The Foreign Policy Mess, and Yes, Obama Built It

Thanks to the indispensable Instapundit I read an interesting article by David Francis in the "Fiscal Times," on "Why Obama’s Foreign Policy Process Is Broken." I recommend that the six or so readers of this humble blog read Francis's article. There certainly is nothing in it with which I disagree, not much, anyhow. He does an excellent job of succinctly laying out what has happened: The US, under Obama, is reduced to reacting to events; under Bush, the world had to react to the United States. That is a neat observation. It is almost always better to be the driver and not some helpless passenger.

As stated above I do not disagree with much in the Francis analysis of the Obamista foreign policy fiasco. I, however, would note Francis states that the Obama team's,

[L]ack of preparedness has been apparent in recent weeks. The White House took a hands-off approach to the Libyan conflict. It failed to act quickly after reports of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It allowed Edward Snowden to escape from Hong Kong to Moscow, keeping the NSA leaker in the news for weeks. And it’s dithering on its long-term plans for Afghanistan.

I would argue that the "lack of preparedness" has been apparent since the start of this misadministration's coming to power. Those six readers might recall that on March 16 I wrote (emphasis added for dramatic effect),

[T]he disaster that is Obama's foreign policy, a policy of defeat. In its defense, let me say that to call it a policy designed for America's defeat gives it too much credit. My experience at State and the NSC, has shown me that most Obamaistas are not knowledgable enough to design anything. Foreign policy for the Obama crew is an afterthought. They really have little interest in it; many key jobs went vacant for months at State, DOD, CIA, and the NSC. The Obama foreign policy team is peopled by the "well-educated," i.e., they have college degrees, and as befits the "well educated" in today's America, they are stunningly ignorant and arrogant leftists, but mostly just idiots. They do not make plans; they tend to fly by the seat of their pants using a deeply ingrained anti-US default setting for navigation. They react to the Beltway crowd of NGOs, "activists" of various stripes, NPR, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Relying on what they "know," they ensure the US does not appear as a bully, or an interventionist when it comes to our enemies: after all, we did something to make them not like us. Long-term US allies, e.g., Canada, UK, Israel, Japan, Honduras, Colombia, on the other hand, they view as anti-poor, anti-Third World, and retrograde Cold Warriors. Why else would somebody befriend the US? Obama's NSC and State are staffed with people who do not know the history of the United States, and, simply, do not understand or appreciate the importance of the United States in and to the world. They are embarrassed by and, above all, do not like the United States.

The chaos we see throughout the world results from the Obama misadministration's lack of preparedness and manifest incompetence from the start. Or does it? Either that or we are left with a much darker possibility: This misadministration deliberately has sought to undermine the power and influence of the United States throughout the world. Increasingly I am of the view that there is a noxious mix of both tendencies, or that we have two-sides of the same coin. I might have been wrong when I stated in the March 16 excerpt above that, "to call it a policy designed for America's defeat gives it too much credit." I am reluctantly coming to conclude that the Obamistas do not prepare, and do name inept National Security Advisors and ignorant Secretaries of State and Ambassadors precisely because it fits in with their world view, to wit, that all would be better with a less active, less effective, less influential United States. They want a post-American world.

Make no mistake about it. The economic and political turmoil we see in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and increasingly in Latin America (I will post about that in more detail) provides a glimpse of how a post-American world would look. Bush and his foreign policy team were not perfect and made mistakes. When Bush spoke, however, leaders and people around the world knew he was serious. You ignored or defied the American President at your peril. Those leaders might not always have liked what Bush said or demanded, but they certainly did not laugh him off. From personal experience I know that when I would go see a senior foreign official on a sensitive topic and said, "The United States asks for your help on this and President Bush would be grateful" that meant something, in fact, it meant a lot. It was very heartening to see the sort of help we got on a range of issues.

Our stupid leftists at home and in Europe referred to Bush as a "cowboy." Nope. They had their Western character wrong. He was the sheriff, and when the sheriff asks you to join his posse to nail the bad guys, well you have a choice. Bush made clear what that choice was, "You are either with us or you are against us." The Bush administration put together some amazing coalitions. This misadministration has thrown that all away. 

It will take years to repair the damage, if it can be repaired.

WLA

The Media Assigns Race: The Martin-Zimmerman Case (UPDATE)

I usually avoid commenting on stories such as the Florida trial of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin. I am not going to go into the details of the case; there is no sense trying to compete with the superb job being done by Legal Insurrection.

There, however, is one issue that increasingly has bothered me. That is how the media and the broader liberal establishment determine racial categories. We have become an odd sort of faded copy of the old South African apartheid system and its obsession with racial classifications. The South African system placed individuals in one of four groups: "Native", "Coloured", "Asian", or "White". Thanks to the liberal obsession with race we are getting into that mode, as well.

Let's do a little mental experiment. Let us say that the man walking around the Sanford housing complex had been George Zimmerman instead of Trayvon Martin. Let us say that Zimmerman had been shot by somebody who looked like, oh, I don't know, let's say, uh, he looked just like Governor Rick Perry of Texas. How much do you want to bet that Zimmerman, who has an Afro-Peruvian grandmother, would have been declared "black"?  Since, however, Rick Perry's doppelgänger was not available, and it was Zimmerman who shot Martin, and Martin is darker than Zimmerman, then Zimmerman is "white" and Martin is "black."  If Zimmerman had used his mother's maiden name or adopted a hispanic version of "George," what would the press have done with this story?

The more I read about this, the more of a travesty of justice I see.

UPDATE: Read the interesting interview by the Sanford police chief in, of all places, CNN. He says the investigation got highjacked for political reasons.

WLA

Testing Days

Just a silly reminisce. No great plot or moral. No daring do. No bulls, no guns, no terrorists.

I was recalling when I took the test for the Foreign Service. I was a grad student in Massachusetts at a small predominantly Jewish university in Waltham--Can you guess the name?--and doing what grad students do best, mooch off the system. I had a full-paid scholarship and a TA gig which left me with sufficient disposable income to live quite well. I could see, however, that the life of academia was not for me. Writing unreadable papers, and dealing with nineteen-year olds and Volvo-driving leftist Ivory Tower sorts forever and ever, well, that struck me as living like Prometheus, chained to a rock and having my liver eaten every day by a giant bird of prey.

I had just been notified that I had gotten a grant to study in Spain for a year or two to work on my never-finished PhD (note: I recently found a couple of chapters of it; it was horrible! The world of letters lost nothing when I abandoned the effort.) Walking by an office, I saw an advert with the very clever and attention-grabbing slogan, "Join the Foreign Service!" There was one mail-in card left and to qualify for the next test, December 4, 1976 (I think) it had to be postmarked that very day. I mailed it, and returned to my dissolute grad student ways.

Lo and Behold! A few weeks later I got my ticket for the exam. It would occur in downtown Boston at a prominent university. I put it aside and didn't think about it much. The date, however, rolled around, as dates are prone to do. The exam was at 8 am and all test takers had to be there early. The night before, as it is wont to do in Massachusetts, it had snowed a lot. The morning temperature was in the single digits. My 1970 Dodge Challenger was buried in the white stuff. I almost blew off the whole thing, but, in the end, dragged myself out of bed, grabbed a shovel, and dug away. The drive into Boston was slow and slick; I hate driving in snow! I eventually made it with thirty minutes to spare. I parked, and slipped and slid my way over to the auditorium to join several hundred nervous hopefuls, some babbling away about how this was their 900th time or so taking the test, and that it was impossible to pass, and was so unfair, etc. I was too groggy to be nervous, and only half-listened to the pompous exam monitor list all the things that would get us thrown out, e.g., talking, sharing, using a calculator, having hidden notes, etc. He added, for spite, I guess, that no more than ten percent of some 30,000 exam-takers nationwide would pass. The test got handed out: it was an SAT-type wherein you use your number 2 pencil to fill the little oval next to the letter of your answer.

The history section, I thought, was a breeze: a lot on the US which I knew well, and a good amount on post-WWII Europe and Asia, which I also knew well. The culture stuff was not hard; if you read Twain, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, etc., it was pretty easy. The geography portion, which my fellow test-takers had said was the toughest part, proved the easiest for me. That year it focussed on the geography of the Pacific and Asia. As an avid reader on the Pacific and Korean wars, I knew where those places were! The math part was mostly charts and interpreting stats, and not hard. I had taken lots of math and science as an undergrad. I left the test with a blah feeling, not worried, not enthused, just blah. Put it all out of my mind as I prepared to go to Spain.

About three or four months later, a short letter arrived telling me I had passed the written exam and needed to report for the second portion, the much-feared oral exam in which, again, at most only ten percent of those examined would pass. If I recall correctly the exam was in May of 1977; it was at the Boston Customs Tower. I arrived early, and got my first lesson in how government works. The examiners were late, very late. After some three hours, I got called into a large room. I was the last person they examined. I took a chair and faced a table with five tired FSOs.

These inquisitors began firing a barrage of what I considered weird questions: If you were an RSO, how would you keep the Ambassador's route unknown? RSO? What the hell is that? As an admin officer facing a budget . . . Admin officer? What's that? How would you solve the Middle East crisis? I mumbled and rambled. I was choking. My ground proximity warning system had begun screeching, "Terrain! Terrain!" I had no parachute! The flames licked at my oh-so-stylish Frye boots! Then the econ specialist asked me, "Describe a non-tariff trade barrier." Hark! A glimmer of hope? The night before I had read a long article in "Business Week" on how France kept US wines out of its market with labeling restrictions. I have a near photographic memory for those kinds of nerdy articles. I spit back the BW piece almost word for word. I started to regain control. The stick was responding! I began to see blue sky! The flames were subsiding! My questioner's jaw dropped: he was taking notes on my answer! Victory barrel roll over the airfield!

The Chairman asked me to wait in the hallway while the panel discussed my fate.

I sat in a folding chair in the hall near the door, a door which I had left slightly ajar--my first incursion into espionage! I could hear them discussing me. The Chairman, more on him later, announced, "I don't like him. He's not very good." A couple of the others mumbled some indistinct mutterings, and then my champion, the econ expert, intervened with a stirring endorsement, "Hell, it's late. He's no worse than anybody else. Might as well take him." I got called in. The Chairman sourly told me, "Well, you got in. The vote was 3-2. I voted against you. I don't think you're very good. We'll let you know when there is an opening." It took until August 1978 to get a job offer.

One penultimate note: that Chairman later got drummed out of the service for, essentially, cowardice and dereliction of duty when he abandoned his post in the middle of a major crisis. So the great wheel does turn and, some times, some times, it grinds the bones of your enemies into dust.

One really last note, the test now, I understand, is completely different as the old test was held to favor white males.

WLA

You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger . . . Until Now

Tired of being an anonymous superhero of the internet, and having people question my bonafides as a former FSO. I, thereby, announce an end to my anonymous existence . . .

My name is W. Lewis Amselem. I joined the Foreign Service in 1978 and left it about two years ago fed up beyond all possible limits with the Obama disaster. I had an increasingly hard time going to work and pretending that morons spoke wisdom.

You can Google me and you will find stories about me, some true, some false, some just weird. BTW, there is a fake Facebook account with my name; pay no attention to that. I do not and will never have a Facebook account.

There, I have done it. The bandage mask has been ripped off.

Tonto, we ride . . . let your sister Elizabeth Warren know we are on our way . . .

WLA

Running in Pamplona . . .

OK, Hemingway fans. You all know what today is. Yes, it is July 7, the first day of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, or Iruña if you're a Basque nationalist, in Navarra, or Nafarroa if you're a Basque nationalist, and which, again depending on whether you're a Basque nationalist, is in Spain or in Euskadi. The condemned bulls that run towards the bullring and death don't care about that stuff, nor do the thousands of drunk foreigners who descend on the place destroying its charm, and risking death at the hooves and horns of huge beasts with nothing to lose.

Despite my deep admiration for British history, philosophers, actors, scientists, writers, book stores and museums, much of my life has revolved around Spain, or Euskadi, depending on whether you're a . . . never mind, you know the drill. My mother was a Spaniard, as is my wife--well, Basque if . . . ---and two of my kids were born in Euskadi or Spain. I love Spanish food (best in the world), art, literature, and history, this although my father's ancestors got thrown out of Illescas (Toledo Province) in the fifteenth century for refusing to convert and ended up as dhimmis in Morocco. My late grandmother kept a box holding the supposed keys to "our" house in Illescas for when we "returned." I told her that the house probably now lay under a shopping mall; she died in Morocco refusing to believe that. Being a callow person, however, for a good paella or crab dish (I will kill for txangurro) I forgive past injustices--I, however, do not vote Democrat as I have some standards.  

Back in July 1978, having not yet joined the Foreign Service--did that the following month--I was visiting my then-girlfriend and now wife in San Sebastian (Donostia, if you're . . . ) We decided to join her cousin and her soon-to-be husband on a road trip to Pamplona. We had to promise the girls' parents on pain of death that we would stay with relatives, and that men and women would sleep in separate rooms for the overnight in Pamplona. They piled themselves and their supplies into their SEAT 850, and we did likewise with my soon-to-be father-in-law's ten-year-old SEAT 600.

The driving distance to Pamplona was not great, probably some 110 kms, about 65 or 70 miles. This, however, was before the freeway that now connects the two cities. It was a grueling mountain drive for our little and heavily laden cars. The 850 overheated several times and we had to stop--and had some great sandwiches and wine, yes, wine is recommended for mountain driving. I hardly got the 600 out of second gear and rarely exceeded 30-35 mph, and there was a minor CO vent into the car. That tiny, noisy SEAT, however, never quit. We arrived over three hours later, dizzy, deaf, tired, and cramped, but alive.

Those were tumultuous times in Spain. The Great Dictator had died some thirty months previous after nearly four decades of rule. The succession to power in Madrid was not at all clear. Long buried themes from Spain's amazingly complex history had come bursting to the surface. Among those, of course, was the issue of separatism, in particular Basque and Catalan claims to their own national identity apart from the five centuries of Castillian domination. Backed by the USSR, the GDR, Libya, Cuba, and Basques in Idaho, the ETA, a terrorist organization modeled on the much older IRA, was conducting violent urban warfare against the traditional symbols of Castillian power, e.g., Spanish banks, the telephone company, the national railroad, Madrid-named governors, pro-Spain Basque politicians, and, of course, the Guardia Civil and the Polícia Nacional. Pamplona and Navarra were caught in the middle. Both Pamplona and its province had long been claimed by Basque nationalists as part of the historical Basque homeland. Even if one accepted some dubious historical interpretations by these Basques, Navarra and Pamplona had undergone major demographic shifts over the decades and centuries. One could no longer consider the population of Navarra and Pamplona as predominantly Basque, either culturally or "racially." ETA and the Basque nationalists, however, could not accept that.

The mood in Pamplona had become ugly, especially in the wake of arrests in previous days of several Basque militants. We arrived in the midst of this darkening political scene in our smoky SEATS with our sandwiches, wine, and sausages. We had to park on the outskirts of town in a raw and only partially developed industrial area. We, however, were young, and away from parents, so a bit of a walk into the center of town didn't bother us. Although the drunk and partying foreigners seemed oblivious to their surroundings, as we got into town those of us a bit more tuned in noticed right away that things were not cheery. We saw fist fights between pro- and anti-ETA youths. The riot police presence was visibly growing with every passing hour. We saw lots of very nasty pro and anti Spain graffiti in Spanish and Euskera. Since we had arrived late, we decided not to check in with my wife's relatives, and headed straight to the bullring to try to get tickets for that day or the next. We walked down the streets where the wooden barricades had been erected for the running of the bulls. We found it impossible to get to the bullring's ticket booth. A large and increasingly boisterous crowd blocked the entrances and filled the plaza in front of the arena. The bullfight for that day was about to begin.

We heard a "Pop!" My wife, the "expert" on bulls, shouted, "Oh my God! They fired the warning rocket! That means the bulls will be charging down this street!" She then did a move that would have made Fosbury proud; she made it over the wooden barricades in record time. I move slower, and remember saying, "The bulls don't run in the afternoon." Another "Pop!" Then more in rapid succession. Lots of yelling and screaming, horns honking, a police siren, a panicked mob pushing down the street where I stood--that's much scarier than bulls. I climbed up the barricade. I saw some people with blood streaming down their faces. More "Pop!" "Pop!" coming from the bullring. I jumped down to where my wife stood and said, "Somebody is shooting!"

Somebody was indeed shooting. The unpopular governor of Navarra had arrived at the bullring to officiate the event. The crowd went wild, booing, stamping their feet, shouting in Spanish and Basque for him to get out, "¡Fuera! ¡Fuera!" They hurled comments about his mother's membership in the world's oldest profession, and her marital status at the time of his birth--nobody can beat Spaniards when it comes to colorful insults. The idiot governor, later assassinated by ETA, sent several members of the Guardia Civil into the center of the arena to announce with bullhorns (appropriate) that the bullfight would get canceled unless order and decorum returned. Mistake. First, never cede the physical high ground to an opponent; second, don't threaten him with a consequence he doesn't care about. The crowd launched a shower of seat cushions, bottles, shoes, chairs, anything throwable onto the cops. One Guardia got hit in the head by a full wine bottle. His colleagues did what panicky cops have done since time immemorial. They began firing. They fired pistols and automatic weapons into the stands and the crowd. A human stampede ensued, not to mention fatalities and many injuries.

To make a long story only slightly less long, the bulls got a reprieve that day. The city of Pamplona, however, exploded. Within a couple of hours or so the telephone company building was ablaze. Running battles between armed and shooting cops and groups of bottle and molotov cocktail throwing youths raged all over town. I told the future Diplowife, "We might want to leave right about now." For once she did not disagree, and with her cousins we walked back to our cars. We were starting them up, when some Guardias approached and asked what we were doing. "We want to leave," we whined. "Not allowed. The city is closed to all traffic, in and out." This made no sense, but they had the guns.

We had never checked in with my wife's relatives; her parents and those of her cousins were almost certainly learning about the mayhem on TV and radio and knew nothing of our fate; the phone company building was a pile of smoldering rubble; and all this, of course, was before cellphones: we were cut off from the outside world. In such a situation, what do you do? You party. My wife's cousin had heard of a fair or carny not too far from where we had parked. Away from the center of town, it offered the promise and hope of fun and safety. Off we went.

Her intel proved accurate. We found a fair with rides and other attractions, and food. We ate sandwiches, drank beer and coffee, and won stuffed animals, appropriately enough, at a shooting booth. By now, it had gotten dark; we could see the glow of the fires in Pamplona and hear police, fire, and ambulance sirens. We would have to sleep in our cars and hope the siege ended by morning. We decided to take a final ride on the merry-go-round. No sooner had we mounted our wooden steeds and begun our slow pointless orbit, a frantic crowd came charging through the fairground. They were fleeing cops who let fly rounds here and there. "Pop!" "Pop!" The herd surged around our merry-go-round, cops in pursuit, and then all vanished. We remained astride our bobbing ponies; the only sound being the jaunty music coming from that merry-go-round. I thought that this could prove a ridiculous way to die. We jumped off the moving carousel, its operator had disappeared, and made our way in the gloom back to the cars. We sat in those tiny SEATs until daybreak, and then slowly drove them past the Guardias who finally had decided to allow people out.

I let Hemingway down. I never saw a single bull, but if I had, I would have run from it. Promise.

WLA

Imagine . . .

If this atrocity's victims had been, well, you know, members of the Religion of Peace . . . the outrage would have been something to see.

WLA

A Subdued Word on Spying

On going through my morning news I see that the French Minister of Interior took advantage of his invite to our 4th of July reception to attack the US for its alleged spying on Europe.

Uh, yeah. OK.

For obvious reasons, I must and will be very cautious in what I say re spying. I note, however, that the French might want to hold their tongues on this matter. France has well-funded, active, and effective national intelligence organizations that operate around the world. The French services collect on many targets, private sector as well as government. Those targets are domestic and foreign, and when I say foreign, I mean, uh, well, foreign, you know, as in not French but maybe European and American, and, uh, those are allies of France, so . . . .

Let me conclude by noting that whenever I was in France on official business or had contact with French officials, including dealing on Airbus vs. Boeing sales, I had to be very careful about where I put my laptop, and what I said or sent via any electronic device, n'est-ce pas?

'Nuff said.

WLA