Shoeless George Bush

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
July 3, 2007
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4739
[With slight differences from the NY Sun version]

When Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in June 1957, his 500-word talk effused good will ("Civilization owes to the Islamic world some of its most important tools and achievements") even as the American president embarrassingly bumbled (Muslims in the United States, he declared, have the right to their "own church"). Conspicuously, he included nary a word about policy.

Exactly fifty years later, standing shoeless, George W. Bush rededicated the center last week. His 1,600-word speech also praised medieval Islamic culture ("We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries"), but he knew a mosque from a church – and he had more on the agenda than flattery.

Most arresting, surely, was his statement that "I have invested the heart of my presidency in helping Muslims fight terrorism, and claim their liberty, and find their own unique paths to prosperity and peace." This cri du coeur signaled how Mr. Bush understands to what extent actions by Muslims will define his legacy.

Should they heed his dream "and find their own unique paths to prosperity and peace," then his presidency, however ravaged it may look at the moment, will be vindicated. As with Harry S Truman, historians will acknowledge that he saw further than his contemporaries. Should Muslims, however, be "left behind in the global movement toward prosperity and freedom," historians will likely judge his two terms as harshly as his fellow Americans do today.

Of course, how Muslims fare depends in large part on the future course of radical Islam, which in turn depends in some part on its understanding by the American president. Over the years, Mr. Bush has generally shown an increased understanding of this topic. He started with platitudinous, apologetic references to Islam as the "religion of peace," using this phrase as late as 2006. He early on even lectured Muslims on the true nature of their religion, a presumptuous ambition that prompted me in 2001 to dub him "Imam Bush."

As his understanding grew, Mr. Bush spoke of the caliphate, "Islamic extremism" and "Islamofacism." What euphemistically he called the "war on terror" in 2001, by 2006 he referred to with the hard-hitting "war with Islamic fascists." Things were looking up. Perhaps official Washington did understand the threat, after all.

But such analyses roused Muslim opposition and, as he approaches his political twilight, Mr. Bush has retreated to safer ground, reverting last week to decayed tropes that tiptoe around any mention of Islam. Instead, he spoke inelegantly of "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East" and vaguely of "a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination."

Worse, the speech drum-rolled the appointment of a U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, directing this envoy to "listen to and learn from" his Muslim counterparts. But the OIC is a Saudi-sponsored organization promoting the Wahhabi agenda under the trappings of a Muslim-only United Nations. As counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson has noted, Bush's dismal initiative stands in "complete ignorance of the rampant radicalism, pro-terrorist, and anti-American sentiments routinely found in statements by the OIC and its leaders."



Sitting in the front row at the Islamic Center on June 27, 2007, senior Bush administration staffers Frances Townsend (left) and Karen Hughes wore makeshift hijabs.Adding to the event's accommodationist tone, some of the president's top female aides, including Frances Townsend and Karen Hughes, wore makeshift hijabs as they listened to him in the audience.

In brief, it feels like "déjà vu all over again." As columnist Diana West puts it, "Nearly six years after September 11 — nearly six years after first visiting the Islamic Center and proclaiming ‘Islam is peace' — Mr. Bush has learned nothing." But we now harbor fewer hopes than in 2001 that he still can learn, absorb, and reflect an understanding of the enemy's Islamist nature.

Concluding that he basically has failed to engage this central issue, we instead must look to Mr. Bush's potential successors and look for them to return to his occasional robustness, again taking up those difficult concepts of Islamic extremism, Shariah, and the caliphate. Several Republicans – Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and (above all) Fred Thompson – are doing just that. Democratic candidates, unfortunately, prefer to remain almost completely silent on this topic.

Almost thirty years after Islamists first attacked Americans, and on the eve of three major attempted terrorist attacks in Great Britain, the president's speech reveals how confused Washington remains.

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July 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Ending the Farce

By DAVID BROOKS
In retrospect, Plamegate was a farce in five acts. The first four were scabrous, disgraceful and absurd. Justice only reared its head at the end.

The drama opened, as these dark comedies are wont to do, with a strutting little peacock who went by the unimaginative name of Joe Wilson.

Mr. Wilson claimed that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to investigate Iraqi purchases in Niger, though that seems not to have been the case. He claimed his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts, though his own report said nothing of the kind.

In short order, Wilson established himself as the charming P.T. Barnum of the National Security set, an inveterate huckster who could be counted on to wrap every actual fact in six layers of embellishment. His small part in the larger fiasco of the Iraq war would not have registered a micron of attention had the villain of the epic — the vice president — not exercised his unfailing talent for vindictive self-destruction.

Act Two opened with a cast of thousands crowding the stage, filling the air with fevered vapors and gleeful rage. Perhaps you can remember those days, when the Plame story pretended to be about the outing of an undercover C.I.A. agent. Perhaps you can remember the howls of outrage from our liberal friends, about the threat to national security, the secret White House plot to discredit its enemies.

Perhaps you remember the media stakeouts of Karl Rove’s driveway, the constant perp-walk photos of Rove on his way to and from the grand jury, the delirious calls from producers (The indictment is coming today! The indictment is coming today!).

There were media types so eager to get Rove, so artificially appalled at the thought of somebody actually leaking classified information, they were willing to forgive prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for throwing journalists in jail. It was like watching a city of Ahabs getting deliriously close to the great white whale.

That was back when everybody thought Rove was the key leaker. But then it turned out he wasn’t. Richard Armitage was, as Fitzgerald knew from the start.

By the start of Act Three, nobody cared about the outing of a C.I.A. agent. That part of the scandal disappeared. And all that was left of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were the creepy photos in Vanity Fair.

Act Three was the perjury act, and attention shifted to the unlikely figure of Scooter Libby. As Joe Wilson was an absurd man with a plain name, Scooter Libby was a plain man with an absurd name. And the odder thing was that Libby was the only normal person in the asylum. People who knew him thought him discreet, honest and admirable. And yet the charges were brought and the storm clouds of idiocy gathered once more.

Republicans who’d worked themselves up into a spittle-spewing rage because Bill Clinton lied under oath were appalled that anybody would bother with poor Libby over lying under oath. Democrats who were outraged that Bill Clinton was hounded for something as trivial as perjury were furious that Scooter Libby might not be ruined for a crime as heinous as perjury. It was an orgy of shamelessness. The God of Self-Respect took sabbatical.

The trial and sentencing, Act Four, was, to be honest, somewhat anticlimactic. Fitzgerald, having lost all perspective, demanded Libby get a harsh sentence as punishment for crimes he had not been convicted of. The judge, casting himself as David against Goliath, demonstrated an impressive capacity for talking about himself.

And finally, yesterday, came Act Five, and a paradox. Scooter Libby emerged as the least absurd character in the entire drama, and yet he was the one who committed a crime. President Bush entered the stage like a character from another world, a world in which things make sense.

His decision to commute Libby’s sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.

Of course, the howlers howl. That is their assigned posture in this drama. They entered howling, they will leave howling and the only thing you can count on is their anger has been cynically manufactured from start to finish.

The farce is over. It has no significance. Nobody but Libby’s family will remember it in a few weeks time. Everyone else will have moved on to other fiascos, other poses, fresher manias.

from the June 27, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0627/p01s05-woaf.html
China takes up civic work in Africa

It's sending 1,809 UN peacekeepers and 300 volunteers in a new Chinese 'peace corps' program.

By Danna Harman | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Wau, South Sudan
She named her baby daughter Siwei Liu, which means "be aware of danger." The young Chinese mother had just passed the United Nations exams and knew she would soon be leaving China's Hubei Province for places unknown and dangerous.

Less than six months later, Fang Liu, a lawyer with the Chinese police forces, packed her suitcase, waved farewell to her husband and baby daughter – and set off for South Sudan. "It was," she says solemnly, "a very long way away."

Ms. Liu, today a UN police observer, was joined by 435 other engineers, medics, and transport specialists, all of them part of China's contribution to the 10,000-strong UN force charged with monitoring the peace agreement here until 2011.

The Sudan mission is the longest-ever peacekeeping mission the Chinese have joined to date – but not their only one.

Playing a far more active role in UN peacekeeping than ever before, 1,809 Chinese troops, police, military observers, and others are deployed worldwide. The majority – 1,273 – are here in Africa, building roads, setting up clinics, patrolling troubled villages – and generally trying to show that China wants to be considered part of the international community when it comes to doing the right thing by this continent.

The number of Chinese peacekeepers worldwide is much smaller than the number that Pakistan supplies the UN – currently 10,173 according to UN statistics – or India, which has sent 9,471 of its nationals to participate in most of the UN's 15 current missions worldwide.

But, it's more than South Africa (1,188 blue helmets) or Brazil (1,277) have in the field – and far more than the US, which, unlike 118 other countries, puts no boots on the ground. (The US does, however, provide the largest chunk of the funding for these missions – 26 percent of the total. China, in turn, provides 3 percent.)

* * *

Some of the words that typically come to mind in association with the budding China-Africa relationship are "trade," "raw materials," and "cheap goods." "Weapons," sometimes pops up, "neocolonialism" has its takers, too.

"Socially responsible," however, does not typically make the Top 10 list.

But increasingly, China is both expanding and honing its aid to the continent, and also trying to draw more attention to its social commitment to the people of Africa.

Since 2000 China has canceled more than $10 billion in debt for 31 African countries and has given $5.5 billion in development aid, with a promise of a further $2.6 billion in 2007-08, according to estimates by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Beijing has overtaken the World Bank in lending to Africa: In 2005, China committed $8 billion in lending to Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique alone – the same year the World Bank spent $2.3 billion in all of Africa.

In 2006, lending by China's Exim Bank was $12.5 billion – and is set to rise by more than $5 billion in 2007, according to the EIU estimates.

The loans China offered Africa in 2006 were three times the total development aid given by rich countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and nearly 25 times the total stock of loans and export credits approved by the US Export-Import Bank for sub-Saharan Africa, points out Greg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, an economic think tank in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Not content with only making big gestures, China has also gotten involved with dozens upon dozens of smaller projects across the continent, touching the lives of everyday people.

During his February tour of the continent, Chinese President Hu Jintao opened a Chinese-built hospital in Cameroon, inaugurated a Chinese-funded malaria research and prevention center in Liberia, and launched a Chinese-language after-school program in Namibia, among others.

And in April, after a five-day visit to Sudan, Liu Guijin, the newly appointed Chinese special representative for Darfur, announced that his country was going to boost its humanitarian aid to Sudan, donating some $10 million worth of aid to the troubled region and sending in close to 300 Chinese military engineers to help strengthen the overtaxed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Western donors, concerned that China is throwing around aid, investment, and business with no strings attached, have been calling on Beijing to abide by global standards when it comes to human rights and the environment. Last month, the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China signed a memorandum of understanding to improve cooperation on aid and investment.

"China has real interests there [in Africa] and will, of course, be engaged on the continent, as is the United States," Deputy Assistant Secretary of African Affairs James Swan said in a February speech at Columbia University in New York. "US policy is not to curtail China's involvement in Africa, but to seek cooperation where possible and continue efforts to nudge China toward becoming a responsible international stakeholder."

Whether or not this largess has ulterior economic and strategic motives behind it, or whether it is propelled by nothing more than a desire to boost China's international image, the bottom line is that it is welcome by many on the continent.

"The Chinese interest in Africa ... their coming into our markets is the best thing that could have happened to us," says small-business contractor Amare Kifle, during a recent meeting with a Chinese investor in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. "We are tired of the condescending American style. True, the American government and American companies have done and do a lot here, but I always feel like they think they are doing us a favor ... telling us how to do things and punishing us when we do it our own way.

"These Chinese are different," he says. "They are about the bottom line and allow us to sort out our side of the business as we see fit. I want to have a business partner and do business. I don't want to have a philosophical debate about Africa's future."

Indeed, China's commitment to a hands-off approach is in stark contrast to the West, and some experts say the lengths to which China goes to be seen as a benevolent partner with Africa is unprecedented.

"China is the most self-conscious rising power in history and is desperate to be seen as a benign force as well as to learn from the mistakes of the existing major powers and previous rising powers," says Andrew Small, a Brussels-based China expert at the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank. "It sees its modern national story as anticolonial – about surpassing the "century of humiliation" at the hands of the colonial powers – and still thinks of itself, in many ways, as a part of the developing world."

* * *

Liu, who is in charge of the UN police force's administrative personnel work, spends her days in a trailer office with four other peacekeepers keeping track of personnel sick days, home leaves, and other special requests.

Previous to this mission, Liu only left her home province once – to go on her honeymoon to Hong Kong.

Today, she shares a small apartment in Wau, Sudan, with six other UN personnel. They have no running water and no electricity.

She does her shopping in the market (the store owners know her and yell out ni hao ma – "How are you?" – when she passes by) and reads at night with the help of a Chinese government-issued rechargeable lamp.

She calls her husband and daughter once a week for three minutes and tries to also communicate throughe-mail, but it's complicated, as her UN-issued computer keyboard does not have Chinese characters.

It is less exciting than she had hoped, she admits. The insecurity, heat, food, bug bites, and loneliness test her. And above all, she misses her baby Siwei, she says, showing off a picture of her now 2-year-old child.

But Liu nonetheless has a clear sense of why she is here.

"Peace is giving [the South Sudanese] a chance for development. I believe the future of Wau will be brighter," she says, untangling her long dark hair, knotted by the hot afternoon wind. "We Chinese come from a different country, far away , but we are in harmony with Africa."

Maj. Mutacho Shadrock, a Kenyan commanding officer with the UN forces in Wau, says the Chinese peacekeepers "keep to themselves and the vast majority doesn't speak English, even the commanding officers." But, he adds, "They are good workers. They have repaired bridges and roads and are doing good work. And that is what is important."

"I am hardly an apologist for China," says Harry Broadman, an economic advisor on Africa at the World Bank. "But people tend to forget that China itself is a developing country that has had global leadership thrust upon it.

"People ascribe a lot of power and knowledge to them without understanding that they are climbing the learning curve themselves," he says, adding that China wants to be seen as a force for good on the continent. "They want to give Africa a fair deal. I believe that."

Liu is finishing her day in the office and going out to join some of the other Chinese peacekeepers for a table-tennis tournament at the engineering corps camp.

She is a terrific player, she says, and will probably win. "But it's not just about winning, of course," she says. "It's about playing the game with – with ..." Liu searches for the word in English, and then smiles, "with dignity."

That, she says, is the way things are done in China.

Recapturing the Spirit of Independence

July 2, 2007

This week Americans will gather around the grill, attend parades and watch fireworks displays, all in the celebration of the signing of our Declaration of Independence. At the same time, we will have thousands of bureaucrats, troops and agents stationed in countries across the globe being paid by American tax dollars.

On the anniversary of our declaring our own independence from the British, it is certainly appropriate that we reflect on the nature and spirit of independent nationhood. While our founding fathers were individual men in a historically unique situation, they posited that the principles upon which they rested our national independence were timeless.

If we truly honor the men who brought about Independence Day, we would do well to spend at least as much time reflecting on the Declaration of Independence, and the principles upon which it is based, as we spend at the cookouts, parades, and fireworks displays. With the trend toward globalism that has been with us for the past century, we should be specifically thoughtful about how our celebration of independence can be made consistent with the policies that have been advocated by the American government -- as well as many of the nation’s elite— or what we used to call the Eastern Establishment.

I believe there is no way to square our nation’s traditions and reverence for independence with the globalist policies these elites are currently pursuing. The American concept of independent nationhood inscribed in our Declaration cannot be maintained if we are going to pursue a policy that undermines the independence of other nations. National independence is an idea, and the erosion of the independence of other nations only serves to erode that idea.

At the same time, if we allow the erosion of that idea, by ignoring it in certain instances, we will be contributing to its erosion in all times and nations, even our own. In this way our nation’s independence is linked with the independence of all nations. The sooner we realize this truth, and enact a foreign policy that is consistent with it, the sooner we will be able to recapture the spirit of independence.

In addition, as our founding fathers understood, the idea of national independence is inseparable from that of constitutional republicanism. Only the safe-guards and limitations that are enshrined in a constitutionally-limited republic can prohibit a nation from lurching toward empire. Recognizing these same protections is also the very best way to eliminate the need for civil wars and the violence of civil strife.

Moreover, this constitutional republicanism is essential to protecting the individual rights and self-determination that is at the heart of our Declaration. As we celebrate the 231ist anniversary of our nation’s birth, I hope every person who reads or hears this will take the time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Only by recapturing the spirit of independence can we ensure our government never resembles the one from which the American States declared their separation.