Hurriyet Daily News
US cost of war ‘at least 225,000 lives'
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans.
The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies called ‘Costs of War’ has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks.
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, the report said. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.
In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.
In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people have been displaced.
“Costs of War” brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon, Reuters news agency reported.
The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget, which is already on an unsustainable course due to an aging American population and skyrocketing healthcare costs. It also raises the question of what the United States gained from its multitrillion-dollar investment.
“I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it,” Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, told Reuters in Washington.
In one sense, the report measures the cost of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages. For every person killed on Sept. 11, another 73 have been killed since. The civilian death toll in Iraq - 125,000 - and the number of Saddam’s forces killed in the invasion - 10,000 - are loose estimates.
The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies called “Costs of War” has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, the report said. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.
In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.
In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people have been displaced.
“Costs of War” brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon, Reuters news agency reported.
The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget, which is already on an unsustainable course due to an aging American population and skyrocketing healthcare costs. It also raises the question of what the United States gained from its multitrillion-dollar investment.
“I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it,” Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, told Reuters in Washington.
In one sense, the report measures the cost of 9/11, the American shorthand for the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nineteen hijackers plus other al-Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages.
What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on Sept. 11, another 73 have been killed since.
The civilian death toll in Iraq - 125,000 - and the number of Saddam’s security forces killed in the invasion - 10,000 - are loose estimates. The U.S. military does not publish a thorough accounting.
In Afghanistan, the civilian death count ranges from 11,700 to 13,900. For Pakistan, where there is little access to the battlefield and the United States fights mostly through aerial drone attacks, the study found it impossible to distinguish between civilian and insurgent deaths.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=us-cost-of-war-8216at-least-225000-lives-2011-06-29
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Israel: Amid evidence to the contrary, GOP candidate accuses Obama of anti-Israel stance
Haaretz
U.S. presidential candidate accuses Obama of treating Israel like a problem
Republican former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty says the U.S. president's Middle East policy 'breaks his heart', claims Obama is wrong in belief that 'Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East'.
By Natasha Mozgovaya Tags: US Jews Barack Obama anti-Israel
Former governor of Minnesota and Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is not impressed with U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, accusing the U.S. president of treating Israel “as a problem rather than as an ally” in his addresses to the State Department and the AIPAC policy conference.
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, Pawlenty lamented the Obama administration’s attitude toward the Middle East, saying “it breaks my heart that President Obama treats Israel, our great friend, as a problem, rather than as an ally.”
The former governor continued, saying “the President seems to genuinely believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East. He said it Cairo in 2009 and again this year. President Obama could not be more wrong”.
Bear in mind that while Obama did admit in his May speech to the State Department that “for decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region”, he chastised those that made antagonism toward Israel “the only acceptable outlet for political expression”. He also made clear the U.S.’s commitment to Israel’s security is “unshakeable”.
Pawlenty continued his criticism of the U.S. president, saying that Israeli – Palestinian peace is a more distant reality than “the day Barack Obama came to office”, adding that the U.S. president “doesn’t really have a policy toward the peace process, he has an attitude.”
The Republican presidential candidate claimed that Obama “thinks the answer is always more pressure on Israel”, accusing the U.S. president of having an “anti-Israel attitude”, adding that it is preposterous to think that the prosperity and freedom of countries undergoing upheaval in the region have anything to do with “how many apartments Israel builds in Jerusalem”.
Pawlenty offered an approach of his own, saying he “would never undermine Israel’s negotiating position, nor pressure it to accept borders which jeopardize security and its ability to defend itself.” The Republican made clear that it is unproductive in his eyes to pressure Israel into negotiations with “Hamas or a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless Hamas renounces terror, accepts Israel’s right to exist, and honors the previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements”.
This is no revelation. The U.S.’s current position is nearly identical to this statement, however, perhaps it has become less clearly elucidated in light of recent Hamas-Fatah unity.
Pawlenty condemned Palestinian efforts to delegitimize Israel in its public sector, saying American assistance to the Palestinians must end immediately “if the teaching of hatred in Palestinian classrooms and airwaves continues,” adding that “incitement must end now”.
The former governor recommend “cultivating and empowering moderate forces in Palestinian society”. Pawlenty predicted that “when the Palestinians have leaders who are honest and capable, who appreciate the rule of law, who understand that war against Israel has doomed generations of Palestinians to lives of bitterness, violence, and poverty – then peace will come”.
The Republican criticized Obama’s hesitation to take action in Syria and demanding that the U.S. take a stand in the war-torn Middle East country. Pawlenty echoed the words of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calling for the removal of U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford from Syria.
The Obama administration has explained its decision to keep Ford in Syria despite Assad’s brutal crackdown on his people, saying the ambassador provides them with a clearer picture of the facts on the ground.
“We have a clear interest in seeing an end to Assad’s murderous regime”, Pawlenty said. “By sticking to Bashar al Assad so long, the Obama Administration has not only frustrated Syrians who are fighting for freedom—it has demonstrated strategic blindness.”
The presidential candidate said that the fall of Assad would have a ripple effect that would weaken Hamas as well as Hezbollah and Iran, all enemies of Israel, emphatically stating: “Bashar al-Assad must go.”
Pawlenty accused Obama of failing to present a coherent response to the Arab Spring, alleging that he has been “slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.” He continued, adding that “instead of promoting democracy he adopted a murky policy he called “engagement”.”
The National Jewish Democratic Council criticized Pawlenty's remarks, saying that the Republican “has proven that he stands with those seeking to make support for Israel a partisan wedge issue” in his “baseless and unfounded shots at President Barack Obama's outstanding pro-Israel record.”
NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said that “Pawlenty's constant misrepresentations of President Barack Obama's pro-Israel record are profoundly wrong and must stop immediately.”
Harris accused Pawlenty of ignoring Obama’s strong support for Israel, sending the world the wrong message in his claims that Obama holds an “anti-Israel attitude”. The NJDC president said that such baseless attacks “especially with this level of vitriol and empty rhetoric” send Israel’s enemies a dangerous message that the Obama administration “is anywhere but squarely in Israel's corner.”
He called for a stop to such “partisan games”, cautioning that they pose a potential threat to Israel’s security.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/focus-u-s-a/u-s-presidential-candidate-accuses-obama-of-treating-israel-like-a-problem-1.370092
U.S. presidential candidate accuses Obama of treating Israel like a problem
Republican former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty says the U.S. president's Middle East policy 'breaks his heart', claims Obama is wrong in belief that 'Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East'.
By Natasha Mozgovaya Tags: US Jews Barack Obama anti-Israel
Former governor of Minnesota and Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is not impressed with U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, accusing the U.S. president of treating Israel “as a problem rather than as an ally” in his addresses to the State Department and the AIPAC policy conference.
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, Pawlenty lamented the Obama administration’s attitude toward the Middle East, saying “it breaks my heart that President Obama treats Israel, our great friend, as a problem, rather than as an ally.”
The former governor continued, saying “the President seems to genuinely believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East. He said it Cairo in 2009 and again this year. President Obama could not be more wrong”.
Bear in mind that while Obama did admit in his May speech to the State Department that “for decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region”, he chastised those that made antagonism toward Israel “the only acceptable outlet for political expression”. He also made clear the U.S.’s commitment to Israel’s security is “unshakeable”.
Pawlenty continued his criticism of the U.S. president, saying that Israeli – Palestinian peace is a more distant reality than “the day Barack Obama came to office”, adding that the U.S. president “doesn’t really have a policy toward the peace process, he has an attitude.”
The Republican presidential candidate claimed that Obama “thinks the answer is always more pressure on Israel”, accusing the U.S. president of having an “anti-Israel attitude”, adding that it is preposterous to think that the prosperity and freedom of countries undergoing upheaval in the region have anything to do with “how many apartments Israel builds in Jerusalem”.
Pawlenty offered an approach of his own, saying he “would never undermine Israel’s negotiating position, nor pressure it to accept borders which jeopardize security and its ability to defend itself.” The Republican made clear that it is unproductive in his eyes to pressure Israel into negotiations with “Hamas or a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless Hamas renounces terror, accepts Israel’s right to exist, and honors the previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements”.
This is no revelation. The U.S.’s current position is nearly identical to this statement, however, perhaps it has become less clearly elucidated in light of recent Hamas-Fatah unity.
Pawlenty condemned Palestinian efforts to delegitimize Israel in its public sector, saying American assistance to the Palestinians must end immediately “if the teaching of hatred in Palestinian classrooms and airwaves continues,” adding that “incitement must end now”.
The former governor recommend “cultivating and empowering moderate forces in Palestinian society”. Pawlenty predicted that “when the Palestinians have leaders who are honest and capable, who appreciate the rule of law, who understand that war against Israel has doomed generations of Palestinians to lives of bitterness, violence, and poverty – then peace will come”.
The Republican criticized Obama’s hesitation to take action in Syria and demanding that the U.S. take a stand in the war-torn Middle East country. Pawlenty echoed the words of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calling for the removal of U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford from Syria.
The Obama administration has explained its decision to keep Ford in Syria despite Assad’s brutal crackdown on his people, saying the ambassador provides them with a clearer picture of the facts on the ground.
“We have a clear interest in seeing an end to Assad’s murderous regime”, Pawlenty said. “By sticking to Bashar al Assad so long, the Obama Administration has not only frustrated Syrians who are fighting for freedom—it has demonstrated strategic blindness.”
The presidential candidate said that the fall of Assad would have a ripple effect that would weaken Hamas as well as Hezbollah and Iran, all enemies of Israel, emphatically stating: “Bashar al-Assad must go.”
Pawlenty accused Obama of failing to present a coherent response to the Arab Spring, alleging that he has been “slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.” He continued, adding that “instead of promoting democracy he adopted a murky policy he called “engagement”.”
The National Jewish Democratic Council criticized Pawlenty's remarks, saying that the Republican “has proven that he stands with those seeking to make support for Israel a partisan wedge issue” in his “baseless and unfounded shots at President Barack Obama's outstanding pro-Israel record.”
NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris said that “Pawlenty's constant misrepresentations of President Barack Obama's pro-Israel record are profoundly wrong and must stop immediately.”
Harris accused Pawlenty of ignoring Obama’s strong support for Israel, sending the world the wrong message in his claims that Obama holds an “anti-Israel attitude”. The NJDC president said that such baseless attacks “especially with this level of vitriol and empty rhetoric” send Israel’s enemies a dangerous message that the Obama administration “is anywhere but squarely in Israel's corner.”
He called for a stop to such “partisan games”, cautioning that they pose a potential threat to Israel’s security.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/focus-u-s-a/u-s-presidential-candidate-accuses-obama-of-treating-israel-like-a-problem-1.370092
China: Obama wades into debt talks and calls for economic stimulus
Xinhua
Obama calls for tax breaks & loans
BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhuanet) – US President Barack Obama has called for new stimulus measures to boost the struggling economy. The effort is likely to further complicate talks to bring the country's debt under control.
Obama said Congress should approve loans to encourage construction spending and extend tax breaks that benefit middle-income families to bring down the unemployment rate, currently at 9 percent.
He said Congress could also advance free trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Those measures would likely add hundreds of billions of dollars to budget deficits at a time when the White House and lawmakers are trying to narrow them by more than one trillion.
Obama and congressional Republicans are deadlocked over whether tax increases should be part of a spending-cut deal that would give lawmakers political cover to extend the government's borrowing authority.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-06/30/c_13958377.htm
Obama calls for tax breaks & loans
BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhuanet) – US President Barack Obama has called for new stimulus measures to boost the struggling economy. The effort is likely to further complicate talks to bring the country's debt under control.
Obama said Congress should approve loans to encourage construction spending and extend tax breaks that benefit middle-income families to bring down the unemployment rate, currently at 9 percent.
He said Congress could also advance free trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Those measures would likely add hundreds of billions of dollars to budget deficits at a time when the White House and lawmakers are trying to narrow them by more than one trillion.
Obama and congressional Republicans are deadlocked over whether tax increases should be part of a spending-cut deal that would give lawmakers political cover to extend the government's borrowing authority.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-06/30/c_13958377.htm
Australia: Taliban attack undermines US withdrawl
The Sydney Morning Herald
Taliban attack undermines US withdrawal
Ben Doherty
THE Taliban's brazen raid on one of Kabul's best-protected public buildings, the Intercontinental Hotel, has highlighted concerns about US plans to start pulling troops out of the country and gradually hand over security to the Afghans.
Yesterday's four-hour siege was ended by the intervention of international forces. A soldier aboard a NATO helicopter shot dead gunmen as they fought on the hotel rooftop.
Ten Afghan civilians, including two policemen, were killed in the attack, as well as all eight insurgents who infiltrated the hotel.
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The two policemen were reportedly killed when they checked a hotel room where an insurgent lay hiding. When they entered the room, hours after the siege was believed over, he blew himself up.
The attack comes less than a week after US President Barack Obama announced he would withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year, beginning next month. Last night Mr Obama was scheduled to face the media in a rare news conference. . It was expected to be the first opportunity for the President to field questions over his plan to withdraw 33,000 troops by September next year.
Other nations have made similar commitments, and with a reduced international security presence there are concerns Afghan forces will be overwhelmed.
"This reinforces concerns that the Afghan security forces will be vulnerable during the transition of the withdrawal of international forces and afterwards," a former UN and European diplomat and director of the Afghan Analysts Network, Thomas Ruttig, said.
"But this attack also demonstrates that despite the presence of NATO and Afghan troops - and in this case it was a NATO helicopter that finished off the gunmen - insurgents are still able to carry it out. The Taliban are clever enough to find vulnerable points."
The attack on the Intercontinental came on the eve of a government conference, due to begin yesterday, to discuss the transition of security in parts of the country to full Afghan control.
"This is an escalation in terms of targeting civilians. This is a hotel frequented by Westerners, and one of the gunmen went to the restaurant, where guests would be expected to be," Mr Ruttig said.
But he said the US's nascent peace talks with the Taliban would not be derailed by the attack. "We have seen in other conflicts outside Afghanistan, the talks can be going on, and the fighting going on as well."
The attack began about 10.30pm on Tuesday Afghan time when eight gunmen wearing suicide bomb vests and armed with machineguns, anti-aircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades approached the heavily fortified Intercontinental Hotel from two sides.
The Intercontinental is one of only two five-star hotels in Kabul. Frequented by Afghan officials and visiting diplomats, it has one of the most elaborate security regimes of any public building in the city, as well as the natural defence of being built alone, high on a hill.
The hotel's electricity was shut off as the gunmen approached by the main road, breaching several checkpoints, and also through bushland on the northern side of the hill.
Two of the insurgents reportedly blew themselves up at the hotel entrance while another detonated his suicide vest in one of the hotel restaurants where several guests were dining.
The other gunmen went to the darkened upper floors, roaming room to room, floor by floor looking for hotel staff and guests to kill.
From the upper floor gunmen made their way to the flat hotel roof, where, after a gun battle with Afghan security forces on the ground, their resistance was ended by a NATO helicopter.
"It flew over the hotel, circled it a few times. They were able to clearly identify a number of insurgents who were armed and wearing suicide vests and then they engaged the individuals with small-arms fire," International Security Assistance Force spokesman Major Tim James said.
One blood-soaked survivor told reporters he saw three men wearing vests with explosives running through the hotel looking for a way to the roof.
"Suddenly they opened fire and three of my friends were killed. I was shot too and I expected to die."
Saiz Ahmed, an American PhD student studying in Kabul, told CNN he wrote a will as he hid in his room on the fourth floor, as gunfire was punctuated by regular explosions. "I'm sure none of us thought we were going to make it," he said. "I wrote my little will, just in case."
He and other guests were evacuated from fires on the upper floor and led out through the hotel basement.
Other survivors reported walking through the front door past the bodies of guests and the remains of the suicide bombers.
With SIMON MANN
http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-attack-undermines-us-withdrawal-20110629-1gqxr.html
Taliban attack undermines US withdrawal
Ben Doherty
THE Taliban's brazen raid on one of Kabul's best-protected public buildings, the Intercontinental Hotel, has highlighted concerns about US plans to start pulling troops out of the country and gradually hand over security to the Afghans.
Yesterday's four-hour siege was ended by the intervention of international forces. A soldier aboard a NATO helicopter shot dead gunmen as they fought on the hotel rooftop.
Ten Afghan civilians, including two policemen, were killed in the attack, as well as all eight insurgents who infiltrated the hotel.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The two policemen were reportedly killed when they checked a hotel room where an insurgent lay hiding. When they entered the room, hours after the siege was believed over, he blew himself up.
The attack comes less than a week after US President Barack Obama announced he would withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year, beginning next month. Last night Mr Obama was scheduled to face the media in a rare news conference. . It was expected to be the first opportunity for the President to field questions over his plan to withdraw 33,000 troops by September next year.
Other nations have made similar commitments, and with a reduced international security presence there are concerns Afghan forces will be overwhelmed.
"This reinforces concerns that the Afghan security forces will be vulnerable during the transition of the withdrawal of international forces and afterwards," a former UN and European diplomat and director of the Afghan Analysts Network, Thomas Ruttig, said.
"But this attack also demonstrates that despite the presence of NATO and Afghan troops - and in this case it was a NATO helicopter that finished off the gunmen - insurgents are still able to carry it out. The Taliban are clever enough to find vulnerable points."
The attack on the Intercontinental came on the eve of a government conference, due to begin yesterday, to discuss the transition of security in parts of the country to full Afghan control.
"This is an escalation in terms of targeting civilians. This is a hotel frequented by Westerners, and one of the gunmen went to the restaurant, where guests would be expected to be," Mr Ruttig said.
But he said the US's nascent peace talks with the Taliban would not be derailed by the attack. "We have seen in other conflicts outside Afghanistan, the talks can be going on, and the fighting going on as well."
The attack began about 10.30pm on Tuesday Afghan time when eight gunmen wearing suicide bomb vests and armed with machineguns, anti-aircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades approached the heavily fortified Intercontinental Hotel from two sides.
The Intercontinental is one of only two five-star hotels in Kabul. Frequented by Afghan officials and visiting diplomats, it has one of the most elaborate security regimes of any public building in the city, as well as the natural defence of being built alone, high on a hill.
The hotel's electricity was shut off as the gunmen approached by the main road, breaching several checkpoints, and also through bushland on the northern side of the hill.
Two of the insurgents reportedly blew themselves up at the hotel entrance while another detonated his suicide vest in one of the hotel restaurants where several guests were dining.
The other gunmen went to the darkened upper floors, roaming room to room, floor by floor looking for hotel staff and guests to kill.
From the upper floor gunmen made their way to the flat hotel roof, where, after a gun battle with Afghan security forces on the ground, their resistance was ended by a NATO helicopter.
"It flew over the hotel, circled it a few times. They were able to clearly identify a number of insurgents who were armed and wearing suicide vests and then they engaged the individuals with small-arms fire," International Security Assistance Force spokesman Major Tim James said.
One blood-soaked survivor told reporters he saw three men wearing vests with explosives running through the hotel looking for a way to the roof.
"Suddenly they opened fire and three of my friends were killed. I was shot too and I expected to die."
Saiz Ahmed, an American PhD student studying in Kabul, told CNN he wrote a will as he hid in his room on the fourth floor, as gunfire was punctuated by regular explosions. "I'm sure none of us thought we were going to make it," he said. "I wrote my little will, just in case."
He and other guests were evacuated from fires on the upper floor and led out through the hotel basement.
Other survivors reported walking through the front door past the bodies of guests and the remains of the suicide bombers.
With SIMON MANN
http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-attack-undermines-us-withdrawal-20110629-1gqxr.html
UK: Staggering cost of US 'war on terror'
The Independent
'War on terror' set to surpass cost of Second World War
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The total cost to America of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the related military operations in Pakistan, is set to exceed $4 trillion – more than three times the sum so far authorised by Congress in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.
This staggering sum emerges from a new study by academics at the Ivy-league Brown University that reveals the $1.3 trillion officially appropriated on Capitol Hill is the tip of a spending iceberg. If other Pentagon outlays, interest payments on money borrowed to finance the wars, and the $400bn estimated to have been spent on the domestic "war on terror", the total cost is already somewhere between $2.3 and $2.7 trillion.
And even though the wars are now winding down, add in future military spending and above all the cost of looking after veterans, disabled and otherwise and the total bill will be somewhere between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion.
The report by Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies is not the first time such astronomical figures have been cited; a 2008 study co-authored by the Harvard economist Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, a former Nobel economics laureate, reckoned the wars would end up costing over $3 trillion. The difference is that America's financial position has worsened considerably in the meantime, with a brutal recession and a federal budget deficit running at some $1.5 trillion annually, while healthcare and social security spending is set to soar as the population ages and the baby boomer generation enters retirement.
Unlike most of America's previous conflicts moreover, Iraq and Afghanistan have been financed almost entirely by borrowed money that sooner or later must be repaid.
The human misery is commensurate. The report concludes that in all, between 225,000 and 258,000 people have died as a result of the wars. Of that total, US soldiers killed on the battlefield represent a small fraction, some 6,100. The civilian death toll in Iraq is put at 125,000 (rather less than some other estimates) and at up to 14,000 in Afghanistan. For Pakistan, no reliable calculation can be made.
Even these figures however only scratch the surface of the suffering, in terms of people injured and maimed, or those who have died from malnutrition or lack of treatment. "When the fighting stops, the indirect dying continues," Neta Crawford, a co-director of the Brown study, said. Not least, the wars may have created some 7.8 million refugees, roughly equal to the population of Scotland and Wales.
What America achieved by such outlays is also more than questionable. Two brutal regimes, those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, have been overturned while al-Qa'ida, the terrorist group that carried out 9/11, by all accounts has been largely destroyed - but in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is democracy exactly flourishing, while the biggest winner from the Iraq war has been America's arch-foe Iran.
Osama bin Laden and his henchmen probably spent the pittance of just $500,000 on organising the September 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people and directly cost the US economy an estimated $50bn to $100bn. In 2003, President George W Bush proclaimed that the Iraq war would cost $50bn to $60bn. Governments that go to war invariably underestimate the cost – but rarely on such an epic scale.
If the Brown study is correct, the wars that flowed from 9/11 will not only have been the longest in US history. At $4 trillion and counting, their combined cost is approaching that of the Second World War, put at some $4.1 trillion in today's prices by the Congressional Budget Office.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/war-on-terror-set-to-surpass-cost-of-second-world-war-2304497.html
'War on terror' set to surpass cost of Second World War
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The total cost to America of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the related military operations in Pakistan, is set to exceed $4 trillion – more than three times the sum so far authorised by Congress in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.
This staggering sum emerges from a new study by academics at the Ivy-league Brown University that reveals the $1.3 trillion officially appropriated on Capitol Hill is the tip of a spending iceberg. If other Pentagon outlays, interest payments on money borrowed to finance the wars, and the $400bn estimated to have been spent on the domestic "war on terror", the total cost is already somewhere between $2.3 and $2.7 trillion.
And even though the wars are now winding down, add in future military spending and above all the cost of looking after veterans, disabled and otherwise and the total bill will be somewhere between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion.
The report by Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies is not the first time such astronomical figures have been cited; a 2008 study co-authored by the Harvard economist Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, a former Nobel economics laureate, reckoned the wars would end up costing over $3 trillion. The difference is that America's financial position has worsened considerably in the meantime, with a brutal recession and a federal budget deficit running at some $1.5 trillion annually, while healthcare and social security spending is set to soar as the population ages and the baby boomer generation enters retirement.
Unlike most of America's previous conflicts moreover, Iraq and Afghanistan have been financed almost entirely by borrowed money that sooner or later must be repaid.
The human misery is commensurate. The report concludes that in all, between 225,000 and 258,000 people have died as a result of the wars. Of that total, US soldiers killed on the battlefield represent a small fraction, some 6,100. The civilian death toll in Iraq is put at 125,000 (rather less than some other estimates) and at up to 14,000 in Afghanistan. For Pakistan, no reliable calculation can be made.
Even these figures however only scratch the surface of the suffering, in terms of people injured and maimed, or those who have died from malnutrition or lack of treatment. "When the fighting stops, the indirect dying continues," Neta Crawford, a co-director of the Brown study, said. Not least, the wars may have created some 7.8 million refugees, roughly equal to the population of Scotland and Wales.
What America achieved by such outlays is also more than questionable. Two brutal regimes, those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, have been overturned while al-Qa'ida, the terrorist group that carried out 9/11, by all accounts has been largely destroyed - but in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is democracy exactly flourishing, while the biggest winner from the Iraq war has been America's arch-foe Iran.
Osama bin Laden and his henchmen probably spent the pittance of just $500,000 on organising the September 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people and directly cost the US economy an estimated $50bn to $100bn. In 2003, President George W Bush proclaimed that the Iraq war would cost $50bn to $60bn. Governments that go to war invariably underestimate the cost – but rarely on such an epic scale.
If the Brown study is correct, the wars that flowed from 9/11 will not only have been the longest in US history. At $4 trillion and counting, their combined cost is approaching that of the Second World War, put at some $4.1 trillion in today's prices by the Congressional Budget Office.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/war-on-terror-set-to-surpass-cost-of-second-world-war-2304497.html
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
UK: Man committed to working for Palin says she'll run
The Telegraph
Sarah Palin's man in Iowa says she will run for the White House in 2012
By Toby Harnden
Sarah Palin will run for the White House in 2012 and conduct an “unorthodox, grassroots campaign the likes of which you’ve never seen”, according to the man who has spent the past eight months organising for her in Iowa.
Speaking to me after the premiere of the film “The Undefeated” in Pella, Iowa, Peter Singleton, a California lawyer who has been assiduously courting Republicans across the state where the first contest of the 2012 election will be heard, said it was “unthinkable” she would remain on the sidelines.
“She’s the right person at this time,” he said. “If you look back at Churchill’s time, in 1938 Churchill was unelectable, in 1940 he was indispensable.
“I can’t see her sitting this one out,” he said. “The stakes are too high. It goes back to 1940. Can you see Churchill sitting it out? It’s unthinkable. Can you see George Washington in 1776 sitting it out? Unthinkable. He wanted to be back on his farm but they said we need you to be president of the republic.”
Mr Singleton, 56, tall and urbane, is a man of considerable mystery. He represents the national Organize4Palin group and has been ubiquitous in Republicans circles building up a network for the former Alaska governor, whose presidential intentions have kept Americans guessing for months.
Although he was standing about 20 yards away from Mrs Palin as he talked to me, Mr Singleton insisted he had never met or spoken to her.
This stance, which he has maintained assiduously since he began working on organising a Palin 2012 campaign in Iowa last November following a scouting trip four months earlier, is something that some senior Iowa Republicans do not take at face value.
It was Mr Singleton who telephoned Beth Hill, director of the Pella Opera House, last Thursday to ask her whether “The Undefeated”, a full-throated defence of Mrs Palin and her career, could be shown there. He then visited to look at the auditorium and put Stephen Bannon, the film’s director on the phone to speak to her.
“Peter came here and he found our town reflected Sarah Palin’s small town, conservative values,” she said. Mr Singleton was also instrumental in distributing the 332 tickets for the film as well as inviting 1,000 Iowans, including many key Republican leaders in the state, for a barbecue afterwards.
When I asked about his involvement, Mr Singleton said that he was an old friend of Mr Bannon and he had been just one of ” a bunch of people” who had helped set up the screening.
Pella, with a population of some 10,500, was founded by Dutch immigrants seeking freedom from religious persecution. As well as being famous for the window company that bears its name, the town boasts the oldest working windmill in the United States and an annual tulip festival. There is a town ordinance that stipulates that all buildings should have traditional Dutch facades.
Seymour Vander Schaff, 70, the theatre pipe organist, who performed before the film, said: “This is a conservative community. Swimming pools weren’t even open on Sunday for many, many years. If you run a lawnmower on a Sunday, you’ll probably have a church member come and ask you whether that is the thing to do.
“They break their damn fool neck trying to get the town to pay bills. They don’t want to have debt. It’s important to get bills paid as quickly as possible and save. The ethic is work hard and provide for your family. Those are values that have huge, long-range implications.
“We’ve lost a bit of them over the years and we need to get it back because we’re at a critical tipping point. With the debt, we’ve got a damn monster on our hands.”
Asked by a Fox News reporter before the film about whether she would run in 2012, Mrs Palin responded: “It’s a tough decision, it’s a big decision to decide whether to run for office or not. I’m still contemplating….I am still thinking about the decision and you know a lot goes into such a life-changing, relatively earth-shattering type of decision and still thinking about it.”
Earlier in the day, it had been reported that her eldest daughter Bristol had said Mrs Palin had made a decision about whether or not to run. Mrs Palin laughed about this and said: “I texted Bristol, I said, ‘Honey what did you say this morning on some news programme.
“She said, ‘Oh, mom, you’ve got to watch the interview. You know how they take everything out of context.’ I said, ‘You remember Bristol what we talk about on the fishing boat stays on the fishing boat’. I don’t know what she said.”
After the film, Mrs Palin and her husband Todd were mobbed by hundreds of supporters amid shots of “your record is golden”, when’s the sequel” and “we need you in the White House, Sarah”.
Asked about the movie as she signed autographs and posed for picture, she said that there was “vindication in it” but “beyond the vindication of my record personally and my team’s record it is a wonderful story about American values”.
It went some way, she added, to presenting the reality of her time as Alaska governor and her life. “There are so many false narratives out there about Todd about our kids, about my record, about my team that has worked so hard together that there is never going to be a way to absolutely set the record straight.”
Mr Singleton also spoke about narratives that were incorrect. “The narratives are: she’s not running; she’s about to endorse another candidate; it’s too late for her to get in; she’s going to run as a celebrity candidate; she’s got no support here; support is attenuated; she’s yesterday’s news,” he said. “All that is comically inaccurate.”
Mrs Palin, he said, would work to connect with Iowans. “Her support is latent. When she runs, whether she wins or loses will be dependent in part on how well she campaigns.
“It’s not like all she has to do is announce and then do a couple of rallies. It doesn’t work and way and it shouldn’t . She will need to work diligently and campaign. Her people are going to have to campaign in every town and every county. That’s what we’re doing.”
For her part, Mrs Palin told RealClearPolitics that she would commit “110 percent” to the Iowa caucus process if she does run for president.
Mr Singleton predicted Mrs Palin “will have hundreds of thousands of volunteers, 10 times more than any other candidate and I think that’s why she’ll win”.
There was still time, he insisted, for her to enter the race, currently being led by Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. “It’s not too late. Would i like her to be here campaigning? Oh sure. But am i worried that the window has closed? No.
“The race is wide open. She a lot of support. I can tell you that because I’ve got field data. I’m part of a team that’s out there all the time.”
Mr Singleton declined to say how many Palin volunteers there were in Iowa but other Republicans said that there were scores, perhaps more than 100, across the state. In time, he said, he expected that “lots of our volunteers now will fold into her campaign in some capacity”.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100094416/sarah-palins-man-in-iowa-says-she-will-run-for-the-white-house-in-2012/
Sarah Palin's man in Iowa says she will run for the White House in 2012
By Toby Harnden
Sarah Palin will run for the White House in 2012 and conduct an “unorthodox, grassroots campaign the likes of which you’ve never seen”, according to the man who has spent the past eight months organising for her in Iowa.
Speaking to me after the premiere of the film “The Undefeated” in Pella, Iowa, Peter Singleton, a California lawyer who has been assiduously courting Republicans across the state where the first contest of the 2012 election will be heard, said it was “unthinkable” she would remain on the sidelines.
“She’s the right person at this time,” he said. “If you look back at Churchill’s time, in 1938 Churchill was unelectable, in 1940 he was indispensable.
“I can’t see her sitting this one out,” he said. “The stakes are too high. It goes back to 1940. Can you see Churchill sitting it out? It’s unthinkable. Can you see George Washington in 1776 sitting it out? Unthinkable. He wanted to be back on his farm but they said we need you to be president of the republic.”
Mr Singleton, 56, tall and urbane, is a man of considerable mystery. He represents the national Organize4Palin group and has been ubiquitous in Republicans circles building up a network for the former Alaska governor, whose presidential intentions have kept Americans guessing for months.
Although he was standing about 20 yards away from Mrs Palin as he talked to me, Mr Singleton insisted he had never met or spoken to her.
This stance, which he has maintained assiduously since he began working on organising a Palin 2012 campaign in Iowa last November following a scouting trip four months earlier, is something that some senior Iowa Republicans do not take at face value.
It was Mr Singleton who telephoned Beth Hill, director of the Pella Opera House, last Thursday to ask her whether “The Undefeated”, a full-throated defence of Mrs Palin and her career, could be shown there. He then visited to look at the auditorium and put Stephen Bannon, the film’s director on the phone to speak to her.
“Peter came here and he found our town reflected Sarah Palin’s small town, conservative values,” she said. Mr Singleton was also instrumental in distributing the 332 tickets for the film as well as inviting 1,000 Iowans, including many key Republican leaders in the state, for a barbecue afterwards.
When I asked about his involvement, Mr Singleton said that he was an old friend of Mr Bannon and he had been just one of ” a bunch of people” who had helped set up the screening.
Pella, with a population of some 10,500, was founded by Dutch immigrants seeking freedom from religious persecution. As well as being famous for the window company that bears its name, the town boasts the oldest working windmill in the United States and an annual tulip festival. There is a town ordinance that stipulates that all buildings should have traditional Dutch facades.
Seymour Vander Schaff, 70, the theatre pipe organist, who performed before the film, said: “This is a conservative community. Swimming pools weren’t even open on Sunday for many, many years. If you run a lawnmower on a Sunday, you’ll probably have a church member come and ask you whether that is the thing to do.
“They break their damn fool neck trying to get the town to pay bills. They don’t want to have debt. It’s important to get bills paid as quickly as possible and save. The ethic is work hard and provide for your family. Those are values that have huge, long-range implications.
“We’ve lost a bit of them over the years and we need to get it back because we’re at a critical tipping point. With the debt, we’ve got a damn monster on our hands.”
Asked by a Fox News reporter before the film about whether she would run in 2012, Mrs Palin responded: “It’s a tough decision, it’s a big decision to decide whether to run for office or not. I’m still contemplating….I am still thinking about the decision and you know a lot goes into such a life-changing, relatively earth-shattering type of decision and still thinking about it.”
Earlier in the day, it had been reported that her eldest daughter Bristol had said Mrs Palin had made a decision about whether or not to run. Mrs Palin laughed about this and said: “I texted Bristol, I said, ‘Honey what did you say this morning on some news programme.
“She said, ‘Oh, mom, you’ve got to watch the interview. You know how they take everything out of context.’ I said, ‘You remember Bristol what we talk about on the fishing boat stays on the fishing boat’. I don’t know what she said.”
After the film, Mrs Palin and her husband Todd were mobbed by hundreds of supporters amid shots of “your record is golden”, when’s the sequel” and “we need you in the White House, Sarah”.
Asked about the movie as she signed autographs and posed for picture, she said that there was “vindication in it” but “beyond the vindication of my record personally and my team’s record it is a wonderful story about American values”.
It went some way, she added, to presenting the reality of her time as Alaska governor and her life. “There are so many false narratives out there about Todd about our kids, about my record, about my team that has worked so hard together that there is never going to be a way to absolutely set the record straight.”
Mr Singleton also spoke about narratives that were incorrect. “The narratives are: she’s not running; she’s about to endorse another candidate; it’s too late for her to get in; she’s going to run as a celebrity candidate; she’s got no support here; support is attenuated; she’s yesterday’s news,” he said. “All that is comically inaccurate.”
Mrs Palin, he said, would work to connect with Iowans. “Her support is latent. When she runs, whether she wins or loses will be dependent in part on how well she campaigns.
“It’s not like all she has to do is announce and then do a couple of rallies. It doesn’t work and way and it shouldn’t . She will need to work diligently and campaign. Her people are going to have to campaign in every town and every county. That’s what we’re doing.”
For her part, Mrs Palin told RealClearPolitics that she would commit “110 percent” to the Iowa caucus process if she does run for president.
Mr Singleton predicted Mrs Palin “will have hundreds of thousands of volunteers, 10 times more than any other candidate and I think that’s why she’ll win”.
There was still time, he insisted, for her to enter the race, currently being led by Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. “It’s not too late. Would i like her to be here campaigning? Oh sure. But am i worried that the window has closed? No.
“The race is wide open. She a lot of support. I can tell you that because I’ve got field data. I’m part of a team that’s out there all the time.”
Mr Singleton declined to say how many Palin volunteers there were in Iowa but other Republicans said that there were scores, perhaps more than 100, across the state. In time, he said, he expected that “lots of our volunteers now will fold into her campaign in some capacity”.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100094416/sarah-palins-man-in-iowa-says-she-will-run-for-the-white-house-in-2012/
UK: America's lurch to the right
The Independent
Matthew Norman: Is America's plight so terrible that it would lurch this far?
Bewildering lack of knowledge, blind terror of others, paranoid hatred of Barack Obama... herein lies her appeal to the frothing far right
Lovers of sledghammer irony, stand by for a doozy. Patience is required, while the odds are both fairly long and mortifyingly short, depending on the closeness of one's acquaintance with sanity. For all that, there is a quantifiable chance – about one in 20 on Betfair – that we will awake on 7 November 2012 to the news that Michele Bachmann is to be the 45th President of the United States.
If so – here's that irony – the person to thank for the election of a sensationally ignorant, anti-gay rights zealot will be not Rush Limbaugh or Rupert Murdoch. It will be that venerable grand dame of out-and-proud homosexuality, that paragon of cultured liberalism and intellectual hauteur, Gore Vidal. It was while reading a novel of his that the Minnesota congresswoman, then a liberal and erstwhile Jimmy Carter campaign volunteer, swapped sides.
"I was reading this snotty novel called Burr," she confided, "and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person" – no sarcasm detectable – "who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, 'You know what? This mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend ... At that point I put the book down. I looked out of the window, and I laughed. And I said, 'You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don't think I'm a Democrat'."
This week, some 30 years after that epiphany, she formally declared her candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination. Everyone expected a borderline barking mom of five, narcissist Tea Party MILF to have a crack. Just not, until recently, this one. There is still a small chance that Sarah Palin will also run. Watching Bachmann soak up all the publicity might stir her into action. You cannot discount the motivational power of Vidal's dictum that every time a friend succeeds, a little piece of me dies.
Yet Palin's unfavourable ratings with Republicans, let alone independents, are so horrendous that even in her protective bubble of zany self-absorption, she must see that any campaign would be a kamikaze one. Bachmann, on the other hand, has swiftly soared into a share of the polling lead with Mitt Romney. The sleeper in this campaign is a good ol' boy Texas Governor with a hotline to the Lord and a passion for executing prisoners – and it's been much too long since one of those occupied the Oval Office – by the name of Rick Perry. If he enters the fray, everything will change. For now, this race is shaping into the usual primary battle between the establishment front-runner (Romney) and, in Bachmann, the telegenic insurgent.
This in mind, three questions pose themselves. Could she seize the White House? Can she even win the GOP nomination? And just how thick or crazy, or both, is Michele Bachmann? In tribute to the late Eric Morley, we will take them in reverse order. While accurately gauging her idiocy-derangement ratio is hard in the absence of a psychiatric report, Bachmann's mouth is a reliable launch pad for astounding foolishness. To cheer us all up – if you can't have a giggle at the thought of the codes falling into such hands, when can you? – here are some highlights.
Wittily replicating the Vidalian impertinence that reshaped her political allegiance, she mocked the Founding Fathers in January by lauding them for "working tirelessly until slavery was no more in the US". Those would be the FFs who in 1776, a mere 89 years before abolition, agreed that an African-American legally constituted three fifths of a human being, and enshrined slavery in the Constitution?
According to Bachmann, meanwhile, the greatest threat the US faces is nothing so footling as the deficit or long-term mass unemployment (let alone the global warming she inevitably regards as "a hoax"), but gay marriage.
Passing over her defence of carbon dioxide, which she says cannot harm humans because it (like arsenic and uranium) occurs naturally, let's end the resumé with this peach. "It was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another Democratic president," she said in reference to her erstwhile idol Mr Carter. "I'm not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it's an interesting coincidence."
In the above lies her appeal to the frothing far right ... bewildering lack of knowledge; blind terror of otherness; and – the latter's kissing cousin – paranoid hatred of Barack Obama. Add to that her Palinic gift for viscerally resonating with her base and its prejudices, the facility to raise fortunes, undeniable can-do charm and good humour, and a talent for spouting drivel with sublime confidence then blaming the lamestream media for accurately reporting it ... and this is one formidable candidate. With her native state of Iowa the first to vote, her campaign should get off to a flier. With momentum in an unusually volatile political climate, Bachmann, who slaughtered all-comers in her one televised debate so far, certainly could defeat Romney.
The presidency is another matter. Is it conceivable that the love child of Mrs Robinson and Glenn Beck – the sub-McCarthyite minx who uses the Commie code word "unAmerican" of her president; the Creationist whose career is guided at every turn by divine visions; the wingnut's wingnut who claims her government is colluding with the Chinese to abolish the dollar – could unseat the incumbent?
At this point, convention demands the disclaimer that stranger political things have happened. But unless I slept through Lembit Opik's appointment as High Chancellor of a federated Europe, or Eric Pickles shaving 0.02 seconds off Usain Bolt's 100m world record, they haven't. However wretched the US economy, however stubbornly unemployment hovers close to 10 per cent, however self-destructive America's mood as it rages against the dying of the imperial light, Michele Bachmann is surely a lurch along the politico-comic interface too far.
Common sense insists that Mr Vidal will never come closer to deciding the presidency than any influence he exerted over his cousin Al Gore. Then again, what possible role has common sense played in her vertiginous rise so far? All we know for sure is that her name's Michele Bachmann, that she's running for president, and that watching her do so will be as much fun as anyone has a right to expect within the law.
Like Matthew Norman on The Independent on Facebook for updates
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-is-americas-plight-so-terrible-that-it-would-lurch-this-far-2304019.html
Matthew Norman: Is America's plight so terrible that it would lurch this far?
Bewildering lack of knowledge, blind terror of others, paranoid hatred of Barack Obama... herein lies her appeal to the frothing far right
Lovers of sledghammer irony, stand by for a doozy. Patience is required, while the odds are both fairly long and mortifyingly short, depending on the closeness of one's acquaintance with sanity. For all that, there is a quantifiable chance – about one in 20 on Betfair – that we will awake on 7 November 2012 to the news that Michele Bachmann is to be the 45th President of the United States.
If so – here's that irony – the person to thank for the election of a sensationally ignorant, anti-gay rights zealot will be not Rush Limbaugh or Rupert Murdoch. It will be that venerable grand dame of out-and-proud homosexuality, that paragon of cultured liberalism and intellectual hauteur, Gore Vidal. It was while reading a novel of his that the Minnesota congresswoman, then a liberal and erstwhile Jimmy Carter campaign volunteer, swapped sides.
"I was reading this snotty novel called Burr," she confided, "and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person" – no sarcasm detectable – "who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, 'You know what? This mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend ... At that point I put the book down. I looked out of the window, and I laughed. And I said, 'You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don't think I'm a Democrat'."
This week, some 30 years after that epiphany, she formally declared her candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination. Everyone expected a borderline barking mom of five, narcissist Tea Party MILF to have a crack. Just not, until recently, this one. There is still a small chance that Sarah Palin will also run. Watching Bachmann soak up all the publicity might stir her into action. You cannot discount the motivational power of Vidal's dictum that every time a friend succeeds, a little piece of me dies.
Yet Palin's unfavourable ratings with Republicans, let alone independents, are so horrendous that even in her protective bubble of zany self-absorption, she must see that any campaign would be a kamikaze one. Bachmann, on the other hand, has swiftly soared into a share of the polling lead with Mitt Romney. The sleeper in this campaign is a good ol' boy Texas Governor with a hotline to the Lord and a passion for executing prisoners – and it's been much too long since one of those occupied the Oval Office – by the name of Rick Perry. If he enters the fray, everything will change. For now, this race is shaping into the usual primary battle between the establishment front-runner (Romney) and, in Bachmann, the telegenic insurgent.
This in mind, three questions pose themselves. Could she seize the White House? Can she even win the GOP nomination? And just how thick or crazy, or both, is Michele Bachmann? In tribute to the late Eric Morley, we will take them in reverse order. While accurately gauging her idiocy-derangement ratio is hard in the absence of a psychiatric report, Bachmann's mouth is a reliable launch pad for astounding foolishness. To cheer us all up – if you can't have a giggle at the thought of the codes falling into such hands, when can you? – here are some highlights.
Wittily replicating the Vidalian impertinence that reshaped her political allegiance, she mocked the Founding Fathers in January by lauding them for "working tirelessly until slavery was no more in the US". Those would be the FFs who in 1776, a mere 89 years before abolition, agreed that an African-American legally constituted three fifths of a human being, and enshrined slavery in the Constitution?
According to Bachmann, meanwhile, the greatest threat the US faces is nothing so footling as the deficit or long-term mass unemployment (let alone the global warming she inevitably regards as "a hoax"), but gay marriage.
Passing over her defence of carbon dioxide, which she says cannot harm humans because it (like arsenic and uranium) occurs naturally, let's end the resumé with this peach. "It was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another Democratic president," she said in reference to her erstwhile idol Mr Carter. "I'm not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it's an interesting coincidence."
In the above lies her appeal to the frothing far right ... bewildering lack of knowledge; blind terror of otherness; and – the latter's kissing cousin – paranoid hatred of Barack Obama. Add to that her Palinic gift for viscerally resonating with her base and its prejudices, the facility to raise fortunes, undeniable can-do charm and good humour, and a talent for spouting drivel with sublime confidence then blaming the lamestream media for accurately reporting it ... and this is one formidable candidate. With her native state of Iowa the first to vote, her campaign should get off to a flier. With momentum in an unusually volatile political climate, Bachmann, who slaughtered all-comers in her one televised debate so far, certainly could defeat Romney.
The presidency is another matter. Is it conceivable that the love child of Mrs Robinson and Glenn Beck – the sub-McCarthyite minx who uses the Commie code word "unAmerican" of her president; the Creationist whose career is guided at every turn by divine visions; the wingnut's wingnut who claims her government is colluding with the Chinese to abolish the dollar – could unseat the incumbent?
At this point, convention demands the disclaimer that stranger political things have happened. But unless I slept through Lembit Opik's appointment as High Chancellor of a federated Europe, or Eric Pickles shaving 0.02 seconds off Usain Bolt's 100m world record, they haven't. However wretched the US economy, however stubbornly unemployment hovers close to 10 per cent, however self-destructive America's mood as it rages against the dying of the imperial light, Michele Bachmann is surely a lurch along the politico-comic interface too far.
Common sense insists that Mr Vidal will never come closer to deciding the presidency than any influence he exerted over his cousin Al Gore. Then again, what possible role has common sense played in her vertiginous rise so far? All we know for sure is that her name's Michele Bachmann, that she's running for president, and that watching her do so will be as much fun as anyone has a right to expect within the law.
Like Matthew Norman on The Independent on Facebook for updates
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-is-americas-plight-so-terrible-that-it-would-lurch-this-far-2304019.html
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Russia's Pravda TV network dedicated to making fun of America
Slate Magazine
Pravda Will Set You Free
Russia's answer to Fox News and MSNBC.
By David Weigel
Alyona Minkovski is on a rant. The rants are essential parts of The Alyona Show," the series she's hosted on Russia Today—RT, if you please—since 2009. They can be about anything, but they are usually about the rest of the media. This particular rant is about the New York Times and the Washington Post, "two major newspapers who won award after award for their hard-hitting journalism," and who, that day, were crowdsourcing an investigation of Sarah Palin's email archives from her time as Alaska's governor. This wins them a spot on Minkovski's regular feature, "Tool Time."
"Why do they need help covering a nonstory?" Minkovski asks. "Sarah Palin quit her job, sold out for fame and fortune, and has spent the last two years making a living by criticizing others. Who cares about her e-mails? Why does the media continue to force coverage of Sarah Palin on us?"
She rolls a clip, a Daily Show-esque rundown of cable news anchors frothing over the Palin trove, making themselves look like fools. As she talks, stage right, one of RT's other hosts, Adam Kokesh, finishes taping his show and walks through the studio, catching up with reporters. He's just finished talking to viewers about the health risks of sitting all day at a desk, arsenic levels in FDA-approved chicken, and the goings-on at the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group. He has stripped down quickly to jeans and a tank top get-up that reveals his biceps and tattoos. Stage left, the liberal radio host Thom Hartmann, primly dressed and radiating calm, is putting together notes for his own show, which will consist largely of an interview with exited White House economist Jared Bernstein.
read the rest of the article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2297783/
Pravda Will Set You Free
Russia's answer to Fox News and MSNBC.
By David Weigel
Alyona Minkovski is on a rant. The rants are essential parts of The Alyona Show," the series she's hosted on Russia Today—RT, if you please—since 2009. They can be about anything, but they are usually about the rest of the media. This particular rant is about the New York Times and the Washington Post, "two major newspapers who won award after award for their hard-hitting journalism," and who, that day, were crowdsourcing an investigation of Sarah Palin's email archives from her time as Alaska's governor. This wins them a spot on Minkovski's regular feature, "Tool Time."
"Why do they need help covering a nonstory?" Minkovski asks. "Sarah Palin quit her job, sold out for fame and fortune, and has spent the last two years making a living by criticizing others. Who cares about her e-mails? Why does the media continue to force coverage of Sarah Palin on us?"
She rolls a clip, a Daily Show-esque rundown of cable news anchors frothing over the Palin trove, making themselves look like fools. As she talks, stage right, one of RT's other hosts, Adam Kokesh, finishes taping his show and walks through the studio, catching up with reporters. He's just finished talking to viewers about the health risks of sitting all day at a desk, arsenic levels in FDA-approved chicken, and the goings-on at the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group. He has stripped down quickly to jeans and a tank top get-up that reveals his biceps and tattoos. Stage left, the liberal radio host Thom Hartmann, primly dressed and radiating calm, is putting together notes for his own show, which will consist largely of an interview with exited White House economist Jared Bernstein.
read the rest of the article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2297783/
Monday, June 27, 2011
Real American History vs. Tea Party chest thumping
Newsweek
The Founding Fathers, Unzipped
The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility.
He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.
Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins.
All of which would surely mean that, notwithstanding his passion for minimal government, the Sage of Monticello would have no chance at all beside True Believers like Michele Bachmann. But Jefferson’s rationalist deism is not the idle makeover of liberal wishful thinking. It is incontrovertible historical fact, as is his absolute determination never to admit religion into any institutions of the public realm.
So the philosopher-president whose aversion to overbearing government makes him a Tea Party patriarch was also a man who thought the Immaculate Conception a fable. But then real history is like that—full of knotty contradictions, its cast list of heroes, especially American heroes, majestic in their complicated imperfections.
Take another of the Founders routinely canonized in the current fairy-tale version of American origins that passes muster for history by those who don’t actually read very much of it: Alexander Hamilton. Outed by the Andrew Breitbart of his day, James Thomson Callender, for having had an “amorous connection” with the married Maria Reynolds, Hamilton responded by making an unapologetic preemptive confession—insisting that since on the truly serious issue of whether he had profited from the management of public finances he was innocent, the rest was nobody’s business but his own. Callender retorted that Hamilton had owned up to the sexual impropriety as a cover for the more serious financial one.
True history is the enemy of reverence. We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation instead of the product of contention and cobbled-together compromise that it actually was. Even the collective noun “Founding -Fathers” planes smooth the unreconciled divisiveness of their bitter and acrimonious disputes. History is a book of chastening wisdom to which we ought to be looking to deepen our understanding of the legitimate nature of American government—including its revenue-raising power, an issue that deeply captivated the antagonized minds of that first generation. But unfortunately, there is little evidence of citizens engaging in close, critical reading of The Federalist Papers, of the debates surrounding constitutional ratification, or of the dispute that pitted Hamilton and James Madison against Patrick Henry over what was at stake in Congress’s authority to make laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the…Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.”
Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.
Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck’s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.
With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.
As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.
Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, debuts as a NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST contributor in this issue.
Books: The Historical Founders
Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America by Jack Rakove.
Compulsive and compulsory reading on the Revolution and forging of the Constitution.
Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & the Making of America by Benjamin L. Carp.
A wise and illuminating study of the original tea party.
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier.
The definitive book, and a thrilling read, on the writing of the Declaration.
The Federalist Papers. The priceless document of two mighty intellects, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, united in common cause of creating an enduring American government.
Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.
Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck’s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.
With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.
As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.
Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, debuts as a NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST contributor in this issue.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/the-founding-fathers-were-flawed.html
The Founding Fathers, Unzipped
The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility.
He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.
Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins.
All of which would surely mean that, notwithstanding his passion for minimal government, the Sage of Monticello would have no chance at all beside True Believers like Michele Bachmann. But Jefferson’s rationalist deism is not the idle makeover of liberal wishful thinking. It is incontrovertible historical fact, as is his absolute determination never to admit religion into any institutions of the public realm.
So the philosopher-president whose aversion to overbearing government makes him a Tea Party patriarch was also a man who thought the Immaculate Conception a fable. But then real history is like that—full of knotty contradictions, its cast list of heroes, especially American heroes, majestic in their complicated imperfections.
Take another of the Founders routinely canonized in the current fairy-tale version of American origins that passes muster for history by those who don’t actually read very much of it: Alexander Hamilton. Outed by the Andrew Breitbart of his day, James Thomson Callender, for having had an “amorous connection” with the married Maria Reynolds, Hamilton responded by making an unapologetic preemptive confession—insisting that since on the truly serious issue of whether he had profited from the management of public finances he was innocent, the rest was nobody’s business but his own. Callender retorted that Hamilton had owned up to the sexual impropriety as a cover for the more serious financial one.
True history is the enemy of reverence. We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation instead of the product of contention and cobbled-together compromise that it actually was. Even the collective noun “Founding -Fathers” planes smooth the unreconciled divisiveness of their bitter and acrimonious disputes. History is a book of chastening wisdom to which we ought to be looking to deepen our understanding of the legitimate nature of American government—including its revenue-raising power, an issue that deeply captivated the antagonized minds of that first generation. But unfortunately, there is little evidence of citizens engaging in close, critical reading of The Federalist Papers, of the debates surrounding constitutional ratification, or of the dispute that pitted Hamilton and James Madison against Patrick Henry over what was at stake in Congress’s authority to make laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the…Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.”
Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.
Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck’s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.
With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.
As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.
Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, debuts as a NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST contributor in this issue.
Books: The Historical Founders
Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America by Jack Rakove.
Compulsive and compulsory reading on the Revolution and forging of the Constitution.
Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & the Making of America by Benjamin L. Carp.
A wise and illuminating study of the original tea party.
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier.
The definitive book, and a thrilling read, on the writing of the Declaration.
The Federalist Papers. The priceless document of two mighty intellects, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, united in common cause of creating an enduring American government.
Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.
Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck’s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.
With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.
As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.
Schama, a professor of history at Columbia University, debuts as a NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST contributor in this issue.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/the-founding-fathers-were-flawed.html
UK: The other Palin film
The Guardian
Nick Broomfield film casts critical eye on Sarah Palin
'Critical' film to compete with authorised Palin documentary
By Ben Child
He's tackled Kurt Cobain, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Heidi Fleiss. Now British documentary-maker Nick Broomfield has turned his attention to Sarah Palin, darling of the American right and potential candidate for a US presidential run next year.
Broomfield's as-yet-untitled film reportedly offers a critical examination of the former US Republican vice presidential candidate via interviews with her parents, friends and ex-colleagues from his subject's time as governor of Alaska. It is due to be screened in Los Angeles next week for potential buyers, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
A trailer for the film features interviews with former Alaska legislative director John Bitney and former state senate president Lyda Green, both of whom describe an "unengaged" Palin who made of a habit of texting on her mobile during important meetings and legislative sessions.
"I never felt that Sarah was ever connected to the business that was going on in the Capitol," says Green, a Republican who retired from politics two years ago. "It was always, I thought, a rather cursory attendance when she was there; lack of interest, and she'd generally have her two Blackberries and was texting most of the time."
The influential US independent film producer Cassian Elwes last week tweeted: "Just saw nick broomfield's film on sarah palin. Wow. Its going to change the presidential race."
Broomfield's film arrives on the scene just as another, very different Palin documentary is due to receive its world premiere. The Undefeated has been put together by Stephen Bannon with the full support of the US politician. It reportedly presents her as a Joan of Arc-like figure, beset by vicious leftwing enemies seeking to thwart her attempts to revive Reagan's conservative legacy.
The Undefeated debuts tomorrow at the historic Pella Opera House in Iowa, with Palin herself in attendance. It features interviews from Palin supporters, both residents of Alaska and conservative bloggers such as Andrew Breitbart. Palin herself does not appear on screen, but reportedly arranged access to some of the interviewees. Iowa is the site of the first US presidential primary, and is seen as an important indicator of election success for candidates. The Undefeated's premiere implies an attempt to build a groundswell of support for a Palin presidential run.
Broomfield is known for working with minimal crew, often in a "gonzo" reporting style. His Palin film is the film-maker's first documentary feature since 2006's His Big White Self, about the South African far-right leader Eugene Terre'Blanche, which was screened on More4. The film-maker's two most recent features, 2006's Ghosts and 2007's Battle for Haditha, adopted a docudrama approach, using untrained actors to play themselves in dramatic roles.
Broomfield's films have attracted controversy in the past. An interview with Courtney Love, ex-partner of the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, for the documentary Kurt and Courtney, was so damning that Love successfully campaigned for the movie to be removed from the lineup for the 1998 Sundance film festival. A version was eventually screened in cinemas without any of Nirvana's music, after Love refused to allow it to be used.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/27/nick-broomfield-film-sarah-palin
Nick Broomfield film casts critical eye on Sarah Palin
'Critical' film to compete with authorised Palin documentary
By Ben Child
He's tackled Kurt Cobain, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Heidi Fleiss. Now British documentary-maker Nick Broomfield has turned his attention to Sarah Palin, darling of the American right and potential candidate for a US presidential run next year.
Broomfield's as-yet-untitled film reportedly offers a critical examination of the former US Republican vice presidential candidate via interviews with her parents, friends and ex-colleagues from his subject's time as governor of Alaska. It is due to be screened in Los Angeles next week for potential buyers, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
A trailer for the film features interviews with former Alaska legislative director John Bitney and former state senate president Lyda Green, both of whom describe an "unengaged" Palin who made of a habit of texting on her mobile during important meetings and legislative sessions.
"I never felt that Sarah was ever connected to the business that was going on in the Capitol," says Green, a Republican who retired from politics two years ago. "It was always, I thought, a rather cursory attendance when she was there; lack of interest, and she'd generally have her two Blackberries and was texting most of the time."
The influential US independent film producer Cassian Elwes last week tweeted: "Just saw nick broomfield's film on sarah palin. Wow. Its going to change the presidential race."
Broomfield's film arrives on the scene just as another, very different Palin documentary is due to receive its world premiere. The Undefeated has been put together by Stephen Bannon with the full support of the US politician. It reportedly presents her as a Joan of Arc-like figure, beset by vicious leftwing enemies seeking to thwart her attempts to revive Reagan's conservative legacy.
The Undefeated debuts tomorrow at the historic Pella Opera House in Iowa, with Palin herself in attendance. It features interviews from Palin supporters, both residents of Alaska and conservative bloggers such as Andrew Breitbart. Palin herself does not appear on screen, but reportedly arranged access to some of the interviewees. Iowa is the site of the first US presidential primary, and is seen as an important indicator of election success for candidates. The Undefeated's premiere implies an attempt to build a groundswell of support for a Palin presidential run.
Broomfield is known for working with minimal crew, often in a "gonzo" reporting style. His Palin film is the film-maker's first documentary feature since 2006's His Big White Self, about the South African far-right leader Eugene Terre'Blanche, which was screened on More4. The film-maker's two most recent features, 2006's Ghosts and 2007's Battle for Haditha, adopted a docudrama approach, using untrained actors to play themselves in dramatic roles.
Broomfield's films have attracted controversy in the past. An interview with Courtney Love, ex-partner of the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, for the documentary Kurt and Courtney, was so damning that Love successfully campaigned for the movie to be removed from the lineup for the 1998 Sundance film festival. A version was eventually screened in cinemas without any of Nirvana's music, after Love refused to allow it to be used.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/27/nick-broomfield-film-sarah-palin
Sunday, June 26, 2011
UK: Bachman closes in on Romney in Iowa poll
PJ: Bachmann is often compared to Sarah Palin because of their Tea Party and Christian conservative credentials. Earlier in the year Bachmann was referred to as "Palin-lite", Palin's mini-me, or the poor man's Palin but Bachmann is quickly carving out a niche for herself and is now considered the intelligent savvy version of the Palin model. In addition, Bachmann, whilst holding extreme right wing views as well as being considered outright crazy by those outside the GOP, has at least shown her toughness as she courts the media by appearing on all news shows and Sunday talk shows exhibiting the thick skin needed in political life. This is all while Palin hides from all but Palin friendly Fox News whilst she throws bombastic tweets and FB rants from the insulated safety of her bunker in Alaska.
The Daily Mail
Forget about Sarah Palin: Now Michele Bachmann is running down Mitt Romney in Iowa
Michele Bachmann officially rolls out her Iowa campaign on Monday and she is a already giving Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney a headache in the polls.
A new Iowa poll shows the Mr Romney and tea party darling Mrs Bachmann are almost level in the state's likely GOP caucus-goers.
The poll conducted for The Des Moines Register shows Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, with support from 23 per cent in Iowa.
And Bachmann, the Minnesota representative is closing in with 22 per cent support.
Romney was the No. 2 finisher in the caucuses in his bid for the 2008 GOP nomination. Bachmann is a three-term congresswoman and newer face in the 2012 White House mix.
The results are based on telephone interviews with 400 likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers from June 19 to 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 per centage points.
Romney has said he plans to run a scaled-down Iowa campaign, compared to the all-out, $10-million effort he waged for the 2008 caucuses.
Tim Pawlenty has been the most aggressive about campaigning in Iowa, having lined up top Iowa and national consultants, been a frequent visitor to the state and ran the 2012 campaign's first Republican candidate television advertisements last week.
However, only 6 per cent of Iowa Republicans expected to attend the 2012 caucuses prefer the former Minnesota governor as their choice, according to the poll.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose campaign has struggled since widespread staff departures this month, has support from 7 per cent, the same as Texas Representative Ron Paul.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has 4 per cent, followed by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has said he will not campaign in Iowa, with 2 per cent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008262/Michele-Bachmann-giving-Mitt-Romney-run-money-Iowa.html
The Daily Mail
Forget about Sarah Palin: Now Michele Bachmann is running down Mitt Romney in Iowa
Michele Bachmann officially rolls out her Iowa campaign on Monday and she is a already giving Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney a headache in the polls.
A new Iowa poll shows the Mr Romney and tea party darling Mrs Bachmann are almost level in the state's likely GOP caucus-goers.
The poll conducted for The Des Moines Register shows Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, with support from 23 per cent in Iowa.
And Bachmann, the Minnesota representative is closing in with 22 per cent support.
Romney was the No. 2 finisher in the caucuses in his bid for the 2008 GOP nomination. Bachmann is a three-term congresswoman and newer face in the 2012 White House mix.
The results are based on telephone interviews with 400 likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers from June 19 to 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 per centage points.
Romney has said he plans to run a scaled-down Iowa campaign, compared to the all-out, $10-million effort he waged for the 2008 caucuses.
Tim Pawlenty has been the most aggressive about campaigning in Iowa, having lined up top Iowa and national consultants, been a frequent visitor to the state and ran the 2012 campaign's first Republican candidate television advertisements last week.
However, only 6 per cent of Iowa Republicans expected to attend the 2012 caucuses prefer the former Minnesota governor as their choice, according to the poll.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose campaign has struggled since widespread staff departures this month, has support from 7 per cent, the same as Texas Representative Ron Paul.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has 4 per cent, followed by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has said he will not campaign in Iowa, with 2 per cent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008262/Michele-Bachmann-giving-Mitt-Romney-run-money-Iowa.html
Saturday, June 25, 2011
UK: Learning to let Palin go
The Guardian
Sarah Palin's bus stop
The national tour to teach Americans their history has been cut short. Can we hope that Sarah Palin has learned her lesson?
By Sadhbh Walshe
It's been a difficult couple of weeks for Sarah Palin. The "is she, isn't she?" running for president storyline, which has secured her lavish attention from the mainstream media she ostensibly loathes, lost its lustre the night she failed to show up for the New Hampshire primary debate. And her thunder was stolen by actual candidates who actually declared that they are actually running. This combined with the disappointing stash of emails, which were less interesting for what the revealed (that governing a small state – at least, Palin-style – is about as riveting as organising a garden fete), than what they were short on (substance, policy ideas and yes, OK, scandal). It was enough to send the media running for shelter – or into the arms of more promising replacements like Michele Bachmann.
And so, on Wednesday, we get the news that Palin is quitting her bus tour half way through, as she did her governorship, and returning to Alaska to enjoy the summer. As with many Palin developments, this latest one defies logic and remains shrouded in confusion. Later the same day, Palin took to Twitter to have a good old laugh at the gullible media for believing the bus tour has been abandoned, insisting she's just back in Alaska to do some jury duty. And while the "is she, is she not quitting?" is not quite as engaging as the "is she, is she not running?" question, it's all we are left with for the moment.
The bottom line for now is that all the Americans waiting patiently to be "educated and energised" by Palin's promised history lessons on our nation's founding principles will just have to wait. As it happens, this might not be such a bad thing. Sarah Palin's enthusiasm for history does not match her knowledge any more than her enthusiasm to educate her fellow Americans matches her enthusiasm to educate herself. This reality was painfully played out in the now infamous Paul Revere saga, where Palin claimed Revere's famous ride was intended to warn the British. She later clarified that what she meant was that Revere "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms". Most experts have averred that while this is not completely inaccurate, it is a highly unusual interpretation.
In Palin's defence, history is a tricky business and certainly open to many interpretations. It tends to be written by the winners, women are often written out of it, but even with those caveats in place, there are some inalienable facts that can't be rendered untrue by modifying a Wikipedia entry. For example, the founding fathers and the founding documents did not intend, as Palin claimed, "that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the ten commandments". We also cannot say for certain, as Palin did, that the founding fathers endorsed the "under God" part of the pledge of allegiance, because they were long dead by the time it was written and even longer dead by the time it was amended to include the controversial phrase. We are not at war with Iran, North Korea is not our ally and Africa is not now, nor ever likely to be, a country.
All of the above claims and misstatements were made by the as yet undeclared possible presidential candidate, who still maintains favourable poll ratings and is still thought to be qualified for the top job by 60% of Republican voters.
Sarah Palin may have failed in her mission to educate Americans, even before her history bus tour was prematurely suspended. There is one big lesson to be learned, however, from all we have seen and heard since the former governor of Alaska invaded our unsuspecting consciousnesses in 2008. Entitled as she is to her private fantasy of becoming president, the time has come for a reality check. Being the leader of the so-called free world is a very serious and demanding job that carries with it the burden of responsibility for the well being of hundreds of millions of people. It is a position for which only a handful of people can hope to be qualified and for which a smaller number still are capable of successfully executing.
Despite her many talents, Palin is not one of these. Let's hope that while she's enjoying the Alaskan summer, she learns to accept that reality. And let's hope that we, who continue to indulge her, can learn to let her go.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/24/sarah-palin-bus-tour-alaska
Sarah Palin's bus stop
The national tour to teach Americans their history has been cut short. Can we hope that Sarah Palin has learned her lesson?
By Sadhbh Walshe
It's been a difficult couple of weeks for Sarah Palin. The "is she, isn't she?" running for president storyline, which has secured her lavish attention from the mainstream media she ostensibly loathes, lost its lustre the night she failed to show up for the New Hampshire primary debate. And her thunder was stolen by actual candidates who actually declared that they are actually running. This combined with the disappointing stash of emails, which were less interesting for what the revealed (that governing a small state – at least, Palin-style – is about as riveting as organising a garden fete), than what they were short on (substance, policy ideas and yes, OK, scandal). It was enough to send the media running for shelter – or into the arms of more promising replacements like Michele Bachmann.
And so, on Wednesday, we get the news that Palin is quitting her bus tour half way through, as she did her governorship, and returning to Alaska to enjoy the summer. As with many Palin developments, this latest one defies logic and remains shrouded in confusion. Later the same day, Palin took to Twitter to have a good old laugh at the gullible media for believing the bus tour has been abandoned, insisting she's just back in Alaska to do some jury duty. And while the "is she, is she not quitting?" is not quite as engaging as the "is she, is she not running?" question, it's all we are left with for the moment.
The bottom line for now is that all the Americans waiting patiently to be "educated and energised" by Palin's promised history lessons on our nation's founding principles will just have to wait. As it happens, this might not be such a bad thing. Sarah Palin's enthusiasm for history does not match her knowledge any more than her enthusiasm to educate her fellow Americans matches her enthusiasm to educate herself. This reality was painfully played out in the now infamous Paul Revere saga, where Palin claimed Revere's famous ride was intended to warn the British. She later clarified that what she meant was that Revere "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms". Most experts have averred that while this is not completely inaccurate, it is a highly unusual interpretation.
In Palin's defence, history is a tricky business and certainly open to many interpretations. It tends to be written by the winners, women are often written out of it, but even with those caveats in place, there are some inalienable facts that can't be rendered untrue by modifying a Wikipedia entry. For example, the founding fathers and the founding documents did not intend, as Palin claimed, "that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the ten commandments". We also cannot say for certain, as Palin did, that the founding fathers endorsed the "under God" part of the pledge of allegiance, because they were long dead by the time it was written and even longer dead by the time it was amended to include the controversial phrase. We are not at war with Iran, North Korea is not our ally and Africa is not now, nor ever likely to be, a country.
All of the above claims and misstatements were made by the as yet undeclared possible presidential candidate, who still maintains favourable poll ratings and is still thought to be qualified for the top job by 60% of Republican voters.
Sarah Palin may have failed in her mission to educate Americans, even before her history bus tour was prematurely suspended. There is one big lesson to be learned, however, from all we have seen and heard since the former governor of Alaska invaded our unsuspecting consciousnesses in 2008. Entitled as she is to her private fantasy of becoming president, the time has come for a reality check. Being the leader of the so-called free world is a very serious and demanding job that carries with it the burden of responsibility for the well being of hundreds of millions of people. It is a position for which only a handful of people can hope to be qualified and for which a smaller number still are capable of successfully executing.
Despite her many talents, Palin is not one of these. Let's hope that while she's enjoying the Alaskan summer, she learns to accept that reality. And let's hope that we, who continue to indulge her, can learn to let her go.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/24/sarah-palin-bus-tour-alaska
UK: Congress rebukes Obama's NATO committment on Libya
The Guardian
Barack Obama rebuked for Libya action by US House of Representatives
In a primarily symbolic vote, Republican-led House rejects resolution authorising Libya mission – but fails in bid to cut funds
By Ewen MacAskill and Nick Hopkins
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives delivered a rare rebuke to Barack Obama over his involvement in the Libyan war on Friday by rejecting a resolution to authorise the US mission.
It is an embarrassment for the president to have a vote go against him in time of conflict and reflects the disenchantment in the US over yet another war. The vote is primarily symbolic but members of Congress sympathetic to Obama and the US role in Libya said the danger was that it could leave the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, with the impression that support for the war is collapsing.
The House voted 295 to 123 against the resolution to authorise the war. About 70 of the president's Democratic party joined the Republicans to vote it down.
The vote was held to highlight a constitutional debate between the White House and Congress over presidents engaging in wars without congressional approval. It is the first time since during the Bosnian conflict in 1999 that either the House or the Senate has voted against a military operation. The Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to mirror the House vote.
The House ignored pleas by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, on Thursday against voting it down. Obama argues that he does not need congressional authorisation because the Libya mission is not a full-blown conflict.
House speaker John Boehner said: "I support the removal of the Libyan regime. I support the president's authority as commander-in-chief, but when the president chooses to challenge the powers of the Congress, I, as speaker of the House, will defend the constitutional authority of the legislature."
Republican congressman Tom Rooney, who sits on the armed services committee, said: "The last thing that we want as Americans is for some president, whether it's this president or some future president, to be able to pick fights around the world without any debate from another branch of government."
Rooney had sponsored a separate bill aiming to cut off funds to the Libya campaign, which would have barred drone attacks and air strikes but allowed the US to continue actions in intelligence gathering, refuelling and reconnaissance. The effort to cut off money was defeated by 238 votes to 180.
Republican leaders had backed the measure, but did not pressure other Republicans in the House to support it.
In a separate development, the Guardian has learned that Nato forces are confident they are successfully tracking Gaddafi as he moves from hideout to hideout in Tripoli.
The coalition is abiding by the UN mandate, which does not permit the military to target the Libyan leader directly, and commanders are hoping he will be removed by a revolt from within his circle of closest associates.
There is also a privately held wish in London that Gaddafi might be caught up in a legitimate bombing raid on a command and control cell as he flits from one safe haven to another. A senior British source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Gaddafi's movements were being monitored closely, and that the military had been able to track him "racing from one place to another" over recent weeks.
Nato has an array of surveillance equipment at its disposal: as well as a Nimrod plane and drones, HMS Liverpool, which is stationed off the Libyan coast, has listening systems which should enable the military to keep watch on the Libyan leader and his entourage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/barack-obama-libya-us-house-of-representatives
Barack Obama rebuked for Libya action by US House of Representatives
In a primarily symbolic vote, Republican-led House rejects resolution authorising Libya mission – but fails in bid to cut funds
By Ewen MacAskill and Nick Hopkins
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives delivered a rare rebuke to Barack Obama over his involvement in the Libyan war on Friday by rejecting a resolution to authorise the US mission.
It is an embarrassment for the president to have a vote go against him in time of conflict and reflects the disenchantment in the US over yet another war. The vote is primarily symbolic but members of Congress sympathetic to Obama and the US role in Libya said the danger was that it could leave the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, with the impression that support for the war is collapsing.
The House voted 295 to 123 against the resolution to authorise the war. About 70 of the president's Democratic party joined the Republicans to vote it down.
The vote was held to highlight a constitutional debate between the White House and Congress over presidents engaging in wars without congressional approval. It is the first time since during the Bosnian conflict in 1999 that either the House or the Senate has voted against a military operation. The Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to mirror the House vote.
The House ignored pleas by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, on Thursday against voting it down. Obama argues that he does not need congressional authorisation because the Libya mission is not a full-blown conflict.
House speaker John Boehner said: "I support the removal of the Libyan regime. I support the president's authority as commander-in-chief, but when the president chooses to challenge the powers of the Congress, I, as speaker of the House, will defend the constitutional authority of the legislature."
Republican congressman Tom Rooney, who sits on the armed services committee, said: "The last thing that we want as Americans is for some president, whether it's this president or some future president, to be able to pick fights around the world without any debate from another branch of government."
Rooney had sponsored a separate bill aiming to cut off funds to the Libya campaign, which would have barred drone attacks and air strikes but allowed the US to continue actions in intelligence gathering, refuelling and reconnaissance. The effort to cut off money was defeated by 238 votes to 180.
Republican leaders had backed the measure, but did not pressure other Republicans in the House to support it.
In a separate development, the Guardian has learned that Nato forces are confident they are successfully tracking Gaddafi as he moves from hideout to hideout in Tripoli.
The coalition is abiding by the UN mandate, which does not permit the military to target the Libyan leader directly, and commanders are hoping he will be removed by a revolt from within his circle of closest associates.
There is also a privately held wish in London that Gaddafi might be caught up in a legitimate bombing raid on a command and control cell as he flits from one safe haven to another. A senior British source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Gaddafi's movements were being monitored closely, and that the military had been able to track him "racing from one place to another" over recent weeks.
Nato has an array of surveillance equipment at its disposal: as well as a Nimrod plane and drones, HMS Liverpool, which is stationed off the Libyan coast, has listening systems which should enable the military to keep watch on the Libyan leader and his entourage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/barack-obama-libya-us-house-of-representatives
UK: Getting to know Jon Huntsman
The Independent
Could Jon Huntsman be the answer to the Republican Party's prayers?
David Usborne spends some quality time with the man who may prove the greatest threat to Obama
For those of us crammed into the sixth floor of an anonymous office tower in downtown Orlando it is like witnessing the rushed birth of a corporation.
The beaming CEO arrives to cut a ribbon with cardboard scissors and to give a pep talk to eager workers he has never met before. The place will soon be a hub of mad activity but today rows of doors reveal offices without furniture, and no one has business cards yet.
Quick off the mark, however, have been the branding people. Posters are everywhere sporting a snazzy "H" logo in red and black, as if advertising a new men's scent or a department store.
It stands for Huntsman, first name Jon, whom everyone has come to see. And although business has been a big part of this Utah native's life, what he's launching here is different: he is running to be president of the United States of America.
Mr Huntsman, 51, with is matinee-idol looks and picture-perfect family – he and his wife, Mary Kaye, have seven children, the last two adopted from China and India – announced before the Statue of Liberty on Tuesday that he was crashing the party to seek the Republican nomination for president.
His quest to become the chosen one to take on President Barack Obama in 2012 has the political parlours of America in a tizzy. No one is yet able to guess whether he might catch fire and snatch the front-runner's position from Mitt Romney – a fellow Mormon and distant cousin – or fizzle out in the first furlong.
That it will be tricky hoeing has not escaped him. He has chosen to compete in a year when, in the primary process at least, the conservative wing of the party will be more influential than ever. This is problematic for a man who favours civil unions for gays, who believes global warming is man-made and who even this week has voiced his respect for President Obama, for whom until 53 days ago he was ambassador in China.
For all his acumen, his first days on the trail have been marked by mild chaos. Here, he arrives one hour late for the ribbon cutting. At Lady Liberty, aides handed out press passes with Jon spelled as John. And someone else who is not a fan has claimed ownership of jonhuntsman.com and posted on the site a letter the candidate wrote praising Mr Obama in 2009 on his dispatch to Beijing, fringed with valentine hearts.
"It's going to be a hard-fought battle, I can tell you that," he warns when finally he grasps a microphone, his wife and five of his children and one son-in-law at his side. "We know it's going to be tough, and it's going to be bruising, and there are going to be some tough days."
Mr Huntsman, however, has an electric smile and even here there is no mistaking the ease with which he shakes hands and talks to staff and would-be supporters. If the FPH – feet per hour – a candidate covers working a crowd is a measure of skilful campaigning, he looks like a champion. He covers barely 20ft in a quarter of an hour.
His focus at this event is on his staff as much as on voters, however. And he offers some guiding principles he says he wants them to hold close. The first is what every candidate will say this year. "To all those who will be roaming these halls I want you just keep in mind jobs and the economy. I don't want you ever to forget what is driving this campaign. This is about getting the greatest nation that there ever was back on its feet again." But the smiling Mormon also reiterates something else he wants as a key theme of his campaign that some think will be his Achilles heel. It's about niceness.
"Civility means something," he offers to applause. "I don't believe that you have to run down another human being to run for president of the United States." This, he goes on, is about, "civility, respect and that sense of decency and humanity that made this great country. A lot of people would say that we are a great country because we are good country. We are a good country and we have a good heart."
Even in the room not everyone is convinced the civility pledge is wise, even if he is able to live up to it.
"This nice-guy thing is going to have to go away real quick," whispers Ron McKinney, a big cheese in the investment banking community in Orlando and an influential power-broker among Florida Republicans.
"There is no such thing as civility in politics. Nice guys usually come in ... well, you finish the sentence."
But Mr Huntsman knows a thing or two about politics and getting votes. He won a second term as governor of Utah in 2008 with an astonishing 78 per cent of the vote, and by most measures he was deemed to have been a particularly effective steward of his state until he answered the call to go to China the next year.
Hailing from Mormon-majority Utah, of course, has both an upside and a downside. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offer both him (and Mr Romney) a potentially very deep pool of campaign donations. A recent Gallup poll suggested, however, that almost a quarter of American voters would pause before electing a Mormon as president.
For Mr Romney, another former Republican governor and successful tycoon (he used to run Massachusetts), the addition of Mr Huntsman to the field might be good news if it dilutes the Mormon factor for him on the stump. But it means he now has competition for those Mormon dollars that helped him build a credible campaign in 2008, even if the nomination was eventually won by Senator John McCain. Who, by the way, was Mr Romney's national finance chairman last time? Jon Huntsman Sr, this candidate's father.
The men are intertwined by blood and romance also. An early Mormon missionary, Parley Pratt, is Mr Huntsman's great-great-great-grandfather and Mr Romney's great-great-grandfather. Huntsman's maternal grandfather was best friends with Mr Romney's father. His uncle once dated Mr Romney's sister.
Both families also have traditions of money-making. Jon Huntsman Sr, a highly successful industrialist in Utah, is known on occasion to lend company jets to the leaders of the Church. His wealth was founded in part on his company inventing the "clam-shell" packing that Big Macs come in.
The styles of the men do not mesh in the same way. It may be generational. Over a decade younger, Mr Huntsman emphasises engaging young Republicans in his speech here today and, while he has no difficulty working the crowd and grasping hands, Romney can suffer from awkwardness on the trail.
The hullabaloo of the ribbon-cutting and staff-greeting completed, Mr Huntsman invites a small group of reporters into one of the side offices – chairs are quickly brought in – to detail how he expects to win this race even in the new Tea Party era. It will begin by his skipping the caucuses in Iowa, which open the process and which over the years have become especially difficult terrain for moderates.
Instead, the Huntsman campaign will focus all of its resources at the outset on three early primary states: New Hampshire, South Carolina and then Florida. (Putting his campaign HQ here is an acknowledgement of the pivotal role the Sunshine State has played in every recent presidential race.) "It will be a bit like running gubernatorial campaigns in three states simultaneously," Mr Huntsman suggests.
To an extent he is copying pages from Mr McCain's song book. Crucially, the primary races in New Hampshire and South Carolina are open to every voter and not just Republicans. If he can appeal to moderate Republicans, independents and even some Democrats who maybe disenchanted with Mr Obama, he could become a powerful contender, especially if the Tea Party vote is split by other rivals.
He meanwhile dismisses the suggestion that his emphasis on civility can never last and might hurt him. "You know, whenever I talk about this people clap and cheer. We talk about Afghanistan, we talk about balancing the economy, we talk about energy independence, we talk about a lot of things. But when we talk about civility, people respond positively everywhere where I go."
For now, Republican voters want to see more of Mr Huntsman before deciding if he is a viable runner. (He is barely registering in the polls.) "I like his temperament, he seems like a level-headed guy and I want to learn more about him," says Naeem Coleman, 31, an estate agent who has come here to the sixth floor to hear him speak.
It is Mary Kaye Huntsman who captures that sense of a candidacy just hatching as she introduces him to the room. "Meet the most undiscovered leader in America today, whom you are soon going to know so much more about," she declares.
From Ambassador to President – not such a well-trodden path
*Thomas Jefferson was ambassador to France between 1785 and 1789, supporting the revolutionaries when the French Revolution broke out towards the end of his term. On his return to the US he was immediately made Secretary of State and by 1801 he was in the White House.
*George H W Bush served as ambassador to the United Nations between 1971 and 1973, while Richard Nixon was president and the Vietnam War was on. He became director of the CIA and Ronald Reagan's vice-president. He was eventually elected president in 1989, but the charms of Bill Clinton beat him four years later.And the one that wasn't...
*Joe Kennedy, the fiercely ambitious father of JFK, right, was appointed ambassador to the UK in 1938. He caused an outcry by declaring democracy "finished" and fleeing to the countryside during the Blitz, while other ambassadors and the Royal Family remained in London. He was forced to resign from his post and the controversy thwarted his presidential ambitions.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/could-jon-huntsman-be-the-answer-to-the-republican-partys-prayers-2302568.html
Could Jon Huntsman be the answer to the Republican Party's prayers?
David Usborne spends some quality time with the man who may prove the greatest threat to Obama
For those of us crammed into the sixth floor of an anonymous office tower in downtown Orlando it is like witnessing the rushed birth of a corporation.
The beaming CEO arrives to cut a ribbon with cardboard scissors and to give a pep talk to eager workers he has never met before. The place will soon be a hub of mad activity but today rows of doors reveal offices without furniture, and no one has business cards yet.
Quick off the mark, however, have been the branding people. Posters are everywhere sporting a snazzy "H" logo in red and black, as if advertising a new men's scent or a department store.
It stands for Huntsman, first name Jon, whom everyone has come to see. And although business has been a big part of this Utah native's life, what he's launching here is different: he is running to be president of the United States of America.
Mr Huntsman, 51, with is matinee-idol looks and picture-perfect family – he and his wife, Mary Kaye, have seven children, the last two adopted from China and India – announced before the Statue of Liberty on Tuesday that he was crashing the party to seek the Republican nomination for president.
His quest to become the chosen one to take on President Barack Obama in 2012 has the political parlours of America in a tizzy. No one is yet able to guess whether he might catch fire and snatch the front-runner's position from Mitt Romney – a fellow Mormon and distant cousin – or fizzle out in the first furlong.
That it will be tricky hoeing has not escaped him. He has chosen to compete in a year when, in the primary process at least, the conservative wing of the party will be more influential than ever. This is problematic for a man who favours civil unions for gays, who believes global warming is man-made and who even this week has voiced his respect for President Obama, for whom until 53 days ago he was ambassador in China.
For all his acumen, his first days on the trail have been marked by mild chaos. Here, he arrives one hour late for the ribbon cutting. At Lady Liberty, aides handed out press passes with Jon spelled as John. And someone else who is not a fan has claimed ownership of jonhuntsman.com and posted on the site a letter the candidate wrote praising Mr Obama in 2009 on his dispatch to Beijing, fringed with valentine hearts.
"It's going to be a hard-fought battle, I can tell you that," he warns when finally he grasps a microphone, his wife and five of his children and one son-in-law at his side. "We know it's going to be tough, and it's going to be bruising, and there are going to be some tough days."
Mr Huntsman, however, has an electric smile and even here there is no mistaking the ease with which he shakes hands and talks to staff and would-be supporters. If the FPH – feet per hour – a candidate covers working a crowd is a measure of skilful campaigning, he looks like a champion. He covers barely 20ft in a quarter of an hour.
His focus at this event is on his staff as much as on voters, however. And he offers some guiding principles he says he wants them to hold close. The first is what every candidate will say this year. "To all those who will be roaming these halls I want you just keep in mind jobs and the economy. I don't want you ever to forget what is driving this campaign. This is about getting the greatest nation that there ever was back on its feet again." But the smiling Mormon also reiterates something else he wants as a key theme of his campaign that some think will be his Achilles heel. It's about niceness.
"Civility means something," he offers to applause. "I don't believe that you have to run down another human being to run for president of the United States." This, he goes on, is about, "civility, respect and that sense of decency and humanity that made this great country. A lot of people would say that we are a great country because we are good country. We are a good country and we have a good heart."
Even in the room not everyone is convinced the civility pledge is wise, even if he is able to live up to it.
"This nice-guy thing is going to have to go away real quick," whispers Ron McKinney, a big cheese in the investment banking community in Orlando and an influential power-broker among Florida Republicans.
"There is no such thing as civility in politics. Nice guys usually come in ... well, you finish the sentence."
But Mr Huntsman knows a thing or two about politics and getting votes. He won a second term as governor of Utah in 2008 with an astonishing 78 per cent of the vote, and by most measures he was deemed to have been a particularly effective steward of his state until he answered the call to go to China the next year.
Hailing from Mormon-majority Utah, of course, has both an upside and a downside. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offer both him (and Mr Romney) a potentially very deep pool of campaign donations. A recent Gallup poll suggested, however, that almost a quarter of American voters would pause before electing a Mormon as president.
For Mr Romney, another former Republican governor and successful tycoon (he used to run Massachusetts), the addition of Mr Huntsman to the field might be good news if it dilutes the Mormon factor for him on the stump. But it means he now has competition for those Mormon dollars that helped him build a credible campaign in 2008, even if the nomination was eventually won by Senator John McCain. Who, by the way, was Mr Romney's national finance chairman last time? Jon Huntsman Sr, this candidate's father.
The men are intertwined by blood and romance also. An early Mormon missionary, Parley Pratt, is Mr Huntsman's great-great-great-grandfather and Mr Romney's great-great-grandfather. Huntsman's maternal grandfather was best friends with Mr Romney's father. His uncle once dated Mr Romney's sister.
Both families also have traditions of money-making. Jon Huntsman Sr, a highly successful industrialist in Utah, is known on occasion to lend company jets to the leaders of the Church. His wealth was founded in part on his company inventing the "clam-shell" packing that Big Macs come in.
The styles of the men do not mesh in the same way. It may be generational. Over a decade younger, Mr Huntsman emphasises engaging young Republicans in his speech here today and, while he has no difficulty working the crowd and grasping hands, Romney can suffer from awkwardness on the trail.
The hullabaloo of the ribbon-cutting and staff-greeting completed, Mr Huntsman invites a small group of reporters into one of the side offices – chairs are quickly brought in – to detail how he expects to win this race even in the new Tea Party era. It will begin by his skipping the caucuses in Iowa, which open the process and which over the years have become especially difficult terrain for moderates.
Instead, the Huntsman campaign will focus all of its resources at the outset on three early primary states: New Hampshire, South Carolina and then Florida. (Putting his campaign HQ here is an acknowledgement of the pivotal role the Sunshine State has played in every recent presidential race.) "It will be a bit like running gubernatorial campaigns in three states simultaneously," Mr Huntsman suggests.
To an extent he is copying pages from Mr McCain's song book. Crucially, the primary races in New Hampshire and South Carolina are open to every voter and not just Republicans. If he can appeal to moderate Republicans, independents and even some Democrats who maybe disenchanted with Mr Obama, he could become a powerful contender, especially if the Tea Party vote is split by other rivals.
He meanwhile dismisses the suggestion that his emphasis on civility can never last and might hurt him. "You know, whenever I talk about this people clap and cheer. We talk about Afghanistan, we talk about balancing the economy, we talk about energy independence, we talk about a lot of things. But when we talk about civility, people respond positively everywhere where I go."
For now, Republican voters want to see more of Mr Huntsman before deciding if he is a viable runner. (He is barely registering in the polls.) "I like his temperament, he seems like a level-headed guy and I want to learn more about him," says Naeem Coleman, 31, an estate agent who has come here to the sixth floor to hear him speak.
It is Mary Kaye Huntsman who captures that sense of a candidacy just hatching as she introduces him to the room. "Meet the most undiscovered leader in America today, whom you are soon going to know so much more about," she declares.
From Ambassador to President – not such a well-trodden path
*Thomas Jefferson was ambassador to France between 1785 and 1789, supporting the revolutionaries when the French Revolution broke out towards the end of his term. On his return to the US he was immediately made Secretary of State and by 1801 he was in the White House.
*George H W Bush served as ambassador to the United Nations between 1971 and 1973, while Richard Nixon was president and the Vietnam War was on. He became director of the CIA and Ronald Reagan's vice-president. He was eventually elected president in 1989, but the charms of Bill Clinton beat him four years later.And the one that wasn't...
*Joe Kennedy, the fiercely ambitious father of JFK, right, was appointed ambassador to the UK in 1938. He caused an outcry by declaring democracy "finished" and fleeing to the countryside during the Blitz, while other ambassadors and the Royal Family remained in London. He was forced to resign from his post and the controversy thwarted his presidential ambitions.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/could-jon-huntsman-be-the-answer-to-the-republican-partys-prayers-2302568.html
Friday, June 24, 2011
UK: Consequences of an American debt default
The Economist
America's debt ceiling
The mother of all tail risks
A US technical default would convulse markets. Nothing else is certain
AMERICA’S debt is supposedly the world’s safest, backed by trustworthy courts and an unrivalled capacity to raise taxes and print money. Yet thanks to a quirk of law, talk of default is not confined to the European side of the Atlantic.
Unlike most countries America requires two legal steps to run a deficit: one to pass budget bills, the other to borrow the money. Congress sets a ceiling on how much the country may borrow. In the past it has always raised the ceiling before the Treasury ran out of cash, doing so on 16 occasions since 1993 alone. But it often attaches conditions, and this year Republicans who control the House of Representatives are insisting on particularly onerous terms. With the debt and the deficit at their highest in 60 years, they want to see at least $2 trillion in spending cuts over ten years and no tax increases.
If a deal cannot be reached before August 2nd the Treasury says it will be forced to default. It has not specified on what: it could choose to stop paying pensioners and soldiers before it stopped paying interest on its debt. But outright default cannot be entirely ruled out. What happens if the world’s most trustworthy borrower reneges on its debt?
The possibility has not gone unnoticed. Trading in credit-default swaps (CDSs) on Treasury securities has picked up and the price of protection against default, as measured by the CDS spread, has risen (see chart). One-year protection is now almost as expensive as five-year protection. This is more often seen in distressed markets where investors are pricing in an imminent default than with otherwise healthy borrowers with long-term problems.
The illiquidity of the CDS market means it can be prone to misinterpretation. The vast Treasury market itself—for Treasury bills, Treasury bonds and other government securities—remains largely free of anxiety. America’s biggest interest payments occur on the 15th of August, November, February and May. Priya Misra, head of US rates strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says anyone who thinks America might default for several weeks this summer should sell a bond with interest due on August 15th and buy one with interest due on November 15th, which would result in the price of the first bond falling relative to the second. But, she says, neither market pricing nor the chatter of clients shows such a trend.
There is a profound muddle about what a default would entail. Firms usually get a few weeks’ grace to make a payment. Sovereigns typically do not so default would probably be declared the day the Treasury missed a payment.
Some market participants argue such a default would be quickly “cured” and be therefore merely technical. Yet history suggests that even a technical default can be costly. America’s only known instance of outright default (other than refusing to repay debts in gold in 1933) occurred in 1979 when the Treasury failed to redeem $122m of Treasury bills on time. It blamed unprecedentedly high interest from small investors, a delay in raising the debt ceiling and a word-processing-equipment failure. Although it repaid the money and a penalty to boot, a later study by Terry Zivney, now of Ball State University, and Richard Marcus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found it caused a 60-basis-point interest-rate premium on some federal debt. Today that would cost $86 billion a year or 0.6% of GDP, a hefty penalty for something so avoidable.
A default now would attract more attention, affect more debtholders and reach more deeply into the financial system. More than half of Treasury debt is held abroad, principally by foreign central banks. Such investors would be unlikely to sell overnight since they have few ready alternatives. But they would be reluctant to hold as much in the future; some, like China, are already diversifying their reserves. After Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two giant mortgage-financing agencies, had to be rescued by the federal government in 2008, foreigners cut their holdings of these securities and have yet to raise them again even though the firms never defaulted.
Domestic banks would not have to classify their sizeable holdings of Treasuries as non-performing if they thought the default short-lived. But they would suffer nonetheless. Currently Treasuries represent roughly 30% of the collateral that financial institutions such as investment banks use to borrow in the $4 trillion repurchase (“repo”) market. They represent another 4-5% of the $1 trillion in collateral used in the derivatives market. A default could trigger demands by lenders like money-market funds for more or different collateral.
Matthew Zames of JPMorgan Chase, writing on behalf of the securities industry in April, gave warning that this could “lead to deleveraging and a sharp drop in lending”. Money-market funds themselves hold another $338 billion of Treasuries. In the event of a default at least one would probably “break the buck” (ie, fail to give the principal back to investors), threatening “a broader run on money funds”, Mr Zames said.
No one can be sure of any of this. Money-market funds, like banks, might argue their holdings are sound if the default is brief. A suspension of new sales of bonds could constrict supply of Treasuries, pushing yields down instead of up. On the other hand America responded to the crisis of 2008 by standing behind the obligations of banks, money-market funds, and Fannie and Freddie. It could hardly do the same for a crisis caused by an inability to stand behind its own debts.
Even if Congress were to tackle turmoil by quickly lifting the debt ceiling, the stain would linger. “In the past our assumption was interest would always be paid on time,” says Steven Hess of Moody’s, a ratings agency which has cautioned that even a brief default would cost America its coveted Aaa status. “If an actual payment were missed once, might that happen again? If you thought it could, that is clearly not compatible with Aaa.” Such warnings are having an effect. On June 19th Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ leader in the Senate, opened the way to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, even though his counterparts in the House demurred. They may not show it but Republicans, like Democrats, are scared of default, too.
http://www.economist.com/node/18866851
America's debt ceiling
The mother of all tail risks
A US technical default would convulse markets. Nothing else is certain
AMERICA’S debt is supposedly the world’s safest, backed by trustworthy courts and an unrivalled capacity to raise taxes and print money. Yet thanks to a quirk of law, talk of default is not confined to the European side of the Atlantic.
Unlike most countries America requires two legal steps to run a deficit: one to pass budget bills, the other to borrow the money. Congress sets a ceiling on how much the country may borrow. In the past it has always raised the ceiling before the Treasury ran out of cash, doing so on 16 occasions since 1993 alone. But it often attaches conditions, and this year Republicans who control the House of Representatives are insisting on particularly onerous terms. With the debt and the deficit at their highest in 60 years, they want to see at least $2 trillion in spending cuts over ten years and no tax increases.
If a deal cannot be reached before August 2nd the Treasury says it will be forced to default. It has not specified on what: it could choose to stop paying pensioners and soldiers before it stopped paying interest on its debt. But outright default cannot be entirely ruled out. What happens if the world’s most trustworthy borrower reneges on its debt?
The possibility has not gone unnoticed. Trading in credit-default swaps (CDSs) on Treasury securities has picked up and the price of protection against default, as measured by the CDS spread, has risen (see chart). One-year protection is now almost as expensive as five-year protection. This is more often seen in distressed markets where investors are pricing in an imminent default than with otherwise healthy borrowers with long-term problems.
The illiquidity of the CDS market means it can be prone to misinterpretation. The vast Treasury market itself—for Treasury bills, Treasury bonds and other government securities—remains largely free of anxiety. America’s biggest interest payments occur on the 15th of August, November, February and May. Priya Misra, head of US rates strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says anyone who thinks America might default for several weeks this summer should sell a bond with interest due on August 15th and buy one with interest due on November 15th, which would result in the price of the first bond falling relative to the second. But, she says, neither market pricing nor the chatter of clients shows such a trend.
There is a profound muddle about what a default would entail. Firms usually get a few weeks’ grace to make a payment. Sovereigns typically do not so default would probably be declared the day the Treasury missed a payment.
Some market participants argue such a default would be quickly “cured” and be therefore merely technical. Yet history suggests that even a technical default can be costly. America’s only known instance of outright default (other than refusing to repay debts in gold in 1933) occurred in 1979 when the Treasury failed to redeem $122m of Treasury bills on time. It blamed unprecedentedly high interest from small investors, a delay in raising the debt ceiling and a word-processing-equipment failure. Although it repaid the money and a penalty to boot, a later study by Terry Zivney, now of Ball State University, and Richard Marcus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found it caused a 60-basis-point interest-rate premium on some federal debt. Today that would cost $86 billion a year or 0.6% of GDP, a hefty penalty for something so avoidable.
A default now would attract more attention, affect more debtholders and reach more deeply into the financial system. More than half of Treasury debt is held abroad, principally by foreign central banks. Such investors would be unlikely to sell overnight since they have few ready alternatives. But they would be reluctant to hold as much in the future; some, like China, are already diversifying their reserves. After Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two giant mortgage-financing agencies, had to be rescued by the federal government in 2008, foreigners cut their holdings of these securities and have yet to raise them again even though the firms never defaulted.
Domestic banks would not have to classify their sizeable holdings of Treasuries as non-performing if they thought the default short-lived. But they would suffer nonetheless. Currently Treasuries represent roughly 30% of the collateral that financial institutions such as investment banks use to borrow in the $4 trillion repurchase (“repo”) market. They represent another 4-5% of the $1 trillion in collateral used in the derivatives market. A default could trigger demands by lenders like money-market funds for more or different collateral.
Matthew Zames of JPMorgan Chase, writing on behalf of the securities industry in April, gave warning that this could “lead to deleveraging and a sharp drop in lending”. Money-market funds themselves hold another $338 billion of Treasuries. In the event of a default at least one would probably “break the buck” (ie, fail to give the principal back to investors), threatening “a broader run on money funds”, Mr Zames said.
No one can be sure of any of this. Money-market funds, like banks, might argue their holdings are sound if the default is brief. A suspension of new sales of bonds could constrict supply of Treasuries, pushing yields down instead of up. On the other hand America responded to the crisis of 2008 by standing behind the obligations of banks, money-market funds, and Fannie and Freddie. It could hardly do the same for a crisis caused by an inability to stand behind its own debts.
Even if Congress were to tackle turmoil by quickly lifting the debt ceiling, the stain would linger. “In the past our assumption was interest would always be paid on time,” says Steven Hess of Moody’s, a ratings agency which has cautioned that even a brief default would cost America its coveted Aaa status. “If an actual payment were missed once, might that happen again? If you thought it could, that is clearly not compatible with Aaa.” Such warnings are having an effect. On June 19th Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ leader in the Senate, opened the way to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, even though his counterparts in the House demurred. They may not show it but Republicans, like Democrats, are scared of default, too.
http://www.economist.com/node/18866851
UK: A complicated peace in Afghanistan
The Economist
Banyan
Neither a picnic nor a Switzerland
The end of the surge in Afghanistan, and the beginning of a search for peace
FOREIGNERS have always struggled to exercise any sort of control over Afghanistan. And the war America and its allies embarked on there in 2001 has often seemed as endless and unwinnable as so many previous invasions. But the past few days have seen the American administration attempt to show that it can manage at least the narrative of the war. It wants to turn the story of a grim, inescapable quagmire into one of erratic but irreversible progress towards a resolution acceptable to all. It is a better story, but can it be a credible one?
Killing Osama bin Laden was a huge help. In a sense his death accomplished the primary mission that took America into Afghanistan. But he was killed in Pakistan and most of the 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan are not engaged in hunting down al-Qaeda remnants. They are there to stabilise Afghanistan. So when Barack Obama confirmed this week that America will begin drawing down its troops in July, he had to point to progress in Afghanistan itself as well as in killing leading terrorists.
His announcement fulfilled a promise made when he approved a “surge” of 30,000 additional troops in late 2009. Indeed, he said all the surge troops are to be back by September 2012. The plan is to leave the Afghan government responsible for its own security by 2014, through a beefed-up national army, supported by a much-diminished but still large foreign contingent.
Related items
* Lexington: Mars in the descendantJun 23rd 2011
Related topics
* Afghanistan war
* Government and politics
* War and conflict
* The Taliban
* United States
Nobody expects that Afghanistan will be wholly at peace by then, nor that the Taliban insurgency will have been routed. So for the troops to leave with dignity there needs to be some semblance of a peace process. This week, America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, confirmed that America has been engaged in “very preliminary” talks with the Taliban. That requires some embellishment of the Taliban’s image. That is tricky when they are the enemy. At America’s urging, a United Nations sanctions committee has agreed to distinguish between the Taliban—a domestic political force as well as an armed insurgency—and al-Qaeda, perpetrator of global terrorism.
The obstacles in the way of reaching an accommodation with the Taliban are manifold. There is the oft-repeated cliché that “the Americans have the watches, but the Taliban have the time.” Setting a timetable for withdrawal gives the Taliban reason to think that they can wait out the latest foreign power to try to bend Afghanistan to its will. And of course at the same time as pursuing “outreach”, America is doing its high-tech damnedest to kill as many Taliban leaders as it can. In what one Western diplomat calls the Taliban’s “madrassa, linear-thinking sort of way” this does not infuse talks with mutual trust.
Then there is the thorny question of which Taliban Mr Obama wants to reconcile. The insurgency is conventionally broken down into three main components: the “Quetta shura” of Mullah Omar, the leader of the former Taliban government, now holed up in Baluchistan in Pakistan; and two other forces, the Haqqani network and Hizb-e-Islami. But even this topology grossly oversimplifies. The Taliban, too diffuse even to be considered a “movement”, range from bloodthirsty bandits and drug-lords to pacific tribal elders, representing the conservative social mores of the Pushtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.
Ethnic kinship and a determination to see friends in power in Kabul make it unlikely that Pakistan will ever turn fully against the Taliban outfits it has nurtured. And, so long as it enjoys safe havens across the border, the insurgency will never be wholly defeated. But so long as the government in Kabul has the military and financial resources to survive—and America remains committed to ensuring that it will—some Taliban supporters will surely conclude that they have more to gain from an accommodation with it than from the resumption of full-scale civil war.
However, that accommodation is not straightforward. The settlement reached in Bonn in 2001 after the toppling of the Taliban was a “victors’ peace”, and needs changing. The president, Hamid Karzai, is a Pushtun. But his regime is widely seen, in the Pushtun-dominated south, as a corrupt interloper representing Persian-speaking Kabulis propped up by white foreigners. For their part, non-Pushtun northerners are hardly going to cheer a Taliban return. Last month Amrullah Saleh, a former spy chief who resigned last year in protest at the government’s conciliatory approach to Pakistan and the Taliban, mustered more than 10,000 Afghans to join a rally in Kabul against “deal-making”. Nobody is taking to the streets to demand that Mr Karzai welcome the Taliban back.
Hamstrung by Hamid
Mr Karzai himself is among the biggest obstacles that stand between America and a dignified withdrawal. That his supporters scandalously rigged the 2009 election which prolonged his rule was bad enough. But now, despite owing his office to the West’s intervention in 2001, he has become among the loudest critics of its role in Afghanistan. In a splenetic recent speech to a conference of young people in Kabul, he told them that foreigners had come to Afghanistan “to pursue their own goals”. “They use our country,” he complained, accusing them both of taking away “100 times more profit from the country than they give it,” and of behaving like a rich guest, who has “involved us in a picnic”.
Without naming Mr Karzai, the outgoing American ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, responded fiercely, saying in a speech that, hearing this sort of outburst, Americans “grow weary of our effort here”. They certainly do (see Lexington). But the risk for moderate Afghans is less that America cuts and runs, abandoning them to a bloody Taliban restoration, than that its criteria for what constitutes an acceptable settlement keep creeping lower. It has become a commonplace to acknowledge that a post-war Afghanistan will “not be Switzerland”. But below Switzerland lies a huge range of possible outcomes, most of them bleak.
http://www.economist.com/node/18866695
Banyan
Neither a picnic nor a Switzerland
The end of the surge in Afghanistan, and the beginning of a search for peace
FOREIGNERS have always struggled to exercise any sort of control over Afghanistan. And the war America and its allies embarked on there in 2001 has often seemed as endless and unwinnable as so many previous invasions. But the past few days have seen the American administration attempt to show that it can manage at least the narrative of the war. It wants to turn the story of a grim, inescapable quagmire into one of erratic but irreversible progress towards a resolution acceptable to all. It is a better story, but can it be a credible one?
Killing Osama bin Laden was a huge help. In a sense his death accomplished the primary mission that took America into Afghanistan. But he was killed in Pakistan and most of the 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan are not engaged in hunting down al-Qaeda remnants. They are there to stabilise Afghanistan. So when Barack Obama confirmed this week that America will begin drawing down its troops in July, he had to point to progress in Afghanistan itself as well as in killing leading terrorists.
His announcement fulfilled a promise made when he approved a “surge” of 30,000 additional troops in late 2009. Indeed, he said all the surge troops are to be back by September 2012. The plan is to leave the Afghan government responsible for its own security by 2014, through a beefed-up national army, supported by a much-diminished but still large foreign contingent.
Related items
* Lexington: Mars in the descendantJun 23rd 2011
Related topics
* Afghanistan war
* Government and politics
* War and conflict
* The Taliban
* United States
Nobody expects that Afghanistan will be wholly at peace by then, nor that the Taliban insurgency will have been routed. So for the troops to leave with dignity there needs to be some semblance of a peace process. This week, America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, confirmed that America has been engaged in “very preliminary” talks with the Taliban. That requires some embellishment of the Taliban’s image. That is tricky when they are the enemy. At America’s urging, a United Nations sanctions committee has agreed to distinguish between the Taliban—a domestic political force as well as an armed insurgency—and al-Qaeda, perpetrator of global terrorism.
The obstacles in the way of reaching an accommodation with the Taliban are manifold. There is the oft-repeated cliché that “the Americans have the watches, but the Taliban have the time.” Setting a timetable for withdrawal gives the Taliban reason to think that they can wait out the latest foreign power to try to bend Afghanistan to its will. And of course at the same time as pursuing “outreach”, America is doing its high-tech damnedest to kill as many Taliban leaders as it can. In what one Western diplomat calls the Taliban’s “madrassa, linear-thinking sort of way” this does not infuse talks with mutual trust.
Then there is the thorny question of which Taliban Mr Obama wants to reconcile. The insurgency is conventionally broken down into three main components: the “Quetta shura” of Mullah Omar, the leader of the former Taliban government, now holed up in Baluchistan in Pakistan; and two other forces, the Haqqani network and Hizb-e-Islami. But even this topology grossly oversimplifies. The Taliban, too diffuse even to be considered a “movement”, range from bloodthirsty bandits and drug-lords to pacific tribal elders, representing the conservative social mores of the Pushtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.
Ethnic kinship and a determination to see friends in power in Kabul make it unlikely that Pakistan will ever turn fully against the Taliban outfits it has nurtured. And, so long as it enjoys safe havens across the border, the insurgency will never be wholly defeated. But so long as the government in Kabul has the military and financial resources to survive—and America remains committed to ensuring that it will—some Taliban supporters will surely conclude that they have more to gain from an accommodation with it than from the resumption of full-scale civil war.
However, that accommodation is not straightforward. The settlement reached in Bonn in 2001 after the toppling of the Taliban was a “victors’ peace”, and needs changing. The president, Hamid Karzai, is a Pushtun. But his regime is widely seen, in the Pushtun-dominated south, as a corrupt interloper representing Persian-speaking Kabulis propped up by white foreigners. For their part, non-Pushtun northerners are hardly going to cheer a Taliban return. Last month Amrullah Saleh, a former spy chief who resigned last year in protest at the government’s conciliatory approach to Pakistan and the Taliban, mustered more than 10,000 Afghans to join a rally in Kabul against “deal-making”. Nobody is taking to the streets to demand that Mr Karzai welcome the Taliban back.
Hamstrung by Hamid
Mr Karzai himself is among the biggest obstacles that stand between America and a dignified withdrawal. That his supporters scandalously rigged the 2009 election which prolonged his rule was bad enough. But now, despite owing his office to the West’s intervention in 2001, he has become among the loudest critics of its role in Afghanistan. In a splenetic recent speech to a conference of young people in Kabul, he told them that foreigners had come to Afghanistan “to pursue their own goals”. “They use our country,” he complained, accusing them both of taking away “100 times more profit from the country than they give it,” and of behaving like a rich guest, who has “involved us in a picnic”.
Without naming Mr Karzai, the outgoing American ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, responded fiercely, saying in a speech that, hearing this sort of outburst, Americans “grow weary of our effort here”. They certainly do (see Lexington). But the risk for moderate Afghans is less that America cuts and runs, abandoning them to a bloody Taliban restoration, than that its criteria for what constitutes an acceptable settlement keep creeping lower. It has become a commonplace to acknowledge that a post-war Afghanistan will “not be Switzerland”. But below Switzerland lies a huge range of possible outcomes, most of them bleak.
http://www.economist.com/node/18866695
UK: The risk of Afghan withdrawl
The Economist
Barack Obama and Afghanistan
A gamble that may not pay off
The president is at risk of running down American forces in Afghanistan too fast
THE real question facing Barack Obama over Afghanistan is just what the United States is trying to achieve there. Plenty of Americans, weary of war and anxious about their own plight at home, think that the death of Osama bin Laden should have marked an end to the mission that took 100,000 troops to a distant and dismal part of the world. Afghanistan will cost America roughly $120 billion this year. Many Americans want this money to go towards creating jobs in Kansas rather than in Kabul.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.economist.com/node/18867057
Barack Obama and Afghanistan
A gamble that may not pay off
The president is at risk of running down American forces in Afghanistan too fast
THE real question facing Barack Obama over Afghanistan is just what the United States is trying to achieve there. Plenty of Americans, weary of war and anxious about their own plight at home, think that the death of Osama bin Laden should have marked an end to the mission that took 100,000 troops to a distant and dismal part of the world. Afghanistan will cost America roughly $120 billion this year. Many Americans want this money to go towards creating jobs in Kansas rather than in Kabul.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.economist.com/node/18867057
UK: Rick Perry could be the GOP's dream candidate
PJ: Governor Rick Perry once declared that Texas might secede from the union. He's a populist, gun-toting, pro-life, stimulus hating politician who paints himself as a fiscal conservative. He was very vocal about his disgust of Obama's stimulus funding even though he took the money to balance his state's budget (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/01/stimulus-hating-gov-rick-perry-used-stimulus-to-balance-texas-budget/21369/) and by doing so now claims victory in righting his state's fiscal imbalance (careful not to credit federal government help). Yep, he's got everything that the Tea Party is searching for including that all important dose of hypocrisy.
The Guardian
Beware Rick Perry, the Republican party's real deal
Texas governor Rick Perry can unite the warring factions of the Republican party – and prove a formidable foe for Obama
By Richard Adams
Rick Perry will enter the Republican presidential contest and he will win the party's nomination. A bold prediction? Not really, not when you consider the noises coming out of Texas and the ungainly sight of the other candidates.
When he does, Democrats will probably make the mistake of thinking that hanging a "George W Bush 2" label around the Texas governor's neck will sink him. Maybe it won't help Perry win the presidency in 2012 but it's hardly a bar to winning the Republican nomination.
The Wall Street Journal felt confident enough to blog that a "normally reliable Republican source reports that Mr Perry has surveyed the field and decided to get in the race later this summer". That's the latest in a chorus of winks, nods, nudges and arched eyebrows from the Lone Star state that Perry is indeed running – even if the official response is "He hasn't made up his mind."
This is significant for two reasons. One is that Perry will win the Republican nomination, barring a "live boy or dead girl" scenario. The other is that it spares the Republican party the long national nightmare of a Sarah Palin candidacy.
On the first point, none of the other candidates in the GOP race have the stature or experience of Perry. He has been governor of Texas since 2000, is an Air Force veteran, has what could be described as Warren Beatty good-looks, and ticks every box on the conservative Republican wishlist, all the way from abortion to something beginning with Z.
Having Texas as a political base gives him some huge advantages. One is the fundraising potential, gifting Perry a goldmine that the likes of Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann can't enter. The other is the cluster of political support that Perry has built up, giving him a deep pool of staff, backers and volunteers. And Texas boasts 149 delegates to the Republican convention, the most of any state other than California. (New Hampshire, in contrast, has just 20.)
Perry's record as governor of Texas might not delight Democrats but he's a hero in Republican circles for his rock-ribbed conservatism and gun-toting populism. That makes him the only candidate able to span the Tea Party and more mainstream Republican wings of the party, on both social and economic issues. And the private sector job creation that Texas can boast under Perry's leadership gives him an enviable record that his primary rivals (and Obama) will find difficult to rebut.
Added to all that is the fact that Perry has won three gubernatorial elections after bitterly contested Republican primaries in Texas. So he knows how to win an intra-party struggle in a big state – something that can't be said for the likes of Romney. His demolition of US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary was a case in point, a brilliant if bare-knuckle campaign.
Perry also has something that the other Republican candidates – with the exception of Palin – lack: an easy rapport with regular voters. Perry easily wins the "most like to have a beer with" test.
On top of all that, Perry will be the only credible Southern candidate in a set of Republican primaries where the rewards are heavily tilted towards the South. While all the attention is now on Iowa and New Hampshire, the real test comes in South Carolina, a bellwether of the solid Republican states. And it's hard to imagine Perry getting beaten there by a Romney or a Huntsman.
As for Palin, while she has played cat-and-mouse with the media, she has also said repeatedly that she won't run if there's a candidate she deems to be acceptable. Perry is likely to fit that bill. A Perry campaign probably means no Palin campaign – a thought that may subtract from the amusement of the nation but is a godsend for the Republican party.
Winning the Republican nomination is one thing, winning the general election is another entirely. From what I read and hear, Democrats and the Washington-based media seem to think that America isn't ready for another Texas governor as president so soon after George Bush. I wouldn't be so sure. For one thing, Perry has never been close to the Bush cadre – in the 2010 Texas primary George HW Bush and Dick Cheney endorsed Perry's opponent. For another, I doubt regular voters care that much.
Certainly, if the Obama campaign thinks that all it has to do to defeat Perry is label him as "Bush Lite" or similar, then it needs to have a Plan B ready if and when that fails to work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/jun/24/rick-perry-republican-nomination-2012
The Guardian
Beware Rick Perry, the Republican party's real deal
Texas governor Rick Perry can unite the warring factions of the Republican party – and prove a formidable foe for Obama
By Richard Adams
Rick Perry will enter the Republican presidential contest and he will win the party's nomination. A bold prediction? Not really, not when you consider the noises coming out of Texas and the ungainly sight of the other candidates.
When he does, Democrats will probably make the mistake of thinking that hanging a "George W Bush 2" label around the Texas governor's neck will sink him. Maybe it won't help Perry win the presidency in 2012 but it's hardly a bar to winning the Republican nomination.
The Wall Street Journal felt confident enough to blog that a "normally reliable Republican source reports that Mr Perry has surveyed the field and decided to get in the race later this summer". That's the latest in a chorus of winks, nods, nudges and arched eyebrows from the Lone Star state that Perry is indeed running – even if the official response is "He hasn't made up his mind."
This is significant for two reasons. One is that Perry will win the Republican nomination, barring a "live boy or dead girl" scenario. The other is that it spares the Republican party the long national nightmare of a Sarah Palin candidacy.
On the first point, none of the other candidates in the GOP race have the stature or experience of Perry. He has been governor of Texas since 2000, is an Air Force veteran, has what could be described as Warren Beatty good-looks, and ticks every box on the conservative Republican wishlist, all the way from abortion to something beginning with Z.
Having Texas as a political base gives him some huge advantages. One is the fundraising potential, gifting Perry a goldmine that the likes of Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann can't enter. The other is the cluster of political support that Perry has built up, giving him a deep pool of staff, backers and volunteers. And Texas boasts 149 delegates to the Republican convention, the most of any state other than California. (New Hampshire, in contrast, has just 20.)
Perry's record as governor of Texas might not delight Democrats but he's a hero in Republican circles for his rock-ribbed conservatism and gun-toting populism. That makes him the only candidate able to span the Tea Party and more mainstream Republican wings of the party, on both social and economic issues. And the private sector job creation that Texas can boast under Perry's leadership gives him an enviable record that his primary rivals (and Obama) will find difficult to rebut.
Added to all that is the fact that Perry has won three gubernatorial elections after bitterly contested Republican primaries in Texas. So he knows how to win an intra-party struggle in a big state – something that can't be said for the likes of Romney. His demolition of US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary was a case in point, a brilliant if bare-knuckle campaign.
Perry also has something that the other Republican candidates – with the exception of Palin – lack: an easy rapport with regular voters. Perry easily wins the "most like to have a beer with" test.
On top of all that, Perry will be the only credible Southern candidate in a set of Republican primaries where the rewards are heavily tilted towards the South. While all the attention is now on Iowa and New Hampshire, the real test comes in South Carolina, a bellwether of the solid Republican states. And it's hard to imagine Perry getting beaten there by a Romney or a Huntsman.
As for Palin, while she has played cat-and-mouse with the media, she has also said repeatedly that she won't run if there's a candidate she deems to be acceptable. Perry is likely to fit that bill. A Perry campaign probably means no Palin campaign – a thought that may subtract from the amusement of the nation but is a godsend for the Republican party.
Winning the Republican nomination is one thing, winning the general election is another entirely. From what I read and hear, Democrats and the Washington-based media seem to think that America isn't ready for another Texas governor as president so soon after George Bush. I wouldn't be so sure. For one thing, Perry has never been close to the Bush cadre – in the 2010 Texas primary George HW Bush and Dick Cheney endorsed Perry's opponent. For another, I doubt regular voters care that much.
Certainly, if the Obama campaign thinks that all it has to do to defeat Perry is label him as "Bush Lite" or similar, then it needs to have a Plan B ready if and when that fails to work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/jun/24/rick-perry-republican-nomination-2012
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Pakistan: Partners in counter terrorism
Associated Press of Pakistan
Pakistan, US have on-going engagement on counter-terrorism issues:
ISLAMABAD, June 23 (APP): Pakistan on Thursday said the issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism would be discussed in greater detail during the core group meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan and US, in Kabul early next week. Responding to a question regarding the statement made by President Obama on Thursday morning, the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson on Thursday said, “we have on-going engagement on issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism.” “We will have the opportunity to discuss these issues in greater detail when the core group of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US will meet in Kabul early next week”, the Spokesperson added.
http://ftpapp.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143114&Itemid=1
Pakistan, US have on-going engagement on counter-terrorism issues:
ISLAMABAD, June 23 (APP): Pakistan on Thursday said the issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism would be discussed in greater detail during the core group meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan and US, in Kabul early next week. Responding to a question regarding the statement made by President Obama on Thursday morning, the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson on Thursday said, “we have on-going engagement on issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism.” “We will have the opportunity to discuss these issues in greater detail when the core group of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US will meet in Kabul early next week”, the Spokesperson added.
http://ftpapp.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143114&Itemid=1
UK: Obama gets his presidency back
The Independent
Obama’s surge
By Anne Penketh
He’s back! President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last night could well mark the moment that he got his presidency back, and smooth his path towards a second term.
For weeks he has been dogged by a comment from an aide, reported in the New Yorker, that he was “leading from behind.” With the administration’s slow response to the Arab spring, and by stepping back from a lead role in the Libya bombings, it looked like caution was the hallmark of the Obama “doctrine”.
But last night Obama demonstrated a boldness that has been lacking in his foreign policy choices. He revisited his 2009 speech at West Point, when he first announced the Afghanistan “surge”, and reminded us that above all he is a pragmatist: “We must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute.”
So saying, he put the military in their place by deciding on a swifter withdrawal of the 30,000 “surge” troops than his generals had recommended. The Afghanistan commander, General David Petraeus, was overruled. But he will still have 70,000 American troops in place once the additional soldiers dispatched last year have returned home.
This is not about winning a war, but winning an election. By announcing the surge forces’ retreat before next summer’s fighting season, Obama will please those in his party who had been urging an early pull-out. He will have public opinion behind him, which will be welcome after the killing of Osama bin Laden only provided a temporary bounce in his approval ratings.
The thrust of his argument was this: “it is time to focus on nation building at home.” Obama knows that the economy holds the key to a second term. After spending $1 trillion on a foreign war since 9/11, it is time to use those dollars to help the American taxpayer.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/23/obamas-surge/
Obama’s surge
By Anne Penketh
He’s back! President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last night could well mark the moment that he got his presidency back, and smooth his path towards a second term.
For weeks he has been dogged by a comment from an aide, reported in the New Yorker, that he was “leading from behind.” With the administration’s slow response to the Arab spring, and by stepping back from a lead role in the Libya bombings, it looked like caution was the hallmark of the Obama “doctrine”.
But last night Obama demonstrated a boldness that has been lacking in his foreign policy choices. He revisited his 2009 speech at West Point, when he first announced the Afghanistan “surge”, and reminded us that above all he is a pragmatist: “We must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute.”
So saying, he put the military in their place by deciding on a swifter withdrawal of the 30,000 “surge” troops than his generals had recommended. The Afghanistan commander, General David Petraeus, was overruled. But he will still have 70,000 American troops in place once the additional soldiers dispatched last year have returned home.
This is not about winning a war, but winning an election. By announcing the surge forces’ retreat before next summer’s fighting season, Obama will please those in his party who had been urging an early pull-out. He will have public opinion behind him, which will be welcome after the killing of Osama bin Laden only provided a temporary bounce in his approval ratings.
The thrust of his argument was this: “it is time to focus on nation building at home.” Obama knows that the economy holds the key to a second term. After spending $1 trillion on a foreign war since 9/11, it is time to use those dollars to help the American taxpayer.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/23/obamas-surge/
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