By PHK
It’s always good to get a change of scene. I normally visit Washington, DC for a week or two during the spring. Not for the cherry blossoms. I avoid them. It’s not because I don’t think they’re beautiful, it’s because the conferences I want to attend are scheduled later and besides, I really don’t like having to compete with screeching kiddies - shirts covered with ice cream cone remnants - and their harried chaperones as they careen from wall to wall in some of the nation’s best museums.
I promised to try to write something for WV while here. This first post will be a reasonably, perhaps mercifully, short outsider’s take.
First, Washington real estate prices have gone sky high. I’m told it’s now far cheaper to rent than to buy. The downtown traffic is worse and the streets are still not repaired despite the fact the District government is running a surplus and trying to figure out how to spend it. If they got rid of the metal plates and repaved pot holed streets, I’ll bet the DC Metro would have to spend far less on bus repairs.
OK, you probably want to know – or maybe you don’t – about my take on Washington’s political circus. And whether I think the Bush administration is in trouble. I hope so. But then most of the people I know here would fit very comfortably in Santa Fe – which also went heavily for Kerry last November. Neither like Bush and have never liked Bush. And oh, my gosh, they listen to NPR. Actually, I’m told the District lost its major classical music station during the past year. At least we still have one in New Mexico. But maybe that’s why the Washington concert scene is doing well. Not only do people want to forget about the mess that the White House has created, but they can’t even listen to a station devoted to the classics. So concerts are a wonderful outlet. And I’ve been to several excellent ones including the Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski who received a rave review yesterday in the Washington Post.
Back to politics. It seems to me – but I’ll probably know more next week – that public diplomacy has been relegated to the Pentagon and its know-little contract agencies who reap big bucks for the thankless job of selling this administration’s interventionist policies to a skeptical world. I’m not really sure what they do is what I would call public diplomacy – but apparently they do. It looks to me like a mishmash of selling the U.S. troop presence in Iraq to Iraqis and Afghanistan to Afghans, the Iraq occupation fiasco to the rest of the world and perhaps even preparing for whatever the Bushites may have up their sleeves for Iran come summer when the European big three-Iranian negotiations are expected to break down.
Add in some psy-ops stuff, too, to what the Pentagon calls public diplomacy. I don’t know whether or not this includes a fake letter circulated in Khuzestan, Iran’s Arab region over a week ago and reported by the Financial Times on or about April 20. The letter, however, set off anti-government demonstrations and the Iranian government was quick to declare it a forgery.
Last week, the DailyKos questioned whether the letter’s originator could possibly have been the CIA.and its manufacturer Ahmed Chalabi’s now infamous forgery operations. The fabricator could, of course, have been the Rumsfeld folk at the Pentagon. They’re closer to Chalabi than the CIA people who told the powers that be before the Iraq invasion that Chalabi was up to no good. Both the CIA and the State Department had already had considerable unpleasant experience with the man. Besides the Pentagon has far larger sums of money to throw around on questionable projects – and a relatively small sum required for this sort of operation could easily be hidden. Or perhaps it was some one else trying to destabilize Iran. Or then it could have been the Iranian government itself trying to cause problems between Arabs in Iran’s south. Take your pick. I don’t know.
Why would the DailyKos even think of the CIA? Perhaps because Steven Kinzer’s book “All the Shah’s Men” explains in excruciating detail how the U.S. and the UK did some things similar to destabilize Mohammad Mossadegh’s democratically elected government in 1953.
Meanwhile the legitimate U.S., government public diplomacy operation under State’s aegis struggles along with no director – Karen Hughes is reportedly not ready to report until the fall sometime – and the thirty-something Dina Powell doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave the White House herself. PD officers in State – at least those in PD positions are too often considered second class citizens – and the PD budget remains grossly inadequate.
It’s now pouring rain. The blossoms are, for the most part, mashes of color on the grass, the 30s buses are incredibly unreliable although the N-2 and N-4 have fortunately not yet met the same fate, and Steve Clemons’s www.thewashingtonnote.com continues his excellent reporting on the Bolton story. Looks like the NSA intercepts will be released – and expect the Hill testimony to continue including from two savvy State Department career women – Beth Jones and Avis Bohlen as reported in the Washington Post and the New York Times over the weekend.
[Posted by CKR for PHK]