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Thread: A nice take on the Bush administration...

  1. #1
    MoROmeTe's Avatar For my name is Legion
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    Default A nice take on the Bush administration...

    Timothy Garton Ash is a well renowned historian and on the fly political anallist and this is a little something he wrote at the beginning of Bush term number two...

    Houston, we have a problem. The spaceship Bush is up for another four years, and its commanders think they have the mandate of heaven. God has spoken through 51% of American voters. He has looked on President Bush's war on terror and He has found it good. Senior officials assure me that the administration wants to reach out to European allies in its second term, but there's every indication that the basic thrust of Bush's foreign policy will remain unchanged. Colin Powell, whom Europeans regard as a reality-based moderate, has said Washington will continue to pursue its foreign policy "aggressively". Even if this is merely a tactical display of toughness and loyalty, in order to keep his job, it shows you which way the wind is blowing.
    They see the Earth differently from up there on spaceship Bush. This is a White House team even more than usually sealed off from outside criticism and realities, except when it comes to winning an American election. As we saw in his first television debate with John Kerry, President Bush is not used to being challenged on foreign policy. And this commander-in-chief has missionary convictions. What chance has the evidence of reality on the ground against the overwhelming power of faith?
    "I truly believe," said Laura Bush fervently, in a conversation with CNN's Larry King, "that Iraq is becoming a democracy." And it was as if, because she truly believes it, it must be true. We pedestrian Earth-dwellers, still naively believing it's the facts on the ground that count, ignore at our peril the power of what has wittily been called "faith-based intelligence" to create its own alternative reality - and then to project it successfully to the conservative half of America through Fox News and rightwing talk radio. Some 42% of those asked in one recent poll thought things were going well in Iraq.
    So, Houston we have a problem. The problem is Houston. What should we do about it? We Europeans, that is, in league with the 48% of American voters who are even more dismayed than we are at the prospect of four more years of Bush. Here are three options.
    1) Treat America as Big Brother. Not the Orwellian one, but the reality TV show. This is what most Europeans do at the moment. We watch fascinated every night, as the inhabitants of the Big Brother house slug it out. Will Rumsfeld survive, or Powell? What did Laura say to Condi? We buy millions of copies of Michael Moore, in every European language. In any bar in Europe, you can hear people trading factoids about how more Americans believe in the virgin birth than in evolution, and how ignorant they are about the rest of the world.
    Anyone who spends time in America can contribute to this script. For example: I was driving down Broadway the other day and the cab driver had his radio tuned to a Christian gospel station called Family Radio. The announcer was describing a book called The Light and the Glory: Did God have a Plan for America? The answer is yes. God's plan - the intelligence dossier on this one, in case you're wondering, is in the gospel according to St Luke, chapter 2, verse 32 - is that the Americans should be "a light to lighten the Gentiles". Or, as the announcer put it, in a slightly sexed-up version of Luke's faith-based intelligence, Americans have been sent "as a light to the world". Wuddya believe it?
    2) Build Europe as a counterweight. This is the Jacques Chirac response to Bush's re-election. Robin Cook has urged something similar in these pages. Faced with another four years of this kind of America, argue the Euro-Gaullists, we must build a powerful EU as an alternative pole of world politics. Everyone else in the world, and especially rising China, should know that there is an alternative version of the west, which speaks another language (French) and is peace-loving, law-abiding, socially concerned, humane and seductive - or, according to taste, weak, cynical, corrupt and hypocritical.
    3) Engage to persuade. Tony Blair arrives in Washington today, aiming to do just that. Continuing what I have called the Jeeves school of diplomacy, he will be unswervingly loyal in public, while privately urging moderation, multilateralism and other good things on the gentleman in the White House. As Arafat leaves the scene, Blair will encourage the Bush administration to seize the chance for a two-state peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. With Britain taking over the chairmanship of the G8, and then the presidency of the EU in the second half of 2005, he will ask Washington to broaden its transatlantic agenda, including not just Iraq and Iran but climate change, the Doha round of trade talks, Africa, Darfur, relations with China, and so on. If the president starts talking about bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, Blair will murmur, like the inimitable Jeeves: "Is that wise, sir?"
    Which option is best? Treating America as Big Brother is easy, and quite fun, but it won't get us anywhere at all. We'll just be jeering from the sidelines. What we need is a wise combination of 2 and 3. Chirac's Gaullist dream of a rival superpower is bound to fail because half of Europe won't follow, leaving the Bush administration with endless possibilities of "divide and rule". But another lesson of the Iraq crisis is that the Jeeves school of British diplomacy doesn't work either. Britain alone no longer has sufficient influence (if it ever had) to redirect the course of the hyperpower spaceship. The EU, however, is listened to in those areas where it has real coherence and clout: trade and competition policy. It even prevented the merger of two giant American companies, General Electric and Honeywell. If the EU had anything like the same coherence in foreign or defence policy, Washington would listen there, too.
    So what we need is a European President Blairac. In my view, this desirable cocktail is ideally mixed three parts Blair to one part Chirac. Other Europeans will vary the proportions, according to taste. We need the strong Europe that Paris wants, but a Europe that defines itself emphatically and genuinely as a strategic partner of the United States, not a rival to it. Fortunately, in the great cocktail-mixer that is the EU of 25 member states, especially with its new Euro-Atlanticist president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barosso, and its Euro-Atlanticist foreign minister, Javier Solana, we may have the postmodern possibility of getting a Blairac voice.
    One of the few, small encouraging signs from these gloomy post-election days is a little-noticed announcement from the White House that President Bush telephoned the Dutch prime minister, who holds the presidency of the EU, and "expressed his intention to work with the EU, building on our shared values and interests, to promote development and progress, defeat terrorists, and encourage freedom and democracy around the world". You may say I'm clutching at straws, but this feels like a time for clutching at straws.
    "Failure is not an option" was the other great American line from the movie Apollo 13. History-scarred Europeans know that failure is always a possibility, even a probability. But our least bad chance of helping to bring this spaceship safely back to earth is to put a Blairac on the blower.

    It is interesting reading in my opinion...


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    Quite interesting indeed. I enjoy the first option of watching America like Big Brother. Very funny!
    I love the smell of Romans in the morning. Smells like Victory!

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    Well, we certainly have the first "faith based" executive branch in American history. Saddam really did had WMD, Iraq is becoming a democracy, and global warming is a socialist conspiracy because our "faith" tells us so. Reality be damned if it contradicts any of the views that they hold dear.

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    IronBrig4's Avatar Good Matey
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    You people are asking for a flaming.

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    MoROmeTe's Avatar For my name is Legion
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    Actually we are reading/discussing an article written by a historian/analyst...


    In the long run, we are all dead - John Maynard Keynes
    Under the patronage of Lvcivs Vorenvs
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    Right-wing members complaining about 'liberal-historians' in 5, 4, 3....

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    Decanus
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    Damn liberal-historians and their liberal-history!

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    Stupid liberal commie historians, trying to spread their vile propaganda!

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    Quote Originally Posted by PowerMetalRocker
    Quite interesting indeed. I enjoy the first option of watching America like Big Brother. Very funny!
    I enjoy watching clips from the British version of Big Brother. Here in America we don't have whores who stick bottles in their woohas. Which is surprising really.

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    Tom Paine's Avatar Mr Common Sense
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    Interesting and enjoyable reading, and I like the direction he points us in. But as he said, the proportions are out IMO.

  11. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by meh_cd
    I enjoy watching clips from the British version of Big Brother. Here in America we don't have whores who stick bottles in their woohas. Which is surprising really.
    My spleen is not large enough to produce the bile I would require to properly explain my opinions on Big Brother.

  12. #12

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    Europeans are funny.

  13. #13
    Tom Paine's Avatar Mr Common Sense
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    Not if you're talking BB, we aren't. Idiots and whores yes. But BB funny? Not a chance. For comedy we can watch American politics!

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    Erik's Avatar Dux Limitis
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    Quote Originally Posted by Destroyer Joe
    Europeans are funny.
    Yes, they are.
    Except for the Germans and us, the Dutch (who are realy Germans in disguise)
    We aren't funny except for a very few who most likely got their head smahed in by a windmill.
    Our highest form of comedy is called "cabaret" and must be serious, political, social, and musical or else the critics wil trash it (the funny parts are optional).
    This is why we invented BB.



  15. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Erik
    Yes, they are.
    Except for the Germans and us, the Dutch (who are realy Germans in disguise)
    We aren't funny except for a very few who most likely got their head smahed in by a windmill.
    Our highest form of comedy is called "cabaret" and must be serious, political, social, and musical or else the critics wil trash it (the funny parts are optional).
    This is why we invented BB.
    You guys invented Big Brother? I thought the British did. Interesting. I only watched the first season over here.

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    Lord Rahl's Avatar Behold the Beard
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    Wow, this thread is going no where.


    He talks about Europe being the alternative pole for politics. Funny, I thought the USA was the only place in the world that has a majority towards the right. While the rest of the world get's more left we get more right.

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    Tom Paine's Avatar Mr Common Sense
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Rahl
    He talks about Europe being the alternative pole for politics. Funny, I thought the USA was the only place in the world that has a majority towards the right. While the rest of the world get's more left we get more right.
    Surely the left is the alternate political pole of the right? Asnd while we may have been going left, we are certainly overall drifting rightwards again, while you get further right, so we are smply drifting slower than you. It is all in the perspective.

  18. #18

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    Well... there's places like Saudi Arabia...

  19. #19

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    keep on topic, or the thread will be closed.

  20. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Rahl
    Wow, this thread is going no where.


    He talks about Europe being the alternative pole for politics. Funny, I thought the USA was the only place in the world that has a majority towards the right. While the rest of the world get's more left we get more right.
    I agree with part of this; that America is going right, but Europe isn't really going left:United Kingdom; Blair (mid-right),France; Chirac (centre-right), Italy; Burlesconi (far right), Germany; Schroeder (centre-right). Eastern Europe has been heading right from communism to capitalism but this has slowed down now.

    I really like that take on the Bush administrition. In my opinion, The Blairac should be three parts Chirac and one part Blair and the whole lot somewhat to the left. This might just be because I live in the UK though.

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