How I Came To Be A Democrat

The first political event I ever attended was a Republican rally for Barry Goldwater for President in Montgomery, Alabama. After serving in the Army in Vietnam and joining the Foreign Service, I may have become pretty liberal. What happened when I was assigned to Warsaw, Poland, in the mid-1990's may have confirmed my then existing predilections.

I was assigned to be the Science Counselor at the American Embassy in Warsaw, where my main job was supposed to be to manage scientific cooperation between the US and Poland under an arrangement named the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund II. It was Fund II, because the first fund had been closed during the bad old days of Polish martial law. An agreement to work under the second Fund had been signed just before I left for Poland, and it was to last for five years.

After about one year, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over Congress and cancelled the funding for our Polish cooperation. The agreement had a clause that said if either of the parties was unable to fund the cooperation, it would end. This clause had been included with Poland in mind, because it faced so many financial problems as it came out of 50 years of Communist rule, but America took advantage of it. The Polish Foreign Ministry called me in almost weekly to complain that the US was not living up to its agreement. I told them that I would report their complaints to Washington, but if they were really serious, they would raise the matter with the Ambassador in Warsaw, or with the Secretary of State or one of his immediate subordinates in Washington. But Poland then wanted more than anything to be included in NATO, and it would not do anything that might endanger that goal, such as making a big stink about the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund. So, they kept raising the matter with me. Although I knew there was nothing personal about it, I ended up taking it personally. I began to feel that I was at least partly responsible for American breaking its word to Poland. I began to feel that I could not represent an America that did not keep its word.

It happened that about this time I became eligible to retire from the Foreign Service, and after discussing it with my wife, I had about decided to retire, so that I would not have to represent a dishonest government. You may say that it is naive to think that any government is going to be totally honest. But I think that if a government is going to be dishonest, there should be a reason for it. For example, virtually every Foreign Service officer will have to lie at one time or another because he or she knows something from intelligence that he or she cannot admit knowing without compromising that intelligence. (Unless of course he has the same lack of morals and patriotism as Robert Novak.) But in this case, the United States was not going to be bankrupted by paying for continued scientific cooperation with Poland, which was the circumstance foreseen by the clause in question.

In any case, I was about to retire, when out of the blue I got a call from Washington asking me if I would agree to go to Rome, where the Science Counselor had be unexpectedly removed. He was not a Foreign Service officer, and the State Department said that after several years, he could not continue to serve in Rome without becoming one, which for some reason he would not do. So, my wife agreed to move from Warsaw to Rome with me.

When I got to Rome, it turned out that one of my main duties was to handle issues involving the North Korean nuclear program, in particular the follow-up to the KEDO agreement, which promised North Korea two Western style reactors that do not produce weapons usable by-products in return for shutting down the plutonium production reactor(s) that North Korea had been using. In addition, the US, Japan and South Korea promised North Korea to supply it with a certain amount of fuel oil to provide energy to replace that produced by the indigenous reactors until the new non-proliferating reactors could come on line.

Once again, the Republican Congress refused to appropriate the money for all the fuel oil that the US had promised. So, one of my jobs was to go the Italians (both in their national capacity and at that time as the Presidency of the European Union) and ask them to contribute money to make up for what the Congress had refused to appropriate. Following up on my experience with the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund II in Poland, I was not happy. I felt that once again the US was failing to honor its promises. Thus, I told the Embassy that I would stay until Italy relinquished its presidency of the EU, but then I would retire.

Another more personal matter intervened, as well. After I agreed to move from Warsaw to Rome, my wife and I decided that it would save the government money, and would be interesting for us, to drive from Warsaw to Rome. We could have had our car shipped, and had the government purchase airline tickets, etc., but we could drive in a few days. Hotels, food and gas would certainly be less than airline tickets and the cost of shipping our car. Plus, we could carry stuff in our car that would reduce the amount we had to ship at government expense. In any case, we had packed everything. Big stuff had been shipped to Rome. The car was loaded to roof, and was parked outside ready to leave that night for Krakow, our first stop. I was saying good-bye to friends in the Embassy, and while I was in the defense attache's office, someone came in to tell me that I had just had a call from Rome saying, "Don't leave!" It was tough to get me the message, because the call had come to a Pole in our personnel section who could not come to the defense attache's office, because it was in a secure, American-only part of the Embassy. So, the Pole had to find an American to deliver the message.

It turned out that the problem was that Newt Gingrich had closed down the American government, and only essential personnel could work. However, I had no place to live, either in Warsaw (since we had moved out) or in Rome. I was furious and called Rome. Because I was just being a good soldier and going where the State Department asked me to go, I didn't know any of the personalities in Rome. It turned out that the DCM (the deputy ambassador) was an old friend from an assignment in Brasilia, Brazil. He arranged some deal with the personnel office in Rome that allowed us to travel. But for what I considered a personal insult, possibly stranding by wife and me with nowhere to live in Warsaw during a cold November, Newt Gingrich won my undying displeasure (a mild word). I also thought it was ironic that the Republicans claim to be the party of business, but if there is one thing that businesses have to do, it's meet a payroll. Newt couldn't do that. Now meeting payrolls is less important. Many businesses now leave their employees twisting in the wind, especially when it comes to health care and retirement. Newt was ahead of his time, unfortunately for us all.

Ironically, when we returned to northern Virginia after I retired, in the first election I voted in after my return to the States, I voted for Republican John Warner for senator, because I thought (and still think) he was (and is) a good man. But he was the exception. In general, no more Republicans.

However, I still think Goldwater, like John Warner and John McCain, was probably a good man, much better than most of the rest of the sleazeballs currently occupying the seats of power in the Republican party he helped create.

Difference between Iraq and Vietnam

The deaths in Iraq of about 20 Marines from Ohio points out an important difference between the way we are fighting the Iraq war and the way we fought the Vietnam war. Troops are sent to Iraq in cohesive units, like the one from Ohio. In Vietnam, they were sent pretty much individually, probably due to the draft, but perhaps due to some political considerations.

I enlisted when I came up 1-A to try to maintain some control over my destiny. However, I was sent to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where very few of my colleagues from Alabama were sent. Then, after going through basic training, I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and given further training there with no one from my basic training unit. Then only three of us who had trained together at Fort Sill were sent to Vietnam together, and although we were sent to the same artillery battalion, we were sent to different batteries, and so never saw each other after the first few days. As individual soldiers reached the end of their tour, they were replaced individually, so that the unit in Vietnam was in constant flux, a few old hands and a few new ones.

Of course this created problems for unit cohesiveness in Vietnam, but I think that one of the worst problems was coming home, because there was no support. Most of your buddies were still back in Vietnam, and the ones who had left before you were back home wherever they lived, some in New York, some in California, etc. After several years, I did see one of my old battery mates in the Washington, DC, area, where we both had moved by coincidence. I think this lack of support had a lot to do with the feeling of alienation when troops came back singly. The country rejected them as war criminals, and they didn't have anywhere to turn for support. The guys who might have supported them were halfway across the country. And the veterans who were nearby did not have the same shared experiences as the guys who had served in Vietnam with you.

I think the current system of maintaining the integrity of entire units is better. But when you have a unit suffer significant casualties, as the Marines from Ohio did, then it is tougher. But even then there is a shared support system for the families of the dead, because other families live nearby.

Quillen Right on Intelligent Design

In today's Denver Post, Ed Quillen's op-ed on "What Intelligent Design?" makes exactly the right reply to those who would replace evolution with intelligent design in our schools and scientific laboratories. If whoever did the intelligent design was so smart, why aren't we (and most of our fellow creatures) better designed?

In additions to the points raised by Quillen, I wonder: Why can't dogs talk? Why do some turtles live longer than human beings? Why do so many human beings become sick and useless years before they die? Who designed the dodo bird?

Bush Believes He Is Still at War

Bush's advisors tried to change the "war on terror" into a "global struggle against violent extremism," but Bush himself isn't buying it. Bush wants to be a war president. The fact that we are not clearly winning the war is apparently less important than being at war. The military appears to be uncomfortable with being in charge of the war on terror. Rumsfeld and his four star lackeys led the charge to change the name from war to struggle.

Karl Rove made fun of "liberals" who thought that the police, rather than the military, had to be the front line against terrorism. Rove said that after the 9/11 attacks, liberals, "wanted to prepare indictments, therapy and understanding" for the attackers. Rove clearly thought indictments were useless, but after the London underground bombings, Tony Blair didn't declare war on any new countries, as Bush declared war on Iraq. Rather, Blair has increased the role of the British police in fighting terrorism. No doubt Rove ridicules Blair and the British people in private, despite the fact that the British bombers appear to be home grown in Britain, rather than people who have come from the Middle East specifically to carry out the bombings.

Bush has no clue what he's doing, or what needs to be done to protect the American people, but he knows that he likes being a war president. By the way, how's the war in Iraq going these days? How many American military have been killed? How many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed? How much better is life for the average Iraqi? How democratic is the new Iraqi government under the new constitution going to be?

US Not Totally Honorable with North Korea

With North Korea back in the news, and with me thinking about Rome in the late 1990's, it reminds me that one of my jobs at the American Embassy in Rome was to take the tin cup out to the Italian Foreign Ministry and beg for money to help the US meet its commitments under the agreement with North Korea that it then still honored. Italy then held the presidency of the EU, and thus we begged Italy as a country and as a representative of the entire EU.

The problem was that the agreement called on the Western parties, the US, Japan, and South Korea, to provide heating oil to North Korea while work was proceeding on the non-proliferating, Western design nuclear reactors that we had promised North Korea to replace their indigenous reactors that were producing the bad bomb-making plutonium. However, the US Congress, under its non-treaty-honoring Republican leadership would not appropriate enough money to meet the US obligations under the treaty. So, we browbeat our allies to make up the difference, presumably because they were more concerned about the future of the world than the Republican Congress was.

I didn't like that any more than I liked punishing children for the sins of their parents, despite the precedent for such punishment in the Old Testament. (See previous post).

So, as I approached the end of my career, it was as if the Republicans became less concerned about the protecting the US, and more greedy (giving money that should have gone to protecting the US to their wealthy campaign contributors instead).

These current negotiations with the North Koreans bring back bad memories. Although Christopher Hill is a career Foreign Service officer (who spent time in Poland as I did), I don't trust the US negotiating position. The North Koreans are crazy, but so is John Bolton, who was in charge of this process until recently. And Condi Rice named him to be Ambassador to the UN, not a good sign for Condi's competence.

Clinton's Winds of War

I happened on a copy of War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk, which I bought after returning from my tour as an American diplomat in Rome.

While I was in Rome around 1996 or '97, I went to a party celebrating the launch of an Italian satellite, as I recall somewhat vaguely, and struck up a conversation with a man who worked for an Italian telecommunications company, maybe the state telecom company. He said that America must really hate him and his little daughter, because it had refused his daughter a visa to visit the US because of the company he worked for.

It turned out the problem was the Helms-Burton law, named after its sponsors in the Senate and House, two bigots and proud of it. I was appalled that the US was punishing children to affect the conduct of their parents. But I had already decided to leave the Foreign Service because I did not feel that the US was living up the standards that it should. Helms-Burton was passed by Republicans, but President Bill Clinton was enforcing it. This was just one more sleazy thing I was glad to be leaving behind.

After I returned to the US, I happened to be watching the mini-series "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" on TV, partly because it involved diplomats in Rome. Lo and behold, one the sleazy things that one of the "nice" the Nazi diplomats there was doing was threatening the child of the Jewish heroine, Natalie, to get her to force her uncle to make propaganda broadcasts against the Allies. How little things change! I didn't personally take any actions against children, but I had worked at an embassy that did. Jesse Helms liked those Nazi tactics! What an awful man!

I'm not sure that the TV mini-series exactly followed the novel. I can't find exactly what I think I remember seeing on TV, but here are some pretty close passages (from the Pocket paperback edition):

Our friend and rescuer, Dr. Werner Beck [the Nazi diplomat], is moving heaven and earth to get us released, or at the very least, to designate three other Americans from the list for the retaliation, if it comes to that. (p. 250)

I have concealed this news from Natalie. Her dread of the Germans and what they may do to her baby borders on the psychotic. (p. 251)

Aaron was describing Werner Beck's intervention to quash the summons from the secret police, at the time when alien Jews had been interned. (p. 294)

"My guess would be," said the doctor, "that this Dr. Beck is preventing you from leaving Italy."

"How preposterous!" exclaimed Jastrow.

But Castelnuovo's words stirred a horrible dark sickness in Natalie. "Why? What would there be in it for him?" (p. 295)

With a curl of his lips, and a total confusion of f's and th's, Beck retorted, "But there's also the question of Mrs. Henry [Natalie] and her baby 'rotting here.' And there's the more serious question of how long you can stay on in Siena."

Natalie interjected, "What's the question about our staying in Siena?"

"Why the OVRA pressure never lets up on me, Mrs. Henry. You realize that you belong in a concentration camp with the rest of the alien Jews....." (p. 339)

Dumbly Natalie nodded. She went to the library to draft the [misleading] letter [to Beck], feeling -- half with terror, half with relief -- that the lead had in an eyeblink passed from her to her uncle, and that she and her baby were now in the dark rapids. (p. 342)

Iraq War Is a Mess

Most of the op-eds in the NY Times today deal with the mess we are in in Iraq. For me the best is David Kennedy's "The Best Army We Can Buy", although it goes hand-in-hand with Duncan's "Uniform Sacrifice." The theme is that Iraq is not a war that the US is fighting as a nation, but one which we have hired mercenaries to fight. Although many are American mercenaries, many more are more typical mercenaries, Hispanic immigrants who are not citizens.

I have a very low opinion of Bush, Cheney, and Republicans in general as military leaders. Bush joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam, and even worse, after the Air Force had trained him as a jet fighter pilot at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million or more, Bush said, "Hey, I'm going to Harvard Business School. I'm done with the National Guard. The US can take its hundreds of thousands of dollars that it spent on me and shove it!" That is in general Bush's attitude toward the government's money (spend it on yourself or your friends, it's free), and his attitude toward defending America. He and Cheney are cowards. After 9/11, Bush flew to Louisiana and Nebraska rather than return to Washington to lead the country, and Cheney went into some cave under or near the White House. These are not men that I would want to follow into battle.

In general the people who favored Iraq, Republicans and Jews, won't fight for it. How many children of wealthy Republicans are in the military in Iraq? And how many Jews? The neo-cons who lobbied so strongly for the Iraq war were predominantly Jews. One was my old nemesis, Richard Perle.

That there is something wrong with Jewish attitudes is illustrated by the dispute between Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and London Mayor Livingstone. As this article in Haaretz shows, Jews are the verbal attack dogs of the world, currently led by a hate-filled Sharon. As Livingstone implied, Israeli Jews are at least partly to blame for inflaming the hatred of Muslims which has resulted in the current rash of terrorism around the world. Of course, there is a lot of bad blood between Britain and Israel, because before World War II, Palestine was a British protectorate, and Jews living there introduced terrorism into the Middle East in order to kill British officials, most notably when they blew up the King David Hotel. In addition, the American invasion of Iraq, instigated under pressure from the Jewish neo-cons, has something to do with the Muslim terrorism problem, too.

On the Bush is a coward issue, I just want to say that I went to Vietnam. I think it is sad how few others did. But, in the Senate, for example, you can see how much better men the veterans are -- McCain, Hegel, Roberts, etc. -- than the draft dodgers. I don't really count John Kerry as a veteran, since he turned on his Vietnam veteran colleagues when he returned to the US.

Will Nuclear Accord with India Make the US Safer?

The Bush administration has begun implementing its policy of containment of China by legitimizing India's status as a nuclear weapons nation, despite its failure to adhere to the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime, primarily incorporated in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The administration has not formally announced a policy of containment of China, but almost simultaneously with the announcement of the new nuclear policy toward India, the Pentagon released a report on China, playing up its potential military threat. According to the Washington Post:

The report comes as the Pentagon focuses on China's steady military modernization as a driving force in long-range U.S. defense strategy and overseas basing, American military officials and analysts say. It generated intense debate within the Bush administration, with the State Department pushing for a benign depiction of China's intentions, while the Pentagon sought to emphasize a potentially insidious threat, defense officials said.

Thus, it appears that the US is adopting a policy of containment toward China much like that proposed by George Kennan after World War II toward the Soviet Union. India is one of the primary countries that can "contain" China. Interesting, India's nuclear-armed neighbor and oftentime enemy, Pakistan, is a protoge of China. Pakistan is also George Bush's close ally in the "war" against terrorism. The administration will have to weigh the importance of a potential real war with China, against an existing threat (but not a war between nations) of terrorism.

Meanwhile, the acceptance of India's nuclear status threatens to undermine the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime by encouraging beligerant smaller countries, such as Iran and North Korea, to follow India's example of flaulting the regime, and by encouraging more responsible countries that see themselves on a par with India for world status to develop their own nuclear weapons capability, countries such as Brazil and Japan. The situation may be manageable but only with a finesse that the Bush administration has not shown in any of its foreign policy actions to date. If anything, it means that for securing the US from nuclear threats, diplomacy is out, and military force is in, which we have used so well in Iraq. US troops can look forward to winters in Korea and Iran.

Where is Israel's Apology?

The "war" between us and the terrorists is inextricably tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Therefore, Israel is to some extent responsible for 9/11, and now for London's 7/7 and for Madrid's 4/11 or whatever it was. Israelis probably treat Palestinians better than Anglos in the US treated the Indians as the Anglos marched across the continent to fulfill their "manifest destiny," but times have changed. What was acceptable 100 or 200 years ago is no longer acceptable.

Of course, the Arabs started the wars against Israel, but that probably had something to do with the way Israel was created. In addition, Israel started the use of terrorism in the Middle East while Palestine still belonged to the British. To his credit, Secretary of State General George Marshall opposed the way Israel was being created, which he said was being done by President Truman for domestic US political purposes in response to American Jewish pressure. It may well have been the reason that Truman upset Dewey in the election. However, we have been paying the price ever since. Only recently have we begun paying in significant quantities of blood.

Israel should at least own up to its partial responsibility for the deaths in the US and Europe. Those who committed the atrocities are of course responsible, but they were egged on by the heartless way Israel treated the Palestinians who lived in Palestine. Israel should apologize to the West for the bloody consequences of its callous denial of Palestinian human rights.

London and Iraq

In all the press coverage about the London subway bombings, there has been little comparison made to Iraq. About 50 people were killed in the London bombings. That is about 1 week of casualties in Iraq, maybe even just in Baghdad, which is smaller than London. And the the killings in Iraq go on week after week.

Bush's argument is that as long as terrorists are killing Iraqis in Iraq, they are not killing Americans or Europeans at home. He has certainly accomplished his mission of bringing horrible misery to ordinary Iraqis. But, is his logic valid? Is he winning the war on terrorism? Certainly there has been no terrorist assault to rival 9/11, but would there have been one anyway, even without a war on terrorism. Was 9/11 a one-time thing? We are not talking about armies, or nations at war, we appear to be talking about a few individuals who are fighting for a cause, but not in a united way -- about 20 for 9/11, maybe less than half a dozen in London. Can you fight a war against a few terrorists any more than you can fight a war against an insane sniper who starts shooting people from the top of building?

As John Tierney says in today's New York Times:

... I think that we'd be better off reconsidering our definition of victory in the war on terror. Calling it a war makes it sound like a national fight against a mighty enemy threatening our society.

But right now the terrorists look more like a small group of loosely organized killers who are less like an army than like lightning bolts - scary but rarely fatal. Except that the risk of being struck by lightning is much higher than the risk of being killed by a terrorist.

Bush Responsible for North Korea's Withdrawal from NPT

An op-ed in today's Washington Post says that the authors were offered a deal by North Korean President Kim in November 2002, which President Bush rejected. Shortly thereafter, North Korea withdrew from the NPT. Much of the Administration's criticism of the NPT has been based on the fact that North Korea withdrew from the treaty with apparent impunity. But it turns out that Bush was at least partly responsible for North Korea's withdrawal. It was as much a failure of diplomacy as of the legal design of the treaty.

No doubt part of the problem was the John Bolton was largely responsible for this issue within the Administration. It has already turned out since he left that he was responsible for the failure of negotiations over the Nunn-Lugar agreement with Russia, and that work under the agreement is starting to move ahead since he left State. It also appears that his efforts to block ElBaradei from getting another term as head of the IAEA has failed, and that Condi Rice wisely agreed to giving him another term once Bolton was gone. It would appear that Bolton was a major failure in his last job. But Bush has rewarded failure before, e.g., CIA Director Tenet's medal, and Paul Wolfowitz promotion to head of the World Bank.

Danforth on True Christianity

I heartily recommend John Danforth's op-ed in the NYT on genuine Christianity. As he says, moderate Christians are a work in progress, always trying to be better. He says, "But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves." If only more politicians would adhere to this standard.

Interestingly, the Times description of him says that he is an Episcopal minister and former Senator. It does not mention that most recently he was US Ambassador to the United Nations, soon to be replaced by John Bolton, a man best known as an SOB who in the past has not loved his neighbor as himself.

When he was leaving the post of UN Ambassador, Danforth refused to criticize the Bush Administration, but he did say the following:

My view is that it’s best that the U.S. have one foreign policy, not a bunch of independent operators. I do not believe that the Permanent Representative to the United Nations is an independent foreign policy maker or should be some sort of figure running around Washington saying exotic things, or running around New York saying exotic things. I really don’t believe that. I believe we should speak with one voice. And therefore I think that this particular method of operation is right. It’s the way I should function. It’s the way the State Department should function. It’s the way the government should function as a totality. Am I used to this kind of operating? No, I mean when I was in the U.S. Senate, I voted my conscience, my point of view and my position on issues, what I thought. And then when I’d go back to my home state and try my best to explain my position to my constituents. You can’t do that in this position, nobody can. I mean everybody who represents the government here does so as an ambassador. You’re representing a point of view that’s the point of view of the entire government, not just the point of view of an individual member of the United States Senate. So it’s a different kind of role, I think that the role here, I’m repeating myself, I think that the role here is not one for somebody who is an independent operator and shouldn’t be that way. And so that’s just the way it is.

Spoken like a true public servant, unlike John Bolton, who frequently made a point of letting the world know that he disagreed with his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell. But if you read between the lines, it looks like he did not feel that he was voting his conscience at the UN under George Bush's orders. Danforth had too much moral character to represent this Administration.

Guantanamo I

All the talk about how bad Guantanamo is, is good. Maybe we'll do something about it. We created it in Guantanamo because we (the government) thought it would be outside the jurisdiction of US courts. We wanted it outside their jurisdiction because we wanted to do things to the prisoners that would be illegal if done inside the continental US. It turned out that the Supreme Court said that trying to escape their jurisdiction in Guantanamo was itself illegal. Why would the government want to do illegal things? These are bad people. I am inclined to think that the Bush Administration is largely white trash, including George W, but not Laura, who seems to have some class and dignity. They have disdain for law of all types. At first I thought it was just international law, e.g., the Geneva Convention and the Vienna Convention. But now I think it includes US law, too, up to and including the Constitution.

Vietnam I

I've just been reading the article on John McCain in the May 30 issue of the New Yorker. I haven't finished it, but so far it has not answered the main question I have about McCain: How does he feel about the US torturing prisoners of war at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Baghram, and other places, including those turned over to other countries for torture under under some process called rendition.

The article brings out McCain's strong support for the war in Iraq and the troops fighting it, but does he also support our torturing our prisoners of war after he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam? If he does, it seems perverted -- that he wants revenge for what he suffered in Vietnam. That view seems to go against everything else that he has done vis-a-vis Vietnam, working to restore diplomatic relations, find remains of MIAs, etc. So, does he believe torture is just an inescapable part of human nature, accepted in both Vietnam and Iraq? I'd like to know. If he had to live up the Military Code of Conduct as a prisoner in Vietnam, why shouldn't both Vietnam and the US live up to their obligations under the Geneva Convention?

Which leads me to why I'm writing this. I believe that any American acceptance of torture is bad. I think that torture is inevitable, that at least a few of the people we send to fight our enemies will come to hate our enemies and be inclined to torture them if given the opportunity, which is why it is so important that our leadership condemn torture and punish it severely when it occurs. Anything less means that we really condone it. So far, Bush, Rumsfeld and McCain condone it. However, there is a surprising, increasing outcry from Democrats and Republicans to close Guantanamo. Cheney has not gotten the message, which says something awful about his moral character. These are the men who should be setting the standards for our soldiers. It's understandable that some soldiers might have the urge to torture, especially if one of their friends was just killed or wounded, but the political leaders -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, McCain --- should set the moral tone.

What Does EU Rejection Mean?

For some, David Brooks and Tom Friedman, the EU's rejection of the new constitution shows that Europe is stuck in the mud and not willing to join today's globally competitive world. They might be right, but there is also the possibility that Europe sees the handwriting on the wall that today's developed countries, including the US, face a world that mean the end of life as we know it, regardless of how hard we work.

Can Americans compete with Chinese and Indian workers? Of course, but they will have to work 20 hours a day (or 35 hours a day according to Friedman), and they will have to live many people in one room, instead of a few people in a whole house. Maybe the Europeans recognize this and are rebelling. While in America, the government is controlled by those who will gain from the changes, those who own the capital that benefits from cheap labor overseas. For a few in America (and in Europe) this will be the greatest change ever. They will live even more like Asian satraps than they do now.

Maybe European voters are smarter than American voters when it comes to their financial well being. Americans have not been quick to destroy Social Security, despite Bush's plea that they do so. Maybe they don't understand that the globalization of the world labor markets threatens their entire livelihood, not just their retirement.

Hooray! Bolton's Postponed

John Bolton's confirmation as UN ambassador was postponed yesterday, which means he is in some trouble. I'm still afraid he is likely to be confirmed, but giving such a bad nomination a little grief is better than letting him sail through. The letter from the US AID staffer was apparently the main reason for the hold up. Good for her!

The earlier letter from a number of diplomats opposing Bolton is here. Most of the signatories go way back. Most of the ones that I knew personally, I met while I was working on the Brazil desk, which was I think only my third assignment in the Foreign Service, under the Carter Administration. Nevertheless, more power to them!

Cheney Looks Bad on "24"

I'm surprised that Fox television, which is usually pretty loyal to the Bush Administration, is portraying Vice President Dick Cheney as such a coward in its hit show "24." The show has been dealing with a string of terrorist attacks modeled on 9/11. Most recently, Air Force One was shot down, with the President left incapacitated and the Vice President forced to take over. These are events not too unlike when a petrified Bush got in Air Force One on 9/11 and flew off to hide in the sky, Louisiana, Nebraska, wherever -- while Cheney took charge from a bunker under the White House, the same one the fictional VP is operating from in "24." The VP in "24" appears scared and afraid to come out of the bunker. Is this art imitating life, when Cheney disappeared into the bunker, and then stayed out of view for months? So far, Fox makes Cheney look pretty bad.

Cheney was a coward and dodged the draft during Vietnam. During 9/11 he went underground and stayed there. Let's hope he never really has to try to lead the country.

Bolton Is a Bad Man

The referenced letter from the Daily Kos Blog to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding a US AID official who had a bad experience with John Bolton shows his bad personal traits. He was then out of government and working as a lawyer for some Republican organization that was doing US AID work in Kyrgyzstan. Interestingly, Kyrgyzstan, which lived in anonymity for years, is now in the news as a result of its coup. Is this due to the great work of Republicans in bringing democracy through this US AID project, or as most people think, just a coup.

I don't doubt that Bolton has some bad personal traits, which he evidenced in his dealings with some State/INR staffers during his more recent stint as Under Secretary of State, but more importantly are his political and philosophical views on foreign policy. In his earlier job as State Assistant Secretary for International Organizations (the UN) and more recently as Under Secretary, he has show his comtempt for diplomacy and working internationally. He, like many of his neo-con allies, believes that the US should just use its raw power internationally, as we did in Iraq. Diplomacy is for wimps (apparently in personal behavior as well as in international dealings).

The text of the letter is:

Dear Sir:

I'm writing to urge you to consider blocking in committee the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

In the late summer of 1994, I worked as the subcontracted leader of a US AID project in Kyrgyzstan officially awarded to a HUB primary contractor. My own employer was Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, and I reported directly to Republican leader Charlie Black.

After months of incompetence, poor contract performance, inadequate in-country funding, and a general lack of interest or support in our work from the prime contractor, I was forced to make US AID officials aware of the prime contractor's poor performance.

I flew from Kyrgyzstan to Moscow to meet with other Black Manafort employees who were leading or subcontracted to other US AID projects. While there, I met with US AID officials and expressed my concerns about the project -- chief among them, the prime contractor's inability to keep enough cash in country to allow us to pay bills, which directly resulted in armed threats by Kyrgyz contractors to me and my staff.

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.

He indicated to key employees of or contractors to State that, based on his discussions with investigatory officials, I was headed for federal prison and, if they refused to cooperate with either him or the prime contractor's replacement team leader, they, too, would find themselves the subjects of federal investigation. As a further aside, he made unconscionable comments about my weight, my wardrobe and, with a couple of team leaders, my sexuality, hinting that I was a lesbian (for the record, I'm not).

When I resurfaced in Kyrgyzstan, I learned that he had done such a convincing job of smearing me that it took me weeks -- with the direct intervention of US AID officials -- to limit the damage. In fact, it was only US AID's appoinment of me as a project leader in Almaty, Kazakstan that largely put paid to the rumors Mr. Bolton maliciously circulated.

As a maligned whistleblower, I've learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.

John Bolton put me through hell -- and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological.

I cannot believe that this is a man being seriously considered for any diplomatic position, let alone such a critical posting to the UN. Others you may call before your committee will be able to speak better to his stated dislike for and objection to stated UN goals. I write you to speak about the very character of the man.

It took me years to get over Mr. Bolton's actions in that Moscow hotel in 1994, his intensely personal attacks and his shocking attempts to malign my character. I urge you from the bottom of my heart to use your ability to block Mr. Bolton's nomination in committee.

Respectfully yours,

Melody Townsel
Dallas, TX 75208

Sokolski on NPT

When I worked on missile non-proliferation issues at State over ten years ago, Henry Sokolski was my opposite number at the Pentagon. We were almost always at loggerheads. It was my impression that he, like most conservatives working on arms control issues, wanted absolute security from any arms control agreement. That is not going to happen. There are many laws against murder -- local, state, federal -- but murders occur every day. Many innocent people are killed simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Similarly, arms control agreements are no guarantee that the things they are supposed to prevent will not occur. But, it's better to have laws against murder than not to have them, and it's better to have arms control agreements than not to have them.

The other principle is that countries will usually only agree to things that are in their self interest. They are not going to agree to something that will disadvantage them militarily vis-a-vis neighboring countries, for example. So, if you want Iran to give up something that it believes is in its self interest, uranium enrichment for example, you have to make Iran see that it is in its self interest to do so. For example, if Iran were assured that it would be guaranteed a supply of fuel for nuclear reactors at a lower price than it could produce that fuel itself. But, at the same time, it would have to be sure that neighboring countries, Israel for example, could not threaten it will nuclear destruction. It might also mean that current nuclear countries, other than Israel, would have to renounce nuclear weapons, the US for example.

Sokolski glosses over this major problem of nations not agreeing to things not in their self interest, when he says:

The first view was reflected in the original intent for the negotiations announced by Fred Aiken, the Irish foreign minister in 1959, when he laid down the first resolution for a nonproliferation treaty. He basically was concerned that the spread of nuclear weapons to additional states would make disarmament less likely, because it would make war, either inadvertent or deliberate, more likely.

Now that set of concerns produced the first three articles of the treaty, and they basically said, "If you have nuclear weapons, don't give them to anyone else; if you don't have any, don't try to get any; and everyone should submit themselves to inspections to make sure there's no diversion." That was, I think, a very sound view. What happened in the mid-1960s was [the result of] impatience in getting the superpowers to agree with this treaty, compounded by a new theory of what the worry of the world was, which was that there would be an arms race between superpowers that would start the next war, and there would be what they call vertical proliferation, and that had to be blocked. And that what we really needed to do was to get countries to make sure that if they had nuclear weapons, they didn't get many more of them, and that they didn't try to proliferate and make them better and quicker, or more accurate. And that what we really needed to do then was to make sure that there were only finite deterrent forces, if there were nuclear weapons. Now, that theory gave rise to things like mutual assured destruction and the like. (Italics supplied)

You can't have a treaty unless people (nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear states) agree to it. My problem with Sokolski and other DOD types was that they always wanted one-sided, restrictive agreements that no one else would accept. Their favored agreements were dead on arrival.

If they rewrite the NPT in the same manner, the NPT will cease to be an agreement which almost every country in the world has accepted. Granted there are important exceptions -- North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel -- but by refusing to accept the NPT they brand themselves as outlaw regimes. The problem is not only what to do about countries like Iran that adhere to the NPT but might withdraw at some future time, but what we do about those countries like North Korea and India, who simply thumb their noses at the treaty.

American Connections to Revolutions in Former Soviet Republics

The NYT reported on Saturday that Kateryna Chumachenko, the American wife of new Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko will renounce her American citizenship in order to take on Ukrainian citizenship. The article says she worked at the State Department, the Treasury and the White House before going to the Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Could one or more of those jobs be CIA cover? In addition, the Washington Post reported that a US medical team assisted in treating Yushchenko's dioxin poisoning, although the US has been reluctant to admit it for fear of offending Russia. The article said:

The team's role in Yushchenko's recovery from an apparently deliberate case of massive dioxin poisoning has been undisclosed until now, largely because U.S. officials and the doctors did not want to appear to interfere in the political drama of the Ukrainian elections. Yushchenko, whose once-youthful face was mysteriously transformed into a blotch of lesions after the poisoning, visited the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic between the election that was declared fraudulent and the election that resulted in his presidential victory. Yushchenko's election was a bitter blow to the Russian government, and even today U.S. officials are reluctant to officially say they assisted the medical team. Gregory Saathoff, the lead doctor and executive director of U-Va.'s Critical Incident Analysis Group in Charlottesville, would confirm only broad details after saying he received permission from the family to discuss it "on a very limited basis." He said the U.S. government was not involved in his team's work. "It was clear that the U.S. government had no interest or ability in being involved in this situation because this would be interference in the election of another country," Saathoff said. "The U.S. government was notably hands-off." But a senior U.S. official directly involved in the operation said it began with a request from Yushchenko's family for assistance, via an official in the Pentagon, and the State Department provided logistical support during the doctors' overseas trip. He said Saathoff kept in touch with the State Department in Washington, at one point informing officials they suspected they were being followed -- by police or even Russian intelligence agents -- and would cut their stay in Vienna short by a day.

In Georgia, the new president Saakashvilli studied, lived and worked in the United States for years before returning to Georgia to become president.

The NYT today says the revolution in Kyrgyzstan did not move Kyrgyzstan any closer to the Western orbit. It was probably just a coup in which one corrupt group took power from the corrupt group already in office.

Ironically so far the revolutions have taken place in the former Soviet republics that are the most democratic (relatively) compared to the other former Soviet republics. What is the lesson from this? For current despots to crack down harder, maybe including Putin?

What does Russia think about this? As usual, the NYT is on top of this, and says Russia might not be too happy about what's going on in its neighborhood and might be preparing to block similar activities in mother Russia.