Avuncular American

Europe: Vaclav Klaus Country? Not.

If this continues, the Czech Republic will earn itself the label of an unreliable partner and a banana republic.

Jiri Pehe, Director of NYU Prague, in Bloomberg 7 October, "Czech Reputation May Be Damaged As Klaus Delays Treaty Signing," by Andrea Dudikova

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When you fly into Prague on Czech Airlines, they start playing The Moldau, Bedrich Smetana’s bucolic ode to his country, from Má vlast (My Country), his set of 19th century symphonic poems. You can almost hear the river Vltava flowing.

Now, I’m no Czech nationalist, in fact I find it awkward to even pronounce the country’s name (”The Czech Republic” is a mouthful in English, and sounds almost silly in French, “La Tchéquie“), ever since the breakup of Czechoslovakia. But I do love The Moldau and "Má vlast." Anyway, I’m not here to dwell on the breakup of perfectly fine 20th century countries. That was then. This is now.

And “now” - except for Czech President Vaclav Klaus (postage stamp portrait thanks to The Brussels Journal, “The Voice of Conservatism in Europe”) - is Europe, possibly even the Europe of the post-Irish referendum Lisbon Treaty. But that doesn’t account for Mr. Klaus, who, despite Brussels blogger Stanley Crossick’s fervent wish, may not want to play Santa for Europe, which is definitely not "Má vlast" in Klaus' book.

Certainly not for what he called, in the pages of The Brussels Journal in 2005, “Europeanism.” It’s an ism right up there in his pantheon of Bad Things, along with “NGOism,” “social-democratism,” “environmentalism,” and “technocratism”… and you know where that leads: right back to “Europeanism.”  Remember how Klaus treated the EU during the Czech Republic's six-month presidency, and you'll appreciate how difficult is interim Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer's task today in Brussels, trying to convince the EU that not all Czechs are in agreement with their president.

So unless Klaus-the-ideologue has changed (looking at his personal website entry from the other day, I doubt it), methinks the Lisbon Treaty has not been saved by my Irish friends. No, I’d say that Tony Blair or Jean-Claude Juncker (I vote for the latter) shouldn’t start their house-hunting in Brussels quite yet.

Though our worries are not over - until the seemingly bitter man in Prague (the scowl on the postage stamp appears to be permanent) gets over his fixation on isms - no point in letting it ruin your day. Just click on YouTube and listen to The Moldau, with a nice slide show of classic Czech postage stamps.

Don’t worry, Klaus’s scowling portrait isn’t among them.

An earlier version of this post appeared in Euractiv/Blogactiv, a compendium of EU coverage.

Irish Abuse Report: The Wages of Theocracy

"A theocracy in all but name" is what the late Irish author John McGahern called his country, especially in the mid-20th century post-independence years, when the Catholic clergy wielded power well beyond the church pulpit.  Power to incarcerate children, and, according to a report just released, power that resulted in the abuse of those same children.

I haven't read the report (available at the above BBC link), but the news reports surrounding its release recall two films on the subject.  "Song For a Raggy Boy" (2004), reviewed here, was dramatically over-dramatized, but apparently spot-on as far as content showing abuse at the hands of "religious," as they were called.

Superior in both dramatic content and credibility is the 2003 film "The Magdalene Sisters," a harrowing account (in part because it portrays events happening as late as the Sixties) of life in a reform school for girls.

Ireland has largely moved on from being the "priest-ridden land" that it once was.  The very fact of the abuse report's publication proves that.  But the damage caused by priests, brothers, and I regret to say, nuns (other than a few disciplinarians, my memory of Irish nuns remains positive) to thousands of children over decades is incalculable.

To say nothing of the lasting damage caused to the Catholic Church.

Theocracy: a concept of governance best left in the Dark Ages.

(Celtic cross clip art from "Ireland Fun Facts" [sic] website)

O' Horten

No Irish man or woman in my circle is an O' Horten.  But my circle doesn't include the Arctic Circle, which is the domain of this particular O' Horten.  Odd (a perfectly normal name for a Norwegian) Horten is a train driver for NSB, the national Norwegian rail line, which appears to have some pretty spectacular scenery on offer for both drivers and passengers.

In this spare, droll, quirky film (Bent Hamer doesn't make them any other way), there's not a whole lot of this scenery on offer, save for some snowy stock footage of trains seen from the air, and locomotives wending through Norway's hundreds of tunnels.  The action, such as it is, mostly takes place in urban settings and interiors; Horten himself lives along the railroad tracks.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a film for trainspotters, though I'd say that nostalgic Märklin HO-gauge enthusiasts will enjoy a scene where Horten's fellow train drivers play a sort of audio Trivial Train Pursuit with reel-to-reel recordings of classic train sounds.   Veteran Norwegian actor Bård Owe, apparently the scion of an acting family, plays Horten to phlegmatic perfection.

No, despite the train theme, O'Horten is more concerned with human interaction, the vagaries of meetings that occur in places familiar and not.  Odd Horten, facing retirement after decades of loyal, though possibly uneventful, service, starts to see the possibilities.  His routine, no longer tied to intercity schedules, opens up to worlds previously unknown - often on his very doorstep.

But you won't strain your eyes reading dense subtitles; the dialogue is true-to-character - spartan.  Since large portions of the film take place in the wee hours of the morning, there isn't a whole lot of scope for talky encounters.

Warning: if you discount the presence of one 6 year-old boy, the average age of the people with speaking parts is closer to 65.  But this isn't an "old folks" film either.  It's just that Bent Hamer appears fascinated with the life of Norwegian "codger bachelors," as the New York Times' Elvis Mitchell said of his 2003 film "Kitchen Stories."

I have yet to see "Kitchen Stories."  But I did see Bent Hamer's English-language "Factotum" a couple of years ago and liked it a lot.  Check the Norwegian Film Institute's (NFI) page on the director, and his long list of international awards.  Norwegian group Kaada provides the fitting soundtrack.

Though here in Belgium they wisely kept Hamer's original title, the French distributor appears to have slapped on the title, "Nouvelle vie de Monsieur Horten," almost guaranteeing apathetic yawns among the uninitiated.  But those who appreciate their humor understated will find plenty to smile at in this gem.

Horten, Norway is "the place to be," says the town's website visithorten.com.  But if you can only get to the cinema - O'Horten is set to be released in the UK and the US later this spring - this film is the way to get a little picture of lives on the working class fringe of this very wealthy country.

O'Horten-Horton, Loftus-Lofthus - there's been a certain influence of the Vikings on the Irish, and vice versa.  Like "Waking Ned Devine," the Irish hit from a decade ago, "old" can be very, very good.  This film is a treat, and confirms my belief - not that I needed to - in "small," low-budget films.

Be sure to stay for the closing credits - especially Bent Hamer's dedication.

Mideast Facts 'n Spin: Time for Mitchell's Model

There is a very useful document archived on the site Mediate.com, "George Mitchell: Role Model for Mediation," written by Irish mediator Geoffrey Corry after the triumph of the Good Friday Agreement a decade ago.  It's worth reading for tips on how Mitchell's low key, high credibility approach brought together factions as riven by mutual antagonism as Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.

Reconciling groups that had previously only demonized the opposing side - useful experience for his new job, which pits Israel against Hamas against Fatah.  Given the fight for world public opinion recently waged around the fighting in Gaza, Mitchell's Mediation Model will first need to separate out the spin.

As Corry wrote about Mitchell in Northern Ireland, it all begins with a Conflict Assessment: "undertaken at the beginning of the process... it was a great way of getting to know all the players and hear their underlying concerns."  That's exactly what former Senator Mitchell is doing today, barely a week after his appointment by President Obama.  Everybody's doing an assessment of the most recent fighting (see below).  Mitchell will be assessing what has changed since he last "did" peace processing, and will be looking deeper and broader than the still-smoldering Gaza.

For now, the after-action reports are still focusing on image, PR, spin, and public opinion.  "A Battle Over What Happened in Gaza," as Jeffrey Fleishman recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, sums up the after-action reporting.  Fleishman quotes Ari Shavit in Haaretz who said while the fighting still raged, that Israel was "destroying its soul and its image."

Those supporting the Israeli position saw much more than solidarity in the European "tilt" in favor of the battered Palestinians.  Wrote Efraim Karsh for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA)

The fact that international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers would seem to suggest that it is a manifestation of longstanding prejudice that has been brought out into the open by the conflict.

If the European press erred on the side of the Gazans, that would not appear to be the case in most of the US press, where, as former American diplomat John Brown noted in Common Dreams, "apologists" successfully deployed "the talking point that Israel, by striking at Hamas on its turf, has done the United States a favor."

Belgian journalist, human rights activist, and "Atlantic Progressive" Jean-Paul Marthoz, who knows the press on both sides of the ocean, writes:

The real issue however is much more the growing European awareness that this conflict is corroding the internal situation and constantly endangering international stability. According to most surveys the level of knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is higher in Europe not only because the European media are on the whole more generous in their foreign news reporting and on the whole more diverse in their coverage but also because the mainstream European political debate provides more plurality of voices than in the U.S.

For plurality, there's no place better than in the current issue of the London Review of Books to get a version of events unseen in much of the US press.  In "Israel's Lies," Henry Siegman (former national director of the American Jewish Congress - AJCongress), as Jimmy Carter did in the Washington Post, shows that Israel's intransigence over allowing food and medicine into Gaza was a major factor in ending the ceasefire that had lasted throughout much of 2008.  Siegman demolishes the notion of Israel's search for accommodation with the Palestinians, using Israeli politicians' own words, then asks: "Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers?"

Senator Mitchell, bless him, will have to wade through the multiple dimensions of mistrust as he tries to make up for the last eight years of neglect.  Geoffrey Corry's "Mitchell Model" - which, beyond conflict assessment, involves setting out basic principles, negotiating a set of basic ground rules, establishing a deadline, working from a single text document, and building an inclusive process - is underpinned by what he calls Mitchell's "low profile" style.

If that sounds boring, so be it.  But, as Ehud Olmert once wisely said (before he contradicted himself recently) "It's better to speak than to shoot."

Dubya We Hardly Knew Ye

In some ways, we think we know George W. Bush too well.

He's been President of the United States for eight interminable years.  Today begins his last full week, for those who don't have the official Countdown Out of Office Calendar.

For the 3,000 to 5,000 American families who homes are repossessed daily, Bush has a permanent place in their broken hearts.

To the families of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died since his invasion of their country, "Boosh" will be shorthand for their multiple reasons to hate.  To the families of American soldiers killed there, they will not be able to see his name without remembering who sent their sons and daughters to his war of choice.

And for generations of Americans to come, he will be remembered as the leader who saddled them with insurmountable debt and a stricken economy, rivaling Herbert Hoover in opprobrium.

(Thanks to MAD Magazine and Warner Bros. for their unforgettable poster)

But do we know George W. Bush at all?  Don't look for much help in his endless series of "legacy" interviews, where he finds fault with everyone but himself for the country's parlous state.  Not much help either from the "biopic" by Oliver Stone, despite Josh Brolin's best efforts at impersonification, as Dubya might say.  What is George W. Bush?

Anti-government? (though he expanded both government payroll and national debt as no President before him).  Christianist zealot? (though jeopardized the lives of his fellow religionists in the Middle East, who lost a longtime safe haven in Iraq).  "Master of Business Administration?" (his MBA got him nowhere in "managing" the meltdown brought on by his policy of malign neglect).  I suspect the books analyzing his psyche will continue to be legion, to be added to groaning bookshelves full of tomes attacking his policies while in office.

My apologies to fans of the Irish tune "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye," and to Kenneth O'Donnell, who appropriated the title for his book on the lamented John F. Kennedy.  No one will lament Dubya.  But he remains an enigma.

I've been reminded by conservative readers that W. probably won't be - and they think he shouldn't be - tried for war crimes.  On the prediction, they're probably right.  On his guilt, well you just have to read the indictment.  It will take more than four or eight years of an Obama Administration to wash away the stain that Bush's torture policies left on a sullied American reputation.

But here's a Travel Warning to the soon-to-be-ex-President: if I were you, I would avoid travel to democratic countries that have an independent judiciary.  Once out of office, the aura of the US Presidency and the immunity it affords will no longer be a force to dissuade prosecutors who respect human rights.  You might just get pursued beyond the borders of Crawford, so it might be best to lie low.

And please, please, don't write any books.  Even Spell Check won't be able to correct your twisting of the language, and of the truth.  Just cut some brush, and fade away.  We won't be needing your advice any more, thank you.

Reg. Peking Dept. Agr.

BEIJING - CHINA, which has weathered a series of scandals over food safety, has put 12 US food products on a 90-day import alert after they were found to contain a banned dye or excessive additives or preservatives.

The import alert comes as the US maintains a ban on imports of food from China, unless they can show they are free of dairy or free of melamine.

The compound, used in making plastic, was added to Chinese baby formula, killing at least six Chinese infants and making hundreds of thousands sick.

Earlier in the week, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) impounded and destroyed Italian brandy, Spanish dairy products, Belgian chocolate and seasoning from Britain. -- REUTERS

Oh Lord.  It's the bit about Belgian chocolate that got me going.  Actually, I don't like the idea of destroying "Italian brandy" either - would that be grappa?  Seriously, this is one of China's sillier efforts in its tit-for-tat approach to international trade.  Anyone who knows Belgian chocolate (thanks to Chocolate.com for the above display) knows that it's among the world's purest - and tastiest.

In the United States, even before the Federal Food and Drug Administration was thought of, there was the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture:

Over the years, many consumers across the U.S. have come to recognize the small print on many food product labels "Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr." (Registered Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture). Historically, Pennsylvania has been known to have some of the more exacting food manufacturing regulations in the U.S. If food manufacturers registered their products in Pennsylvania, this was indication they met requirements in other states.

That was before China's exacting standards became the norm.  Who knows, we may all have to add melamine to food to receive the "Reg. Peking Dept. Agr." seal of approval.  Maybe the Irish got their chemical substances confused when they added dioxin, and not melamine, to their animal feed.

As long as the Belgians don't cravenly cave to the Chinese, their chocolate should be just fine.

Ireland, Europe: Why "Not?"

The end of Europe.¹
Clearly demonstrated the deep division that exists between the European elite and the citizens of Europe.²
Underneath all this there is a more profound question, which is about the future of Europe.³
"No" brings Europe to a kind of standstill.⁴
For me, the worst that could happen is if the citizens of the European Union or the leaders of the European Union enter into a zone of paralysis psychologically.⁵

Europe is still dealing with the Irish audacity of No, its unsurprising rejection of the Lisbon Treaty last Thursday.  Search the opinion columns of the European press, and you'll likely come up with sentiment similar to that expressed above.  Only the quotes I've provided date back to May 2005, when French voters rejected the EU constitution, the failed precursor to the Lisbon Treaty.  Providing the wisdom back then were:

¹Romano Prodi, former EU Commission President;
²President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic;
³Tony Blair, then British PM;
⁴Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Belgian PM;
⁵Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief.

Some of these luminaries are still in the same jobs; others (Blair, Prodi, Dehaene) have gone on to other occupations.  The quotes are found in "French No Vote on European Constitution Rattles Continent," by Elaine Sciolino in the 31 May 2005 New York Times.

Perhaps the only unexpected aspect of Thursday's referendum was the relatively high turnout (53.1 %).  As an informed Irish reader of this blog put it, the high turnout revealed "the fallacy of the silent majority's favorable feelings towards the EU."  The same reader pointed me in the direction of pre-vote analysis by Irish writer David McWilliams, who pondered on the eve of the referendum ("Why 'Yes' and 'No' voters are in a class of their own")

Is the debate on the Lisbon Treaty coming down to class? Is the overwhelming bourgeois accent of the ‘Yes’ vote an election issue? In an era when many considered class politics to be more or less over, the social breakdown in the polls is fascinating. The trend that has emerged is that the middle-class is considerably more pro-European than the working class. According to the latest polls, the ‘Yes’ campaign is only ahead among the better off voters. So the posh are pro-Europe while the majority of the working class is planning a ‘No’ vote.

With the benefit of hindsight, now you can look at the Irish Times' great interactive map, showing the map of Ireland divided into No (flaming red) and Yes (bright green) and Undecided (gray for Dublin, which was still counting when the Times went to print).  Beyond the Pale (the way the English described Ireland outside of the Dublin area in the old days), poorer, rural Ireland appears to have given Lisbon a massive Red light.  But why?

Fintan O'Toole, assistant editor of the Irish Times writing in today's Guardian, speaks of the "scattergun negativity" of the naysayers defeating the "miserable" and uninspired Yes campaign ("Good for Ireland, Good for Europe").  His examples of voter sentiment would make you laugh, if you didn't want to cry:

• One anonymous voter was using the opportunity of a vote on the structural reform of the European Union to protest against the withdrawal by the newly privatised state airline Aer Lingus of its regular service between Shannon airport and Heathrow.
• Another voter "got a bit of information that, if I voted yes, my sons would be drafted into the army, so I voted no ... Our sons are too good-looking for the army."

Of course, we know how irrational voters can be once in the booth, and I fear what results such behavior will yield in next November's US presidential elections.  But that's what happens in democracies: people will do the damnedest things.

But once the "end of Europe as we know it" ill-informed reaction to this vote subsides, serious minds will approach the negotiating table with salvage in mind... just like Nicolas Sarkozy did last year when he helped unravel the mess that French voters helped cause when they rejected the EU constitution.  Getting Europe right is messy, time-consuming, frustrating, expensive, and more.  But, as Romano Prodi told Elaine Sciolino three years ago after the French reverse, "This is still better than a war of secession like the United States once had.  We must keep this perspective in mind. We don't have a treaty, but we also don't have wars."

Europe: All Eyes On Ireland

A copy of the Agreement was posted to every household in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and put to referendums the following May, which gave them substantial support by 74% and 94% respectively.
BBC on the Good Friday Agreement Referendum, 22 May 1998

I remember seeing one of those copies at my cousins' home, on the coffee table and well-thumbed.  They had read it before voting.

I’m voting ‘no,' though I don’t know an awful lot about it.
Brendan Fairbrother, retired Dubliner, quoted in today's New York Times by Sarah Lyall.

It looks like Mr. Fairbrother hasn't studied the 287-page Lisbon Treaty, but I can't be sure.  For those Irish voters (or readers) who want a quick summary, today's Irish Independent provides "The Treaty Made Simple."

If Brendan Fairbrother can't manage 287 pages of, as Sarah Lyall writes, "vintage bureacratese," I can't really blame him.  Nor is it the fault of the Irish that their constitution requiring Yes/No plebiscites puts them in, as today's Guardian cheerfully calls it, Europe's "awkward squad" along with Denmark and other sometime naysayers.  That's the problem with referendums: reducing complex 287-page treaties to a yes or no response can elicit the "wrong" response.  "Wrong" as in "no."  What then?  As the NYT's Lyall reports, "French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke ominously on Tuesday of a “Franco-German” response to a “no” vote."  Sarkozy, who early in his presidency made a big show over his role in "simplifying" the treaty, has a personal investment in its ratification.

A "Franco-German response?"  France tried to help the Irish win their independence in 1798, "The Year of the French" (great historical novel, by the way, by Thomas Flanagan).  That didn't go well, and the Irish had to wait another century-plus to rid themselves of the colonial British.  Germans have been buying up lots of vacation homes in Ireland in recent years, and Germany's designs on a newly-independent neutral Ireland in the '30s and '40s worried the Anglo-American alliance, but things never went too far.  The Irish have to vote - it's not optional.

It's this kind of talk, Monsieur Sarkozy, that gets Ireland's Irish up, so to speak.  As the Irish Independent's cheat sheet puts it on the cherished notion of Irish neutrality:

Q:What does the treaty do on the military front?

A:Over the last five decades Ireland has built an internationally respected reputation for UN peacekeeping, thanks in part to neutrality.
Fears have been expressed over military expansion in Europe and demands on countries to massively increase their defence budgets.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, foreign, security and defence decisions must be made unanimously.
Ireland's neutrality is protected but there is an obligation to aid and assist, in accordance with the UN, a state which is the victim of armed aggression.
The type of aid and assistance that is required is not specified, but it must not affect security and defence policies of states, including Ireland's neutrality.
Also, states are obliged to help each other after a terrorist attack, natural or man-made disaster.

Such step-by-step gingerly handling of the Neutrality Question may strike non-Irish readers as overly cautious in the post Cold War present.  Not so.  Neutrality, and supposed threats to it, is sacred to the Irish.  I recall that when the US Mission to NATO (of which I was then a part) organized a seminar in a Dublin suburb in the late '90s, there was a mini-hullabaloo over this "military alliance" coming to neutral Ireland.  That the conference was on NATO's expansion to the East (and not west to Ireland) mattered little.  It was their very presence on neutral soil that counted.

Referendums, like elections, are sometimes decided on issues that have nothing to do with the question at hand.  Are voters unhappy (or happy?) with the ruling coalition this month?  Has the president (or prime minister, or chancellor) been unpopular of late?  Do people want to get their revenge by opposing whatever the government is proposing?  How's the weather on referendum day?  The Guardian:

Europe's future, being decided today, may hinge on such happenstance as the Irish weather. An unlovely day could keep people at home. A low turnout will hurt the pro-European vote.

Today's weather forecast for Ireland is "intermittent clouds."  Will attitudes toward the European benefactor - the hand that helps feed the Celtic Tiger - be sunny today?

(Image Source: Traditional Lace Makers of Ireland)

Contacts With the Opposition II: Ireland, Good Friday, and Terror

Today is the tenth anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has allowed Northern Ireland to regain a measure of peaceful coexistence, as well as a considerable economic rebirth.  On a visit to Belfast circa 1999, the change in atmosphere was already apparent; Belfast bloomed with construction sites, “boutique” hotels were catering to business travelers if not tourists, and I recall that Belfast had something like the UK’s highest concentration of Mercedes and BMWs.

But as the BBC’s Panorama program showed this week, all is not love and roses between the communities; some 47 “peace walls” separate the Protestant and Catholic communities in several Ulster cities.  Though former sworn enemies Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein Catholic nationalists and Ian Paisley of the Protestant unionists now cavort laughingly together at the Stormont regional assembly, so much so that they’ve been dubbed “The Chuckle Brothers,” things are not so cozy on the street, where sectarianism is very much alive and well.

Yesterday’s Terrorist Is Today’s Statesman

So though the Northern Irish peace is not perfect, it is unquestionably better than the alternative.  The same might be said of Bosnia in the years after the Dayton Agreement, though the country is still divided into ethnic enclaves.  People can at least go shopping in Sarajevo without being picked off by snipers.  And Kosovo, Europe’s newest state(let), which may need an international umbilical cord for the foreseeable future, has settled into a sort of modus vivendi among its warring factions.

If Martin McGuinness – former IRA commander and convicted under terrorism charges – can now share parliamentary power with his former enemy, what does that tell us about the nature of politics?  Examples of former “terrorists” graduating to statesman status abound: Israel’s Menachim Begin of Irgun/Stern Gang infamy, becoming a peace partner with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat; Nelson Mandela, though probably the world’s most respected former leader, was originally imprisoned as the leader of the “terrorist” ANC, and still has to be "waivered" into the United States for his link with anti-apartheid terrorism; and if the French Revolution hadn’t yet “invented” the term terrorism in the late 18th century, the colonial British had similar terms a few years earlier for their American Revolutionaries, whose guerrilla operations (the “Swamp Fox”) and privateering went beyond the bounds of conventional military etiquette.

Back to the Good Friday anniversary and Tony Blair’s Finest Hour.  Today’s BBC World Service radio program “Analysis” is an excellent 9 minute evocation of the true political courage and vision that was behind the British-Irish-American (former senator George Mitchell was a key intermediary during the talks) initiative that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998.  “Analysis” notes that Blair rightly judged that the men-with-guns had to be included in the process, which tended to sideline or at least diminish the role of moderate parties like the SDLP, the largely Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party.

But Blair’s approach – if the men-with-guns are talking, they might be distracted from shooting – is singular in its audacity.  Governments, whether it is Bush’s with-us-or-against-us “hunt ‘em down in their caves” approach to Islamist extremism or Algeria’s “eradicateurs” set on destruction of the Islamist opposition, whether terrorists or simply activists or even elected officials, tend to paint a simplistic picture of radical opposition, often with predictably disastrous results.  Blair, at least in his Northern Ireland peacemaker role, took a chance and it has paid off over the last decade.