Avuncular American

Israel: Swift Sword, Into Foot

In the heady days after the Six Day War, when the IDF vanquished numerically superior forces on three fronts, retired US Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall wrote Swift Sword: The Historical Record of Israel's Victory, June 1967.  Now, the title might have to be Spin Swiftly: Israel Inflicts Own Goal In Showdown With Aid Flotilla.

All the spin in the world isn't helping this time.  The Israeli MFA deployed its multilingual team of spokespeople, native speakers of English, French, Arabic, and the infinite diversity of languages brought back from the diaspora by the Aliyah.  To little avail.  When the IDF commandos wind up alienating 81 year old diplomats like retired US Ambassador Edward Peck, they probably have lost already.  What are they going to do, sink the next ship with Nobel Peace Prize winners aboard?

Israel may have the best spinners, but if the message is in contradiction to your very foundation - "Let my people go" - then audiences will quickly figure it out.  Yes, it would be nice if the Palestinians could deploy their own diaspora, who probably have as wide a linguistic background as the Israelis.  For now, they choose people whose imperfect command of English and of PR 101 leaves them at a distinct disadvantage.  The other problem: Israeli spokespersons represent a country, and Palestine does not yet have that status.

Which brings us to the heart of the problem.  As Israeli writer Amos Oz says today ("Israeli Force, Adrift On the Sea") in the New York Times

the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Amen.  Minus that, flotillas will continue to float - and rockets will resume flying.

(Image: Mother Jones)

Diego Garcia: Freedom's Footprint, or Enduring Injustice?

Note: This article appears in the "Speaking Out" column of the June issue of the Foreign Service Journal, "The magazine for foreign affairs professionals" published by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA).  I have wanted to write it ever since visiting Diego Garcia in 1989.

- - - - - - -

In the last decades of the previous century, two isolated archipelagos continued to fly the Union Jack thousands of miles from the mother country, outposts for a handful of British citizens.  Located near strategic territory, these repositories for precious resources remained prized possessions even as the sun was setting on the rest of the empire.

In one of the archipelagos, the Falkland Islands, Britain went to war to eject enemy forces that claimed the territory.  In the other, the Chagos Islands, it welcomed friendly foreign troops, but exiled the islands’ inhabitants.

One can take the analogy between Diego Garcia (the principal island in the chain) and the Falklands too far, of course.  The foreign troops in the latter location only became the enemy in 1982, when a dictatorship sent them to grab the Malvinas, as Argentina still calls the Falklands.  And in the case of Diego Garcia, the United Kingdom was a full partner in making its territory available to the forces of its closest ally, the United States.

But the analogy, which has been made in the British press and courts, contains one very disturbing kernel of truth.  In the Falklands, the inhabitants are white, with implicit rights to protection as British citizens -- while the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, descendants of African slaves, were black, and weren’t even told that they were British citizens when they were summarily removed from the islands.  And why were they evicted?  Because the United States wanted all the islands depopulated.

A Lie Comes to Life

We think of Diego Garcia – if we think of this remote mid-Indian Ocean outpost at all – as a reassuring sandy aircraft carrier of an archipelago, ready to launch planes on missions to the Middle East or to Southwest Asia.  That role was conceived in the 1960s, when London agreed to lease Diego Garcia to Washington.  And if both parties are amenable to a renewal of the lease prior to 2016, Diego Garcia might well continue to serve its strategic role for the rest of the 21st century.

But the original agreement was based on a lie that wrecked the lives of the families who had been living on the islands for generations: that the islands were uninhabited.  To make this fiction a reality, the inhabitants of Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands – known as Chagossians or Ilois  – within the British Indian Ocean Territory had to go.

In Memoriam

This year we are not making our usual pilgrimage to an American military cemetery for Memorial Day (the photo at left is from Flanders Field a couple of years ago).  But I did get to see the next best thing, the PBS documentary Hallowed Grounds, which shows again on PBS stations in the US next Monday May 31, the official Memorial Day holiday.  The film shows every American overseas cemetery, and provides context to the battles that led to the soldiers' final resting places.

Last weekend we were in Luxembourg, and if any country honors US war dead as much as their own, it is Luxembourg.  Its American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) cemetery outside the capital is home to General George Patton, buried with his troops, many of whom fell during the Battle of the Bulge.  Whether it's Luxembourg, France, Belgium or elsewhere, count on local citizens to adorn each American grave with the Stars and Stripes and their own national flag.

This particular Memorial Day comes at a time when Europe is remembering that 70 years ago, in May and June 1940, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France were reeling under the onslaught of the German blitzkrieg that ended the Phony War.  The Maginot Line, Dunkirk, and all that.

Today, another reminder of wars past and veterans present.  The highest French judicial body, the Cour Constitutionnelle, held that "colonial" veterans from places as far afield as Algeria, Morocco, and Senegal cannot be given second class status in terms of pensions.  Veterans groups hailed the move as a victory for equal treatment.

To the veterans, wherever they are from, and to the fallen, wherever they lie.

WW II + 65: Say It With Stamps

It's fitting that former enemies and inheritors of former regimes got together today in Moscow for what may be one of the last big World War II commemorations that can include numbers of walking veterans.  Quite right, too, that the country that suffered the greatest number of casualties be the host.  It's hard to see how Germany could have been defeated without the Red Army's determination.  Click on the stamp at left for an example of the Soviet-era heroic gigantism prevalent in the USSR (from StampRussia).

That other Ally that withstood alone on the Western Front, Great Britain, is of course personified by its wartime leader, Winston Churchill.  His voice, his profile, his very pugnaciousness, stood for so much in the years before the US entered the war.  From the British Postal Museum Archive.

Marching in Moscow for the first time today was the United States, which not only saved the Brits from the Germans, but had to fight off the Japanese throughout the Pacific.  The cartoonist Bill Mauldin, beloved of the foot soldiers but mistrusted by the brass for the scruffy image he gave to GIs, is portrayed in this US Postal Service stamp. Rounding out the Big Four was China, but not the China of Communist Beijing.  Nationalist China, under Chiang Kai-Shek, was at the table with its Soviet, American, and British allies.  No more Soviets at the Kremlin these days, and the Nationalists had to watch the ceremony from Taiwan.  From StampsOfChina.

Finally, France, which though not a member of the wartime Big Four, did manage to stay in the big power league thanks to the sheer will power of then General De Gaulle.  Thanks to French postwar leaders managing to overcome their hatred of Germany for outrages like Oradour (hundreds of men, women, and children killed in cold blood, the entire village burnt to the ground), we have a united Europe today.  Stamp from Timbres-de-France.

Okay, world leaders, well done in the war memorial category.  Now please work together on that even bigger goal: saving the planet from its multiple non-military threats.  It's a much harder target to zero in on.

Coastal Protection, Then and Now

If you’re like me, you may not have known that the patron saint of customs agents is St. Matthew. What better place, then, to hike along the sentier douanier, the customs path that follows Brittany’s rugged coastline, than at Pointe St. Mathieu, west of the port of Brest?

Customs agents used to scout the horizon for signs of smugglers trying to ply the tax-free liquor trade. In the 1940s, German bunkers consumed huge amounts of concrete in a futile quest to ward off Allied invaders. Their hulking presence is especially evident here on the watery approaches to Brest, where the Germans established an important U-Boat base.

Brest is still an important maritime center, home to France’s naval academy, and the Crozon Peninsula across the bay is reputed to be a nuclear site. But the French patrol vessels that ply these waters are probably as interested in preventing pollution than in warding off hostile ships.

Offshore, an astounding 40,000 ships a year travel the maritime highway en route to and from the English Channel. Most of them are good international citizens; some crash on the rocky outcroppings that dot the Mer d’Iroise; and some deliberately flush out their oily fuel tanks and pollute some of the most pristine waters in Europe, which have been given UNESCO protected status.

The threat is not only from offshore: industrial agriculture, especially intensive pork and chicken production, has resulted in massive nitrate pollution of Breton fresh water resources. As this wends its way to the sea, smelly (and potentially deadly) green algae creates a hideous sludge on some of the most beautiful coves and beaches in Western Europe. It’s a tragedy, but one that only comes to public attention when a horse or a dog succumbs to the toxic fumes. So far, humans have only had close calls.

Interestingly, Brittany was one of the three regions in last week’s first round of elections where Socialists and Ecologists failed to reach an agreement on joint lists for next Sunday’s second round. If any region needs more environmentalists to take on entrenched interests, it is Brittany.

Nowhere else is the contrast between differing economic models as drastic. Raise millions of pigs and chickens for our fast food, spread their waste over the fields, and scare off potential tourists who come to Brittany for its combination of rural charm and coastal adventure? If ever there was a challenge for sustainable development, it is here.

Medevac Diplomacy Requires Public Diplomacy

"Not our finest moment"

One of the main developing stories on BBC and other international media over the weekend is the mystery surrounding the apparent freeze - since Wednesday, 5 long days ago - of US military medevac flights from Haiti to the US, meaning Florida.  It's time to get a grip before this becomes a major calamity, human and diplomatic.

[UPDATE I, 1 February: the White House has announced that flights will resume Monday.  UPDATE II, 2 February: according to the New York Times, the Federal government will now reimburse hospitals for Haitians treated under the emergency.  The doctor whose outcry galvanized concerted action said the system was back "in sync."]

The White House has told the BBC that the suspension is due to "logistical issues," but the Miami Herald indicates that state-federal wrangling over reimbursement of medical costs has played a part in the confusion. A Florida doctor on the ground in Haiti said that "it is not our finest moment right now."

One Florida official referred to confusion over having to deal with multiple federal agencies.  Oops, there we go again, despite years of work and millions spent on "interagency" coordination.  Granted, well-intentioned people of numerous nationalities and organizational affiliations are pitching in during this dire emergency, under daunting conditions.  But that is exactly what interagency planning is for - coordination.

The decision to have the US military go in with overwhelming numbers, take charge of the Port-au-Prince airport, and regulate the flow of relief supplies and medevacs means that that the US is solely responsible for making this work.  When it doesn't, it shouldn't be up to Florida officials and US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) spokesmen to trade charges over who is responsible for the holdup.  In addition to unblocking the jam, let's exert a little message control here.

Despite the destruction and the initial rush to help, things started out promisingly - hell, even Cuba granted special flight clearance for US military planes to fly through its airspace.  If Florida is having trouble admitting a few hundred additional Haitians, why not expand on this diplomatic breakthrough and work with Cuba's ongoing Haitian medical program to land patients there?

Image from the Commission for Aviation Regulation.

Christmas 1944: Glorious Bastards of Bastogne

People who skip over their 65th birthdays can be forgiven: there's Social Security and all that.  With historical commemorations, 65 doesn't have quite the same ring as 50 or 75.  The 60th anniversary in 2004 was a pretty big event, but may have lost some of the usual warm glow due to European unhappiness over Bush's invasion of Iraq.

For those who may not have realized that we are smack in the middle of the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge and its Christmas of 1944, here is my take on "the Battered Bastards of Bastogne" (the 101st Airborne Division) and other tales from the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg.

The view from our balcony in Brussels the other day (below right) was a taste of what they saw in those days of December 1944.  Or didn't see: a large part of the German success in making a mid-winter breakthrough was the freezing fog, which kept Allied aviation (especially reconnaissance) grounded.  When the panzers made their dash starting December 16, tank-destroying fighters were still unable to fly.

General George S. Patton was so perturbed by the weather that he had his chaplain compose a prayer for divine intervention (see Carlo D'Este's biography, "A Genius For War").  Less well known perhaps is Patton's Christmas carol, to the tune of "O, Little Town of Bethlehem," after seeing the destruction of the Belgian town of Houffalize:

Oh little town of Houffalize,
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy steep and battered streets
The aeroplanes sail by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
Not any goddamned light;
The hopes and fears of all thy years
Were blown to hell last night.

The town had been completely destroyed, mostly by Allied bombing, but that did not appear to dampen the townspeople's gratitude toward their liberators.  It was, after all, their second liberation in a matter of a couple of months.  And the Ardennes had been a German invasion route in 1940, 1914, 1870...

Houffalize, Bastogne, and other towns in Belgium, plus several in Luxembourg, are marking the events of six and a half decades ago this snowy (but infinitely milder than that of 1944-45) winter.  Americans may have fallen out of the habit of saying "Nuts!" as a way of dismissal, but most Belgians still remember General Anthony McAuliffe's famous one-liner, his refusal to surrender encircled Bastogne at the Bulge's most dangerous moment.

See the entire schedule of events, plus campaign maps, on the Ardennes' Tourist Board website (poster, left).  Belgian TV channels have been putting on documentaries featuring people whose memories are still fresh, though they were at most teenagers during these traumatic events.

For those who can't make it to this corner of Europe in mid-winter, read a good book (the 101st Airborne's site has an extensive list) or check out Patton, the 1970 classic, or the "Band Of Brothers" episode on Bastogne.  Just don't watch the embarrassing "Battle of the Bulge," the 1965 war movie shot - not on location in the Ardennes - but in the Hollywood favorite of arid Spain.

America: Exceptional, Indispensable, or Musclebound?

Two unrelated but thought-provoking seminars in Brussels, plus a Presidential address from West Point later today, have put American foreign and security policy on my mind.  If the spin is accurate, we are told to expect the announcement tonight of an Afghanistan surge by the President from the US Military Academy.

Bob Herbert in the New York Times today ("A Tragic Mistake") calls escalation - to use a Vietnam-era term - in Afghanistan "the easier option"

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime.

Is that true - that the United States has been in "permanent state of warfare?"  That was one of the premises behind Michael Moore's 2002 hit Bowling For Columbine, but for a less hysterical look at a "permanent state of exceptionalism" since the outset of the republic, let me talk about the very serious conference organized around the book launch of "Exceptionalisme américain et les droits de l'homme" (American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, edited by two young ULB law professors Ludovic Hennebel of the Magna Carta Institute and Arnaud Van Waeyenberge of the Perelman Centre).

Non-lawyer that I am, I was most interested in one of the assertions in the book/conference by Van Waeyenberge: that the European human rights concept of "human dignity" - curiously - is not a concept that is enshrined in the US Constitution, though I suppose the Bill of Rights goes some way towards rectifying the omission.  But even there, the enumerated rights don't really address human dignity.

Maybe that's why there is a discipline called Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), "Breaking the cycle of humiliation."  Remember how the general public in the US appeared to be less than horrified at the revelations of Bush/Cheney-approved torture?  Perhaps they have become inured to the routine hand and foot shackling of even non-violent suspects in the American judicial system, the fitting of slavery-evoking "spit guards" on young minority defendants, the chaining of women prisoners as they deliver babies... yes, "exceptionalism" can include lots of affronts to human dignity.

One shining example of taking exception to Bush/Cheney legal and moral exceptionalism was in the JAG corps, the military's judicial and prosecutorial cadre in the Judge Advocate General branches of each of the services.  If the US still claims adherence to the Geneva Conventions, it is in large part thanks to several senior military lawyers and judges, who put their careers on the line.

Venerable Realists, and Realistic Upstarts

Exceptionalism, and Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation" were also the subject of an IERI conference that I moderated on readings of three prominent American strategic thinkers: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel Huntington.  I was relieved that the analyst, Jacques Lippert of IERI, took issue with Huntington's "clashing civilizations," as his amalgam of Chinese/Islamic threats to the West always sounded like the lumping together of deadly enemies Iran and Iraq with outlying crazies in North Korea to form Bush's "Axis of Evil."

But lest the audience of European Union functionaries and diplomats get the impression that American strategic thought is caught in a Kissinger-Brzezinski time warp of the Seventies, I harped on about Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich and his take on realism as an antidote to the dark ages of neoconservatism. In "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War" (my review), Bacevich builds his argument against military adventurism, and against the bipartisan tendency to look to military solutions for thorny world problems.  A musclebound muscle man is like a one-note song.  Bacevich's most recent book, "The Limits of Power: American Exceptionalism," should be required night table reading for Obama Administration advisers.

Just as Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Albright incarnated the mid-20th century European exodus to the safety of the United States, so do some of today's brightest thinkers on international affairs - Fareed Zakaria and Parag Khanna - represent another, southern, diaspora of growing importance in 21st century USA.  Their books point to "the rise of the rest" or a dynamic, resource-rich "second world" that has come up out of the old Third World.  Neither would sign on to the "realpolitik" definitions of national power that narrowly focus on troop strength or missile range.  They would, however, see merit in the DIME construct that the US military likes to inculcate in its strategic thinkers, that Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic pillars constitute crucial elements of national power.  Not in isolation, but collectively.

Colin Powell, soldier and diplomat that he has been, knows a thing or two about the bases of national power, and was a keen believer in that phrase "all elements of national power."  His Powell Doctrine, which includes overwhelming force coupled with national purpose and an exit strategy, may be due for a revisit, as we learn in today's post from Diplopundit.

If so, it couldn't be more timely.

Veterans Day: Easy On the Onion Rings

When you are on a US military installation, whether soldier or civilian, you're supposed to stop out of respect if you're walking outside when the bugler plays taps at the end of the day.

Yesterday, a day ahead of Veterans Day, as the November 11 Armistice Day ending World War I has been known in the United States for more than fifty years, President Obama observed that respect in the Fort Hood ceremony.  Dignified - the proper stance for a Veterans Day that is as delicate a moment as any in recent years.  For once, a President and his advisers are doing war planning that will strive to end our two ongoing wars/occupations, deliberating in a way that apparently was not done when President Bush - with typically undeliberative speed - got the US into those wars.

Dignity doesn't always come naturally to Americans wanting to profit from identification with patriotism.  "Free onion rings for men and women in uniform" promises a fast food outlet, its way of "investing" a few scraps in the war effort.  Well, I suppose that if you're a private or airman risking your life on what approaches minimum wage, anything that comes free is welcome.

But don't ask the fast food magnate to sacrifice his son or daughter to the defense of the realm - that's for people who eat onion rings in greasy spoons.

From Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Good Eats

My friend Dick, happily retired in Florida's Gulf coast, does provide the Good Eats (although you might have to cook some yourself), but the Christian part is definitely tongue in cheek.  He's one of the tidiest bachelors around, so the "Dirty Dick" part is there just for color, though it does sound properly rakish and piratical.   He was a Navy man before he became a diplomat and eventually my first boss in the Foreign Service.

Those days are past, and we spend much of our time applying our honed analytical skills - sorry, but Evaluation Report language always manages to creep in... trying to get our heads around the matter of the State of the United States.  It's a lifelong task.

We were blissfully enjoying a beer and Cheap Eeetz alongside the marina when a wide screen TV on the wall announced the mass killing at Fort Hood ("the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services") Texas.  When we read the caption naming the alleged shooter, we knew it boded ill for a whole host of reasons.  Yet another "senseless killing" as they say, the work of a possibly deranged individual.  A Lone Star Shooter.  But because the suspect has a name that resonates from here to the Middle East, and because his victims were soldiers in a place where they shouldn't have been under fire, he won't be "just another" mass murderer.

Nidal Malik Hasan's apparent infiltration of personal weapons onto the base has to cause concern for the hundreds of other military installations scattered across the country, and across the world.  "We will increase our security presence here in the coming days" said base commander Lieutenant General Robert Cone.  Well, of course they will, but the deed is done, and no amount of posting Humvees with 50 caliber machine guns trained at the gates will screen murderous intent in the minds of soldiers who might "go Postal."

Do you know how many private cars pass through the gates of just this one base - population 50,000 or so - daily?  Sure, they can double and triple check ID, pull some suspicious sergeants and potentially mad majors over and have them open up the trunk, but a determined killer will easily stow a few handguns and plenty of ammunition wherever he pleases.  It's what's in the mind, not what's under the hood.

Read today's Bob Herbert, himself a Vietnam era vet and consistent in his recognition of the extreme stress that upwards of a decade of wars has put on the US military.  Herbert reminds us that stress is not just a minor irritant in the context of repeated exposure to war zones.  There is not one iota of an excuse for this insane act's perpetrator, but Herbert reminds us that "we haven’t heard a lot about the scores of suicides at that same base — the highest of any U.S. military installation — since the invasion of Iraq in 2003."

This mass murder, like the many before it, unleashes the perennial battle over gun control, or rather the lack thereof, in the United States.  The same arguments for and against will be trotted out with numbing effect.  It's unfortunate that there are ultra-stressed out individuals, whether soldiers or civilians, but why oh why do we make it so easy for them to act out their impulses?  "Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People" read the NRA bumper stickers.  Perhaps, but a potential mass murderer armed with, say, a kitchen knife he just grabbed on impulse might be a tad less lethal than one armed with an automatic weapon and endless ammo clips.

But at Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Fine Foods, we don't indulge in pie-in-the-sky.  Just add Fort Hood to the list - Columbine, University of Texas, Virginia Tech - shake your head, and hit the remote control.  There are, apparently, other priorities.  To be continued...