Rememberence

Today is July 7th, one year after the Underground bombings in London. The Brits are did memorial services throughout the day and many people are reliving the moment and grieving in their own way. Oddly, President Bush is nowhere to be seen (except for laughing it up at his first ever "outside of Washington" news conference in Chicago this morning - yeah, Fox News!). I would have expected Bush to be standing next to his good buddy Tony Blair, but since Blair is pretty unpopular and Bush is an ananthema in the UK, it was probably best that he stay away.

At any rate, I was reflecting on the last year and thought I would share some thoughts. A year ago, I was on a train on the way to work when the bombs went off. I was nowhere near the actual violence, so I was merely inconvienanced into walking home and skipping the day at work. Many others were not so lucky. It was certainly a shocking day, but for me, an American that experienced 9/11 (like so many others) and actually saw the Pentagon on fire, well, my reaction was tempered. My British neighbor was not so calm. If memory serves, he was at first shocked and then angry, finally ending in raving (a common feature of his personality). I think that was a fairly typical reaction.

At any rate, my focus was more on finishing my Master's degree and making decisions for my next step. Returning to Washington wasn't exactly a thrilling proposition (still isn't) and I was considering Mexico or another Latin American country since staying in the UK looked like an extreme long shot. Little did I know that my life was on the cusp of radical change - little did I know that I was about to meet my wife.

As time passed in that July, London returned to normal fairly quickly. The defiant, "we won't let them win" slowly became, "oh, yeah, it isn't about winning, we really don't have another way to get to work" and people pretty much did what they always did. I imagine it's much the same today.

I left London four months later with a fiancee, a new country in mind, and a world of options. It's just wild when I think about how rapidly all that happened. Damn glad it did.

.......

Ok, just wanted to make some comment about the press conference today. I managed to watch some of it because I came home early from Spanish class with a migraine (woke up with it). Bush was engaging, funny, on message, and so, so wrong at so many places. It's sad really because I think Bush pretty much shoots from the hip without a great deal of information. He doesn't strike me as the type of guy that would sit around reading reports about what's happening in Iraq - he pretty much just trusts the people around him - a dangerous type of leadership, but doesn't really make him a bad guy, just a bad President.

Well, as proud as he is of "providing electricity", maybe he ought to actually talk to some people in the field or just read this Foreign Policy article. According to the journalist interviewed, things are A LOT worse in Iraq than what the media is able to report (although I'm a bit fatigued with the phrase "on the brink of a civil war". I mean, how long can one be "on the brink". It's akin to calling the North Korea situation a "crisis" since crises are mostly characterized by sudden suprise. An ongoing (14 year) foreign policy challenge shouldn't be a "surprise".)

Ahem, my point is, Iraq was such a colossal mistake and has been such a disaster for the people, even when the President of the United States grasps for some element of "success", he whiffs. That's not good. But I don't want to get partisan (or overly simplistic).

The real reason Iraq was a mistake is that the biggest danger wasn't Iraq - it was North Korea. Iraq was manageable under the UN Sanctions regime. Sure, it certainly wasn't ideal and continued defiance by Hussein certainly wasn't doing any good for UN Security Council credibility, but it was manageable. North Korea, by comparison, has been completely ignored and is, by most reports, much closer to the bomb than Iraq ever was. It's a concerning situation as well because, even though Saddam was a tyrant, dictator, genocidal leader, and pretty much an evil human being, it's tough to argue that things are better in North Korea. In fact, they're worse. The Iraqi's weren't dying of starvation - they didn't have a famine. NK did. So the claim that Saddam was a bad man that should have been removed doesn't really make any sense compared to North Korea.

Of course, there is no such thing as consistency in politics. Out of one corner of Bush's mouth he said that diplomacy went on too long with Saddam and wasn't going to work. Yet, with the very next breath he urged patience with North Korea saying, "diplomacy takes awhile."

It's nonsensical, and, I think it's because the issue isn't nuclear weapons. The issue is the strategic interests of the United States. The neo-conservatives want a democratic Middle East. They care more about that than North Korea because the ME has oil and NK doesn't. It's that simple. The fundamental defining characteristics of a nation's foreign policy goals are self-interest. The President isn't going to say it outright, but he can come close, as he did today when he stated that the goal was a democratic Middle East. Asia's pretty stable, doesn't have much interest aside from manufacturing cheap products, and it's really at risk from a beligerent North Korea. Simply, US interests are more involved and endangered in the Middle East and Bush tried to change that.

Of course, democratizing the Middle East carries risks, something to be addressed in a future post.