Because the best things in life are free.

 
Enemy Aliens

Once again, British subjects were apprehended in another country by America's allies on the war on terror. This time however, the detainees appear to be headed to somewhere other than Guantanamo Bay. The reason is because the prisoners are British army covert operations. Managing to get themselves trapped in the Alpazat cave system, the "cavers" refused to be rescued by Mexican authorities. And now of course, the Mexican government does not want to let them go. The British accuse the Mexicans of not releasing them quickly and responsibly. The Federales accuse the Ministry of Defence of violating the terms of a tourist visa.

But the accusations leveled by the Mexican press is a bit more than that. There are claims that gas sensor equipment was being used not to look for radon...a heavy noble gas...but that which would find uranium. However, even if they found uranium, it is not clear what they would do with it. Instead, this imbroglio continues largely because Mexican President Vincente Fox wants to make a message: this is not Afghanistan. His country is not destined to be another proxy battleground for "the war on terror". After all, caves store things. It's easy to hide that which you do not want to be found. And judging by how it turns out, if the MoD was looking it sure didn't find anything to justify the expedition.

But there's one other question left. Jonathan Sims, one of the six cavers made the following quote: "There appears to be some bad news in Mexico bubbling under. I think it has been a way of diverting the press around from internal problems." Certainly if it's problems about being soft on illegal immigration to Mexico, a common complaint at the nation's border with Guatemala, those concerns look muted now.
posted by Thomas at 5:16 PM 0 comments

 
Dodging Bullets

After seeing negative campaigning at its finest in Spain, you can imagine election officials in the Republic of China wanted a quiet vote. Instead, they got the worst possible outcome imaginable. An assassination attempt on the incumbent, Chen Shui Bian and his veep, Annette Lu, ends up with both of them recovering within hours. The gunman has yet to be identified or found...and with a razor-thin victory for the incumbent, there's demand for a recount. Well, maybe this isn't as bad as it could get. For on the same ballot was a referendum on "Taiwanese independence". This is a novel idea since the Republic of China (which occupies Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (which resides on the mainland) are still at war. No side has ever surrounded to the other and there is speculation that "A-Bian" simply wanted to promote his own legacy by changing the goal of the ROC into the ROT and he would be it's founding father. And the truth is, the Kuomingtang, the political machine that ran the island until 2000 (much as the Party Revolutionary Institucional did in Mexico) would just as likely want the measure passed. However, the KMT told it's partisan to abstain from the referendum. And it failed.

Somewhere in Washington D.C. a very happy George W. Bush took the news. After all, the U.S. guarantees that an invasion by the PRC into Taiwan would be something like Germany plowing into Belgium in World War I. With no additional provocation, the PRC would not likely test out it's new artillery. And on a map, it would appear that a nation as small as Taiwan would find itself immediately humbled by the might of the Communist Dynasty. But that's inaccurate, because while the ROC army is smaller, it has much more technological innovation and a professional fighting force. The PRC has numbers, and not much else. Add to that American military assistance, and one wonders why this referendum matters at all.

The answer is money. Not in the sense that most people think of money as greed, but rather the concept of money itself. Iraq had very few if any American financial presence. The jets were free to bomb any target they wanted. But take that logic to Shanghai or Beijing, and you get a totally different outcome. One, you would get a ravaged Chinese infrastructure which could ruin the American companies that rely on it, like WalMart and General Electric. Two, you have a major problem with refugees and waves of Chinese expatriates washing up on shores from Japan to the United Kingdom. Three, you would have the world's richest country trying to restructure it's most populous nation. It is without a doubt that Chen Shui Bian could hop a jet to Beijing and within hours declare the Republic of China victorious. But it would be far more challenging to rebuild a country that already is falling apart.

Nevertheless, the US can't exactly avoid defending the Republic of China from mainland aggression either. Democracy continues to grow in Asia, and the Japanese, South Koreans, and Indians all very much want China to continue to have problems with Taiwan. For if that is the case, China is unable to concentrate on consolidating its control on Asian markets. Secondly, the US does not trust "Red China". For while many of us wonder how it's Communist China when unions are outlawed, the Nixonian distrust of the Reds runs large. In fact, many moderate conservative and liberals argue the best way to modernize China is to encourage free market reform and have the regime abolish itself. And this is still quite possible, given that as more manufacturing heads to China, the prospect of labor unrest, and with it, labor reforms grows extant. And why not, given the dynastic heartbeat of Chinese history?

The response to this question is painfully acute. "Reaganesque" foreign policy is to fight many small wars hoping that you can negotiate the other side into defeat. Taking on the People's Republic of China would be a conflict of direct engagement, something which no one in Washington currently can handle. What's worse is that the referendum will be back, and someday will put the Eagle nose-to-nose with the Dragon. We can only hope one side is smart enough to blink.
posted by Thomas at 9:47 PM 0 comments

 
This Coup is for You, America

For months, President Bush had denied any American involvement in Haiti. A nation with no military saw police as the only barrier against the militia of Guy Philippe. When at long last it because clear that US armed forces would not protect him, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned with the barbarians at the gate. Within a day, he remained hunkered down in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic. Rep. Maxine Waters claimed that US Marines and CIA agents had forced him out. Aristide agreed, but even Colin Powell went so far as to repudiate Haiti's erstwhile first man. Aristide flew back to Florida from the C.A.R. and now has plans to spend ten weeks in Jamaica. That is strikingly similar to the exile he endured from the last time he was removed from power in 1991 before being restored three years later. But the sudden American presence after months and months of recalcitrant by the Bush Administration begs the question: why?

The answer could lie at the southern shore of the Caribbean. The British newspaper The Independent revealed on Sunday that US funding has propped up much of the resistance to Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. Chavez has alleged this all along, and what it casts is perhaps a curious glimpse into the future of American foreign policy.

Case in point, the folks at Halliburton engineering subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root have been desperate to reconnect the Iraqi oil infrastructure since the capitulation of the Baathist regime last year. While they haven't been as successful as hoped, the world oil market has seen it's struggles also with a weak dollar, which has spurred OPEC to order a cut in production after April 1. In addition, unrest in Venezuela creates the fear that supplies will be truncated. This fear largely comes from the idea that Chavez could be vindictive towards the export market. The major petroleum production center of the nation is near Lake Maracaibo, far from the political unrest in the capital, Caracas. In fact, much of the country remains as untouched by civilization and geopolitics as before.

So the question remains, will the seemingly inexhaustible American war machine abandon Port au Prince for Caracas? Is the action in Haiti a mere "dry run" for the real mission in Venezuela? In the short term, the answer seems to be not. A coup attempt on Chavez failed within days in 2002, and real muscle would not be politically astute in an election year. But unless we see a new administration or a real change of heart Chavez cannot count out the possibility. The worst part may be that just as in any foreign adventure the President and his advisors are likely to repeat the same mantra: this was done in the best interests of national security.
posted by Thomas at 10:04 PM 0 comments

 
Who Killed Howard Dean?

With the Democratic nomination process down to only one notable candidate, tired and suddenly bored political columnists across the nation have turned to the most compelling story they can write in elegy. How did Kerry roar ahead of Dean in the waning moments of the Iowa campaign and best Dean's previously unstoppable juggernaut. And there are no shortage of theories: that Joe Trippi and Dean always fought and could never get along. That the major unions, SEIU and AFSCME, decided that Dean was too liberal. The "scream" speech was replayed so often it caused him to crash and burn. And my personal favorite: Dean torpedoed his own campaign because he really did not want to be president. But each of these focuses too much on personality and persona, and not enough on message. How could voters suddenly change
nearly five months of consistent poll numbers all for one night?

And the answer is, though we hate to admit it, because this entire nomination process is a sham.

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe stung from the the election defeat of 2000, and then 2002. He envisioned a "front-loaded" nomination process that would favor the front-runner nearly the whole way through. After all, the eventually nominee gained so much momentum in Iowa, that unless another person had a strong victory in New Hampshire, they were destined to see the bottom drop out. McAuliffe organized it this way because he felt against the George W. Bush, the Democrats would need to know who the candidate was as soon as possible to keep the "silent money" from staying on the sidelines. The only problem is, McAuliffe's ideas about who to run in 2004 have always been perhaps a bit charitable. When Al Gore refused to take up the standard in 2002, a fierce contest broke out among his three choices for vice president, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman. Surprisingly or not, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark put in his hat as well as Howard Dean, unemployed from ten years as the governor of Vermont. Former speaker of the house, Richard Gephardt resurrected his 1988 bid as well. At the moment in December of 2002 when Gore announced, it is hard to guess which of the five the Chairman favored.

And further, McAuliffe was careful not to attack the President's decision to levy "conflict" in Iraq at first, and only Dean emerged as the lightning rod for the anti-war movement. A bold move, but he did not have the last. Dean faced a strange situation at the start of 2004: he had to develop the equivalent of a nomination Schlieffen Plan, one that would let him wage war on two fronts, Iowa and New Hampshire, almost simultaneously. With Gephardt and Edwards working hard in the plains, and Clark and Lieberman exclusively plying the Granite State, it appeared that McAuliffe had been supplanted by Joe Trippi as the person who held all the cards. With a week to go, Dean's troops had both Des Moines and Manchester in their sights.

But in the last week, attack ads began to pummel Dean as Gephardt feared he was losing. Also, a group called Americans for Jobs and Healthcare began to run several negative ads in New Hampshire and Iowa. The group was spending quite a bit of money, but in addition, was careful not to run the advertisements outside of Iowa and New Hampshire. Secondly, as we told you in January, the Club for Growth had already given the media much tastier anti-Dean ads comparing him to a "left-wing liberal freak show". But naturally you might ask why these ads were so important. The reason for this is that if any group under the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act uses soft money to run attack ads against the candidate, there must be a disclosure of which candidate the money came from supporting the message. The paper trail on Americans for Jobs and Healthcare was long, but on February 11, in the Washington Post, Jim Vander Hei found out it the "group" was essentially disgraced ex-senator Bob Torricelli funneling money from Kerry and others campaigns. However, Torricelli appears nowhere on the balance sheet, and only with severe digging did Charles Lewis manage this essay.

Dean knew that Gephardt was attacking him, and when it appears his numbers were dropping...he pulled the spots. If the laws in place had worked, Dean could have bloodied the other candidates noses by showing just who American for Jobs and Healthcare were. But at that point it was fait accompli. Kerry survived because only Dean could have stopped him in New Hampshire. When Dennis Kucinich threw his delegates to Edwards in Iowa, it pulled the race to where, as we saw...no one could stop Kerry. The only problem? The race for the nomination isn't the election itself. George W. Bush now has the chance to accuse Kerry of violating election laws in addition to nailing him as a candidate with an almost Gore-like tendency to waffle. In fact if Bush is smart enough, he could wait until after Labor Day to declare that Kerry has committed such heinous fraud he should drop out of the race. If he were to, the Democrats would be in a huge bind, and no matter how poor the state of the country, Bush would likely prevail.

And what does the Dean for America remind us of? Much like the "Cross of Gold" speech of 1896. With Populism gaining strength throughout the 1890s...William Jennings Bryan stunned the Democratic seventeen on July 9, attempt to succeed Grover Cleveland as the Democratic nominee and as one which would enfranchise the Populist movement, which had nearly cost the Democrats the vote in '92. However, unlike 1892, eastern Democrats in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana shunned "free silver", afraid that it would cause inflation in the face of what had been a very serious depression in 1893. Populism disappeared as a party, but it ultimately heralded not soon after massive business reforms by Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. Dean was Bryan...attempting to bring the Nader protest vote of 2000 into the big tent.

The question remains if "playing it safe" will be the winning strategy this year. Ultimately, McAuliffe may not be the ultimate mastermind, but Bill and Hillary Clinton. For remember, Gore proclaimed Dean as his man, and this likely meant that Gore wanted Dean to win so that if Dean had lost, there would be wide open race against someone other than Dick Cheney for the Presidency in 2008. Indeed, how high up the ladder of American power must we go to find someone that opposed Dean's message? For if it is as Nader proclaims, "a one party system with two wings", both parties must be aware that Roosevelt's final election pitted him against William Howard Taft in 1912, crippling the GOP and allowing the victory of Southern professor Thomas Woodrow Wilson. In short, Dean's demise could spell a political realignment's rise.

Next week: This Coup is For You, America
posted by Thomas at 6:18 PM 0 comments

 
New Post coming soon...and it should not disappoint.
posted by Thomas at 12:09 AM 0 comments