International Politics Presidential Race

Pakistan, Indonesia…and the New Hillary/Barack Smackdown

barack-and-hillary-2.gif

I got a very nice note from Fatima Bhutto today
telling me that the WitnessLA/Huff Post interview with her had been picked up by a quite number of papers in Pakistan.

“…the response has been overwhelming,”
she wrote. “People have emailed me to say how much they enjoyed reading it. They were surprised” she added, “and isn’t this sad—that the interview was done for an American audience and by an American.”

Well, it was heartening to find that Pakistani readers were eager to read about Fatima’s interview for an American media outlet. But, yes, it was a bit depressing that so many Pakistanis were stunned that we might be interested.

In the past eight years, peoples of far too many countries in the world have come to believe that Americans see things only from our own point of view—and that the perspective of anything or anyone that falls out outside that point of view simply doesn’t matter. The perception was again reinforced in the past few weeks by the Bush administration’s ham handed dealings with Musharraf and the ongoing situation in Pakistan.

And it was this same issue of leadership myopia that was at the heart of the slap-fest that occurred yesterday between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

It began when Obama remarked that, should he become President, his childhood in Indonesia would be an asset. He suggested that it gave him a leg up in understanding the points of view of countries other than our own.

Hillary Clinton slapped back by declaring that one’s experience as a ten-year-old was not exactly equivalent to all the time she’d spent hobnobbing with world leaders.

Obama swung next with the observation that a long foreign policy resume guarantees exactly nothing when it comes to wise leadership. “There are a couple guys named Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who had two of the longest resumes in Washington and led us into the biggest foreign policy disaster of a generation,” Obama said at his next New Hampshire campaign stop. “So a long resume doesn’t guarantee good judgment.”


And God knows we could use some good judgment at the country’s helm
,. We also need, as mentioned above, a president who has the ability to see beyond his or her own experience to accurately imagine how cultures and countries might perceive things. Both our security, and our ability to repair our badly damaged standing in the world depend upon it.

Whether, on the Democratic side of the presidential race, it is Clinton or Obama or Edwards or Biden
who is the one most likely to posses this wider framework—plus strength, clarity of purpose, and all those other good things a President needs—is in the eye of the beholder. But more and more veteran foreign policy types seem to be leaning to Obama.

“In today’s globalized world,” he said in a foreign policy speech last spring,“ the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America, it’s America’s problem too. When poor villagers in Indonesia have no choice but to send chickens to market infected with avian flu, it cannot be seen as a distant concern. When religious schools in Pakistan teach hatred to young children, our children are threatened as well.”

The people who emailed Fatima Bhutto understand that interconnectedness all too clearly.
Let’s hope we get a Democratic Presidential candidate who understands it too.

21 Comments

  • To focus on one point, but don’t let it detract from Celeste’s main theme:

    In the past eight years, peoples of far too many countries in the world have come to believe that Americans see things only from our own point of view.

    What do you mean “in the past eight years.” Maybe JFK & LBJ did a great job in understanding the people of Vietnam in the 1960s. Or, was it Jimmy Carter who knew how to handle Iranians in the 1970s? Truman put troops in Korea in 1950, where we still maintain forces. In the 1990s, Clinton’s Sec. of State Madeline Albright was clinking champagne glasses after having claimed to have secured an agreement with North Korea’s Kim Jong-ll. Did you like Clinton’s job in sending troops to Bosnia, where they remain today? LINKS:
    NYT: Still No Exit Strategy on Bosnia
    Sen. Craig (Yes): Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base

    It seems like problems started long before Bush became President.

    The person who understood other countries best was President Reagan. He knew that the Soviet Union understood strength, and Reagan used that to force them to close up shop and free tens of millions of people.

    The U.S. also understands countries in need, and we provide more support, medical care, food, and disaster assistance to other lands than any other country. I think that people in other countries see that as our seeing hurt from their point of view. Do give us some credit.

    What the Democrats don’t see is that foreigners start to see America as weak, after the Democrats said a year ago that we had already lost in Iraq and continue to promise to bring the troops home immediately. (Note, the surge has been successful, despite the lack of good news in the liberal mass media.) If there is a great failure in foreign understanding, it’s from them.

    BTW, peoples of far too “many parts of the U.S.” have come to believe that “people in California” see things only from “their” own point of view.

    Now, back to the main topic.

  • P.S. I don’t believe that Hillary’s ” hobnobbing with world leaders” taught her anything, but her remarks have taught me not to trust her.

    BTW, congratulations, Celeste, on the article and the wonderful response. It was very good. Also, you should thank me partly for the success, as I stayed out of the discussion entirely.

    Everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving.

  • I told you Bush and Cheney are lying and sneaky bas**rds.

    Ex-White House press secretary writes in his new book that top administration officials let him unknowingly pass on false information.

    From the Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-leak22nov22,1,256729.story?

    Hmmmmm……

    Maybe Bob Woodward’s book about the Iraq war secret and sneaky plan is very true.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-16-woodward-book_x.htm

  • Interesting that Colin Powell’s name came up in that NYT article about Obama’s foreign policy crew. Is there a sadder figure in American politics than Powell. I mean he has to be sitting there realizing that all of this could have been his. He was the Obama of a few years ago. The toast of the town and the most admired African American (at least among whites. Among blacks a sense that he was an oreo was palpable) and a man who could be the first Black President. Maybe he was wise not to seek it in the GOP – but most of his family were Democrats and it was a black Democrat (Cliff Alexander – Carter’s Army Secty) who was responsible for getting him his first star in 1979. He coulda been a contender.

    But Colin preferred the bureaucratic game at which he excelled. And its known his wife was against a politcal run. So he chose the appointive rout and became Secty of State.And saw his Reputation destroyed by the likes of Cheney and Bush. He’ll never live down his UN performance in the run-up to war with Iraq. And, for all the help from aides like Wilkerson and allies like Scowcroft and the first Bush he is tarred with with this foreign policy disaster.

    Colin is an object lesson. Seize the moment or the moment will seize you!

  • Celeste, your interview with Fatima Bhutto deserves the notice and praise that it is receiving. What was striking to me was that the young woman you interviewed is not easily reducible to a stereotype. Not knowing of her, I was surprised to read her criticism of Benazir Bhutto. She seemed, if anything, to be the stereotype of an Obama voter. She demonstrated the mixture of cynicism and idealism that seems to characterize her generation. We need to be reminded, perhaps on a daily basis, that we are all citizens of the world. And I don’t mean, as Claude Rains in Casablanca suggested, that we are all, necessarily, drunkards.

  • I’ve been to dozens of countries, including obscure areas that very few know anything about, let alone have been to, and it is a tremendous blessing and the difference it makes in understanding the world is hard to describe. Above all, I’d say it makes someone a pragmatist, with no patience for the closed-minded insularity of either the extreme left (which we see on the comments in this blog) or the right (sorry, Woody, but some suburban Atlanta Georgians I’ve met make me want to shake them, too — or, to save energy, just avoid them, like the know-nothing smugly babbling liberal left). George Bush never traveled outside the country before before becoming President, which always struck me as bizarre and shallow — doing so is a historical right of passage for the grads of top schools, a great passion for most. So he’s clearly naive and insular in a bad way (but those who call him psychotic while dismissing the claims of those truly unhinged, are themselves so naive about the world they laugh off the real dangers and are themselves, dangerous).

    We see the results of Bush’s lack of exposure to the world before becoming President, and why they are important. This doesn’t mean we have to agree with foreign perceptions and become biased America-bashers as many of them are, assuming the worst about us (I agree with Woody on that), but we need to know WHAT they’re thinking and why, to weight that into our actions. Obama saying he can do this because he lived abroad in one country as a child under age 10, is nonsense, just as much as an immigrant kid from any country coming here has ONE other perspective, not a world perspective.

    But Hillary’s experience in the top, privileged echelons as the President’s wife, is only worth so much, too. (We see how much it’s helped Bush make up for his earlier lack.) Historically, kings, Emperors and Tsars would travel among the people in peasant disguise, like Siddhartha/the Buddha as a means to glean true “insight.” These days, that’s impossible for them. You have to be out incognito among the people as I have, a “traveler” not a tourist or elite diplomat or business traveler, to know. (I’ve traveled to tightly controlled countries with diplomatic papers in a couple of cases, so I have some idea of that pampered, rarified world — Hilary’s must be quite extraordinary, and therefore NOT “ordinary” or typical.) It takes a genuine curiosity about the world and ability to put a broad range of socio-economic experiences into a whole.

    In that sense, none of the candidates qualifies, so they might as well give up that no-won battle. (Bill Clinton, as a Rhodes scholar and student traveler, WAS more of a genuine citizen of the world.) They should just tell us what they think about specific issues or show us how they’d act like “citizens of the world,” instead of these generic claims. Since Hillary is the most pragmatic all around, in diplomacy as well as domestic policy — having learned not to make fiscally unreasonable, idealistic commitments she can’t keep — I’d say Hillary trumps Obama.

    (Don’t bother with your idiotic, clueless insular, armchair leftist know-nothing predictable rants, reg/lA/ric — your qualifications to be “citizens of the world” or logical thinkers ranks right “up” there with your psychotic dictator friends and experts on Bush’s alleged psychosis, Chavez and Ahmenajad. Go ahead and post links to other irrelevant armchair leftists who “know” the world from still others like them/yourselves, agree with each other, rant…)

  • Mavis and Maggie, I will indeed ask Fatima if she’d been willing to comment on your questions. Meant to do it the other night.

    About being a citizen of the world: traveling outside the U.S. enough to know that you can find kindred spirits just about anywhere, in any country or culture, is a great gift to give yourself in that it makes the world—for all its dangers and troubles—a far less scary, and a much more interesting place to be.

  • I know I am not supposed to bother with my idiotic, clueless insular, armchair leftist know-nothing predictable rants. But since I am a just like my psychotic dictator best buddies, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (not Ahmenajad), damn right I will rant. But this time I won’t rant about illegal aliens in schools.

    I will be having Thanksgiving dinner with Hugo Chavez and enjoying a few Polar cervezas with turkey stuffed arepas (yum, yum). I’m not sure whether to dress formal or wear my Che Guevara tee-shirt and black beret. Reg and Ric did you get your invitation?

    Let me make a quick list of where this “insular clueless leftist” has worked, and stayed many months at a time to start-up factories, process pants and theme parks (thanks to the big mouse). Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt, Germany, Luxemburg, England, Spain, France, Japan and Canada. A few of the places I have either been on vacation or building schools for the poor. Honduras, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile. I have worked/traveled to so many U.S. cities I lost track long time ago. I even survived driving in a winter storm in North Dakota, don’t try this, even if you want to get home for Christmas!!!

    The one important thing I learned from traveling and meeting different people is that most people just want a decent job and provide a home for their family. And just because some crazy president uses words such as the “axis of evil” and “evil empire” does not mean we need to bomb the innocent citizens because of the actions of their crazy, megalomaniac leader. There have been dangerous leaders since man has existed. I don’t live in fear and paranoia of different people and different cultures.

    And anybody who knows “anything” about most third-world countries, knows that many of these third-world “democracies” have been a miserable failure. Democracy in these countries means the wealthy/elitist are the “democracy”. I wonder why a country which is so concerned with human rights and Democracy does so much business with Saudi Arabia and China?

  • Maggie: I’ve been to dozens of countries…. Above all, I’d say it makes someone a pragmatist, with no patience for …the extreme left…or the right (sorry, Woody, but some suburban Atlanta Georgians I’ve met make me want to shake them, too….)

    Maggie, I don’t know what you mean. Most of what I learned about the mideast is contained in this endearing song about that region and was written and sung by a man who grew up in the Atlanta suburbs. Why just check it out. Even a lady named Fatima is a central character in it. Any problem?

    LINK TO VIDEO: Ray Stevens » Ahab The Arab

  • Woody, funny video. Actually I find the people in suburban Atlanta where I also have family and a relocated good friend, extremely friendly, neighborly, and there for you if you need anything. But I wouldn’t quote some of the stuff they say so as not to give fodder to some bloggers here, and would give a distorted picture of them. Certainly there’s huge diversity among regions in this country too.

    L A Res, thanks for wearing that Che Guevara t-shirt from the 70’s — it helps me get out the earplugs soon as I see y’all coming, keeps my blood pressure down. Sorry about misspelling your best bud Ahmen’s name, but psychotic dictators don’t merit much attention to detail. I never said Bush should bomb Iran or these countries, but that anyone psychotic enough to hold conferences denying the Holocaust or the existence of gays, and having said Israel should be destroyed to solve the Middle East once and for all, might just do what he says and just because y’all hate Bush, doesn’t make this any less so. (Brooks’/Fareed’s justifications for brushing off this threat were worse than imbecilic pseudo-historical distortions and nonsense.) I’m not going back there… Of course “Third-world democracy” is an oxymoron so far, except in India, where it’s a crazy mix of caste religion, English law, Maharajahs who now rule the party circuit… Just one (of many many) e.g., of how everyone feels free to bash America: wealthy friends there are very critical of how they feel Asian Indians are treated in America (for some reason, there’s a belief in the community that that fashion designer arrested for molesting young women is targeted for his race, “a brown boy is being set up by white girls,”), and even visiting there, it’s acceptable social conversation for people to tell me their resentments of America’s bullying tacics, Bush, etc. (they sound like you and reg), but say anything critical about their country, where the lakes and forests are trashed and people die in the streets for lack of a dollar a day, and they become really, really offended. This is true in almost any third-world country, except in Egypt and Pakistan, the elite are very critical of their military dictators. America is the only country anyone can freely bash.

    My turkey and ham smell great, as we get ready to celebrate, have a great relaxing day. Hats off to your wives — they must be saints, deaf or have good earplugs.

    Celeste, thanks for the update — that would be good to know. Quite a coup you scored there — no one has been pursuing the Fatima angle, you’ve got the inside track.

  • Lest we forget just how wack Maggie is, she’s pissed because I pointed out the following comment of hers was “crazy”, which it obviously is:

    “And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overrun the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order?” (Well, yeah – because it’s Iran’s leader in his funny suits who’s a nutcase, in denial of reality, and hence liable to do anything.)”

    Rather than elaborate even the bare bones of any substantive argument that this equation of the Iranian threat and the Iranian political reality with much more powerful and, in fact, totalitarian systems that we have faced in the past, like Stalin’s USSR or Mao’s China is anything other than an article of faith (and paranoia), she’s still just ranting away in the next thread about “Che Guevara tee-shirts” and other purely ad hominem crap. We are to believe that Fareed Zakaria is “worse than imbecilic” and she’s “rational”. Very bizarre, very sad, and very scary if one actually ran up against such a person in the real world. The ONLY reason bother with this is because she’s still dragging my “name” through her mud on another comment thread. Disgusting and creepy…
    If you respond to this Maggie – give me a solid argument that Iran “is about to overrun the International system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order”. Not an argument that a man in a funny suit might dream of this but that they are “about to” do it. Otherwise withdraw your crazy answer to are “we to believe (this)?”, which was “Yeah…” I’m trying to hold you to some actual standards of logic, as opposed to “off-my-meds” ranting and raving. Please don’t even bother if all you’ve got is your arsenal of mindless invective….

  • I might add that I have no illusions about my being “a citizen of the world.” I am proudly American, love this country, know it like I know no other. My attitude toward other countries and cultures varies, quite frankly. I know that I judge others through the lens of my “Americaness” and I refuse to apologize for it – because my “Americaness” is reasonably inclusive, humane and democratic.

    That said, I know it’s something I can’t shed, because it’s the skin I live in. This doesn’t mean that I’m blind to others or lack empathy. I just feel that we’re all better off if I admit who I am and where I’m coming from in whatever conversation I am having with “the world”. I assume the same of most folks from other parts of the world – they are who they are our mutual respect can develop in the context of who we actually are. I also judge others in my own country through the same lens, i.e. reasonably incluseve, humane and democratic – and many of them don’t measure up to what I believe is the best that we could be as a nation. My hope for the United States is that we use our power and privilege more wisely and productively in the world than we often have.

    Overall, I think we have a lot to offer the rest of the world in terms of our ideals and practice as a very diverse, open society. We also have a lot to gain by not looking at entire regions as, for example, our gas pump or a cheap labor market we’re eager to exploit. There’s nothing wrong with investment or trade – in general these are positives – but our energy dependence on the Middle East and our import/debt service deal with China are examples of extremes that come back to bite one in the ass, so to speak. My biggest criticism of the Bush administration is that, whatever else one might say about them from various moral or philosophical views, they have clearly and consistently been a national security disaster for the United States.

  • reg, I didn’t read a word of your ramt, so won’t respond now or ever. To be called “wack” and “crazy” by an illiterate, rude and utterly uncivilized person must be a compliment. You are a uniquely unpleasant experience even among those who think KPFK is too right-wing, to repeat your own nasty words, “now go find someone who gives a shit.” Happy Thanksgiving.

  • Not surprised you can’t respond with a substantive discussion of what I wrote vs. what you said. Again, you claim you “didn’t read a word” and proceed to quote my comment, which says about all anyone needs to know about your mode of argument. You are quite a piece of work…

  • If anyone has any serious – as opposed to paranoic or demagogic – interest in the question of Iran and what course the U.S. should take, here’s Iran’s most prominent dissident, a man who spend 6 years in an Iranian prison, on some of the key issues. Interestingly, he also refused to meet with President Bush when he visited the U.S. because he believes that the U.S. policy toward Iran is counterproductive and damaging to the interests of democratic forces within the country and he didn’t want to be used as a propaganda item on the Bush agenda. Because his views are more proximate to Fareed Zakaria’s than hers, Maggie is free, of course, to denounce him as “worse than imbecilic” or in the throes of “Bush hatred.”

    http://bostonreview.net/BR32.3/ganji.html

Leave a Comment