden wasn’t able to mount a stronger campaign.

However, if the president of the U.S. is going to be a pretty face, a cheerleader, a figurehead, then he or she better have very good advisers indeed. And so I come to my second concern. Two big stumbles have already given the McCain forces dangerous ammunition.

The initial blooper had to do with Obama’s remark that he’d speak to anyone, even the leaders of Iran. This willingness to prioritize diplomacy pleased many of his supporters. It pleased me, too, even before the primary phase was over. But McCain and company jumped on it. Naturally. The failure came when Obama was unable to explain, clearly, why he could and would stand on that simple principle. Talking to tough cookies really is defensible.

The Sins of the Fathers: Thoughts on the Fulbright Snafu in Gaza

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Here’s the gist of it: because Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas, Gaza has been turned into a concentration camp, and even the children of those naughty voters must be punished, according to Israel and its primary financial and moral (ahem!) backers in the Bush administration. As a result, Palestinian students can’t count on exit visas to study abroad, even when they’re awarded the full scholarships they need to do so. Not even when those scholarships are sponsored by Israel’s official friends in the U.S.

So, Palestinian children are to be punished for the sins of their fathers even unto the umpteenth generation. This sort of thinking goes back to the Bible. It’s purpose, several millenia ago, was to account for the baffling cosmic injustice by which good people suffered very bad things. The explanation: God designed it that way. You’re in trouble because you had a bad daddy or mommy ad infinitum.

Well, that explanation may work, sort of, for some people, to account for the consequences of natural phenomena like tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes. Unavertable catastrophes kill a lot of innocent people and even some saints, no doubt. Such premature mortality doesn’t seem fair, but people often feel better if they can find a “good reason” for the horror.

Actually death by typhoon, etc., isn’t fair, because fairness has nothing to do with nature.

But the Israeli exit visa policy has nothing to do with god or nature. It’s a political decision, and it’s hubris or sacrilege for humans to think they may act like god. On the human level, meanwhile, the notion of punishing children for the sins of their fathers is not only unjust inhuman and unjust, it’s ludicrous. It assumes that a person’s future can be predicted at a very early age. It also assumes that children always or mostly turn out like their parents.

On what sage-worthy grounds might an Israeli security staffer deny an exit visa? The kid threw stones at Israeli soldiers when he/she was 12 or 14? He/she shouted anti-Israeli slogans or scribbled anti-Israeli graffiti? He/she has a father, mother, cousin, uncle who is/was a Hamas member or supporter?

In practice, no such factors reliably predict anyone's future philosophy or behavior. For example, when I entered college, I was a Christian, a Republican and an ardent Israel supporter. I am none of these now, and I have changed no more than many people do over a lifetime.

Sometimes children adopt the parental religious orientation or profession; sometimes they don’t. Some children get more liberal as a result of travel and education. Some get more conservative. Furthermore, we all know that siblings can be as different as night and day. Thus, there is no way to know how a young or inexperienced person will react when exposed to foreign countries and cultures.

To give the devil his due, it’s true that some foreign-educated engineers and doctors have become terrorists. Yet most turn out to be beneficial members of society. Is it reasonable to punish 1000 potential agents of good in order to avert the minuscule risk of one (or less) going amok? The Israeli policy of denying foreign education to Gazans is a crude and vicious business of punishing children for the supposed sins of their fathers, a policy of totally gratuitous cruelty.

It’s cruel in another way, too. It assumes that parents will do anything you want them to do if you make life hard for their children. It assumes, in this case, that Gazans, at a certain point of deprivation and humiliation, will hug their babies, fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness, after which they will humbly vote as Israelis want them to vote. By now, it should be clear that such self-negation will not happen. Not even the Bush administration is willing to let Gazans starve.

Fortunately, then, most of the trapped children will grow up, but there’s a consequence to consider. Although the principle of non-predictability applies across the board, I strongly suspect that a larger proportion of those who never experience a more benign environment will be angrier and more vindictive than those who left to study at Harvard or Michigan State or Bryn Mawr. Or Oxford. Or Heidelberg.

How could the U.S. have slavishly acquiesced in this policy of punishing youth for the sins of the grown ups? I don’t understand it, but I am deeply grateful to those who spilled the beans and hope (not very optimistically) they will not be punished for disclosing this injustice. There is nothing like public humiliation to cause policy change. The Palestinian Fulbrighters will travel.

I am no less happy to see that exit visas will also be issued to hundreds of Gazans who had been denied the opportunity to travel to other countries for education.

However, nothing can be taken for granted. Vigilance will be required, lest the prison gates be locked again, after this little brouhaha dies down. And should an administrative “bottleneck” occur again, I suggest that the proper U.S. response should not be to revoke Palestinian grants or to plead for reversal, but to immediately reassign all Israeli Fulbright grants to Muslim students elsewhere in the world.

Not all Fulbright awards go to young students, of course, but visas for older scholars are equally defensible. Surely no Israeli official in his or her right mind can believe that a Palestine without professionals and academics will be good for Israel’s future security. Unless, of course, Israel’s true goal really is the genocide, total expropriation or perpetual serfdom that some Israelis, at least, seem to envision for the Palestinians.

Favoritism-in-the-Ranks Saga Continues at State

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Here we go again.

Yes, there is another way to become a US Ambassador besides signing on as a state finance campaign chairman for the Ds or Rs. The political appointments route to the deepest purple of plum book assignments, after all, only opens 35 percent of Ambassadorships to political party money handlers or other party bigwigs who bet on the right candidate during election season.

The other 60-65 percent of Ambassadorial appointees come from the ranks of the career Foreign Service. This part of the system, at least, supposedly operates on merit – and to some extent it still does. Nevertheless, in Condi Rice’s State Department, there’s a lot more (or less, in this case) than merit that meets the eye.

As I wrote on WhirledView on February 26, 2008, favoritism was alive and well for the approximately 65 percent of U.S. Ambassadorial appointments that went to career Foreign Service Officers between 2006 and late February 2008. State’s assignments and promotion system has never been particularly fair - despite a few protestations to the contrary – but it seems to have worsened perceptibly under the current administration’s approach to managing, or mismanaging, the Department.

Here’s what my research then unearthed: “too high a percentage of Senior Foreign Service Officers who held or hold positions in Human Resources were or are being nominated for Ambassadorial appointments among all those eligible to be considered for them. What is even more striking is that none of those nominated for Ambassadorships from positions in Human Resources between 2006-2008 had served in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 – or for that matter had ever served in Iraq. Period."

Since I wrote in that February 26, 2008 post entitled “Why the AFSA Survey is Right: Favoritism Charge Is Real,” the State Department has made 19 additional Ambassadorial nominations from among its career ranks.

The skewed picture remains the same.

Of the 19 new Ambassadorial nominees only one has served in Iraq; Another left Afghanistan last year. However, continuing the trend I noted in my first post, two of the others work in Human Resources – e.g. Personnel -- and (surprise, surprise) neither of them have Iraq or Afghan experience.

The numbers I published in February showed that at least 14 percent of all Ambassadorial assignments had gone to career officers who had previously served in Iraq versus 11 percent who came from Human Resources. This time around – albeit using a much smaller sample and including Afghanistan – the tally is 10.5 percent for the Iraq and Afghanistan vets -- exactly equal to the 10.5 percent coming out of HR.

Think about how this appears.

There are, after all, far more senior officer positions in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Human Resources. If I knew those numbers for sure, I’d post them but I can only guess the dimensions.

AFSA: aren’t these some of the statistics you should be prying out of State?

Does anyone know? Is the number four times as many? Five times as many? Not only are there far more senior Foreign Service Officer positions at these two Embassies – Iraq is now the largest US Embassy in the world – and on the Provincial Reconstruction Teams than in Human Resources, but far more officers will have served in these war zones because the assignments to Iraq and Afghanistan last one year. Whereas State Human Resources positions are usually held by the same individual for two or three years.

The numbers I posted on February 26 should have set off alarm bells at the State Department’s highest levels of management, at the American Foreign Service Association, in White House personnel, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Alas, the silence from the above quarters is deafening.

To top it all off, one of this year’s HR Ambassadorial appointees has, in her role as Deputy DG, been sending out cables for the past two years imploring others to put their lives on the line and “volunteer” for Iraq or Afghanistan, but has herself never served in either country. She instead, will shuffle off to Ecuador as US Ambassador.

Just in case the connection is missed between getting cushy jobs, ducking service in Iraq and serving in HR, another recent HR nominee happily took along her boss, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Resources, to her Senate confirmation hearing. It’s right there in her testimony.

One Person Can make Make a Difference

by CKR

Glenn Kessler today tells us about one of them: Christopher Hill, who has been in charge of the negotiations with North Korea. Hill has managed to persuade North Korea to begin decommissioning its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon and to make its records of plutonium production available.

Somehow, Hill managed to persuade Condoleezza Rice and George Bush to let him run the negotiations his way. And he made it work.

But Jeffrey Lewis tells us that the rumor mill says that Hill will be leaving his position “any day now.” Lewis speculates that Hill is being pushed out by the Cheney faction. That’s entirely possible. I’d add another factor.

Through deft use of public appearances and the news media, Hill also has become an international figure in his own right. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last year hailed him as a "diplomat par excellence" whose "persistence and skillful negotiation have brought us close, I believe, to resolving this last legacy of the Cold War." Along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Aga Khan, Hill is even a finalist for Britain’s prestigious Chatham House Prize -- given to the statesman who has had the greatest impact on international relations -- for keeping the North Korean "talks alive and viable, against seemingly impossible odds," including the "complex internal politics of Washington."

Two things are wrong here, from the point of view of Hill’s bosses and the broader bureaucracy. One is that he’s doing a good job where the earlier application of the conventional wisdom (conventional within the administration, that is) failed. The other is that he is getting credit for it from outside.

It doesn’t matter that he really is doing a good job. It does matter that others in his organization, and perhaps (even worse), his bosses have their noses out of joint.

I’m hoping that someone (Condi? The Prez?) will take things in hand, keep Hill on, and shut down the others. We need more diplomats like Hill. And keeping him on would signal to others in the State Department that this is how they should do their jobs.

But the combination of political and bureaucratic knives can be pretty deadly. It wouldn’t be the first time.

An Inappropriate Speech from an Incompetent President

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Or America's Number One Risk Taker Scores Again.

Who masterminded George W. Bush’s May 15 speech to the Israeli Knesset anyway and what was the purpose behind it?

Was this truly a speech to commemorate Israel’s 60th birthday? I don’t think so.

It certainly wasn’t a speech to further peace in the Middle East or spur on even a semblance of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. But then I never thought the Bush administration’s supposed interest in facilitating an honest-to-God Middle East Peace settlement held a modicum of credence anyway.

To claim, as the president did in his Knesset speech that Israel has “forged a free and modern society based on the love of liberty, a passion for justice, and a respect for human dignity. . . worked tirelessly for peace . . .and fought valiantly for freedom” may well have been music to Israeli ears but certainly can't have played well among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have had to make way for an Israeli uber-class and with whom the Israelis will need to deal across the negotiating table if they are ever to reach a state at peace with their neighbors.

Given the tone and tenor of W’s Knesset speech, why should it be any surprise then that when W dropped by the Saudi kingdom to beg the House of Saud to open the oil spigots wider that he received a rebuke and a public slap in the face?

The wrong place and the wrong time

To issue not-so-veiled threats against the Iranians who have not, by the way, invaded Canada, Mexico, Israel, Turkey or Saudi Arabia and who do not have a single nuclear weapon at their disposal despite the size of Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal not to mention equating the Iranians with the Nazis and Ahmadinejad with Hitler is well, just plain lunacy. It's in even worse taste to do that kind of name-calling in someone else’s parliament on a festive and solemn occasion.

Who, after all, was the intended audience? Certainly not the Iranians. The Israelis? Doubtful. The bomb-Iran-now neocon crowd clustered around the American Enterprise Institute? But wouldn't this be like, well, preaching to the choir?

Or was the intent foremost to score cheap partisan points at home ? Or/And could it possibly be part of a not-so-subtle public relations campaign to attempt to soften up the American public for a late-in-the-game, long-in-the tooth, military attack on Iran?

Irresponsible political pandering combined with sleazy brinksmanship

To brand, in the same breath, unnamed “some people” as appeasers akin to Chamberlain who “seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals” and supposedly would “just break ties with Israel” is not only grossly irresponsible but also political slander solely supported by cheap falsehoods aimed at a possible next president of this country.

So which “bold White House visionary” dreamed up this fiasco of a speech? And who penned it? Not only was it poorly written but the consequences – unintended or not – were badly thought out. Just one more reason why the next seven months under America’s Number One Risk Taker are likely to be some of the longest in American - or perhaps even world - history.

To fly - or not to fly - with Condi: That is the Question

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Yesterday, I came upon an insightful post by The Washington Times State Department correspondent Nick Kralev on his blog Nick Kralev on Diplomacy about his latest trip to Israel, Palestine and London with Condi Rice.

What intrigued me most about “Flying with Miss Rice” was Kralev’s comment – almost in passing - that he was one of only nine reporters sent by their news organizations to cover Rice’s trip. As he explained, the media has to weigh whether the stories produced by such a trip are worth the expenditures when deciding whether to send a reporter along or not. Most organizations, clearly, decided in this case not.

In some senses, the nay-saying editors were right: there would be no break-throughs in Israeli-Palestinian talks whether Rice came calling or not. For my money, there will not be until after W departs from the scene. Why pay the money, therefore, to send a reporter along to report a non-event or a series of non-events when it's clear the event or events is/are not going to happen anyway? So why send along a content provider, previously known as a reporter or correspondent.

And if there had been a break-through it would have been picked up and reported instantly by the local media organizations and even, horror-of-horrors, citizen journalists aka bloggers in-situ. Headlines are what consitute 30 second sound bites - no context and little content needed thank you very much.

As Kralev also pointed out in his post, stories related to policy do not get the hits – or the readers – that non-policy stories do. So editors have to decide whether an expensive foreign trip has enough "public interest value" to make it worth it. In my view, most of our commercial media – dependent on ad revenues and needing to meet the bottom line plus some obscene profit margin for their continued existence – continue to cut back on substance in favor of fluff, fluff and more fluff which unfortunately is far the more attractive to the mass audience - as I suppose it always has been.

Have times changed

But wait a minute. When I was press attaché in Helsinki at the end of the Cold War and the Secretary came through, anywhere between 25 and 50 reporters straggled off the back of the Secretary’s plane and onto the waiting press bus. This was nothing compared to the media that came along on a Presidential visit. Regardless, there were enough reporters with the Secretary that we set up and staffed round-tbe-clock press (filing) centers where I saw major US media personalities in action or inaction.

What does this lack of State Department media attention that Kralev reports now mean? That Rice and the State Department are superfluous?

That the media climate is so changed that it is no longer necessary to send reporters along with the Secretary to get a story when transcripts are posted almost immediately on State’s webpage anyway?

That the American public is so poorly educated and uninterested in US foreign policy or what the administration is doing abroad to warrant the expense?

That State’s charges to the media organizations are out of line (after all a $60 passport now costs $100 and one has to wonder how much of that goes to a private contractor with a head office in the Netherlands and a manufacturing plant in Thailand that provides insecure RFID chips)?

How much, by the way, does one seat on Rice’s plane cost and what does it pay for?

Or is there that intangeable added value – which Kralev also describes – to the personal touch: Real time proximity to the Secretary and others one meets (like the UN Secretary General) as a result of being there, to on-the-plane briefings which are reported, at least first, by those reporters who did go along, or to the inevitable un-reportable chatter that helps reporters key into future stories and put them in better context than they could otherwise?

Massive Retaliation

by CKR

Hillary Clinton, answering a question that contained two hypotheticals—that Iran had its own nuclear weapons and that it attacked Israel with them—threatened to “obliterate” Iran with “massive retaliation.” Not once, but five times (one, two, three, four, five), mostly under direct questioning. So we may presume that she means it, that it wasn’t too late at night, and she didn’t misspeak.

Gary Sick gives us some background on “dual containment,” which may be what is behind Clinton’s pairing of nuclear threats with her concept of a nuclear umbrella for the non-Iran states of the Middle East.

The idea presumably would be to prevent the sort of nuclear proliferation that Joby Warrick writes about in today’s Washington Post. Forty or more developing countries have signaled interest in starting nuclear power programs, and of them, a half dozen have said that they are planning to enrich uranium or reprocess nuclear fuel. Those capabilities, in particular, make a weapons program possible. Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, and Turkey are all interested in nuclear power. United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have vowed never to pursue uranium enrichment or fuel reprocessing, but they are interested in nuclear power.

The price of oil is one of the motivators to own the nuclear fuel cycle, but regional stability may be more important to the Middle Eastern states, along with the prestige of having nuclear weapons, a way of signaling to the world that they have arrived militarily.

It’s easy and convenient to blame this on Iran, but let’s step back a bit.

Let Them Eat Golf Balls

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I can’t believe it. The U.S. is backing plans to build a luxury golf course adjacent to or in the Green Zone. Who uses a golf course? Mostly males. Monied males. Is this what’s needed in the center of a city that has suffered so badly?

Think of New York. What’s in the center of New York? Central Park.
What’s in the center of London? Hyde Park.
What’s in the center of Rome? The Villa Borghese.
What’s in the center of Paris? Lots of parks.

What’s in the center of Calcutta? The Maidan. Yes, the maidan was laid out by the British during the colonial period, but today it’s where kiddies ride ponies and boys play football/soccer and families picnic and lovers smooch behind the shrubbery. It’s one of the good things the British did during their long tenure. This would be a fine model for what the U.S. leaves behind in Baghdad—assuming the U.S. ever leaves, which is seldom contemplated under the Bush administration, although, in the long run, it will happen. Gracefully. Or otherwise.

Parks are a mark of civilization. They bring people together in the open air. They serve as lungs for a crowded city. They remind people caught up in the stressful necessities of urbanized life that there’s something called nature, which forms the bedrock of our existence. They give people as deep sense of freedom and ease.

Parks bring people together and, something very important, they don't come with entrance fees (as in Disneyish amusement “parks”) or greens fees. People stroll. They sit. They play with children or watch their children play. They chat. They debate. They laugh. They flirt. The enjoy the play of the seasons. When they leave the park, they feel relaxed and happy.

But instead of gifting the people of Bagdad with a spacious central park for the enjoyment of all Baghdadis, what is the Bush administration pushing? A golf course, where a handful of (mostly) middle-aged, VIPish males can hit a ball around velvety lawns while making deals with the same (and sometimes a few women, if they’re really really important or don’t mind inconvenient tee times).

Yes, the American cast of thousands and the other bigwigs who work in the Green Zone will be able to play nine holes or maybe even 18 right in the center of the city and then, no doubt, have drinks (alcoholic) in a luxurious clubhouse thereafter.

There’s a possible upside to this scheme. Maybe, if there’s a golf course next to the monster embassy in the Green Zone, the U.S. State department won’t have so much trouble filling all its Baghdad slots. I guess a golf course is a good way to bribe people into putting up with life in a sealed off, privileged enclave in the middle of a war zone.

And the jehadis can practice making holes in one with their occasional rockets.

I’m not making this up. The American military promoters admit that they are thinking very much of themselves and not the long-suffering people they’ll be posted among.

The $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some with deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, according to the lead military liaison for the project.

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy, whose total cost will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

"When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are," said Captain Thomas Karnowski, the U.S. Navy officer who led the team that created the development plan. "You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time."

The U.S. has done so many inept things in Iraq. The golf course project will be one more indication that the U.S. is totally out of touch with the needs of real people.

How about putting the golf course money into building parks along the river banks? Parks for everybody. Oh? A river park wouldn’t be safe for Americans? Stupid me!

On the other hand, Iraqis too have raised their eyebrows.

Some Iraqi leaders even have drawn parallels to the U.S.-backed development plan and what Saddam Hussein did in the area. During his reign, the neighborhood was dominated by family and tribal allies, political loyalists and members of his elite Republican Guard.

Furthermore, and I can't emphasize this too much, all this smacks of the dirty O-word. That’s occupation.

That aside, the project is being whitewashed as having the blessing of the mayor of Baghdad. And how was that blessing obtained? How much did it cost under the table and how was the money channeled? I’d like the opinion of a courageous inspector general here, an inspector general of proven integrity and independence. Perhaps I am being a tad too cynical here. But the process of rebuilding Iraq has been, to a very large extent, a tale of corruption and irresponsibility. The benefits to ordinary Iraqis have not been commensurate with the sums laid out by the U.S.

What’s more, it’s hard for me to see that any mayor who favors investment in golf courses run for profit over parks provided freely to the people of the city can be cited as a man who has the best interests of his electorate at heart.

And I wonder if anyone still serving in what's left of the public diplomacy sphere at the State Department was consulted on this move? Probably not. Diplomacy has mostly been handed over to the Pentagon, which is of course the sponsor of the golf course project.

What the hell! Let them eat golf balls.