Archiv der Kategorie: US Politics

compulsory reading, US Politics, USA

Sex, Lies, And Dossiers.

Today, Salon.com’s Nicholas Thompson looks at recent examples of US-Presidential truth-tampering and decides that lying about war is worse than lying about sex. Many, certainly on this side of the pond, will agree with him that lying about the reasons for the sanctioned killing of human beings is actually lying in a league of its own.

But however much I believe that Mr. Thompson is theoretically right, I am not so sure about the political viability of his analysis.

After all, Mr Bush is President of a country, some states of which still criminalise ownership of sex toys and in which it is possible to seriously question the privacy of homosexuals – a case recently debated publicly following remarks of a US Senator and now settled by the US supreme court – in favour of their privacy.

Notwithstanding the annual San Franciscan group-masturbate-a-thon and Candice Bushnell’s “Sex and the City”, notwithstanding even unionised lap-dancers, in America, freedom of speech does NOT entail “obscenity” – but it does protect the depiction of violence.

It is certainly interesting to debate the cultural origins of this American particularity, but whatever the reasons – including the American media -, the fact remains that the American public has a special way of dealing with the sexuality of its public figures, above all the President.

A few weeks ago, I met Amber, a 20 year old Texan student currently pursuing an language study exchange programme in Bonn, the former West German capital. She adamantly defended the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq, and a lot of other things (excluding their tax and educational policies – because that’s where she is personally affected…). It wasn’t too long before we crossed the Clinton line – after all, it was the week of Hillary Clinton’s book release. Amber explained to me that she would always hate Bill Clinton for dishonoring the American Presidency by having sex with Monica Lewinsky – and also, because he lied about it. How could she, she wondered, trust such a politician?

Trust – the magic word when it comes to lying.

After hearing what she said about lying presidents, I couldn’t help but wonder if it were different for her if she was lied to about other things, say, the war on Iraq – if the President had decided he had to adjust the story to sell it to the public but if he *believed* he was doing the right thing for the country? [which is basically the story US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, floated a few weeks ago].

And you know what, Amber said – yes, that would be less grave, as long as he believed he was doing *the right thing* for the country. She is right, of course. But this realisation has to be put differently to become useful in a political analysis- as long as most of his electorate trusts (or pretends to trust) that the President was *doing the right thing*, lying about the reasons will be forgiven and called leadership. And having sex with an intern can never be the right thing to do, however smart your PR people are. As Clinton realised, fighting this battle was pointless.

We might not like it, but in politics, sex, lies and dossiers are never judged by their factual truth, or by their moral gravity alone – these things matter if, and only if, they allude to electoral ramifications. This US administration knows that, however nervous some of their recent statements, however unpractical the unfolding drama around David Kelly’s death in the UK.

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US Politics

“Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics” by Michael Lind.

cover Interesting look behind the scenes of the culture that GWB grew up in. Lind makes a lot of interesting arguments about the seemingly fundamentalist basis of the Republican party and their pact with ivy-league educated neoconservatives. While his claims seem superficially credible to a non-expert reader like me, I would have preferred to get more data backing up his claim that 5% premillenial fundamentalists have hijacked the GOP because of their high turnout in Republican primaries.

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oddly enough, photoblogging, US Politics

Deep Throat.

Deep Throat: Hillary ClintonI wonder what Mrs Clinton wants to tell us here – personally, I suppose she’s indicating that she can solve the puzzle about the identity of Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s secret helper in uncovering the Watergate scandal, deep throat. On the other hand, regarding the traumatic oral experiences her husband made her go through back in 1998, different interpretations are clearly possible ;)…

(found at zogbyblog.)

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media, oddly enough, US Politics

Shorter Denis Boyles.

Denis Boyles over at the National Review Online reviews last week’s European Press for the literate American conservative. Here’s a summary :

“Germans are sissies for not agreeing with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that calling the “annoying socialist” Martin Schulz a Nazi is indeed really funny. Why? Germany is Unpatriotic/ Antiamerican/ LEFT/ EVIL to its core as it was against the war in Iraq. And Silvio Berlusconi was for the war (boy did we kick Saddam’s ass!). And he’s also rich, powerful, and never has to actually pay for the illegal stuff he did, aka self-made, which is really cool in my book. But those sissies on the European LEFT/EVIL, just can’t see clearly. They’re always lamenting about justice (bleah). Europe needs more RIGHT people like Mr Berlusconi. Disclaimer: Beware – Europe is in the hands of THE EVIL/THE LEFT! Ceterum censeo THE LEFT/THE EVIL should be destroyed.”

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compulsory reading, Iraq, oddly enough, US Politics

The Psychology Of WMDs

Salon.com’s Louise Witt is wondering why America is in collective denial that [someone in] the Bush administration knowingly “sexed up” the WMD charges against Saddam Hussein, as the administration is now admitting itself –

“[f]inally, on Monday, the White House admitted the president relied on inaccurate, incomplete information for that crucial passage of his State of the Union address.” [this is referring to the President’s claim that Iraq was about to aquire radioactive material from Niger]

She asks why lying is perceived as bad in some cases – and she uses the obvious Clinton impeachment example – while most people will accept it without problems in other cases. She chooses an interesting and helpful angle to analyse this question: behavioral psychology, a scientific discipline that is predominantly occupied with exploring the limits of human information processing and decision making abilities. Obviously, she can only allude to some of the insights such a perspective has to offer for the problem at hand. But these allusions are well worth reading.

Here’s a part of Ms Witt’s article I found particularly interesting –

“When Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist who interviewed the Nuremberg prisoners, talked to Hermann Goering, the former leader of the Third Reich’s Luftwaffe, Goering volunteered that it was relatively easy to persuade a populace to go to war.

As quoted in Gilbert’s book “Nuremberg Diary,” Goering said: “It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Gilbert disagreed with Goering’s analysis. “There is one difference,” he answered. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

But Goering held his ground: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Of course, such a statement has to be read as carefully as possible. It certainly does not add any truth to the recently rather popular, strange comparison of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler.

But it does indicate that even liberal democracies could be heading in a dangerous direction. Especially when fear is calling the shots in most people’s brains.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

The Next Tirpitz?

Ha – I knew it. My gentle readers, I am going to tell you a little secret.

On last new years eve I bet a young German Navy officer for six bottles of Champagne that, in ten years, Germany would have at least ordered a brand new Aircraft carrier… and today – according to Spiegel Online – Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen and friend of George W. and eternal conservative hopeful in the CDU took advantage of a day trip to the coast to explain that, well, the changed requirements of military interventions might very well include ordering an Aircraft Carrier…

Don’t worry, Roland Koch is not quite the next Tirpitz. This is, above all, funny – for the time being. But yes, the Navy brass will vote CDU next time… ;).

And for the real deal, Harvard’s Andrew Moravcsik shares his thoughts about “Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain” (full text requires subscription) in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled “After Saddam”.

Here’s Moravcsik’s brief sketch of the current transatlantic reality –

“The Iraq crisis offers two basic lessons. The first, for Europeans, is that American hawks were right. Unilateral intervention to coerce regime change can be a cost-effective way to deal with rogue states. In military matters, there is only one superpower — the United States — and it can go it alone if it has to. It is time to accept this fact and move on.

The second lesson, for Americans, is that moderate skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic were also right. Winning a peace is much harder than winning a war. Intervention is cheap in the short run but expensive in the long run. And when it comes to the essential instruments for avoiding chaos or quagmire once the fighting stops — trade, aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring, and multilateral legitimacy — Europe remains indispensable. In this respect, the unipolar world turns out to be bipolar after all.

Given these truths, it is now time to work out a new transatlantic bargain, one that redirects complementary military and civilian instruments toward common ends and new security threats. Without such a deal, danger exists that Europeans — who were rolled over in the run-up to the war, frozen out by unilateral U.S. nation building, disparaged by triumphalist American pundits and politicians, and who lack sufficiently unified regional institutions — will keep their distance and leave the United States to its own devices. Although understandable, this reaction would be a recipe for disaster, since the United States lacks both the will and the institutional capacity to follow up its military triumphs properly — as the initial haphazard efforts at Iraqi reconstruction demonstrate.

To get things back on track, both in Iraq and elsewhere, Washington must shift course and accept multilateral conditions for intervention. The Europeans, meanwhile, must shed their resentment of American power and be prepared to pick up much of the burden of conflict prevention and postconflict engagement. Complementarity, not conflict, should be the transatlantic watchword.

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Iraq, US Politics

God’s Own Agenda?

Haaretz reports that, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas President Bush allegedly explained at the recent Akaba summit that

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”

Mr Abbas words are, according to the newspaper, taken from selected minutes acquired by Haaretz from a negotiation between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian faction leaders last week.

So God instructed Bush to strike at Saddam… [and probably allowed the use of some “white lies”]

But apparently God hasn’t spoken to Bush about the Middle East conflict, as the President is only “determined” to solve the problem.

Reading this I can’t help but wonder – assume for a moment that God would indeed speak to President Bush about the Middle East a little too close to the 2004 US elections? Would Bush tell God that, right now, he can’t really concentrate on a divine mission because of the election?

The statement is interesting in another way as well – given the substantial support Bush has among the American people and apparently record breaking donation levels for his next campaign, why would he need to concentrate on the election. Wouldn’t “solving” the Middle East suffice to win?

Maybe his camp is paranoid. But maybe, they really think they need a full-scale campaign because they stand a real chance to lose…

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oddly enough, US Politics

The Occasional Freaky Bit

You know, my gentle readers, how I am usually quite understanding of many kinds of political behavior – but then there’s the occasional bit that really freaks me out (if correct).

Paul Krugman wrote last Friday in the NYTimes that –

“after the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay [the Republican House of Representatives majority leader] called a press conference in which he attributed the tragedy to the fact that students are taught the theory of evolution.”

There’s really nothing to add to that. Oh wait, maybe this.

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Ken Starr Grand Jury - Monica is not here
media, photoblogging, US Politics, USA

Living History. Deleting Posts.

After Blogger decided to shred two of my planned entries today I have settled for one involving only very little typing.

I was in Washington, DC, back in 1998 when the Starr-Rreport was released, and I have never in my life seen so many journalists per square-centimeter.

I only had a tiny disposable camera with me, and the reddish part in the right hand side – yeah, that’s my middle finger.

I guess Hillary Clinton will have a more interesting account of that part of her living history. Der Spiegel has some German excerpts from her biography/political re-positioning in this week’s print edition.

I am not particularly interested in this kind of books, but I did have a brief look at the excerpt. I can’t help but wonder. What does Hillary Clinton really mean when she writes about she and Bill managed to get on after, well, you know –

“The Key to understanding our marriage is certainly our common history. But to be true, our relationship is too profound to be put into words. Maybe I could express it this way: In the Spring of 1971 I began a conversation with Bill Clinton, and more than thirty later we still talk to each other.”

“We still talk to each other?” Now here I can’t help but wonder if I believe this is a positive or negative verdict about their relationship…

Note: As this is a re-translation from German, I don’t know what she actually wrote. Last week’s Wolfowitz-oil quip should be a sufficient reminder of the perils of translation.

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