Kids get sick.  A lot!  My nephew, Xander, is an industrious one and doesn’t let a simple illness keep him down.  Not five minutes after his mommy instructed him to stay away from his brother, Zereth, to keep him from getting sick as well, I overheard Xander threatening Zereth with a little germ warfare…  It’s no wonder when children get sick, their entire family (parents and siblings alike) are taken down with them.

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Hot off the wire: “Cuba began its biggest military maneuvers in five years on Thursday, saying they were needed to prepare for a possible invasion by the United States.”

Apparently the Castro Clan is still neurotically suspicious of us, despite their past praise for Obama’s rhetoric and agenda. It’s probably just another nationalistic charade needed to energize citizens’ loyalty to the government and distract them from Cuba’s failing economic situation.

The quiet American

Nov 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Is Barack Obama’s diplomacy subtle and strategic, or weak and naive? The world is about to find out

AFP

AT LAST Barack Obama seems to be starting to make up his mind.   After months of agonising, he is apparently close to announcing that he will after all send a decent number of American reinforcements to Afghanistan (see article).   Meanwhile, having barely mentioned climate change since his inauguration, he has now told the world that he is going to the international summit in Copenhagen—and with a provisional promise that the world’s greatest polluter will cut emissions.

Bold stuff.   But both Afghanistan and Copenhagen can also be cited as evidence of a weakness that runs through his foreign policy.   It looks to many as if he has dithered, not deliberated.  On Afghanistan, far from being clever, his faint-hearted attempt to talk round Congress, manage his squabbling officials and twist the arm of Hamid Karzai, the vote-rigging Afghan president, has arguably accomplished little except hand the initiative to the enemy: his generals have an uphill struggle.  

On climate change, the rush to Copenhagen, with no bill in sight in Congress, has an air of desperation.

This goes to the heart of the debate about Mr Obama’s diplomacy.   Which will he be, clever or weak?    Does this president have a strategy, backed if necessary by force, to reorder the world? Or is he merely a presidential version of Alden Pyle, Graham Greene’s idealistic, clever Quiet American who wants to change the world, but underestimates how bad the world is—and ends up causing harm?

Short-sighters v long-gamers

The doubters argue that, however decent and articulate, Mr Obama is gaining a reputation as someone who can be pushed around.  This month, after the president pandered to China by refusing to meet the Dalai Lama, China pushed for more by banning questions at his Beijing press conference with Hu Jintao, its president.   When Mr Obama demanded that Israel stop all work on its settlements in the occupied territories, Binyamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, defied him and still, staggeringly, won praise from Hillary Clinton.

Each time, the doubters say, Mr Obama’s delicate overtures are met with ambiguity or contempt.  Since he engaged Iran, it has continued to temporise and dissimulate over its nuclear programme.   When Mr Obama abandoned a missile-defence system in Europe, he appeared to extract a pledge from Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, that his country would support sanctions if Iran is recalcitrant—only for Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, repeatedly to say he sees no need.   Although America has pledged $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over five years, the army seems reluctant to take on the Taliban who drift from northern Pakistan into Afghanistan—indeed, the conditions riding on the grant were spun by the Pakistani security services into an American “insult” (see article).   Yes, Mr Karzai eventually buckled in Kabul, but his readiness to thumb his nose at the world superpower was humiliating.

The “clever” camp retort that diplomacy is not about instant gratification.  Mr Obama has pulled off the urgent tasks of starting to withdraw troops from Iraq and resetting America’s dysfunctional relations with Russia.   He has boosted the G20 as a new global forum.   This week Israel announced a partial settlement freeze.   With health-care reform under his belt, he will soon be able to turn to world affairs with his status enhanced.   Besides, you could hardly accuse Mr Obama of timidity.  In three speeches in Prague, Cairo and Accra, he set out a new foreign policy that rejects the Manichean view of his predecessor.   He means to negotiate deep cuts in nuclear weapons, make peace between Arabs and Jews, engage Iran, heal the climate and establish America as the strongest and most upright pole of a multipolar world.   Yes, this work lies ahead, but how much can you ask in a year of war and recession?

It is a fair point, but as the months drag on, the “weak” case has been gaining the upper hand. Mr Obama has yet to show he has the staying power to take on a dangerous, stubborn and occasionally bad world. Even allowing for Israel’s shift this week, the president has hardly lived up to his promise to work for Middle East peace “with all the patience and dedication that the task requires”. With one big exception, he has not yet shown that he can back his oratory with a stick—and that was a tariff on Chinese tyres, a weak sop to America’s unions.

Calm and conciliatory pragmatism is welcome after George Bush’s impetuous moral certitude, but it also carries risks.   Critics on the American right are wrong to carp at Mr Obama’s bowing to kings and emperors.   Simple courtesy will help restore America’s image, not diminish it. The trouble is that the president often seems kinder to America’s rivals than to its friends.   His guest this week, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, may well have moaned about Mr Obama’s kid-glove handling of China.   Allies in eastern Europe, their soldiers dying in Afghanistan, resent being called mere “partners”, Mr Obama’s term for pretty much anyone (see article). The hapless Gordon Brown has got precious little thanks.

And how exactly will Mr Obama’s quiet multilateral vision, in which each nation does its bit for the good of all, work in practice? He is right that American power is circumscribed. But the European Union is not fit to help him police the world (see article). China, India and Russia are not willing.

“God save us always from the innocent and the good”

That leaves Mr Obama with a burden to shoulder on his own.   In the coming weeks he could prove the doubters wrong.   He could lead the way towards a brave deal on the climate.   He could press Iran to negotiate over its nuclear programme before his own end-of-year deadline—or secure Russian backing for sanctions.   He could agree to cut nuclear arms with Russia.   He could bully the Palestinians and Mr Netanyahu to agree to talk.   And he could get Mr Karzai and Pakistan to show that they mean to make Afghanistan governable.   Even part of that list would set up Mr Obama as a foreign-policy president.   But if there is no progress, then Mr Obama will be cast as starry-eyed and weak.   He himself recognised the danger of that in one of those golden speeches: “Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”

He Can’t Take Another Bow

An icon of a White House that is coming to seem amateurish.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington’s Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.

From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, “a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man.” They once held “an unromantically high opinion of Obama,” and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn’t “the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought.”

President Obama bows as he shakes hands with Japanese Emperor Akihito.

She scored “the Chicago crowd,” which she characterized as “a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team.” The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision—”an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment.”

As I read Ms. Drew’s piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, “Well, I was for Hillary.” This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama.  Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him.  But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him.  George W. Bush had people who loved him.  A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.  But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they’re not dazzled and head over heels.  That’s gone away.  He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support.  But presidents need that rock—bottom 20% who, no matter what’s happening—war, unemployment—adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too.

They’re the hard 20 a president always keeps. Nixon kept them! Obama probably has a hard 20 too, but whatever is keeping them close, it doesn’t seem to be love.

***

Just as stinging as Elizabeth Drew on domestic matters was Leslie Gelb on Mr. Obama and foreign policy in the Daily Beast.  Mr. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and fully plugged into the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, wrote this week that the president’s Asia trip suggested “a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power.”
The president’s Afghanistan review has been “inexcusably clumsy,” Mideast negotiations have been “fumbling.”
So unsuccessful was the trip that Mr. Gelb suggested Mr. Obama take responsibility for it “as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs.”

He added that rather than bowing to emperors—Mr. Obama “seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably”—he should begin to bow to “the voices of experience” in Washington.

When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.

It also raises a distressing question: Who are the wise men and women now?  Who are the Robert Lovetts, Chip Bohlens and Robert Strausses who can came in to help a president in trouble right his ship?   America seems short of wise men, or short on those who are universally agreed to be wise.  I suppose Vietnam was the end of that, but establishments exist for a reason, and it is hard for a great nation to function without the presence of a group of “the oldest and wisest” who can not only give sound advice but help engineer how that advice will be reported and received.

Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can’t afford to lose is exactly wrong—he can’t afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama’s rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.

Which gets us back to the bow.

In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off.  The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol.  There was a reason, and it wasn’t that he was physically clumsy.  He was not only coordinated but graceful.  He’d been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.

But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford’s policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren’t playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying “Tough Talks Yield Big Progress” or “Obama Shows Muscle in China,” the bowing pictures might be understood this way: “He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation’s interests.”

But that’s not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.

It is true that Mr. Obama often seems not to have a firm grasp of—or respect for—protocol, of what has been done before and why, and of what divergence from the traditional might imply. And it is true that his political timing was unfortunate. When a great nation is feeling confident and strong, a surprising presidential bow might seem gracious. When it is feeling anxious, a bow will seem obsequious.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.

It is hard to be president, and White Houses under pressure take refuge in thoughts that become mantras.  When the previous White House came under mounting criticism from 2005 through ‘08, they comforted themselves by thinking, They criticized Lincoln, too.   You could see their minds whirring: Lincoln was criticized, Lincoln was great, ergo we are great. But of course just because they say you’re stupid doesn’t mean you’re Lincoln.

One senses the Obama people are doing the Lincoln too, and adding to it the consoling thought that this is only the first year, we’ve got three years to go, we can change perceptions, don’t worry.

But they should worry. You can get tagged, typed and pegged your first year. Gerald Ford did, and Ronald Reagan too, more happily. The first year is when indelible impressions are made and iconic photos emerge.

In my relentless pursuit of State Dinner photos and coming up empty except for that ONE photo, I missed this from State.gov:

* You can listen to a segment of the Slavoj Žižek essay on contemporary apocalypticism that will appear in our upcoming issue of Polygraph here. (via Verso)

* The headline reads, Cigar-Shaped “Mothership” Plunges Argentinian Town Into A Blackout.

* 15 Toys Not to Buy Your Child This Christmas. Of course, science proves you shouldn’t buy anyone gifts at all. (Both links via Neil.)

* Is the public option now too watered-down to fight for? Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen join Josh Marshall in thinking this over. I feel exactly how I did on Monday: the point is to pass anything so it can be improved without a filibuster.

* North Carolina in the news! Kay Hagan is the Senate’s 17th wealthiest senator (via), while Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina has gotten itself in big trouble for improper issue advocacy against the public option.

* Other politics quick hits: HIV travel ban finally lifted. The national GOP has money problems. They’re talking about a war tax. Despite what you may hear in the press, Obama is pretty good at this whole international diplomacy thing. And Dubai is collapsing; couldn’t have happened to a nicer country.

* The New York Times “100 Notable Books of 2009″ list is already out.

* ‘Are Fake Academic Conferences the New Nigerian Prince Scam?’

* Little-used geek measurements.

Sheppey (distance)
I have to include Douglas Adams’ co-creation (with John Lloyd) here — It’s from The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of things there aren’t any words for yet. All the words in the dictionary are British place names (the Isle of Sheppey is off the Kent coast). One sheppey is the closest distance at which sheep are still picturesque, and is about seven-eighths of a mile.

* Thor, a Marvel comics character I’m still pretty sure has to be an elaborate joke, will redefine what a superhero movie can be.

* Black Friday LEGO nostalgia.

* Ah, that explains it: that badly timed Dollhouse ARG turns out to be the work of overzealous fans.

* Paging George Michael Bluth. (via)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Paris for a two-day working visit. Before the visit’s formal events got underway, he had breakfast with former French President Jacques Chirac, held restricted-attendance talks with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and participated in the 14th meeting of the Russian-French Commission on Bilateral Cooperation at the level of prime ministers. Prime ministers Putin and Fillon met with top managers from both Russian and French companies, signed the summary document of the 14th session of the Russian-French Commission and gave a joint press conference.

“Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won another victory for his aggressive energy diplomacy strategy Friday, signing a deal bringing French investment to a pipeline project” reports AFP.

In a successful trip that worried Russia’s nervous neighbours, Putin also secured French investment to save the struggling Lada car maker and a promise that France will consider selling Moscow a huge amphibious assault ship.

I will return with an analysis on this subject.

• Play CBS Video Video Iran Nuclear Deal DraftedAfter years of growing tensions, Iran may soon reach a nuclear programs deal with Western nations. CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer reports from Vienna, the site of the ongoing negotiations.

• A GeoEye-1 satellite image taken of the suspect nuclear enrichment facility under construction.  (GeoEye/IHS Janes Analysis via AP)

(CBS) 

Richard Grenell served as the spokesman for the last four U.S. Ambassadors to the United Nations: Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, John Danforth and John Negroponte.

Unfortunately it wasn’t about the Iran nuclear issue they were talking about – it was about his opposition to the UN’s ineffective Human Rights Council.

Nevertheless, someone needs to say it now. John Bolton was right.

When the Obama Administration proclaimed victory on October 1st by announcing that a break-through had been reached in Geneva and that Iran had committed to shipping 2,600 pounds of fuel to Russia, expert Iran watchers were appropriately cynical. Bolton cautioned, yet again, that the Iranians had used some of the same diplomatic nuances they had been using for years to successfully buy more time to continue enriching uranium and fake cooperation with the international community.

Usually, the Europeans were the first to take the bait but this time the Obama Administration got hooked first. Bolton, however, was the first to stand up and call the Iranian pronouncement a sham – and he did it within hours of the announcement.

But as Obama officials were rushing to pat themselves on the back and the New York Times was proclaiming atop the paper “Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia,” Iranian officials were telling reporters that they had not committed to anything. The Iranians called it “an agreement in principle” – code words for “we’d like to but…”

The Times’ reporter in Geneva, however, was taking what the Obama officials were saying and running wildly with the incredible news. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the Times had either not checked with Iranian officials or ignored their warnings in favor of the Obama Administration’s good news. Roughly a month later, the Iranian official statements confirmed the fact that the Obama Administration had been duped. The Times subsequently inched its way back to reality through multiple follow-up stories that increasingly showed skepticism in the Victory claims culminating with October 30th’s headline “Tehran Rejects Nuclear Accord.”

Today, while the Iranians reprocess more fuel, the Obama team continues to compromise and offer even more incentives to them. No wonder Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is waiting – the deal keeps getting sweeter. President Obama has offered the Iranians more time, more sites to place their illegal fuel, more personal correspondence with the Ayatollah, more excuses as to what happened to the original deal they announced and no Chinese and Russian arm-twisting. The Obama team also keeps claiming that if Iran ships 2600 pounds of fuel out to Russia for re-processing then Iran will be unable to pose a nuclear threat for at least a year.

This often told claim is a dangerous calculation based on an assumption that Iran doesn’t have more hidden fuel (we just found out about another reprocessing plant in September) and can’t quickly convert what would remain if the plan had been accepted. Additionally, the low enriched uranium in question was produced in violation of UN Security Council resolutions so any deal to help Iran convert illegal fuel undermines Security Council credibility. The naivety of President Obama could be chalked up to hope and inexperience in foreign policy matters if it wasn’t routinely and consistently happening.

Bolton should know. No American Ambassador has produced more Security Council Resolutions on the issue of Iran than John Bolton. Bolton was able to produce three UN Security Council resolutions on Iran, two with the increasing pressure of sanctions. The deadlines in the resolutions that Bolton insisted upon were kept mainly because he held his counterparts to their word.

When Iran tried to manipulate the process by asking for more time, more talks or giving empty and last minute commitments, Bolton enforced the deadlines. Bolton was incredibly patient and willing to have round the clock negotiations but in the end forced a vote of the Security Council to the dismay of the Europeans and the consternation of Russian and China. It’s true that John Bolton would not win the most popular Ambassador award at the UN but being popular shouldn’t be the priority.

I hope that the Obama team can now see that being popular at the UN doesn’t get us support from the Europeans on sanctions resolutions or an affirmative vote from Russia and China. If it did, President Obama would have passed another Security Council Resolution on Iran, North Korea and Sudan by now. Obama is so popular in foreign countries that one begins to wonder who is happier. But being popular only means you aren’t asking Countries to do anything different.

This month, the world is seeing the pressure turned down on Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. France’s Foreign Minister has signaled their refusal to block shipments of refined fuel to Iran, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov called sanctions “counterproductive when there are talks underway” and China needs Iran’s oil so badly that it not only is refusing to consider further sanctions but is cutting new energy deals with Iran.

Where is the Obama Administration’s pressure on Iran to stop enriching uranium? Sadly, the Americans are getting hoodwinked by Iran and Europe is happy that they don’t have to vote for more sanctions or enforce the ones that are in place now. While the President gives up our missile shield to Russia, relaxes financial restrictions on Cuba, allows North Korea to violate their signed agreements and breaks campaign promises on a Sudan no-fly zone, the world applauds the most popular American President in history.

And here at home, Fareed Zakaria continues to call for more American compromises and more talk while characterizing Conservatives as unwilling to talk. It isn’t that Conservatives think speaking to Russia about Iran is bad, a claim Fareed Zakaria erroneously tries to tag Conservatives with, it’s that giving something without getting something in return is foolish and naïve. Zakaria and the other elites blinded by Obama’s global reset button want America to compromise and negotiate but fail to expect the same from the other side. Zakaria is that typical internationalist that views diplomatic success as merely sitting down to talk. Talking is the goal for them.

And if America needs to compromise in order to ensure that there are more talks, well, then so be it. Talking is success, right?

Read this article and be informed.

The Tajik Solution

Also Happy Thanksgiving.

Early on in my career, I found myself sitting at an elderly woman’s house whom I’ll call Betty. That morning she had called police to report some fraudulent transactions on her credit card statement. Well, I had no sooner sat down at the kitchen table and she excused herself from the room. This bundle of grandma sweetness returned  several minutes later carrying a huge platter of home-baked sticky buns. She sat them down in front of me and said, “I hope you like them, I just baked them.” Now in fairness to her, she didn’t realize I had just eaten a huge breakfast and was not particularly fond of sticky buns. But I knew if I didn’t have one of her sticky buns this woman would be devastated, her feelings would be hurt, and I just couldn’t do that to her. So as I sat there listening to Betty I was trying to decide how to resolve the situation in a diplomatic way, without being forced into a situation where I might projectile vomit on her carpet if forced to eat this sticky bun. Well as luck would have it, Betty left the room again to get some bank statements for my investigation. As soon as she left the room, I grabbed the sticky bun from my plate and jammed it into the front pocket of my body armour, zipping it closed. When Betty returned several minutes later, all that remained were the crumbs on my plate. She said, “Oh my, you were hungry, would you like another one?” I smiled politely and said “No thank you, that was delicious.”

In life we sometimes find ourselves in awkward situations. While I believe in forthrightness and being a straight shooter, there are times when a little tact and diplomacy can go along way towards improving or sustaining relations, and relationships. The same principle applies in giving feedback to people. So often people receive performance feedback that is so harsh and destructive that it actually becomes counter-productive.  Harsh feedback delivered without tact and diplomacy can have an adverse effect on the person’s behavior and performance. Like a child who continually hears he/she is dumb, they will soon begin believing and acting in such a way.

As much as people may say they want you to give them straight feedback and tell it like it is, tread carefully. There are very few people who can accept this type of directness when it comes to the most important subject in their life “themself”. Erring on the side of caution with the use of a little tact and diplomacy is a safe strategy, which at the same time gives the impression that the sticky bun was delicious!

The First ‘Pacific President’?

George F. Will

Published Nov 21, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Nov 30, 2009

 

Barack Obama’s irresistible, or at least unresisted, propensity for self-aggrandizement bubbled up yet again during his recent trip to the Far East when he proclaimed himself “America’s first Pacific president.” Hearing this, Asians may have muttered about inscrutable Occidentals. Obama’s exercise in rhetorical grandiosity, while hardly his first, was exquisitely meaningless.

Yes, Obama lived for 14 years in Hawaii, which is in the Pacific. But two presidents (Ronald Reagan, and before him Richard Nixon, who in 1972 ended the freeze in U.S.-China relations that began in 1949) came from California, which is on the Pacific. So, is the world-historic difference in the preposition?

Yes, Obama lived four years, until the age of 10, in Indonesia. But two young men who were to become America’s 35th and 41st presidents also had formative experiences in the Pacific: John Kennedy’s PT-109 was sunk beneath him, and George Herbert Walker Bush, a future envoy to China, had his Grumman Avenger shot down. And before becoming America’s 27th president, William Howard Taft governed the Philippines for about as many years as child Obama lived in Indonesia.

//

In May 1900, America’s 25th president, William McKinley, sent U.S. troops to China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. America’s 33rd president, Harry Truman, waged serious war in Asia—in Korea, where Americans suffered 157,530 casualties, including 54,246 fatalities. Dwight Eisenhower vowed, during the 1952 campaign, “I shall go to Korea,” which Americans correctly heard as a vow to end the war one way or another. In December of that year the president-elect did something no serving president had ever done: He set foot on the far side of the Pacific. America’s 38th president, Gerald Ford, was the first to visit Japan while in office. (President Ulysses S. Grant visited Japan after leaving office, and is said to have been the first person to shake the emperor’s hand. America’s First Pacific President bowed.)

President Taft’s predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, sort of earned—imagine that—his Nobel Peace Prize for helping to mediate the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. (The mediation occurred in Portsmouth, N.H.; TR did not attend.) In October 1908, the “Great White Fleet” that TR sent around the world as an act of national exuberance arrived in Japan, where U.S. officers were housed in the emperor’s palace.

In order to encourage Japan, then an almost hermetically sealed society, to play nicely with others, in March 1852 America’s 13th president, Millard Fillmore, ordered Commodore Matthew Perry to go to Tokyo with the U.S. Navy’s East India Squadron, which had first been dispatched across the Pacific in 1835 by America’s seventh president, Andrew Jackson. Perry’s 1853 visit to Tokyo Bay was not persuasive, so he returned in 1854—by then his commander in chief was America’s 14th president, Franklin Pierce—with a larger fleet. The spectacle of what the Japanese called the “black ships” moved them to sign a treaty of “permanent” friendship, which became impermanent at 7:49 a.m., Dec. 7, 1941.

The first U.S. treaty with China was signed in 1844 under the 10th president, John Tyler. Pacific waves have lapped the republic’s shores since California attained statehood in September 1850. The 11th president, James Polk, had wrested California from Mexico, and the 12th president, Zachary Taylor, died before statehood came under Fillmore.

All this—indeed, all of the human story—was but prologue to today’s culmination in a president who, in his 10th month in office, flew across the Pacific for seven days in Asia, thereby becoming “America’s first Pacific president.” Such rhetorical inflation devalues the currency of words with which we think. Not everywhere, though. Listeners to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion know that one of the businesses in Lake Wobegon, Minn., is Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery. (“If you can’t get it at Ralph’s, you can probably get along without it.”) In an age of pandemic hyperbole, the store’s name is a refreshing zephyr of modesty.

Come 2012, America’s First Pacific President—self-proclaimed “citizen of the world,” whose advent marked, he said, “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”—will be seeking reelection. Someone running against him might find that this resonates with a public suffering greatness fatigue: “Vote for me and get a pretty good president.”

George Will is also the author of One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation and With a Happy Eye But . . .: America and the World, 1997—2002 .

 

Recently I encountered the most courteous concierge who went far above and beyond any job description when he heard that I was flying into a city outside of California, where I couldn’t get a shuttle to my hotel due to a 6-hour flight delay.   I had phoned the hotel I would be staying at to see if they would arrange for a taxi to pick me up upon my arrival (what woman likes to hang out at an unfamiliar airport at 3 am right? ….).  No such luck.  However, a friend of mine who I had spoken to on the phone had mentioned it to Scott MacIntosh, concierge at the Beverly Hills Peninsula who, to my surprise, immediately arranged for someone to pick me up near the gate, help me with my luggage and drive me safely to my destination.  I’ve never even stayed at the Peninsula and yet they reached out across 2,000 miles and saved the day for me!  What a pleasure to encounter someone so thoughtful.  I’ll definitely remember him when I go gift shopping for the holidays!

The Los Angeles Institute of Etiquette wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Here I include just a few paragraphs from the excellent analysis.  I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing, here

With President Obama having concluded his trip through one of the fastest-dying regions of the planet, complete with literal prostrations to a symbolic Emperor and metaphorical prostrations to an Emperor in all but name, this is as good a time as any to ask whether his Administration has developed a coherent foreign policy grand strategy yet. The evidence, to date, suggests that Obama foreign policy is like Obama campaign promises: destined to be realized in some shadowy future likely – but not certain – to come, yet already awarded rich accolades merely for promise……

Applauding what President Obama has delivered – a foreign policy with better aesthetics than President Bush’s, without President Bush’s substance – is like wanting a faster car always stuck in the driveway: There’s no point if it’s not going anywhere.

This inability to separate substance and appearance – oddly appropriate for a President who has never shown much of an ability to do so since he began putting the finishing touch on his resume in 2004 – is nowhere better on display than in his dealings with China.

One would be hard-pressed to identify anyone who is neither a member of the Administration, a member of the American press corps (insofar as that isn’t the same thing), one of the aforementioned lovers of Metternichian avoidance, or a member of the government of the People’s Republic of China who thinks President Obama’s strolling photo-shoot through Asia was a success. The heretofore-unbroken foreign policy consensus of three decades has been that America wants to control a rising China to bring it into the community of nations – as a free and open society, trading freely with the world and keeping its torture to the bare minimum a quasi-fascist regime can accept as it transitions into something vaguely resembling a democratic empire. Because this requires a delicate dance of threats, cajolings, ingratiations, brute shows of force, and speeches about strategic partnerships while everyone clenches their teeth; and because that sort of thing is beyond the ability of any elected American President since Reagan if not Washington; Sino-American relations tend to look like a bizarrely schizophrenic bumble that extends the length of an Administration.

This is why President Clinton – in that way that only Bubba could – alternated between overlooking Chinese espionage at Los Alamos and sending a carrier battle group to the Taiwan Straits; why President Bush thanked China for capturing an American plane in international airspace on the one hand and met early and often with the Dalai Lama and made clear that America’s future strategic partnership lay with India, as an explicit counterweight to China.

The critical feature to all of this, however ineptly done, is that the carrot and the stick are closely joined. American Presidents praise a free, prosperous China. They speak of strategic partnerships while directing carrier battle groups in the Pacific. They talk about One China while approving arms shipments to Taiwan and hugging the Dalai Lama. They let China know that it faces no threat from the United States, but that it could…….

If its foreign policy approach is merely the revenge of the rabbit-stalked, its grand strategy appears to be providing President Obama chances to appear before cheering crowds composed of non-Americans. Concrete effects simply do not matter, because they are not the goal. The President is the message; the President is the medium; the President is the goal. It is not coincidence that the word “I” appears more often than the words “a,” “an,” and “the” combined in the President’s speeches abroad; it is not coincidence that the only things anyone noted of the President’s tour were his bow to a figurehead Emperor and his announcement that he is the first Pacific President.

Taking this in the most charitable way possible, this represents a complete failure of understanding by the President. I say the President and not his foreign policy team, as some of his partisans are wont to do because, as an internet commenter noted the other day, what the Unitary Executive really means is this: When someone in the Executive Branch screws up, there’s only one man to blame.

Whether that man even knows it is, like everything else about his foreign policy, an open question.

Christopher Badeaux is Senior Editor of The New Ledger.

Faced with the utter failure of yet another of his boneheaded, anti-American ally, foreign policy decisions, Obama finally gives up, waves his ever handy white flag, and surrenders to the good guys’ rule of law in Honduras.

Honduras: Obama administration finally and completely abandons Zelaya

The Obama administration’s wishy-washy attitude toward Honduran elections finally lands him on the right side of the issue: in favor of Honduras and its democracy, and against ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who was thrown out after attempting to extend his reign illegally.

The United States says it supports Sunday’s presidential election in Honduras as an “essential” part of a solution to that country’s ongoing political crisis.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly says the U.S. thinks it is important that the people of Honduras have the opportunity to “express their votes in a free and transparent way.”

…Spokesman Kelly noted that the election, in which neither [Interim President Roberto] Micheletti nor Mr. Zelaya is running, is being organized by an electoral tribunal that was selected and installed in a transparent, democratic process before the coup. He said it is important the election be seen as free, fair and transparent, and is monitored by a credible international monitoring process.

After an Obama knee-jerk reaction to Zelaya’s ouster in June, the U.S. had insisted on Zelaya’s reinstatement. This would have harmed Honduras’s Congress and high court, which had ousted Zelaya, even as it served no discernible U.S. interest. At the same time, Zelaya’s continuation in power would have benefited one of Zelaya’s main allies and alleged sources of funding — Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

By hanging Zelaya out to dry — leaving him powerless and languishing in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, possibly facing trial for illegally seeking re-election — the administration saves face in Honduras and ultimately does the right thing. The Honduran Congress will vote on Dec. 2, after the next president has been elected, whether to reinstate Zelaya as a lame duck, and with the election already decided, they won’t be under any pressure to do so and reverse their earlier decision.

So all’s well that ends well. But even so, as we recently opined, a happy ending is still no excuse for Obama’s half-cocked diplomacy, and no number of low bows to Honduras’s next president will make up for the damage he has caused there. Again, his legendary inexperience in world matters shows.

See also:
US Expresses Support for Honduran Election
Obama’s Honduran debacle
Micheletti steps aside for Honduras poll
Zelaya warns US support for Honduras election divisive
INTERVIEW-US risks isolation over Honduras election-Brazil
Honduras vote to sideline president, enshrine coup
Hondurans march supporting elections without Zelaya
Our Man In Tegucigalpa Is A Raving Lunatic
Still Stuck On Stupid And Doubling Down
Selective Meddle For Communist Dictators

Well, ever since the U.S. reversed course and decided to support this Sunday’s November 29th Honduran elections, all the world’s communists, socialists, assorted tin pot dictators and far left loons have been screaming bloody murder.

/what does that tell you about what was the right thing for the United States to do?

Would you all agree with me that war is an ugly, but sometimes necessary thing? No SANE person ever wants to go to war. But when diplomacy fails and our national well being, safety, and security are at stake military action is sometimes necessary. When military action can no longer be avoided, for it to be truly effective it must be conducted violently and with overwhelming force to quickly defeat the enemy and make them KNOW that further resistance is futile. Contrary to what many opponents of any war believe, fewer people on both sides die if you hold to these principals. When you try to make war “nice,” as our spineless yellow bellied politicians have done, it turns into a slow war of attrition, a war of a thousand cuts. The enemy that threatened you is never defeated and will ALWAYS be a threat until they are defeated. They gain strength day after day and kill more and more of your people a few at a time.

With regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other conflict in which our military is employed, just about every conservative I know, be they politician, talk show host, fellow soldier, sailor, Marine or airman, have universally held the opinion “let us win, or bring us home.” That includes me. When we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a genuine military purpose and legitimate national security goal. Once the initial military victories on the ground had faded into history, the politicians got involved and began to tear down the success of our military. Especially those liberal politicians who didn’t want us to go to Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place, but who would not speak out because the POLLS said speaking out against the actions wasn’t popular. Cowards.

As each day passes, the liberals withdraw more and more support from our military men and women who are on the front lines risking and sacrificing their lives for America. The withhold money, new weapons, and reinforcements. They attack and belittle the military in the press. The two most notable examples of this are senator Harry Reid of Nevada who said the war in Iraq was lost before the surge ever began, and congressman Jack Murtha (spit) of Pennsylvania who with no proof or evidence came out publicly and loudly to proclaim that U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq were murderers and baby killers. Of course they were proven innocent, but Murtha (spit) couldn’t and still hasn’t found a microphone to say he was wrong, or that he is sorry for what he said. He calls himself a former Marine, but I assure you any REAL Marine would rather disembowel himself than shake this traitors hand.

Now we have the Obama administration about to prosecute three Navy SEALs for capturing a terrorist on the field of battle ALIVE. Keep in mind that usually SEALs don’t CAPTURE anyone. They kill them. Why are they being prosecuted? Because the terrorist, the mastermind of the abduction, torture, execution, and burning of four Blackwater agents whose bodies were then hung from a bridge, this scumbag got a bloody lip. I’m sure he wasn’t read his Miranda rights either. He should have died of acute lead poisoning. Navy “leadership,” in politically correct lock step with Obama and the liberals, tried to give these SEALs non-judicial punishment which would still effectively end their careers. Seeing the absurdity of this they exercised their option and demanded a trial by Courts Martial. God bless them.

Yesterday I heard several people who had been ardent supporters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan say it was time to bring our troops home. Radio hosts Roger Hedgecock and Glenn Beck were two of the more notable. When our Commander-in-Chief (in this case the campaigner-in-chief) and the rest of our national command structure no longer support our military in a time of war, when they will throw our own soldiers under the bus, when they WILL NOT ALLOW OUR MILITARY TO WIN, it is time to bring them home. The lives of a million of those dirt bag, swine excrement, satanic terrorists is not worth the life of even one single American.

Bring them home. Now.
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Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
By Rowan Scarborough

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

Neal Puckett, an attorney representing McCabe, told Fox News the SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a “punch in the gut.”

“I don’t know how they’re going to bring this detainee to the United States and give us our constitutional right to confrontation in the courtroom,” Puckett said. “But again, we have terrorists getting their constitutional rights in New York City, but I suspect that they’re going to deny these SEALs their right to confrontation in a military courtroom in Virginia.”

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

“I gave the detainee a glance over and then left,” the SEAL wrote. “I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health.”

Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, spokeswoman for the special operations component of U.S. Central Command, confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com that three SEALs have been charged in connection with the capture of a detainee. She said their court martial is scheduled for January.

United States Central Command declined to discuss the detainee, but a legal source told FoxNews.com that the detainee was turned over to Iraqi authorities, to whom he made the abuse complaints. He was then returned to American custody. The SEAL leader reported the charge up the chain of command, and an investigation ensued.

The source said intelligence briefings provided to the SEALs stated that “Objective Amber” planned the 2004 Fallujah ambush, and “they had been tracking this guy for some time.”

The Fallujah atrocity came to symbolize the brutality of the enemy in Iraq and the degree to which a homegrown insurgency was extending its grip over Iraq.

The four Blackwater agents were transporting supplies for a catering company when they were ambushed and killed by gunfire and grenades. Insurgents burned the bodies and dragged them through the city. They hanged two of the bodies on a bridge over the Euphrates River for the world press to photograph.

Intelligence sources identified Abed as the ringleader, but he had evaded capture until September.

The military is sensitive to charges of detainee abuse highlighted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Navy charged four SEALs with abuse in 2004 in connection with detainee treatment.

Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage

By Gabor Steingart  Der Spiegel

AP

US President Barack Obama is back in the US after an Asian trip that produced few results.

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it’s not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home.  US President Barack Obama trip through Asia had already seen him travel 24,000 kilometers, sit through a dozen state banquets, climb the Great Wall of China and shake hands with Korean children.  It was high time to take stock of the trip.

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president.  He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up.  But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him?  Instead, he simply said “thank you, guys,” and disappeared.  David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists’ questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public’s expectations had been “too high.”

 The mood in Obama’s foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The “first Pacific president,” as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.

Lost Some Stature

Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama’s currency isn’t as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik. The Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington’s new foreign policy: Although Obama did not lose face in China and Japan, he did appear to have lost some of his initial stature.

In Tokyo, the new center-left government even pulled out of its participation in a mission which saw the Japanese navy refueling US warships in the Indian Ocean as part of the Afghanistan campaign. In Beijing, Obama failed to achieve any important concessions whatsoever. There will be no binding commitments from China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A revaluation of the Chinese currency, which is kept artificially weak, has been postponed. Sanctions against Iran? Not a chance. Nuclear disarmament? Not an issue for the Chinese.

The White House did not even stand up for itself when it came to the question of human rights in China. The president, who had said only a few days earlier that freedom of expression is a universal right, was coerced into attending a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at which questions were forbidden. Former US President George W. Bush had always managed to avoid such press conferences.

Relatively Unsuccessful

A look back in time reveals the differences. When former President Bill Clinton went to China in June 1998, Beijing wanted to impress the Americans. A press conference in the Great Hall of the People, broadcast on television as a 70-minute live discussion, became a sensation the world over. Clinton mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when the government used tanks against protestors. But then President Jiang Zemin defended the tough approach taken by the Chinese Communists. At the end of the exchange, the Chinese president praised the debate and said: “I believe this is democracy!”

Obama visited a new China, an economic power that is now making its own demands. America should clean up its government finances, and the weak dollar is unacceptable, the head of the Chinese banking authority said, just as Obama’s plane was about to land.

Obama’s new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere, with even friends like Israel leaving him high and dry. For the government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace is only conceivable under its terms.  Netanyahu has rejected Obama’s call for a complete moratorium on the construction of settlements.  As a result, Obama has nothing to offer the Palestinians and the Syrians.   “We thought we had some leverage,” says Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration and now an advisor to Obama. “But that proved to be an illusion.”

Even the president seems to have lost his faith in a genial foreign policy. The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong emphasis on civilian reconstruction, is already being changed. “We’re searching for an exit strategy,” said a staff member with the National Security Council on the sidelines of the Asia trip.

‘A Lot Like Jimmy Carter’

An end to diplomacy is also taking shape in Washington’s policy toward Tehran. It is now up to Iran, Obama said, to convince the world that its nuclear power is peaceful. While in Asia, Obama mentioned “consequences” unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began — with threats. “Time is running out,” Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

There are many indications that the man in charge at the White House will take a tougher stance in the future. Obama’s advisors fear a comparison with former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush. Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to the humanitarian from Georgia, who lost in his bid to win a second term, because voters felt that he was too soft. “Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead,” Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, recently said. And then he added: “This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter.”

Indians are cynical by nature – that is the conclusion that I have drawn from the reaction to the ongoing Manmohan Singh visit to the White House. There are exceptions, though, but by and large the inferences drawn from the Indian prime minister’s visit by various self-styled ‘experts’ is that it is high on hyperbole and low in substance. It does not help at all when our present prime minister does not have the charm of a Rajiv Gandhi or the oratorical skills of a Vajpayee. His starchy gait and fumbling, halting speech belies a man who has a razor sharp mind and knows what he wants and how to get it. Those who know Manmohan Singh swear by his competitiveness and strong will power. The Sardar from Gah, in Jhelum (now in Pakistan) is not only a good economist but also a very pragmatic visionary who understands the needs of his country and his people.

The first interaction between President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was when they read out the opening speeches welcoming and thanking each other. One could see a bemused smile on the face of President Obama when Manmohan Singh in his inimitable halting style read out his thank you note to the president in front of the media. The Sardar, a man of few words is almost tongue tied as he is just unable to make small talk with dignitaries. It was no different when Obama and Singh walked down the red carpet to give the initial comments. On the way back into the White House too, Singh walked silently.  Later the two were to address a joint statement along with a brief press conference. The two sides were engaged in dialogue way past the scheduled time. It took the two leaders almost twenty minutes to emerge from their talks from the scheduled time while the international media waited impatiently. This time too, the Sardar did not make any small talk as he and Obama came forward to issue their statements and answer the questions. But Obama’s gait had changed and far from the bemused look on his face, he had his jaws tight and one could see that there was an element of respect for the economist turned politician. The American press and the world media failed to notice the change in the demeanor of the president. Both the Indian and the American press corps were allowed just one question each (when the British prime minister is there it is five questions each, generally. We are getting there, slowly but surely). The American journalist jumped at the chance of ‘cornering’ Obama and shot a question as regards the increase in troop levels in Afghanistan. The President gave an elaborate answer and hoped that that would be enough till Thanksgiving. The Indian journalist asked the usual customary question which is to get an assurance whether America was for India and the works. It was a run of the mill question and the two leaders mouthed the usual niceties and that was it. That Singh had struck a chord with Obama, most failed to notice. It is still unclear as to whether the two leaders talked one to one or was it a delegation level meeting only. What is clear is that something substantial transpired between the two leaders and that there was a change in the attitude of President Obama.

By evening, during the salutation at the State dinner, (Indian PM was the first guest of honour during Obama presidency) President  Obama said a Namaste and then welcomed the prime minister and the people there in Hindi (aap ka swagat hai)!! Apart from the pomp and the pageantry there was bonhomie and there was warmth between the two leaders and the two delegations. Contrast this with Obama’s China visit and the difference is as clear as day and night. Obama tried hard to come across as a pleasant leader, which he is but the Chinese stiff upper lip was firmly in place. It is true that the US needs China as China needs US but there was still frostiness in the air. Obama almost looked glad he was out of China when he reached Singapore for the next leg of his East Asia tour.

The state dinner at the White House in honor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an elaborate affair. Obama was at his charming, confident best and Singh his usual professorial, starchy self. It was a contrast, yet there was so much in common. The two toasted each other and their nations. The warmth was perceptible in the air. It is clear that what was started by President Bush is being carried forward by President Obama. And that is much more than Civil Nuclear Deal which both have endorsed. Here in India, most experts were hung up on whether the Civil Nuclear Deal will be honored by Obama or will it be sidelined and hang in the air. People are naïve and do not understand the semantics of the ties between India and the US. Such ‘experts’ perhaps were hoping against hope that the Nuclear Deal will be set aside. They underestimate the common sense of the Americans and they most certainly are fooled by the demeanor of our prime minister. Such ‘experts’ have still not understood what the Sharm-el-Sheikh Indo-Pak accord has achieved for India. The fact is that Pakistan has been cornered and the Pakistan army is busy fighting the Taliban on the western front. There has been a displacement of more than a million people within Pakistan and the terrorist attacks have subsided on our side. Both Zardari and Gilani have been sidelined and the army is calling the shots. The Pakistan army has been targeted by the Taliban more than once and even the ISI headquarters in Rawalpindi and their offices in Peshawar have been bombed. Peshawar has become a ghost town and Pakistan is trying to come to terms with its own contradictions. Apart from a few skirmishes in Kashmir, India has remained peaceful. Sharm-el Sheikh accord was at the back of this all. Manmohan Singh showed the courage to go out and do what he had to do. Baluchistan is a non-issue and will remain so. Singh wondered aloud recently, before embarking on his trip to the US that he does not know who to talk to in Pakistan. This is what has become of our envious neighbors. While the people of India would like to see a prosperous and peaceful Pakistan it is also true that our first priority is peace within our borders and that is non-negotiable. Terrorism within India must stop and that includes the violence by the Maoists.  The situation in Pakistan is so precarious that their top political leadership has gone incognito. The Sardar is flying high toasting with President Obama while both Beijing and Islamabad are trying to gather the pieces.

Yes, there has been consternation in Islamabad and in Beijing. They are wary of US and India coming close. This recent visit has cemented the ties between the two natural allies. President Obama did not term the Indo-US relations as ‘indispensable’ for no reason. I am still wondering as to what Prime Minister Singh discussed with President Obama behind closed doors while the media waited. The reality will unfold in the months to come. Suffice to say that the Indo-US relations are very wide ranging covering the entire gamut of issues. India will benefit from this strategic partnership as will the US. In Prime Minister Manmohan Singh we have a silent achiever. In President Obama the American people have a visionary. It’s a heady cocktail. The world is watching. Lest we forget, it was all started by President George W. Bush. Obama is taking forward the good work of his Republican counterparts. The starchy Sardar can come back home safe in the knowledge that it was a job well done. India has firmly arrived on the world stage. Good day Mr. President!!

Addendum: The Pakistan army is finding itself between a rock and a hard place. They do not want to fight the Taliban and now they have started saying that they believe that India is planning a ’short, swift war’, in other words a surgical strike. Nothing could be further from truth. They want to get out of a sticky situation and therefore are making up excuses to withdraw from South Waziristan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her recent trip to Islamabad had said that purging Pakistan of the radical elements, most notably the Taliban was in Pakistan’s interest. Evidently,the Pakistan army thinks otherwise. This is not an impossible task, were they to get down to it. If they refuse to clean up the mess, they may be able to needle India in the short run, but with the passage of time they will realize that this was not the best choice. Pakistan may have to pay with its very existence  were they to play ball with the jihadists as a matter of policy.

Prime Minister Singh’s initiative in Washington has already shown some results. Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the 26/11 master mind has been charge-sheeted as have six others. India is very clear that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks must be brought to book. The US understands India’s stand and has decided to back India on this.

Update 26.11.2009: The fact that a socialite couple from Virginia gate crashed into the state dinner hosted by the Obamas is bigger news. That the state dinner was in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a footnote. Many newspapers have carried the state dinner either for the golden dress worn by First Lady Michelle Obama or for the fact that there was a couple that managed to gate crash into the dinner party. The photos of the gate crashing couple is hot property. The Los Angeles Times has reported it thus:

The Secret Service is looking into its security procedures after determining that a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, slipped into Tuesday night’s event even though they were not on the guest list, agency spokesman Ed Donovan said.

What transpired between the two leaders has global implications but that does not concern most people around the world. It is the trivia that makes news. Suits leaders like Manmohan Singh fine, as he does not enjoy the spot light anyway.

Update 28.11.2009: India has voted against Iran at the IAEA. One of the correspondent reported this as follows:

India has voted along with the US, China and other major powers in favour of a German-sponsored resolution at the IAEA on referring the Iran nuclear programme yet again to the UN Security Council.

However, it clarified in its explanation of vote that this decision “cannot be the basis of a renewed punitive approach or new sanctions.”

Three countries, Venezuela, Malaysia and Cuba, voted against the resolution and six abstained: Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey.

There was a discussion on this on one of the innumerable news channels and there was this ‘most distinguished’ former diplomat Mr. Natwar Singh who not only ran down the prime minister’s visit to the US as low on substance but also criticized India’s decision to vote against Iran at the IAEA. Most of the other panelists were against this move, though some like Mr. Mattoo tried to pass this off as ‘realpolitik’ and ‘national interest over ideology’. This was neither realpolitik nor being pragmatic. This was a necessity. India does not want proliferation in the neighborhood. People do not realize that a nuclear Iran will be a threat to India. Today, we may be having good relations with Iran but sometime in future this relationship may change, especially if Pakistan implodes. They have missiles that have a range of more than 2000 kilometers. They can easily hit Delhi if they wanted to, and if their missiles are nuclear tipped that will compound our problems. This is not ‘realpolitik’ this is simple rationale. Our friend, Israel is the reason for this militarization of Iran and we need to heed the needs of our friends too. A nuclear Iran will be a disaster for the region, including South Asia.

Natwar Singh very pompously said that when he is asked by diplomats as to why he thought that India cannot be a ‘natural ally’ of the US he replies that since India is not a part of the NATO therefore such natural alliance is not possible. This is as ridiculous as one can be. The man calls himself a former diplomat and then shoots off his mouth with such ridiculous statements, it is hard to believe. The fact is there are many countries outside of the NATO that are ‘natural allies’ of the west and the US in particular, Australia and New Zealand being two of them. India is firmly where it belongs, a part of the free, civilized world. India is an extension of the west in this part of the world. Socialists like our ‘intellectual elite’ cannot and do not want to understand this fact.

One little detail. Prime Minister Singh’s aircraft with his staff and entourage landed at the St. Andrews airport in the outskirts of Washington DC. This is a military base and the US president uses it from time to time. Not every one is allowed this facility. I hope our ‘intellectual elite’ get a reality check before they shoot their mouths off. It would not harm the national interest at all if we started behaving as a responsible nuclear weapons state, a fact that was endorsed by President Obama and earlier by President Bush.

Lastly, a Chinese “NGO” (when did this species evolve?) called Asia-Africa Department of Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with foreign countries, arrived in India recently and was making all the right noises including the fact that the Dalai Lama should not be an impediment to Sino-Indian relations. This was right during prime ministers visit to the US. The dragon has blinked, or so it seems.

Our national interest should be our top priority and people of all hues getting so much importance, throwing so much rubbish around is detrimental to our cause. We must look at what is beneficial for us as a nation. This hackneyed rhetoric should not be given media space at all.

AP reports:

“Iran said Tuesday it was ready to exchange its low enriched uranium with a higher enriched material, but only on its own soil, to guarantee the West follows through with promises to give the fuel”

This position is being taken as Iran’s  “official” response to the IAEA-brokered nuclear proposal born of talks among p-5+1 countries in October.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran had sent its response on the proposal to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, saying it wants a simultaneous exchange on Iranian soil.

“Iran’s answer is given. I think the other side has received it,” said Mehmanparast. “The creation of a 100 percent guarantee for delivery of the fuel is important for Iran.”

Another Iranian official, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, confirmed the details, saying that in Iran’s view such an exchange was an “objective guarantee.”

Details on the text of the response are forthcoming.

While the response is not quite what the p-5+1 had hoped to get, this development still marks progress with Iran. The deal helps by putting time back on the nuclear clock. The more proliferation-resistant fuel rods Iran would receive in exchange for giving up its raw stockpile of LEU would lengthen the time Iran would need to develop a nuclear weapons.

Now…before any of us get ahead of ourselves, we should caution: if Iran decides in the coming days to alter its response, waffle back and forth, or vacillate in any way–such as requesting the exchange be made over multiple installments–the West would be absolutely correct to excoriate Iran for going back on its word.  It’s bad enough that this entire process–which was intended to build confidence between the two sides–has done nothing of the sort.  Now is not the time to end diplomatic engagement with Iran when it appears that some compromise deal may actually be struck.  After all, such a deal would form the basis for future cooperation and actual trust-building.

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It was also reported today that the p-5+1 have prepared a resolution critical of Iran’s nuclear defiance for the next IAEA board meeting, calling for more openness about is nuclear activities particularly in light of the revelation of the Fardo facility near Qom. Notably, Russia and China, who have been resistant in the past to confrontational positions on Iran, stifling calls for more sanctions, join in the criticism. Iran’s response today might give pause to delay those considering moving the resolution, in favor of hammering out a more concrete deal.

9:15 a.m. Secretary Clinton attends the Official South Lawn Arrival Ceremony for His Excellency Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of the Republic of India, and Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, at the White House.
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED BY WHITE HOUSE)

10:20 a.m. Secretary Clinton attends Bilateral Meetings with President Obama and Prime Minister Singh, at the White House.
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED BY WHITE HOUSE)

1:00 p.m. Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden host a Luncheon for Prime Minister Singh and Mrs. Kaur

3:05 p.m. Secretary Clinton signs a Memorandum of Understanding with His Excellency S. M. Krishna, Minister of External Affairs of the Republic of India, at the Department of State.

5:00 p.m. Secretary Clinton attends a Bilateral Meeting with Prime Minister Singh, at the Willard Hotel.
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED BY INDIA)

7:00 p.m. Secretary Clinton attends the State Dinner in honor of Prime Minister Singh and Mrs. Kaur, at the White House.
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED BY WHITE HOUSE)

By Gabor Steingart

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it’s not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home. US President Barack Obama trip through Asia had already seen him travel 24,000 kilometers, sit through a dozen state banquets, climb the Great Wall of China and shake hands with Korean children. It was high time to take stock of the trip.

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him? Instead, he simply said “thank you, guys,” and disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists’ questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public’s expectations had been “too high.”

The mood in Obama’s foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The “first Pacific president,” as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.

via spiegel.de