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Turkey: A Look In From the Outside

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the Turkish police had arrested two retired generals, the head of Ankara’s main business lobby and 21 others affiliated with an ultra-right wing group in a failed coup plot against the Turkish government.

Military takeovers in Turkey were part of the political landscape for years but, if I remember correctly, they were normally restricted to the highest ranks of the active duty Turkish armed forces. They were usually successful. They only occurred when actions by civilian politicians threatened to destroy the country and, as a consequence, they also had considerable popular support.

This week’s reported coup plot and the arrests made met none of those criteria.

That was then . . .

When I first visited Turkey in January 1979, the country was on the verge of collapse. The economy was in shambles. Gas lines were long, inflation was rampant, trading on the black market for dollars was ubiquitous, even coffee – that staple of all Turkish staples – was scarce. The migration of villagers from the plains and mountains of Anatolia to the slums of Istanbul in search of a better life had already begun and the country’s infrastructure and leaders couldn’t cope with the strains.

The political system was in chaos: caught between ultra right and extreme left – street fights and murders had become all too common place. Eighteen months later – when I was filling in for three weeks on the Turkish desk at the then US Information Agency, the military moved in and restored order ushering in – as it turned out – the beginning of a new and far more prosperous and stable era.

This is now. . .

Since then Turkey – and Turkish politics – have come a long way despite ups and downs, slips and slides. Yet, every so often the Turkish political system confronts a crisis as is happening again this summer. This latest crisis – in which the Constitutional Court has not only been asked to declare the ruling moderate Islamist party illegal and ban the government’s leaders from power but has also agreed to rule on this contentious issue - is unlike any this country has ever confronted. The Bloomberg report hints, at least, that the recent arrests may be the government’s response to its establishment challengers.

A changing Turkey

Yet, what is less understood is that the rules of the game – and some of the players themselves - have changed because over the past decades Turkish society itself has substantially changed. As a result, even banning the ruling party and its leaders will not, repeat not, eliminate moderate Islamists from the Turkish political scene.

Where have all the public diplomacy specialists gone?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

You have to hand it to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy for engaging in what must have been a Herculean tooth pulling exercise with the State Department’s normally secretive Human Resources Division in an endeavor to determine what has happened to America’s public diplomacy specialists since 1999 when much of the U.S. Information Agency was slurped up by State. This is the subject of the Commission’s most recent report. It has a terrific title “Getting the People Part Right” and is the first report I’ve seen on the topic. It raises many of the right questions. Now almost ten years since 1999, this report, its approach and the resultant findings (and more) are badly needed.

Alarming

Anyone interested in learning about how the vast majority of civilian professionals tasked with tending America’s image abroad are being treated at Foggy Bottom and in US Embassies abroad should read this 45 page report. It is well written, organized and thought provoking. It explores recruiting, hiring, training, bureaucratic structures, institutional cultures as well as career advancement and the ever important question of impact - all in non-jargon laden terms.

In short, despite all the Bush administration’s rhetoric about the importance of public diplomacy and Condi Rice’s maxim that “we all do public diplomacy,” the State Department has too often neglected the very people who are tasked to “do public diplomacy.” Moreover, it has failed to provide the additional training necessary to enable Ambassadors or other high level embassy officials to “do” even a smiggen of public diplomacy right either.

It’s not for no reason that many public diplomacy specialists who could leave, left at the first opportunity or planned to leave as soon as possible after the consolidation announcement in fall 1997. And it’s also not for no reason that the US military has subsequently inserted its own information operations specialists into US Embassies abroad – presumably to pick up the slack in human capital missing from State.

State’s “Red-haired step children”

In my experience, far too often too few State Department officers ever understood how to use public diplomacy staff, programs and funding effectively. When I joined the Foreign Service in 1970, public diplomacy specialists were derisively labeled “red haired step children” by State. It’s clear that this part of the equation has not changed.

Unfortunately, this latest public diplomacy report demonstrates that public diplomacy officers remain State’s red-haired step-children. Despite the fact that the Department couldn’t wait to get its hands on USIA (in particular its budget) in its Greater State Department expansionary days under then Secretary Madeleine Albright who had made a devil’s pact with then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jesse Helms to sell out USIA, the public diplomacy specialty remains among the two most popular among new recruits. But unless things change quickly, the reality is that if these newly minted public diplomacy diplomats want to get ahead they need to shift into some other field and rapidly.

What should be the requirements for public diplomacy specialists?

There’s much to-ing and fro-ing and tut-tutting in the report with respect to lack of specialized recruitment and training for public diplomacy officers. I don’t doubt that it is real. But I wonder: what sorts of people would make good public diplomacy officers as opposed to, say, political officers? Is there really that much of a qualitative difference?

Inang Bayan’s New Clothes – A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Shhh. This delightful children’s book may – or may not - be off-limits to Americans. So let’s pretend you didn’t hear about it from me. But it’s a best seller in the Philippines.

I first learned about Inang Bayan’s New Clothes from one of the few informative articles I’ve come across of late in State the State Department’s in-house magazine so I sent out feelers to see if I could obtain a copy.

Don’t ask how I got it but I did.

That’s best kept part of my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – because of an outdated law known as Smith-Mundt that restricts Americans’ access to learning what our taxpayers’ dollars are supporting overseas. Thanks to the Internet, however, you can at least see American Ambassador Kristie Kenney on the US Embassy’s webpage reading from the book to a group of Filipino girls in 2006 when it first appeared. It then took over a year for the story to appear in State – but better late than never.

Suffice it to say that I’ll bet you never dreamed that US government money would help finance a story about two Filipino girls – Feliza and Nurhana, one Christian and the other Muslim – who live in Mindanao, work in a dress shop after school and despite their families’ religious differences are best of friends.

The purpose of this book is to promote inter-communal understanding – and it is clearly aimed at Filipino girls. It is full of pretty clothes, lovely pictures, and paper dolls to dress. In so doing, it shows the multi-ethnic heritage of Filipinos and it also depicts how it is possible – two girls at a time - to play a part in overcoming the devastating religious cleavage that has bedeviled the southern-most part of the archipelago for years. The name Inang Bayan means the Philippine Motherland or Spirit. It dates back - at least - to the early 1900s. Inang Bayan is also known as the "first muse" of Philippine poets.

In short, this little paperback book with cut-outable inserts is a winner.

Its authors – Tony Perez and Agnes Caballa - are veteran Filipino public diplomacy staff at the US Embassy in Manila and its illustrator is Frances Alcaraz, a illustrator and Ateneo de Manila University professor. Perez is an award winning author in his own right and Caballa is a television script writer, lyricist and stage director, as well as co-editor of the magazine Muslim Life in the Philippines. The book was published by Anvil, a major Filipino publishing house, and its publication and production was financed by the U.S. government. Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, apparently, still in print – or perhaps back in print because it is so popular. But don't expect to find it on Amazon. The text is in both Cebuano (the language of Mindanao) and English.

Now you might ask why the US government would invest in a children’s book of this sort. It’s not, after all, about promoting the US image abroad. But in the event you’ve forgotten, in 2002 the US sent a small number of troops to the Philippines to help the Philippine armed forces cope with Mindanao-based Muslim insurgents including those with ties to Al Qaeda. As far as I can tell, the insurgents as well as Philippine and US troops are still there and the government’s long-standing insurgency problem has yet to be resolved for numerous reasons.

Yet Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, at the very least, a tiny – delightful - step in the right direction.

Head’s Up! More US Visa Problems Loom on the Horizon

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last year the problem was passports. Looks like, if the June 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal story “Security Changes Are Likely to Create Visa Backlog” is right, visas – at least for citizens from as many as 27 countries - could be next.

This story which I found in the WSJ print edition is based on a May 22, 2008 General Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress entitled “State Department Should Plan for Potentially Significant Staffing and Facilities Shortfalls Caused by Changes in the Visa Waiver Program.”

Where have all the plans and planners gone?

The bottom line is that State hasn’t done the planning - because the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t yet produced the plans upon which State’s planning should be based. So how can State begin to gear up for an increased work load in posts abroad when it doesn’t know what to gear up for? Yet if GAO can come up with estimates for a worst case scenario, State should be able to do so too. And if the worst case scenario turns out to be the ticket, expect a huge visa backlog at US Consulates in Western Europe, New Zealand and Australia as well as three Asian countries beginning as soon as January 12, 2009.

The Worst Case Scenario

Actually, according to the GAO, if the Visa Waiver Program were eliminated (the bureaucratic worst case scenario), State Department staff would need to be increased by about 540 new Foreign Service Officers ($185-201 million annually) and 1,350 local Foreign Service national staff ($168 million to $190 million annually) as well as additional management and support positions ($447 million to $486 million annually). Now State is already 1,000-2,000 Foreign Service positions short and I have to question how it would increase and train staff all that quickly. So much - by the way - for Condi’s transformational diplomacy because all of these new positions would be in wealthy countries.

The good news is that visa fees should off-set these additional staffing costs. The bad news is that State says it would need about 45 new facilities which the GAO estimates would cost approximately $3.8 billion to $5.7 billion. Given the cookie-cutter fortress Embassy design now in vogue, I have to wonder where these facilities would be built and how the average would-be tourist could even access them for a visa interview – but that’s another question for another post.

I’m not going to go into more of the details now, but if you’re among the curious here’s the link to the 58 page GAO report on the potential impact of ESTA (the Electronic System for Travel Authorization) that is making this potential mess possible. The travelers from countries most likely to be hit the worst are those that are already part of the Visa Waiver Program: much of Western Europe, Japan, Brunei and Singapore. Needless to say this is all part of increased border control laws enacted in the wake of 9/11 and the terrorist bombings in Europe.

Most likely scenario

But what if DHS comes up with something in between elimination of the Visa Waiver Program and the system that exists now? DHS can and does, after all, refuse people admittance at the border – and presumably would continue to do so. Yet the most likely scenario is to allow people from VWP countries to apply for visas voluntarily at US Consulates abroad. This includes electronic screening from a US data base of suspects - and we know how reliable that is). Otherwise, intending visitors take their chances with a potentially unpleasant DHS experience at the border. How many intending visitors would choose that option is an open question.

According to GAO, however, neither State nor DHS has “attempted to estimate demand” and State has not “attempted to estimate additional resources that would be needed to manage demand, and what additional visa fees would be received.”

Hmmm, and all of this is supposed to go into effect January 12, 2009? Although DHS – with its inimitable lack of foresight and planning - plans to jump the gun and “launch the program in August.” Whatever that means. (Registration, according to the WSJ, however, will be mandatory in January.)

Even with the weak dollar, one has to wonder whether tourist travel to the US is really worth it. One doesn’t have to wonder, however, why America’s reputation abroad is at an all time low.

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?

The Foreign Service and the Military

By Patricia H. Kushlis

A friend clued me into an oped in the Sunday, June 15 Washington Post by James DeHart, a Foreign Service Officer soon to be assigned to an Afghanistan provincial reconstruction team after a year as a Fellow at Georgetown University. I don’t know DeHart and I wish him well on his onward assignment but I also wonder why he is spending the year at Georgetown and not learning (or improving his) Dari, Pashto or whatever other local language is spoken in the region to which he is being assigned and knowledge of Afghan culture at the Department’s own Foreign Service Institute or why he agreed to a PRT assignment in the first place.

Could the answer to my second question be contained in his observation that State Department assignments to war zones are fast tracks up the career ladder and that as war zone vets “rise up the chain and (presumably) gain a bigger say in future personnel decisions, the practitioners of more ‘traditional” diplomacy’” may find themselves second class citizens?

I’m not sure I buy that argument. At least until I see the statistics. I would love to see the numbers that demonstrate that Iraq and Afghanistan State Department veterans are, in fact, getting promoted faster than their peers. If someone can point or e-mail them to me – I’d be delighted. Since this is becoming an increasingly divisive issue in the Foreign Service - based from what I can tell primarily on corridor gossip – a systematic, fact-based, transparent study should be an imperative. But maybe I've just missed it.

I think it is true – or it should be the case – that the vets do, or did, get a nice assignment after a year in Iraq or Afghanistan and an attractive pay package while serving there to boot. This is what they were promised. It is also what has kept the State Department from introducing a policy of forced assignments. But from what I’ve seen with respect to recent Ambassadorial postings, a senior assignment in Human Resources appears to be an easier way thus far to make Ambassador than braving the desert sands in Iraq – or particularly Afghanistan.

Saluting vs thinking

If DeHart, however, really thinks the State Department will place more weight on the “ability to salute” rather than a “liberal arts education” in its recruitment of future diplomats – and this will, therefore, be the cause of a more militarized US diplomatic corps and perhaps approach to foreign policy, I think he needs to think again. The US military has – in my Foreign Service memory – always been one of State’s recruiting grounds.

State also, however, recruits from the Peace Corps, academia, the media, the legal profession, business and an occasional natural scientist. The Foreign Service written exam – with its wide ranging questions – set a high liberal arts entry bar. My own entering class in the Vietnam War era included several former military officers. But they also had liberal arts degrees and knew how to think critically. So, by the way, did others.

That being said, DeHart raises a number of thought-provoking questions that the next administration needs to consider – in particular his concern about the militarization of the service although he sees the problem far differently than I do. Let’s face it George Bush’s approach to foreign policy remains that of leading with guns and steel – regardless of whether tanks and the bombers are the most appropriate way of dealing with problems overseas.

State’s red-haired step-child’s role in this “militarization” game is a given and hard to swallow for those of us who think there are usually other, less costly and more effective approaches, but it also may change. Hopefully, a new president with a different foreign policy team and mindset will rethink the fundamentals as well as reinvigorate USAID and staff it with experts in “nation-building” as opposed to contracting the task out and assigning State Department officers and the military to perform functions for which they are unqualified and unsuited.

An even more insidious problem

Yet I fail to understand why DeHart fails to mention a far more insidious problem. Namely, the mushrooming of Foreign Service Officers assigned as advisors (POLADS) to and students at various US military institutions. There have always been a few – and that’s been good because both parts of government need to understand how the other works and thinks - but the POLAD expansion, I think, has happened just over the past year. What makes it even more questionable, however, is that it is also occurring despite the fact the Department is one-two thousand officers short and is intentionally leaving most posts (except Iraq, Afghanistan and passport services) and the Department itself understaffed.

The Odoms: Father and Son

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last night as I was flipping through Middlebury College’s Magazine spring 2008 edition I came across “The Road to Hawr Rajab,” a feature story on alum Mark Odom by The New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon. Now, I am not a Middlebury graduate, but I think highly of the college and its magazine. But Odom’s name, in particular, drew my attention.

Yes, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Mark Odom is the son of the recently deceased William E. Odom, the retired Army lieutenant general, former NSA director and long time Soviet expert who was openly and critically outspoken of the US invasion of Iraq and US heavy handed policy towards Iran. He foremost expressed a pragmatic view of US interests and his wisdom will be missed. One hopes his realistic view of the world has also rubbed off on his son. It is, above all, patriotic.

Why Mark Odom chose the career military is best left to Gordon’s article to explain. Whether in his heart of hearts the son truly thinks the US has a chance of achieving its goals and creating a unified, stable Iraq that is also democratic is questionable – although given his employer – wisely left unstated at this time.

Whether Mark Odom will rise to the heights of his father's profession is also an open question – the son, after all, entered the service through ROTC not West Point. It seems to me, regardless, that the next generation of US professional military leaders is likely to come from those who, like Odom, have “been there and done that,” e.g. served multiple tours on the ground in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, have learned how to adapt to different forms of conflict and can speak from real life experience not just the podium of some ideologically driven Washington, DC-based think tank.

I first came across Bill Odom’s name when I was working as a very junior editor on USIA’s then academic and intellectual journal Problems of Communism which expired after the Cold War ended. Odom had recently returned from the US Embassy in Moscow as a military attaché from 1972-4 where he, according to his recent Washington Post obituary, “studied Soviet life." An aside: Wonder who thought up that, ahem, euphemism. Questionable choice of words for an otherwise excellent obit.

Unlike most professional military or Foreign Service Officers, Odom wrote prolifically for publication even while on active duty. What I remember him writing for POC at the time was an article about the Soviet military – not the Bolshoi, the Tretyakov Gallery, the metro, the Soviet jazz underground or any other form of “Soviet life” that I experienced there three years later. He truly was an expert in his field. That he was considered a “hard liner” who also understood the political faces of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before it is undeniable: the country’s military and politics were, of course, intertwined. Odom really was a Soviet specialist with an MA and a PhD from Columbia University and taught at Yale after his government service had ended.

What also comes through in Gordon’s article about the son, is that Mark Odom understands the realities on the ground in Iraq as his father did while serving in Vietnam - but like his father is keeping his views to himself, that the broader question is “more political than military” and that the role of a military officer is “to place the ball in the air” to allow the political decisions made “to complete the pass.” Yet Odom’s copious readings, Gordon tells us after a look at his bookshelf, suggest that that will likely be a “very hard, perhaps even impossible" task.

State, the blame game, the media and the Palestinian Seven

By Patricia H. Kushlis

How lower, exactly, is lower?

Blaming nameless “lower level” officials in the Department of State for taking it upon themselves to cancel Fulbright grants for seven Palestinians students just doesn’t compute.

Let’s put aside the concentration camp, shortsighted aspect of the Israeli Army’s noose around a small group of graduate students from Gaza and all the untoward ramifications that entails. I’m looking at a different dark side to this same story that my colleague Patricia Sharpe addressed on WV over the weekend.

What I raise here is the pass-the-blame game and worse - The New York Times’ willingness to buy into it. How well do the editors at The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune or Times Israel correspondent Ethan Bronner, who broke the story there, understand the operation of the US State Department or, for that matter, the Fulbright program? And why have the source or sources of this finger-pointing exercise remained anonymous?

It troubles me to see blame ascribed to unnamed “lower-level State Department officials” who, Bronner wrote on June 6, “had apparently assumed that the new stricter closing of Gaza would make it impossible to get the students out, so the officials canceled their grants.” It sounds as if, on first reading, a couple of GS-7s and 9s in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs had gone off the reservation and done something really stupid without checking with their superiors. Having worked in and with the bureau during my own lengthy Foreign Service career, I have my doubts.

A clever choice of words?

The more I think about it, however, the phrase Bronner used was “lower level officials.” Now, that’s really quite clever. I wonder if it wasn’t carefully chosen to appear to mean one thing – when in reality it may well mean something else. Yet no one, to my knowledge, has questioned it.

The uber-hierarchical State Department has multiple layers of “lower level officials” one ranking yet lower than the other. The operation is positively Byzantine. In the case of the Palestinian Seven, a “lower level official” could even have referred to the Deputy Secretary of State, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs or Public Diplomacy (if there had been one at the time), or the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. All are very high ranking but, of course, because they rank below Madam Secretary herself they themselves constitute “lower level officials.”

Alternatively, the term could have referred to mid-or even low level bureaucrats in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. This latter meaning of the phrase is what we - Jane and John Q public - are meant to believe.

Blaming “lower-level” - presumably career government employees for incompetence - isn’t that the Republican way? Could the goal have been to make the career Washington bureaucracy appear incompetent yet again in order to cover up for a few Republican political appointee snafus – or for that matter top ranking professional diplomats - mistakes? I think the term was carefully selected precisely because it is so pregnant with meanings.

Duking it out on Turkey in The Wall Street Journal

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Wouldn’t it be a relief if The Wall Street Journal re-employed Hugh Pope, its former veteran Istanbul bureau chief, and ditched Michael Rubin’s biased, undistinguished, unenlightening, off-the-wall albeit occasional diatribes on Turkey?

On Friday, Rubin called the country’s prime minister Tayyip Erdogan a dictator ala Vladimir Putin and demanded Erdogan’s ouster. This under an inflammatory headline “Turkey’s Putin Deserves to Go.” Now I usually don’t read WSJ Op Eds because they’re too often over-the-top but there’s so little information and even less analysis on Turkey in the American media and the WSJ is far too influential to ignore completely that I did read this one.

In good part Rubin’s June 6 Op Ed was a retort to a previous one The Journal had run by former US Ambassador Mark Parris who criticized the State Department for ignoring Turkey’s impending Constitutional crisis and failing to try to avert it.

But Rubin went beyond the pale and this is not the first time.

As predicted – Rubin, who – if I remember correctly - has close ties to the Israeli military-industrial complex that sells tanks (or at least other weaponry) to the Turkish military (a major protagonist in the current domestic political fight), trashed the Turkish elected civilian leadership and charged it with undemocratic tendencies. As if the Turkish military and the Supreme Court were themselves bastions of democracy. Regardless, talk about taking sides in someone else’s domestic dispute. Moderate Islamist Erdogan is not perfect and he’s made mistakes – but the secularist opposition which wants the world to equate their actions with democratic governance isn’t a paragon of virtue either.

On top of everything else Rubin blames Erdogan for inflaming anti-American and anti-Semitic attitudes in Turkey quoting last year’s Pew Global Attitudes Survey which described Turkey as the “world’s most anti-American country." In this case, the survey’s right. But Rubin’s interpretation of it is just plain wrong. Besides, I don't recall it even including attitudes on anti-Semitism in its data.

Sorry, Mr. Rubin, those anti-American attitudes that have persisted in the country over the past five years have their roots in the Bush administration’s public trashing of the Turkish government when it refused to allow US troops to invade Iraq through Turkey’s southern border.

Maybe if W, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and your other neocon cronies had treated the Turks a little better at the time and even heeded their advice about how to deal with that troublesome neighbor to their south then the American image would not be such a disaster now. If I remember correctly, Turkish views of the US plummeted at the time of the invasion. Didn't you conveniently forget the timing? I didn’t. I’ll bet those attitudes won’t change until W has left the White House and a saner head is in command of US policy in the Middle East.

PS: A note to The Wall Street Journal. Please, your readers deserve better: Michael Rubin deserves to go.

The White House, Scott McClellan and the Complicit Media

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Why is it that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has been left to stand almost alone in defense of his memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception?

Pundits - especially on the right - are swarming to assure us that McClellan's memoir contains nothing new, that it's poorly written, and/or to remind us that McClellan’s just part of the Bush Texas loyalists – the home-town-gang-who-couldn’t-shoot–straight - who were out of their element once they hit the big time on the Potomac. Besides, these same political savvants tell us, McClellan was a terrible press secretary who did untold harm to Georgie Boy over the course of three years before being fired. Almost as if Georgie Boy's own delusional policy decisions and bad judgment were irrelevant.

Then there are others who criticize McClellan for jumping the gun and playing kiss-and-tell before the end of the Bush administration rather than waiting until the day after W leaves the White House to reveal all.

Come to think of it, why did no major publisher touch McClellan’s manuscript?

Their loss, as it turns out, this story that-won’t-go-away was at the top of Amazon's charts last week. Yet, McClellan must have pitched his book to the big commercial houses before settling on Public Affairs.

If so and the majors turned him down could it have been because the US media still refuses to own up to its role in scamming the American public in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion? Or are those in the commercial book publishing business just too close to the Republicans to want to see McClellan’s damaging memoirs in circulation before the November elections? Or was it simply a bad economic decision - one that backfired?

Or could the publishers been fed a Bush administration line that there was nothing in the book that wasn’t already in the public record– so why waste time, money and paper in printing something soon destined for the shredders? But isn't it in McClellan's case the source itself, as The Economist points out, that's most important here?

Strange too because an argument used vis-à-vis the elephantine redactions of text from Valerie Plame’s book Fair Game was that it was the whole that made her memoirs dangerous –not the individual bits of information they contained.

One of the most scathing insider accounts of the complicit media of which McClellan wrote comes from investigative reporter Jeff Cohen who worked as a senior producer of Phil Donahue’s MSNBC prime time show that MSNBC cancelled just three weeks before the Iraq invasion even though, Cohen tells us, it was the network’s most popular program at the time. Cohen, founder of the FAIR, the media organization devoted to fairness and accuracy in reporting, now teaches journalism at Ithaca College. Here are just a few of his observations:

“Trust me: too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable offense. I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side.