Fareed Zakaria Plays to the Crowd

In his Newsweek essay entitled “Change We Can’t Believe in”, Fareed Zakaria casts a skeptical eye at Pakistan’s newfound seriousness in fighting militant Islam on the home front. He points to the Pakistani military and intelligence forces’ longstanding relationship with the Islamists as part of its geopolitical strategy that pitted it against India and a USSR-controlled Afghanistan. He gives kudos to a $15 billion Biden-Lugar aid bill that encourages the development of civil society, believing that it will encourage “more cooperation with its neighbors”. But he ends the essay with the following:

“Perhaps…the strategy of the past six decades has suddenly changed. But I recall what Warren Buffett once called the four most dangerous words in investing: ‘This time it's different.’”

Zakaria appears to take a different tack in his guest appearance on The Daily show. Maybe it’s just me, but he appears to give the impression that the Pakistanis have finally seen the light on the dangers of radical Islam within its own borders. Moreover, he at best only hints at the Pakistani military and intelligence forces’ longstanding relationship with the Islamists as part of its geopolitical strategy that pitted it against India and a USSR-controlled Afghanistan, instead focusing on an army’s reluctance to fight at all. Meanwhile, he contrasts the Obama administration’s emphasis on the dangers in Pakistan favorably against the Bush administration’s singular focus on Afghanistan.

The Newsweek essay adopts what is at best a skeptical tone, emphasizing the historical weight of what to Western eyes comes across as a sinister, symbiotic relationship. The U.S. effort that is given the most play is a bipartisan bill. The Daily Show by contrast emphasizes the turnaround, and highlights the Obama administration at the expense of the Bush administration.

Molding the message to the audience is nothing new; you only have to remember Jesus’ parables to understand that. Still, when you do that at the expense of leaving a very different impression of the long-term prospects of the recent turnaround in Pakistan, you are no longer being an intellectual, or even an advocate; you have become an entertainer.

Italian Cruise Ship Repels Pirates with Gunfire

That’s what the NYT headline to this Reuters wire says. Now it quotes Andrew Mwangura of the Mombasa-based East African Sea Farers Assistance Programme, whoever and whatever that is:

”Having weapons on a passenger or merchant ship is dangerous. They should have used other means to shake off the pirates, like a loud acoustic device," said Andrew Mwangura of the Mombasa-based East African Sea Farers Assistance Programme.”

“Only military ships should have weapons on board.”

Perhaps. But wasn’t that so...Italian? And before you have time to second-guess the captain’s decision, NYT goes on to note:

It is not the first time that pirates have tried to seize a cruise ship, but they have always been fended off.

It works. So who needs GeorgeStephen Seagal?

The real question, of course, is: What the hell are these cruise ships and private yachts doing here? This isn’t a Disneyland theme park.

Woulda, Coulda, Shouldn’a? No.1 Foreign Policy Priority in a Gore Administration

From Reuters: Lieberman praises pastor repudiated by McCain:

…
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who frequently campaigns with McCain, said pastor John Hagee's support for Israel outweighed the remarks that led McCain to reject his endorsement.
…
Hagee has written that events in the Middle East point to an imminent apocalypse Christians should welcome, and in several books envisions a climactic battle in Israel leading to the second coming of Jesus.
…

Asahi Reports on NYT Reports on Iranian Missile Launch: Shouldn’t Meta-Reporting Be Done More Cheaply?

This morning’s Asahi reports on a July 10 New York Times online report on the two near-identical photos of the Iranian missile launch; one from AFP showing four missiles in the air, the other from AP showing three in the air and another still on the ground.

Q: Why did it take a full day and-a-half to condense the fairly trivial NYT report—the Washington Post didn’t bother to run a mismatch story—when CNN had already reported later in the day (nearly a full day before Asahi posted its version on its website) a more significant story on the actual substance of the two-day missile launches*?

A: Asahi has a very slow connection on the Internets, and does not subscribe to cable TV.

I take note of this because it reminded me that an American asked me the other day why so much of the stateside news in the Japanese dailies is copied from the U.S. media and I didn’t have a good answer at the time. I see that the U.S. media also cites Japanese media reports from time to time. I also recognize that local reports are useful sources, not only for their content, but also as a social and political force in their own right. Meta-reporting has its own value. But Japanese media have, at least collectively, more resources on the ground in New York and Washington. My guesses:

1) Japanese reporters don’t have the foreign language skills to do interviews.
2) Their overseas assignments are too short to develop the personal contacts that enable them to generate
3) They miss the domestic kasha club system, where the political institutions, bureaucracies, business associations and other institutionalized news sources systematically feed their constituent media representatives. The English-language media, now much of their content conveniently online, are their virtual substitutes.

What do you think?

You know what? I think that the Japanese media can profitably move much of their overseas reporting home side, especially in OECD countries, and put some of the savings—my guesstimate is that a foreign correspondent takes at least two to three times as much corporate resources, financial and otherwise, to maintain and service than a domestic one—to good use by beefing up the original content generation activities in their foreign correspondence bureaus.

Incidentally, as of this morning Tokyo Time, Matt Drudge has a news flash item that I’ve copied below, after the footnote. If true, there’ll an even bigger NYT story later in the day that should have a downward impact on the oil market. Isn’t that the kind of information that online readers would appreciate?

* The CNN does mention the doctored photo, but it’s an appropriately minor point in the story.

** One of the reasons media people read Matt Drudge must be to get these leads so that they can avoid being scooped other media outlets. Then again, some of these leaks may be deliberate, to create a buzz so that their own reports attract more eyeballs and hopefully generate more revenue.

ADD. ...forgot to paste the following...

IRAN MISSILE TEST BLUFF: OLD ROCKETS, BOGUS VIDEO
Fri Jul 11 2008 15:18:02 ET

Many of Iran's claims related to missile tests during "Great Prophet III" war games -- appear to be smoke and mirrors!

The missiles tested DID NOT not have 2,000-kilometer range, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Saturday.

Iran DID NOT launch a Shahab-3 missile, able to reach Israel.

It was an older missile that was out of production, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE.

And a video showing what appeared to be many missiles being fired -- is actually one missile, filmed from different angles!

NYT's Bill Broad is planning to quote military insiders.

Developing...

More on Latest Revelations over North Korea-Syria Nuclear Ties

Siegfried Knittel sends me this post on the blog China Matters and wants to know what I make of the speculation “that Kim Jung Il revealed information about the plant as a confidence-building measure to advance North Korea’s agenda with US negotiators, while hanging the Syrians out to dry. Maybe those incriminating pictures inside the purported Syrian reactor were snaps by a North Korean technician that Dear Leader passed on to Chris Hill.” The blogger probably does not realize it, but it would echo the revelations that Great Leader made to Prime Minister Koizumi regarding the abductees. So it's an interesting hypothesis, and it’s pretty clear that Israel/US had access to official or semi-official records, not “just a few furtive snapshots taken by a daring spy”.

However, the access most likely consisted of clandestine operations by the Israelis, the Mossad, and not through a Kim Jong Il leak. Think, Occam’s Razor. Besides, letting Chris Hill know that you've given assistance to a clandestine nuclear program of a third country (and a “state sponsor of terrorism” at that) while continuing to deny it publicly would be a strange way to go about getting a deal accepted in the US.

In support of his guess, the blogger assumes that John Bolton is holding back on his criticism of the State Department people because he knows what’s going on. To quote:

Specifically, I am not seeing the signs of orgasmic release I would expect from John Bolton if this revelation was a bombshell that promised to destroy the Six Party Agreement and shatter the reputations of his detested adversaries inside the State Department.But this not only assumes that he supports the deal, but that he somehow had access to the information, the Kim Jong Il leak, that had not been available when he resigned from the Bush administration.

Pardon the blogger’s French, but there's the following quote from the Washington Post:

On the conservative side, John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been critical of U.S. policy on North Korea, said: "I think this should drive the stake through the six-party talks. It shows why the North Koreans can't be trusted, why you need intrusive verification of anything they say."

Sounds to me like one happy guy, IYKWIAS. I'm sure he said much more, but there are so many other newsworthy sources closer to the action, such as angry Republican Senators and Congressmen, that there’s only so much ink to spare for someone who is at present no more than a talking head. And now to the real point of this post:

If you don’t find something in the media, that doesn’t mean that the media hasn’t carried it. But if you do find it in the media, that doesn’t mean that it has happened. And if the media didn’t carried it, that still doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.

Part of the reason why I blog, actually.

ADD: Incidentally, I think that the main reason why Israel didn't go to the IAEA with the information is because it didn't want to face questions about its own nuclear weapons program.

Japan Consistently Bucks US on the Palestinian Question. Will It Distance Itself Elsewhere in the Middle East and Beyond?

The Jewish Virtual Library provides a list of US vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel between 1972-2006. According to this list, the US has always been alone in casting vetoes*. Although from time to time, other UNSC members have abstained, Japan, in all but one case, voted for the resolutions. Japan has been an elected UNSC member in 71- 72, 75-76, 81-82, 87-88, 92-93, 97-98 and 2005-06. In1983-present, the years for which the list gives the names of the abstaining members for each resolution, the US did receive some support of sorts between 1984-88 and 2001-2006, when an assortment of mainly Western European nations** would abstain when the US exercised its veto. However, Japan abstained only once, in 2006, on a draft resolution calling for Israel to halt its Gaza operations, where it joined three other abstaining UNSC members***.

Much of this Japanese accommodation of the Arab position on the Palestinian Question is surely attributable to its heavy reliance on Middle East oil. But there is also our history, or lack of it to consider. Japan’s involvement in the politics of the Middle East is quite recent, since its imperialist ambitions never extended to the Middle East. In fact, as the enemy of Russia and later the West European empires, Japan appears to have enjoyed a favorable, if somewhat vaguely informed, reputation with the Moslem nations in the Middle East. True, imperial Japan was one of the four powers in the 1920 San Remo Conference that, among other things, gave the UK the Mandate for Palestine and reaffirmed the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which stated that the UK government viewed “with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and that it would “use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object”. In any case, post-WW II Japan was obviously not in a position to take a stand in the 1947 UN partition of Palestine. Shielded by the Yoshida Doctrine and the Peace Constitution, Japan has been at most a passive actor in the geopolitics of the region.

So far, the Japanese stand on the Palestinian Question has had little by way of consequences. Domestically, the issue rarely registers on the political scene. The US has never made an issue of it as far as I am aware, and neither has Israel, with which Japan also has a sound, if somewhat distant, relationship. More importantly, this particular US-Japan rift has never spread to other issues in the Middle East. Most recently, Japan has docilely followed the US lead there in putting boots and boats in Iraq and Afghanistan and, far more painful with regard to national security, forfeited most of its exploration rights to the Azadegan oil fields in Iran in keeping with the wishes of the US.

We have already seen the DPJ intransigence on the Japanese presence on the Iraqi and terrorism fronts. DPJ leaders have also been taking a hard line on the US military presence on Japanese territory. This maneuvering is in part the consequence of the political game being played between the DPJ and the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition. As such, it faces dissent within the DPJ itself. But even mere political posturing can interact with the underlying situation to create a momentum of its own, and national security should be no exception. I suspect that the broader debate will become a feature of the Japanese political scene sooner rather than later. In a thoroughgoing review of Japan’s national security, the Middle East would surely come right after the near abroad.

---

The dissonance within the DPJ (and to a lesser extent the LDP as well, if you listen carefully) with regard to national security is but one of the many fault lines within the two major parties (and between the LDP and New Kōmeitō. Other contentious examples are: the history issues, imperial succession, gasoline taxes (and road-related expenditures) and human rights protection legislation. These and other contradictions, to resuscitate stock Marxist terminology, have led many observers and some participants themselves to expect/hope for a major realignment of the political parties along ideologically more coherent lines. I have been moving away from that line of thinking. The fault lines are too many to allow political actors to coalesce around two to three distinct groups sharing an across-the-board policy manifest without serious reserves. Instead, I think that some relaxation of the party-line voting will become visible along the line as the Diet works its way through possibly two more Upper House elections before the Upper House/Lower House split is resolved****.


* I assume that no other UNSC permanent member has cast a veto during this period.

** The return of UK abstention precedes 9.11 and coincides with Tony Blair’s appointment as Prime Minister.

*** It replaced Peru, which was the fourth abstaining member in an earlier draft resolution.

**** I think that it is telling that Naoto Kan only demanded that the proportional-district Diet members give up their seats if they were going to vote in favor of the extension of the gasoline tax surcharge.

Look What the President of the United States Can Do If He Puts His Mind to It

Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity: before, after.

Let’s hope he can work the same magic on the Jews and the Moslems.

When Is History History? (The U.S.H.R. Resolutions)

And here a terrible spectacle displayed itself: the women first cast their infants down the cliff, and then they cast themselves after their fallen little ones, and the men likewise. In such a scene, Aeneas the Stymphalian, an officer, caught sight of a man with a fine dress about to throw himself over, and seized hold of him to stop him; but the other caught him to his arms, and both were gone in an instant headlong down the crags, and were killed. Out of this place the merest handful of human beings were taken prisoners, but cattle and asses in abundance and flocks of sheep.

- from The Anabasis by Xenonphon (ca. 431 – 355 BC), as translated by H. G. Dakyns

I remember being stunned by this passage many, many years ago, in my youth. In fact, it is about the only thing I retained from the book. Nevertheless, it did not evoke the sense of anger and revulsion that I much, much later felt over the 9.11 attacks. It was, after all, history. (note: I was in Manhattan at the time.)

But so much of the Middle East has yet to pass into history. Europeans carved out Israel after WW II to solve their Jewish problem, and the wound continues to fester; many of the other ill-fitting borders they etched across tribal and religious boundaries have not lost their tenuousness either. Likewise, so many of the deeds and misdeeds of the local actors continue to resonate in the hearts of their descendants. The Armenian genocide may have looked like history to Democrats, but not to its Armenian-American constituency in California, nor to the Turks.

Did Nancy Pelosi think that since Japan was a good sport, Turkey would roll over too? But there was only one loach under this willow tree. Japan put WW II and everything that led to it behind when we lost to the Americans. Thus, we do not vent our anger at Russia for unlawfully shipping our soldiers and civilians to Siberia to use them as slave labor, or seek recompense for the Japanese women who were forced to provide sexual satisfaction to the Soviet soldiers who marched into Manchuria. And the Hiroshima Epitaph famously leaves us wondering, “Who will not repeat the mistake?” even as we bade them, “Sleep peacefully”. Never mind the righteousness (or not) of such grievances. We decided, collectively, that it was all history.

---

Actually, though I did not notice it at the time (I think), Xenophon, a disciple of Socrates, and his men appear to have been uncommonly civilized for those days. For later in the narrative, Xenophon explains: “But wherever we come, be it foreign or Hellenic soil, and find no market for provisions, we are wont to help ourselves, not out of insolence but from necessity. There have been tribes like the Carduchians, the Taochians, the Chaldaeans, which, albeit they were not subject to the great king, yet were no less formidable than independent. These we had to bring over by our arms. The necessity of getting provisions forced us; since they refused to offer us a market.”And there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that they did otherwise.

North Korea's Impeccable Sense of Timing

Talks Held between WPK and Syrian Political Party

Pyongyang, September 21 (KCNA) -- Talks were held between Choe Thae Bok, secretary of the C.C., the Workers' Party of Korea, and Saaeed Eleia Dawood, director of the Organizational Department of Syria's Baath Arab Socialist Party, on September 21.
Present at the talks were officials concerned from the DPRK side and the director's party and the Syrian charge d'affaires ad interim here from the Syrian side.
At the talks both sides informed each other of activities of their parties and exchanged views on the issue of boosting the friendly and cooperative ties between the two parties and a series of issues of bilateral interest.
The talks proceeded in a friendly atmosphere.
- Sept. 21, Korean News

Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Nuclear Site
Bush Was Told of North Korean Presence in Syria, Sources Say

Israel's decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.
- Sept. 21, Washington Post


Do they need failure to thrive - like the Tamil Tigers, ETA, and the IRA?