Karen,
Regarding the two NYT articles by Kristof which you posted ("If Saddam were
only Brazilian" and "Hold your nose and negotiate") I think one can safely
say that the foreign policy of the US is in total disarray. And in policy
areas in which it is not in total disarray it is in total neglect.
The disarray is conspicuous in the case of Iraqi policy and strategy. The
White House is in the grip of a particularly perverse theory of history, as
enunciated by Paul Wolfovitz and Eliot A. Cohen.
Eliot A. Cohen is Professor of Strategic Studies at John Hopkins University
and in his book, "Supreme Command", he argues that great victories are more
often achieved when politicians take over the reins from dumbo military
men. Cohen concentrates on four leaders, Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and
Ben-Gurion who were "locked in conflict" with their military advisors, but
yet overcame them to their country's great advantage. (It's significant
that Cohen doesn't use Hitler as an example!*)
Well . . . I don't know much about Lincoln, Clemenceau and Ben-Gurion, but
I certainly have a different view about Churchill. If one reads the
personal diaries of Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke, Commander-in-Chief of
the British forces in WWII, then one wonders just how on earth the Allies
ever won the war because of Churchill's weird ideas. Almost every day for
the last three years of the war, Alanbrooke, was driven to the point of
despair by Churchill's impetuous decisions. Luckily, half of them were
prevented from ever being carried out by the Chiefs of Staff committee
(Commanders of the Army, Navy and Airforce together with their planning
staff) and the other half only after they had been delayed for further
discussion with Churchill and substantially modified.
Alanbrooks was not the only person who despaired of Churchill. American
President Roosevelt thought he was a clown, and the Australian Prime
Minister, Robert Menzies, said of him: "Only Churchill's magnificent and
courageous leadership compensated for his deplorable strategic sense." At
the end of the war, when the Chiefs of Staff and Churchill were celebrating
at 10 Downing Street, "Winston Churchill handed out extravagant praise to
the three Chiefs of Staff as having been the architects of victory,"
according to General Hasting Ismay who was there. You might have thought
that in such a happy and bibulous atmosphere at least one Chief of Staff
would have praised Churchill. However, as Ismay wrote in his papers (kept
at King's College, London): "Not one of them responded by saying that
Winston had also had a little to do with it."
Alanbrooke described Churchill as a "public menace" and so, today, is
George W. Bush or, more accurately, those behind him who actually take the
decisions -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush Senior together with, of course,
Wolfovitz and Cohen as advisors. From what one gathers, there's been a
ding-dong battle going on for the past year between the State
Department/Army and the Bush group -- and still continues.
I think, as with Churchill's, the ideas of the Bush Group will collapse
about their ears as sanity prevails in the next few months. (And then, of
course, Bush will be solely concerned with the American economy in order to
try to be re-elected in 2004.) But, meanwhile, tension in the Middle East
will have been screwed up higher, the Al Qaeda will be more organised than
ever before, millions more poor people will have died of starvation, and a
great deal more by way of positive policies in Indonesia, North Korea,
Latin America and other countries will have been totally neglected.
The trouble with political suicide is that the subject lives to regret it.
Bush will surely have at least one or two decades in which to regret what
he didn't achieve in his presidency. The tragedy is that the rest of the
world will also regret it.
Keith
(* Hitler gets only half a dozen passing references in the whole book!)
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Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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