US foreign policy – Page 9 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

NATO’s crisis

… Hint: It isn’t just the organization’s massively long over-reach in Afghanistan, as revealed in the ever-mounting casualties among western forces and the continuing, dire crises of insecurity and pauperization through which the Afghan people are living (or not), now, nearly seven whole years after the US invaded their country…
It’s also the whole range of questions raised about NATO’s purpose and usefulness by the whole Georgia crisis.
Many militarists here in the US have been arguing vociferously (a) that the existing NATO members should now ‘fast-track’ Georgia’s entry into the alliance and (b) that Russia would have been completely deterred from the counter-attack it launched against Georgia if Georgia had already been a member of NATO.
Excuse me?
Imagine if Georgia had already been in NATO on August 7. That was the day Pres. Saakashvili broke an existing ceasefire when he launched a rocket attack against targets in South Ossetia who included Russian peacekeepers serving there under the auspices of OSCE.
Russia’s military response to that can certainly be described as disproportionate (though not nearly as much so as, say, Israel’s assault against Lebanon in 2006.) But it was not completely unjustified… One could also describe it, in the circumstances that prevailed in the region over preceding weeks, as predictable with quite a high level of certitude.
So if Georgia was already a NATO member, would NATO as a whole have come to Saak’s rescue once the Russians counter-attacked? Or failing NATO-as-a-whole, would individual NATO members have sent in enough troops to push the Russians back out and “punish” them?
(NATO’s ground-rules of “all for one and one for all” would indicate that it should be NATO as a whole that responds… But we could look at the other option, too.)
In a word, no.
And that’s the real crisis of NATO. It doesn’t actually seem to have any point any more. And that is probably what has gotten “front-line” states like Poland and the Czech Republic into such a tizzy right now.
A good part of the reason that NATO wouldn’t have come to Saak’s aid even if Georgia were already in it is that it couldn’t have done so effectively because of the deep bleeding of its lifeblood and capabilities over Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military is the absolutely necessary backbone of NATO. But now, US ground forces are stretched to break-point. US military airlift, sealift, global recon capabilities, and long-distance attack platforms are all just about fully tied up trying to keep the Iraq and Afghanistan missions going.
And no, no-one in the US– as far as I know– was about to launch a nuclear first strike against Russia over Ossetia.
Nor should we forget that the political infrastructure of NATO– the web of relationships among its members– was rent in two by Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and remains in very bad shape because of the demands placed by Bush regarding Afghanistan…
So the Bush administration’s decisions to (a) invade Iraq and (b) frog-march as many NATO members as possible into the mission in Afghanistan have caused NATO’s crisis to manifest itself with particular sharpness right now.
But there are deeper problems, too… Mainly those connected with the phenomena of mission creep and/or mission dissolution. (Often linked phenomena in troubled organizations, I note.)
NATO was founded in 1949. Its founding goal– as its first Secretary-General, Lord Ismay, once famously said– was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” (I got the attribution on that great quote from Wikipedia, whose entry on NATO is pretty good.)
So what do you do, if you’re a western leader, in 1991-93, when first the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union itself collapses?
Do you hold a victory party, dissolve NATO, and then work with Russia and all the former WP/Soviet states to build a new, much better set of relationships among all these countries? (You might call that the Abraham Lincoln approach.)
You could have used OSCE as the main framework for this, given its significant history and its broad, trans-Eurasian and even transatlantic reach.
Or there were those, back in the early 1990s, who proposed inviting Russia (and presumably all the other formerly -Soviet countries) to join NATO.
Andrew Meier reminds us that that idea aroused significant interest from Boris Yeltsin, who in 1991 described it as his “long-term political aim.” Also, that even Vladimir Putin, during his first few days in office in March 2000, still expressed support for that aim.
But Presidents GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush have never been able to get their heads around that idea of Russian integration into the transatlantic system on the “equal” basis that both Yeltsin and Putin insisted on. Indeed, they and the vast majority of the US political elite seem, even after the fall of the Soviet Union, to have stuck rigidly to the idea that the idea of NATO is “to keep the Russians out” of the system.
But given that the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union had both collapsed, there then arose the tricky political problem of how do you “sell” NATO, and the non-trivial costs involved in keeping the old war-horse going, to its sometimes skeptical non-US members? The watchword in some US circles at the time was that NATO had to either go “out of area”– that is, take on tasks outside its traditional Central European (counter-Russian) area– or it would have to go “out of business.”
As we can see from a glance at the map, Afghanistan is massively “out of area”!
So that’s one of the big differences between NATO and OSCE. NATO’s goal was to keep Russia out while OSCE’s goal, since the very beginning, has been to keep the Russians and their allies well integrated within the transatlantic/Eurasian part of the world system.
The other difference– which is huge, and fundamental– is that NATO is overwhelmingly a military alliance. Military action is its entire raison d’etre. (Hence, the need for ‘enemies’, and the shock with which most NATO leaders view any suspicion that Russia might be included in the membership… After all, if Russia is not an ‘enemy’, what is NATO for? Ah, good question.)
OSCE, by contrast, seeks to use numerous networks of relationships in the non-military sphere to try to keep its 56 member nations together, to build up support for common norms and for the institutions that embody and further them. One key one being the norm of finding nonviolent ways to resolve thorny political problems..
Hence, the role that OSCE’s been playing for the past 17 years– including inside Georgia– in midwifing and monitoring ceasefire and demilitarization agreements among and sometimes within its member states.
So here’s my proposal. Let’s declare the Cold War over? Let’s disband NATO. And rather than looking at ways to further encircle, ‘contain’, or push back Russia, let’s work hard at strengthening the norm of nonviolent conflict resolution across the board, including by seeking stronger roles for the UN, at the global level, and for OSCE, in the areas that it covers.
One good first step: OSCE’s announcement yesterday that it will be increasing the number of unarmed military monitoring officers it has inside Georgia by “up to 100.” Twenty of these monitors should be deployed “immediately.”

Yglesias nails McCain

Think Progress and Matt Yglesias’s blog, now also over at the Center for American Progress, are emerging as two of the most thought-provoking blogs on foreign policy decisionmaking in Washington.
Today, Yglesias absolutely nails the irresponsible and dangerously escalatory nature of John McCain’s rhetoric over the Georgia crisis.
He notes that McCain has described the Georgia-Russia war the “first serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War” and joins with those (including Think Progress’s Satyam) who have pointed out that, erm, just a few other crises much graver than that in Georgia have occurred since 1991.
Matt adds:

the interesting thing is the confusion in terms of high-level concepts.

a near-constant hysteria about threat levels and a pathological inability to set priorities.

Holed it in one, Matt.
I particularly liked the “pathological” there, though perhaps “pathogenic” would also be a good description. Because this “gadfly” quality of McCain’s, that apparently does prevent him from setting clear priorities in global affairs, would cause considerable harm to Americans and the other 95% of the world’s people if he got elected President… Especially when allied to his longstanding tendency to see enormous threats wherever he looks. (We could call this latter condition “phobiaphilia.” Of course, the entire military-industrial-‘contractor’ complex depends on it.)

Georgia: More grandstanding?

If the situation in Georgia weren’t so tragic, it would be pretty amusing to see George W. Bush now posing as the guardian and gatekeeper of international legitimacy. In his statement in the Rose Garden today, he prissily lectured the Russians that,

Russia has sought to integrate into the diplomatic, political, economic, and security structures of the 21st century. The United States has supported those efforts. Now Russia is putting its aspirations at risk by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with the principles of those institutions. To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis…

All of which would have a lot more force if Bush had positioned himself over the previous 7.5 years as a staunch respecter and defender of the world’s multilateral institutions and their key organizing principles…
As it is, given the extreme constraints at both the logistical and the political levels on the Bush administration’s ability to respond militarily to Russia’s undoubted excesses in Georgia, all Washington is able to do is organize some airlifts of humanitarian supplies into Georgia.
As for Georgia’s intemperate president, Mikheil Saakashvili, he briefly claimed today that this airlift meant that the US would be taking over his country’s ports and airports. Yesterday, he had told CNN that the Russians were about to encircle his his capital. He said (once again) that the whole fate of world democracy was imperiled in his country, while he also blamed “the west” for letting his countrymen down.
Perhaps all those attempts at moral blackmail were intended to cover up for his own extreme lack of forethought in having provoked the Russian response with his military assault on South Ossetia last week?
In the event, little of Saak’s blackmail worked. The Pentagon was quick to “shoot down” the suggestion its forces were about to take over Georgia’s ports and airports. The the airlift to Tbilisi is being described as “continuous and robust”– but it will also apparently be strictly limited to humanitarian supplies. (I note that many items useful in humanitarian relief ops are also dual-use as basic military items; but at a certain level of military materiel, including all forms of weaponry and ammunition, these items have no reasonable “humanitarian” purpose.)
And while we’re looking at people seeking to use the present crisis for purposes of political grandstanding, top of that list must be Sen. John McCain, who is reportedly despatching two of his key advisers, Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, to Georgia.
I find this outrageous. The foreign policy of the country is supposed to be run by the President, and it can only considerably complicate the delicate task Bush faces in doing this if either of the candidates seems to be running his own foreign policy separate from that of the president.
Bush should rein in McCain and his Senatorial wingmen, in no uncertain terms.
(Imagine the uproar if Obama announced that her was sending his own personal envoys to Georgia to deal with the situation there!)
It is also, of course, extremely relevant that McCain’s key foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunman was until very recently a paid lobbyist for the Georgian president.
Another question: Though Lieberman and Graham are working as high-level advisers to the McCain campaign, they are also members of the US Senate in their own right. So if they do travel to Georgia in the days ahead, will they do so as Senators or as McCain campaign people?
It is all so very murky that they would do a lot better just not to go.

On US over-stretch

When I blogged about the Ossetia crisis Sunday, I wrote that one thing it clearly showed was that “The ‘west’ is hopelessly over-stretched, what with all its current commitments of troops in Iraq, a crisis-ridden Afghanistan, and (still) in the Balkans…”
Today, McClatchy’s dogged reporter Jonathan Landay gives us more details of that over-stretch. (HT: Dan Froomkin.) Landay quoted one US official as saying that the US military authorities had not really understood the seriousness of the preparations the Russian military had recently made along the Georgian border– because US spy satellites and other means of technical espionage were “pretty well consumed by Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan.”
That, you could describe as logistical over-stretch. But there has also been political over-stretch. You’ll recall that back last year, shortly after the Bush administration announced that portions of its new “ballistic missile defense system” would be placed in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia announced that it would withdraw from the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE). Few people paid much heed at the time, or thought thaqt Moscow’s exit from that older treaty was very important. But one of the key provisions of the CFE Treaty was that signatories were committed to engaging in regular exchanges of information about troop movements and submitting to challenge inspections from other treaty participants.
Guess what. After Russia withdrew from the CFE, they no longer had to do that.
And guess what else. It truly seems that no-one in the Pentagon was on duty last week as Russia’s troop build-up gained momentum.
All that, despite Condi Rice’s long-vaunted reputation as a go-to “expert” on Russian military affairs…
Landay quoted the unnamed US official as saying,

And that, mind you, despite the continued presence of presence of some 130 US military trainers in Georgia.
Ouch. Did anyone say “over-stretch”?
… So what does it all mean?
It means that this conceit that members of the US political elite of both parties have nearly all entertained for the past 15 years: that the dominance of the US military over just about the entire globe is really, kind of the natural order of things… and that yes, of course, our country has “vital” interests in very distant parts of the world that yes, of course, we need to be able to protect– on our own, if necessary… now, that entire conceit is no longer going to be sustainable.
We are, after all, less than five percent of humanity. Sure, there are still a few countries we can bludgeon in one way or another into supporting this or that military adventure. Like the way Tony Blair and Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili agreed– for their own reasons– to contribute their support and a limited amount of their own manpower to the US project in Iraq. Like the way that some (but not all) NATO countries got strong-armed into acting as if Afghanistan were really right their in their own “North Atlantic” backyard. But these contributions from the increasingly resentful allies never added up to anything that would solve either the intense manpower problems, or the intense legitimacy-deficit problems, or the horrendously mounting funding problems suffered by these imperial-style US projects in distant countries.
So we need a radically different model of how the world’s countries can act in response to the security challenges that just about all of our countries face.
As it happens, this model exists. It is one that the US itself created, back in 1945. It is one based on the unassailable foundations of a commitment to finding nonviolent ways to resolve thorny international conflicts, and a deep respect for the equality of all human persons and all nations. It’s called the United Nations.
It also happens that just last week I wrote a piece in the CSM arguing strongly that the US should seek UN leadership of the peace-restoration efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan…
Just imagine if, over the past seven years, the US government had put its energies into using, building up, and reforming the UN and its associated principles, instead of going full-bore for unabashedly US-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq!
Imagine how much stronger the mechanisms of nonviolent conflict resolution available to the world’s leaders would be today.
Imagine how different the politics of Russia’s relations with its neighbors and with the world’s other big powers would be.
Imagine how different Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, and that whole part of the world would look today.
Imagine the resources that, instead of being thrown into equipping very expensive, hi-tech military units and sending them halfway round the world to kill and die, could instead have been spent on rebuilding flourishing communities in Africa.
Imagine the lives that would have been spared. Imagine the families that would still be whole, instead of having to live with their current pain of bereavement or displacement…
Well, regarding the past seven years, we can only sit here and imagine that alternative universe.
But regarding the coming seven or 20 years, there are many things that we who are US citizens can and need to do, to turn our country away from the dead-end of unilateralism and militarism.
What’s happened this past week in Georgia has been a tragedy of serious proportions. But we also need to look at it as a lesson of what happens when one country, that represents only five percent of the world’s people, tries to run the whole world– and then finds itself hopelessly over-stretched.
There is a better way.
It’s called shared leadership, and the rebuilding of sturdy institutions of all-nation cooperation and action. Let’s pursue it.

Americans and distress abroad: The vital “Who” question?

One thing I’ve noticed again and again and again is the– in many ways admirable– instinct of many Americans to think that they (we) and/or the US government has to “do” something about every reported incident of distress or dysfunction overseas.
In Iraq, this morphs easily into the so-called “Pottery Barn” rule… That our government broke it so therefore our government should fix it.
(Hey guys, ever stop to think that precisely because our government’s track record in Iraq is so abysmal, that probably makes our government uniquely unqualified to take any kind of a lead role in the fixing that very evidently needs to be done in Iraq? Pay reparations to Iraqis to let them fix it themselves– yes… But that’s a different manner.)
Or take Afghanistan: The whole official discussion in Washington DC right now is over how many additional US troops are needed to “fix” Afghanistan. This is a specific, and specifically militarized, version of the “Who” question.
Rejoinder #1 to this: Military force is centrally not what’s needed in order to “fix”/heal Afghanistan’s chronically traumatized society and governance system. Any country’s troops operating in a military way inside Afghanistan are most likely only to make things worse.
Rejoinder #2: America’s means of “intervention” are overwhlemingly the tools of military intervention. (See point 1 above.) But even when Washington deploys “reconstruction teams” or whatever, why would anyone assume that they have anything special to contribute to the complex tasks of social and political rebuilding in Afghanistan? The idea that “the west” can build or rebuild societies in distinctly non-western environments is incredibly 19th century. But hullo! That’s two centuries back from today.
Or take Zimbabwe, just for another recent example. In the aftermath of the recent fiasco of the Mugabe-stolen election, many American commentators earnestly asked “What should Washington do about Mugabe?”
Why should anyone think that Washington, as such, should do anything in particular to help “save” Zimbabwe’s people? Why not leave it to those of his neighbors who have a very much greater stake in trying to restore stability to the country… and who seem to be doing a not bad job of crafting a political path forward among Zimbabweans?
… As I’ve written a little in my Re-engage book, many Americans have this great urge to rush around the world trying to “help” or “save” people in distress elsewhere. But they seldom take the time that is required to look coolly at the effects of our own country’s policies on vulnerable societies elsewhere, to look at the sheer harm our country inflicts on those societies, and to engage in the campaigns that are needed here at home to change those policies and thus end the harm that our government’s policies inflict.
This is so much less “romantic” than traveling overseas as saviors to try to “save” or “help” people in distressed countries… But it is a whole lot more necessary.
Two harm-inflicting policies we need to change, for starters:

As you can see, working on issues like these is not only not romantic– it’s also incredibly difficult! So many hundreds of thousands of our own fellow-citizens here in the US have done very nicely indeed by feeding off either the taxpayer-funded military-industrial complex or the taxpayer-funded agricultural-subsidy complex… So persuading them that our country needs to change its ways is a real– though necessary– challenge.
I guess there are two parts to this short argument I’m making here::

This latter one is the vital “Who” question. Yes, Iraqis and Afghans may well need some external help to resolve their current crises of governance. But why on earth would we imagine that it’s a specifically American, or US-dominated, helping mechanism that’s needed?
As I’ve written earlier here on the blog, in the present world information environment, the question of the legitimacy of any particular actor in the international field has acquired considerable new sensitivity.
Washington doesn’t have much legitimacy as a military-intervening actor these days. Certainly not in Iraq (where, in the view of most people and governments around the world, the original invasion of 2003 never had any legitimacy.) And US/NATO “legitimacy” in Afghanistan– among Afghans– is probably decreasing very rapidly, especially after the militarized over-“kill” that the US troops there have been engaging in there in recent months.
USIP recently reported that the US/NATO forces there increased their use of airborne munitions against ground targets in Afghanistan from “5, 000 pounds of munitions per month in 2005 to an average of 80,000 pounds per month since June 2006, peaking at 168,000 pounds in December 2007. The response of most voices in the political elite– except that of Zbig Brzezinski— has been to argue for considerably beefed-up US and NATO ground forces. But why would anyone imagine that the “solution” in distant Afghanistan is primarily a military one at all– let-alone a made-by-NATO military one?

Bush misquotes Jefferson

Stirred by President Bush’s actual comments at Monticello on July 4th, Ruhi Ramazani and I (sh) published a comment in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: Bush’s War Betrays the Sage of Monticello’s Vision for Liberty.
As we suggested last week, President Bush’s decision to speak at Monticello, the first visit of his life, sought a Jeffersonian stamp of approval for his own foreign policy legacy. (Here’s the WhiteHouse link to the speech.)

Ironically, President Bush sought to don the Jefferson mantle by claiming that, “We honor Jefferson’s legacy by aiding the rise of liberty in lands that do not know the blessings of freedom. And on this Fourth of July, we pay tribute to the brave men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America.”

As the often forgotten founder of the US Military Academy, Jefferson likely would not object to honoring a professional American military. Yet we also contend that Jefferson would have turned over in his grave at the thought that his beloved country had justified “a war of choice” and occupation in the name of promoting democracy.
Having recently been a Jefferson Fellow focused on Jefferson’s reflections on the Declaration of Independence, I was particularly startled when I heard President Bush misquote a 24 June 1826 Jefferson letter, written just before his death, to Robert Weightman. The full passage in the original reads:

May it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self government

This is the same letter cited accurately last Monday by Bill Kristol in his New York Times column.
But President Bush’s speech tellingly deleted the clause referencing “monkish ignorance and superstition.”

This omission matters because the full quote reflects Jefferson’s long-held doubts about democracy taking root elsewhere. Unlike Bush, Jefferson believed that before democracy can flourish, citizens and their culture must be receptive to democratic principles, including the rule of law and respect for minority rights.

Our essay then highlights means Jefferson endorsed for exporting democratic ideals — leading by example, via information, and through education.
We close with a reference to a theme I wrote about here at jwn last year — about the simple, yet so often forgotten original purpose of the Declaration:

More than a listing of grievances and abstract principles, it was crafted to declare independence — to proclaim America’s determination before a “candid world” to govern itself.
As the world granted America that liberty to choose its own path, so too “The Sage of Monticello” would see wisdom in America granting other countries the same freedom

What a concept.

Bush at Monticello: The Irony

Dan Jordan, outgoing and venerated President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, is getting more “love” than usual this past week. Many were dismayed that Monticello, Jefferson’s historic home, had invited George Bush to speak at its annual naturalization ceremony on July 4th. Others were miffed that the Foundation “permitted” the audience to include “indecent” demonstrators who were less than impressed by the President. (See this link for debate within the local activist community on the propriety of protests.)
To clarify, the Foundation every year issues an invitation to the sitting President to speak at Monticello. This year, President Bush accepted the invitation.
Previously scheduled speaker Kenneth Burns deferred to the President. Burns would have been following last year’s outstanding speaker, actor Sam Waterson. I commented on Waterston’s magnificent “Commencement Speech for America” here.
As for the many hecklers in the audience, the Foundation released 1,000 or so free general audience tickets on Wednesday morning. To its credit, no attempt was made to restrict who could get those tickets. Early birds got those worms. How refreshing it was that the President encountered some “free speech,” unlike so many other venues where potential protesters are kept far, far away.
**********************
I too was moved to comment upon the profound irony of the spectacle — the 43rd President belatedly getting around to visiting with the 3rd President, known to many as the “author of America.” My commentary with Ruhi Ramazani was distributed via Agence Global. I can now post it here, with notes and links we couldn’t put into the original:
Bush’s Last Fourth
by Wm. Scott Harrop and R. K. Ramazani Released: 5 Jul 2008

Irony abounds in President George W. Bush’s decision to speak at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, on the last July 4th that he will occupy the Oval Office.
For it was Jefferson who wrote in America’s Declaration of Independence that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires” the colonies to set forth the reasons for their rebellion before a “candid world.” America’s founders agreed — international legitimacy mattered. Two hundred and thirty-two years later, the conscious disregard for the “opinions of mankind” has come to define the Bush presidency.

If that sounds a little strong, it’s calmer than an earlier draft, which wondered if Bush came seeking to wrap his foreign policies in the cover, the perceived legitimacy that speaking from Jefferson’s porch would afford to his controversial legacy.

In the Bush view, the world commonly reduced to being either “with us or against us.” His former press secretary Scott McClellan illustrates the problem in his recent book, What Happened. Lacking respect for international opinion, Bush created alliances with leaders of a “coalition of the willing,” not their citizens. Bush praised those leaders who stood with him for being “tough” and “strong” despite intense criticism from their own publics.
This disregard for the opinions of mankind yielded a bitter harvest. In the aftermath of 9/11, most of the world sympathized with America. But America’s reputation abroad plummeted since 2002, as documented by multiple international public opinion surveys.

Continue reading “Bush at Monticello: The Irony”

US Diplomats and Boumediene Case

I too am encouraged by the US Supreme Court’s Boumediene v. Bush ruling that detainees held at Gunatanamo Bay are entitled to Habeas Corpus protection — the right to challenge their detention in a US Court. I also appreciate this LA Times analysis on the “internationalist” considerations that likely influenced the Boumediene majority. Yet I’ve also been perplexed by the fury of the dissents and the hyperbolic claim by presidential candidate John McCain that the ruling was “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
Three complaints stand out: First, dissenting Justice Scalia darkly warns that the ruling will “almost certainly” result in more American being killed. Second, because the US is deemed to be at”war” with those who don’t respect our values, we should not extend such rights to them. Cast as an inhuman “enemy,” they only understand the “language of force.”
Third, the critics condemn the Court for subjecting our laws to the dictates of international opinions — to the norms recognized by the rest of the world. That’s “judicial cosmopolitanism;” it’s “too French.” Or worse, it’d be like Thomas Jefferson in the first sentence of the US Declaration of Independence waxing about “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”
In researching case background (and hat tip to Helena for this resource) I came across a timeless and eloquent response to such concerns, in the form of a Friend of the Court filing, prepared last year by some of America’s best career diplomats. Endorsers include former US Ambassadors to Israel (and elsewhere) Sam Lewis, Thomas Pickering, and William (C) Harrop, as well as Bruce Laingen and the late William D. Rogers and our recently departed Charlottesville friend and mentor, David D. Newsom. (bless his memory)
Among their sage observations: (emphasis added):

If the mounting cost to American diplomatic interests is finally to be curbed, it is imperative, at minimum, to restore meaningful judicial review for prisoners at Guantanamo. Our nation cannot credibly champion the rule of law in the world, while being seen to disregard it in our own affairs….
[O]ur professional experience convinces us that American diplomatic credibility and effectiveness in many areas of international relations suffer greatly from the widely shared perception that, by denying prisoners at Guantanamo access to habeas corpus, our country has lost sight of its historic commitment to independent and effective judicial review of the lawfulness of detention…..
We have come to believe, in our representation of this country to other nations, that those nations are more willing to accept American leadership and counsel to the extent that they see us as true to the principle of freedom under the law. Indeed, the matter has rarely been better put than by President Bush in signing the Torture Victims Protection Act on March 12, 1992:

In this new era, in which countries throughout the world are turning to democratic institutions and the rule of law, we must maintain and strengthen our commitment to ensuring that they are respected everywhere….

(Perhaps this entire subject ought to be re-framed as, “Bush vs. Bush.”)

The admiration and respect for this nation abroad is a function of our own commitment to liberty under law. In this, we have led the world. The success of our interests in the wider arena turns importantly on the extent to which this nation is perceived as continuing to abide by these principles. Any hint that America is not all that it claims, or that it is prepared to ignore a “nonnegotiable demand of human dignity,” that it can accept that the Executive Branch may imprison whom it will and do so beyond the reach of the due process of law, demeans and weakens this nation’s voice abroad.
We have taken it as our duty to so state to this Court. There is no doubting America’s power at this juncture. But values count too. And, for this nation, there is no benefit in the exercise of our undoubted power unless it is deployed in the service of fundamental values: democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and due process. To the extent that we are perceived as compromising those values, to that extent will our efforts to promote our interests in the wider world be prejudiced. Such at least is our collective experience.
George Kennan’s Long Telegram from the American Embassy in Moscow to the State Department in 1946 defined the authoritarian bestiality of the Soviet system and its aim to break “the international authority of our state.” It was perhaps the most important American diplomatic communication of the last century. In closing, Kennan spoke for us all and for all time:

[T]he greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

I recommend this document as an enduring resource for policymakers, educators, and citizens alike, challenging us to consider that we don’t have to toss aside our values to defend them, that our values are a component of our potential influence abroad, that defending our principles need not detract from our “power.”

Those commander-in-chief videoconference records

It has been a new and notable feature of the present administration’s wars that the Prez has “reached down deep” into the command structure to build personal relationships with the U.S. military’s front-line commanders on the ground. He has done this mainly through secure videoconferencing– a technology that he has also used to conduct regular video-conned discussions with government leaders in Iraq and doubtless elsewhere as well.
Now, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of US troops in Iraq, has published a memoir in which he describes how Bush behaved during a secure videocon held in April 2004, after Americans learned of the burning and lynching of four US military contractors in Fallujah.
Sanchez writes (hat-tip to the WaPo’s Michael Abramowitz here) that during that videocon Bush launched into what Sanchez described as a “confused” pep talk:

“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! … Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

Abramowitz adds that “A White House spokesman had no comment.”
Now, I’m assuming that Sanchez would not have put such shockingly provocative words into the mouth of the US President if he did not have full records (i.e., most likely, a tape of the videocon) to back them up.
“If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them!” … “Stay the course! Kill them!” … “We are going to wipe them out!”
Excuse me?
Is this the language of the leader of a self-confident, cultured, and democratic nation? (I noted particularly the irony of the bit about “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, ve vill seek them out and kill them… “)
But here’s something else this news report reminded me to make note of. Presumably, all these videoconferences have been archived and stored somewhere deep in the archives of the government that organized them?
As a taxpayer in a democratic country, I feel quite entitled to require that

I hope that my representatives on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees make every effort to ensure the preservation and speedy declassification of these records.
(I have also previously noted the extent to which the “personal” relationships that Bush has built with front-line commanders have played havoc with the country’s long-established and legally correct command structure, according to which the Prez should communicate with commanders through via his SecDef, the Chairman of the JCS, and the regional CINCs– in this case, the Centcom CINC. Bush’s “reaching down deep” into the structure has had terrible consequences, above all, for the ability of the nation’s military to conduct a rational and sustainable system for achieving force planning objectives. But that’s another story.)

Scott McClellan– some remorse maybe??

I have been as intrigued as everyone else by the fact that former White House spokesman Scott McClellan has published a book accusing President Bush of having engaged in spin and unfair manipulation of both the facts and those who report them (i.e. the media) during the lead-up to the Iraq war.
I have not yet read McClellan’s book, but hope to some day soon. (I’m reluctant to contribute to his authorial earnings, though. So I’ll have to look for a library copy.)
Obviously his record of what happened inside the White House spin machine is very important.
But I think that a lot of the MSM reporting on the book’s revelations still falls into the trap of treating them as primarily an “inside the Washington Beltway” story, focusing on two major memes:

to us

What’s gotten left out of the reporting I’ve seen has been the fact that the lie-telling in which McClellan engaged while inside the White House contributed materially to inflicting massive amounts of actual harm on millions of people in Iraq and scores of thousands of others here in the US.
Scott McClellan, could you express some remorse to the family members of Iraqi civilians killed by and because of the US invasion of their country?
Scott McClellan, could you express some remorse to the family members of the 4,080 American citizens killed, and the scores of thousands maimed forever, because of Pres. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq?
To me, the Scott McClellan story is not primarily “about” what happens inside the Washington Beltway. It is about the harm the war has inflicted on millions of people outside the Beltway– both in outside-the-Beltway America and overseas. Can Scott McClellan look into a camera and speak to those people and say, “I am truly sorry for the part I played in implementing the President’s plan to prepare for and launch the invasion.”
Will he give the royalty earnings from this book to charities that work to reconstruct the shattered lives of Iraqis and of US war veterans? That would be one solid good move.
I just watched this Youtube clip of McClellan being interviewed on NBC’s “Today” program yesterday. At around 3:30 minutes into the clip he starts saying some significant things about the role he played in the buildup to war, and how he felt about it at the time.
He said (paraphrasing here):

struggled

Well, I guess I’m glad that you underwent that struggle, Scott. But it would be good if you could acknowledge that the struggle you have undergone to do that, undertaken in the comfort and safety of a luxurious family home and surrounded by presumably-intact family members, completely pales in comparison with the struggles for survival currently being undertaken by scores of thousands of badly wounded Iraq war veterans in this country, and their families, and by literally millions of Iraqis inside their war-shattered country.
So maybe a little less emphasis on the difficulty of your own “struggle” might be in order? And a bit more moral plainspeaking? And some plain human empathy for people struggling far outside the Washington Beltway because of your complicity in the war preparations? And some efforts, however small or symbolic, to contribute to the repair of those people’s lives?
Also, just some old-fashioned and straight-from-the-heart remorse?