Bloggledygook

The Times Interviews the CIC.

The Times online (London) publishes an interview with President Bush today.

In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

What a shame for the BBC, the Guardian, Paul Krugman.

Bush gives the author a short tour around the Oval Office. One can read between the lines to divine that the reporter is taken aback by a man the media has dubbed an idiot.

As expansive as he is, Mr Bush can’t help betraying a faint irritation at the intrusiveness of the modern media, with a reference to a famous brief medical emergency from a couple of years ago.

He points out the door in the well of the presidential desk, placed there by President Roosevelt to hide the fact that he spent his presidency in a wheelchair. “FDR was in a wheelchair and nobody knows. I choke on a pretzel and the whole world gets to hear about it.”

After the icebreaking is over, the interview gets down to business, and here again, Bush reveals more than words could convey:

Perhaps most revealing is his response to a question about Iran. His words are polite but the President’s body language is eloquent. As I read him a quote from the latest rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, and remind him that the Iranian President was a leader of the students who took Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979, he is visibly agitated. He glances at his advisers with a look of disgust that suggests that the chances of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis are remoter than ever.

On aid to Africa:

We’ll make some more commitments. First of all, the way I like to describe our relationship with Africa is one of partnership. That’s different than a relationship of cheque-writer.

In other words, partnership means that we’ve got obligations and so do the people we are trying to help . . . we have a partnership when it comes to African growth and opportunity. When you really think about how to get wealth distributed, aid is one way but it doesn’t compare to trade and commerce. And we’ve opened up markets and we’re beginning to see a payoff, more commerce.

I doubt that the president actually said "cheque." But I quibble.

On the war:

So we made a decision to protect ourselves and remove Saddam Hussein. The jihadists made a decision to come into Iraq to fight us. For a reason. They know that if we’re successful in Iraq, like we were in Afghanistan, that it’ll be a serious blow to their ideology. General (John) Abizaid (Commander of US forces in the Middle East) told me something very early in this campaign I thought was very interesting. Very capable man. He’s a Arab-American who I find to be a man of great depth and understanding. When we win in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a beginning of the end. Talking about the war on terror. If we don’t win here, it’s the beginning of the beginning. And that’s how I view it.

[...]
And last time I went to Europe I said many in Europe viewed September 11 as a tragic moment, but a moment. I view September 11 as an attack as a result of a larger war that changed how I view the world and how many other Americans view the world. It was one of the moments in history that changed outlook. So as long as I’m sitting here in this Oval Office, I will never forget the lessons of September 11, and that is that we are in a global war against cold-blooded killers.

This last paragraph is perhaps the best, most succinct explanation that has come from Bush as to why we have chosen to fight this war in this manner. Many will no doubt  condescend and sniff that this is much too evangelical, but there it is: whether the rest of the world likes it or not, September 11 did indeed require a change in the way the US deals with those entities arrayed against it.

On Democracy:

Frankly, I rejected the intellectual elitism of some around the world who say, “Well, maybe certain people can’t be free”. I don’t believe that. Of course I was labelled a, you know, blatant idealist.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the post-September 11 world is this idea of what constitutes idealism. In the past, the right delighted in sneering at the idealism of the left as a sure way to ruin. Good intentions and all that. Now, the right has elected a president who inhabits much the same territory when it comes to intention but sees a different, possibly better path.

This is why Bush is such an iconoclast. The right is baffled by his expansive view of democracy and fairness and the left is continually ignoring the fact that many of his inititatives could be considered liberal but for his strategy. If those on the left could allow themselves to get over the fact that maybe some of his ideas might work, there would be less reason to hate him. And they can't let that happen.

Take Bob Geldoff for example. Here's a liberal who says, in essence, "I don't care how he does it. But he's trying to get things done in Africa and I support his effort." This frustrates both the left and the right. Which may just be part of Bush's strategy after all.

 

Ulf Goes A-huntin'.

LGF points us to this story of a man who's had enough:

A HOSTAGE held alongside Australian Douglas Wood in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to track down his former captors, promising to eliminate them one by one.

Swede Ulf Hjertstrom, who was held for several weeks with Mr Wood in Baghdad, was released by his kidnappers on May 30.

Mr Hjertstrom has since claimed he shared information with US and Iraqi troops about Mr Wood which led to the release of the 63-year-old Australian engineers two weeks ago, after 47 days in captivity.

Now, he wants to find those responsible.

"I have now put some people to work to find these bastards," he told the Ten Network today.

"I invested about $50,000 so far and we will get them one by one."

There must be something about the name Ulf. Back when the Pittsburgh Penguins (I know, I know) were winning Stanley Cups, they employed an "enforcer" named Ulf Samuelson, a big, bad Viking on skates.

Anyway, good luck, Ulf.

Saudi Ambassador Resigns. Finally.

The BBC is reporting that Saudi puppetmaster ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan has resigned. Just a few hours ago, Saudi officials were directly denying that Bandar tendered his resignation, saying that he was merely on vacation.

It looks as if Bandar is headed back home to wade hip-deep into the swamp that is the Saudi family to slog through the coming succession struggle. The current King, Fahd is basically on life support while Crown Prince Abdullah more or less runs the country and is busy angling against intrigue from Prince Sultan, Bandar's father and the current Defense Minister.

Bandar was in DC since 1983 and did much to endear himself to a list of presidents who, every one of them, allowed themselves to be seduced by the sleazy, dishonest and terror-supporting Bandar. It is the shame of the White House, from Ronald Reagan to George Bush, that the presidency has been more or less handed over to a foreign power in the person of Bandar, the US based frontman for the world's most corrupt, radical and murderous family since the Borgias.

Even after the attacks of September 11 (there's that date again) in which the vast majority of hijackers where Saudi, Bandar was allowed to dictate to and manipulate the White House.

There doesn't seem to be a clear choice for Bandar's replacement, although it wouldn't matter that much. Most likely would be Abdel al-Jubeir, an accomplished liar and the most public face of the Saudi regime. But there is a slight possibility that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, the world's fifth-richest man and the dolt that made a donation to New York after the attacks only to turn around and say it was all our fault anyway (his money was unceremoniously thrown back in his face by Mayor Giuliani, establishing Rudy's myth). His appointment would ruffle quite a few feathers, which should heighten his attractiveness for the Saudis. Sending bin Talal to Washington would signal Riyadh's intentions to continue its control over the White House and the State Department, which has become an Arabist PR firm shilling for the Saudis during Bandar's tenure.

As the Executive Branch is fully in thrall of the Saudi billionaires, the only hope of any change is for foreign affairs hawks in Congress to pay a visit to the White House and impress upon the president how important it is that he use this opportunity to distance his office and his country from the international crime organization known as the Saudi Royal Family.

First Tomato.

Not even July yet, and we're seeing the first cherry tomato, waiting for that moment when we pick it, sprinkle a little sea salt on it and devour it in one bite. I'll share. Maybe. There are many more where she came from, but there's nothing like the first home grown tomato of the season.

A city boy now, I grew up deep in the Southwestern Pennsylvania countryside, learned to care for vegetables, to till the earth and harvest lettuces. Last year, I decided to try my luck in my cramped backyard and from the first taste of homegrown nourishment, I was hooked.

This year we expanded from tomatoes and herbs and peppers to include zucchini and cucumbers, the zukes yielding two types of blossoms, boys and girls, one type to eat now and one to see grow into sweet green slender batons. We'll take the male blossoms and stuff them with goat cheese and a little chipotle, then fry them tempura-style with a raita on the side.

The three types of basil are liturgically resplendent, the tomatoes voluptuous, the chilies lazily dangling from strong, slender stalks and promising heat and sweetness. The mint, well, the mint has asserted itself from across the garden, but we keep at it, mixing it with the cilantro that we grew from seed and the Thai basil just coming into its own to put in our summer rolls of raw salmon and arugula. We'll make a dipping sauce of the chilie paste we made from last year's crop, some fish sauce, ginger and rice vinegar for what we have come to call, "sandwich night." The freshness and goodness fills our palates and feeds our desire to see new things grow.

The tarragon from last year looks as if it wants to be decorated for Christmas it's growing so thick (we have offered bunches to the B&B next door, but even they can't keep up)  and the red, yellow and orange pepper plants have blossomed, promising a late summer roast on the grill to be finished with olive oil and feta.

There is a particular type of character that longs to see green things grow. I confess that at my core, I am among those souls who wish every spring to drive my hands into dirt, to weed and water and harvest. I dream about it in Winter.

I cannot look at my garden and not think of my father, the man who compelled his sons to backbreaking work to feed their adolescent bodies. My family had not one garden, but two and they nourished us throughout the Summer and into Winter with the canning my mother and grandmother put up. We were never rich, but the wealth of eating something you had labored over is a treasure one never forgets. Everything is sweet and flavorful and filled with the good earth's love. If I was a religious man, I would say that one cannot watch God's creation turn itself every Spring to bounty and not be humbled.
My garden is modest, yet I visit it daily to weed, check its progress and congratulate the whole lot of them on our mutual good fortune.

So thanks, Dad, for this garden. And thanks, Mom, for teaching me what to do with all this. Each bite will illicit a memory, each memory a story, each story a treasure.

Shelby Foote, RIP.

Civil War historian Shelby Foote, probably, because of Ken Burns' 1990 PBS documentary, the most recognized chronicler of the War Between the States, has died.

Burns brought to his subject an ability to make storytelling immediate and intimate. Foote was featured throughout the documentary and at least for me, provided a sense of fascination with the War that I had lacked up until then. Foote's commentary struck me as being quiet and deep, without the self-aggrandizement we have come to accept from experts.

I remember a quote from Foote still now, a decade and a half after watching. I'll paraphrase: "The outcome of the Civil War," Foote observed, "was that before the war the country was referred to as 'The United States are...' and after, 'The United States is...'"

I know that Foote was criticized for not being academic enough, which I always took to meaning that he was too close to his subject. But Foote inhabited his passion so completely that it would have been impossible to treat it as just another intellectual exercise. Foote seemed to me to be a kind of Grand Uncle who drew you to his knee to tell you the stories that illuminated your people's history. And for one, I appreciated the invitation.

Shelby Foote was 88.

Sending Support.

Here is the site the president mentioned last night:

America Supports You.

Whatever You Do, Don't Mention September 11.

After the president's speech, I spent the rest of the evening flipping between CNN, MSNBC and FOX to see what everybody was saying and to avoid the latest breaking who-cares from Aruba so I missed David Gergen being offended by Bush's references to September 11.

Well, too bad for Gergen. And too bad for all those who are "offended" by the very mention of the attacks. I heard the speech, I have read the text. Here are the references:

• The terrorists who attacked us — and the terrorists we face — murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent.
• After September 11, I made a commitment to the American people: This Nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will take the fight to the enemy. We will defend our freedom.
• Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
• The terrorists can kill the innocent — but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11 … if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi … and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden. For the sake of our Nation’s security, this will not happen on my watch.
• We are fighting against men with blind hatred — and armed with lethal weapons — who are capable of any atrocity. They wear no uniform; they respect no laws of warfare or morality. They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras. They are trying to shake our will in Iraq — just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001. They will fail. The terrorists do not understand America. The American people do not falter under threat — and we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins.
• After September 11, 2001, I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult — and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult. And we are prevailing. Our enemies are brutal — but they are no match for the United States of America — and they are no match for the men and women of the United States military.

Now, can anyone point out where the president makes a direct claim that Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11 (which is what many critics were complaining about last night)? What he said was that we fight the same sort of people in Iraq that we saw on that day. NOT the same exact people. Those who are making the claim that Bush is linking September 11 directly to Saddam are either willfully confusing the president's words or are too dense to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

We attacked Afghanistan after September 11. Most Americans were supportive. After Afghanistan, many couldn't make the jump to Iraq, which is in some ways understandable, so they needed to make some sort of direct relationship in their minds to justify the action. Bush easily made the jump, because he believes that after September 11 the President of the United States has an obligation to take the fight wherever he sees a threat. By all means, one can agree or disagree with the premise, or the wisdom of going after Iraq instead of, say Saudi Arabia, but one can't challenge the right of a president to choose where we fight next. There is a certain way of thinking that we can only attack those countries or entities that have directly attacked us. Why? Why not put those arrayed against us on notice that we are still angry and likely to strike anywhere we please?

Part of this was Bush's fault. He should have come right out and said something like, "Yes, I know that I cannot prove that Saddam had anything to do with September 11 or al Qaeda, but I honestly don't care. He's next on the list; too bad for him. Anybody want to get in line after Saddam?" It really isn't that hard of a concept.

But there is an element that thinks that the US must never respond to attack or provocation. We deserve it, after all. We should just sit here and take it.

Frankly, I'm offended by people who are offended by the mention of September 11. We don't think, hear, see enough about that day.

No one's asking me, but if I was in some way involved with the president's speech last night, I would have advised that he walk out onto the stage and pick up a remote control.

Bush says nothing, but points the remote to a screen that has been lowered behind him. He pushes a button and steps aside to allow full view of a video of the attacks of September 11. He offers no commentary. The video contains not only the images we have seen, but also the censored images or people plummeting to their death, body parts slamming the pavement, hundreds jumping into the East River to escape what seemed at the time to be the end of the world (I know all this happened. I had friends and colleagues in WTC 2).

After the video is over, Bush simply hits the remote to retract the screen. The look on his face is much the same as it has been these last three-and-a-half years, except with a touch of consternation that he has to be out here, yet again, to remind the nation what we're up against. He still doesn't say anything. He just looks straight into the camera, sets down the remote and walks off the stage.

UPDATE: Here's an article by Andrew McCarthy today that enumerates a long list of questions having to do with Saddam's ties to terror organizations.

Presidential Address.

The President is in Fort Bragg to address the nation on the war in Iraq. Just about every media outlet is quoting that Bush will say that regardless of the difficulties, the war is "worth it."

Bush is now remaking his case for not only being in the Middle East in general, but that those who will attempt to drive the US out will fail.

UPDATE:  The argument is that Iraq is part of a broader war against terror ideology. Here are the words, "worth it." This is part of the struggle against this terror ideology.

UPDATE II: "This nation will not wait to be attacked again."

UPDATE III: Bush is now enumerating the many failures of terror forces in Iraq and refusing to relinquish Iraq to terrorists.

UPDATE IV: So far, the speech seems to be rather defensive.

UPDATE V: "We will stay as long as needed and not a day longer." He is now moving from a listing of strategic details to the critical elements that will secure the democracy in Iraq. He refuses a call for timetables for withdrawal.

UPDATE VI: The effects of the battle in Iraq has wider ramifications. Libya, Lebanon, etc. Not so sure about Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but you can't have eveything.

UPDATE VII: "The idea of liberty is worth defending."

UPDATE VIII: Now thanking the military and asking the country to honor and thank those fighting and serving.

UPDATE IX: The road has been difficult, but we are prevailing. The enemy is no match for the men and women if the United States Military.

UPDATE X: The President is now working the crowd and will likely stay here for a while.

All in all, I sensed an effort to regain some support that he may have lost in recent months. His list of what is going on in Iraq was realistic as to the difficulties but he did pledge that we are winning. He invoked Afghanistan and Iraq and in that moment appeared as resolute in his fight as I have seen him. He has not offered any "new initiative" that would have likely been seen as a change of course in the face of criticism. He sees this battle as being central to the Global War on Terror. He was confident, sober and realistic. No great soaring rhetoric, but a solid case for his vision of this conflict.

This was a speech he has needed to make for some time, now. This, hopefully, is the first new step in calling things as they are while rallying support for the troops and the war effort.

"The American people do not falter under threat--and we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins."

Well said.

 

Gongadze Suspect Found In Israel.

The man suspected killing Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze has reportedly been found in Israel. From abdymok:

lt. general olexei pukach, former head of surveillance for ukraine’s ministry of internal affairs, could be deported soon, the official told the jerusalem post.

"we have a very good relationship with kyiv and intend to fully cooperate with ukrainian authorities in accordance with international law," the official was quoted as saying.

two days earlier, president viktor yushchenko’s told reporters in kyiv that he wanted pukach to be brought back to ukraine alive.

the remark, later posted on the president’s website, came only after the kyiv daily segodnya published a report, titled “general pukach is found in israel,” which cited “sources” as saying that a team of state secret service (sbu) agents on june 18 was dispatched from ukraine to israel to look for the general.

Bananas.

It's embarrassing when someone whom you admired as a young man turns out to be an idiot. So it is today for me as I read Woody Allen's interview with der Speigel.

It is instructive that a man who has lived most of his life in a cocoon of self-congratulatory fetishism chooses to counsel us cretins that life is oh so sad, oh so tragic. To make his point, he slices of another Allenesque riff with this gem: "Tragedy is tragic..." You can almost hear George Bush's speech writers damning themselves for not thinking that one up.

Woody now wants to be considered a "European filmmaker" because, presumably, being a New York filmmaker has become a little problematic.

As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11. Because, if you look at the big picture, the long view of things, it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: he kills me, I kill him. Only with different cosmetics and different castings: so in 2001 some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.

There is no law that says that every filmmaker must include a reference to September 11 in his or her work, but it is interesting that this particular filmmaker, the director most identified with New York, the guy who once insisted that he not be forced to leave his island abode to make a film has nothing to say about the greatest catastrophe in the city's history.

Is Allen begging European status as a refugee or as someone who refuses to face this sad, tragic world? More likely it is that, as a man who has garnered enormous latitude to make progressively irrelevant films, he now finds it more useful to decry America (and the system that enabled him to transfer to celluloid his fevered geriatric fantasies) as an enemy to artistic freedom.

What's more, Allen sees no difference between the murders of September 11 and the fighting in Iraq. To him, it's all the same, as if he looked out a downtown-facing window of his Upper East Side palace, saw the Towers collapse and shrugged, "Would you look at that? Must be some more killing going on." Allen can't even fathom the idea that maybe at least part of what makes this life so "tragic" is craven buffoons who can't tell the difference between a massacre and an armed struggle. For him, gassing six million Jews is all in a few years' work so he decides to wallow in the same lies that his European welcome wagon has been peddling since the founding of Israel; namely, that the Holocaust and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are exactly the same thing.

This reasoning is a limp take on the old saying, "The news never changes. It just happens to different people." Allen has anointed himself as World Chorus, the detached observer, the One Seer with Perspective. As history repeats, we all just need to calm down and ride it out. From Allen's point of view, then, there would be no good reason to stop genocide in Sudan or send aid to tsunami victims. It doesn't matter, you see; it'll all just happen again. So Allen is thus relieved from any obligation to humanity. His only cause is himself.

But if tragedy is tragic, then comedy must be comic. Which sort of explains all the plots in which we find a decaying, wretched, Cliffs-Notes intellectual stammering below the latest pair of twenty-something breasts. Don't you see? It's all simply hilarious! When the breezy depravity of the last twenty-five years of his oeuvre is noticed, one need not wonder why Allen spent all that time blubbering over Flaubert.

Woody can't have it any other way. To acknowledge that there may just be a difference between a basically moral person who keenly fails and an amoral person who cynically achieves would leave him to look at his life in a fashion not so lovingly. If he was forced to actually look into what makes him so blithely dismissive of what constitutes tragedy, he might find that it's not all that funny after all.