A Reminder

From Sidney Blumenthal in Salon:

Trying to remove the suspicion that falls on conservative Republicans, he pledged that he would protect the solvency of Social Security. On foreign policy, he said he would be "humble": "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us." Here he was criticizing Clinton's peacemaking and nation-building efforts in the Balkans and suggesting he would be far more restrained. The sharpest criticism he made of Clinton's foreign policy was that he would be more mindful of the civil liberties of Arabs accused of terrorism: "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that." This statement was not an off-the-cuff remark, but carefully crafted and presented in one of the debates with Vice President Al Gore. Bush's intent was to win an endorsement from the American Muslim Council, which was cued to back him after he delivered his debating point, and it was instrumental in his winning an overwhelming share of Muslims' votes, about 90,000 of which were in Florida.

Compare/Contrast:

Is it any wonder that U.S. public diplomacy is on life support?

While perhaps the truest measure of our effectiveness around the globe and an essential tool for U.S. national interests long-term, public diplomacy is in deep trouble -- undervalued at home and under siege abroad. From Katrina to Iraq, our communication wounds are deep -- hostage to policies that are viewed as bankrupt in both their rhetoric and application.

At the core, our credibility is on the line, at home and abroad. The challenge is how to stop the hemorrhaging and get back to winning hearts and minds. When our words and deeds are perceived as so mismatched it won't be easy. Just this week, the Bush Administration again is seeking to turn the responsibility for failed planning and policies by blaming the American people. We are again admonished by the Secretary of Defense that American "willpower" is at stake internationally and those who question or offer alternatives are confused or lack "resolve." It is an old and familiar argument. No responsibility for failure is ever assumed by this Administration for helping create the dangerous world in which we live.

Compare/Contrast:

One of the basic flaws in the way the administration responded to 9/11 was its deep arrogance. An arrogant person is one who wrongfully arrogates to him- or herself decision-making power that rightly should be exercised by others. Immediately after 9/11, a world shocked by the hate-fueled and inhumane nature of those attacks rallied around the United States in an unprecedentedly sympathetic way. The vast majority of people and governments around the world felt that what had been attacked that day was not just 3,000 (mainly) American people, not just "America"—but the values of humanity as a whole.

So the world gave Washington a free pass—though it shouldn't have—when President Bush sent the U.S. military to invade and occupy Afghanistan in late 2001. The administration didn't even go through the motions of assembling a robust policing-plus-sanctions response to the al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan before launching that invasion! Then in 2002, Bush adopted the infamous "National Security Strategy" document that explicitly claimed for the United States the "right" to use military force anywhere in the world where U.S. decision-makers alone might determine that they could "prevent" a claimed future threat. And throughout 2002, as we now know, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were hard at work stealthily assembling and deploying forces for their planned invasion of Iraq.

When they launched that second invasion, in early 2003, the rest of the world did not give them a "free pass" to do so. But they went ahead anyway, once again arrogating to themselves decisions that ought to have been made by a wider body. And now, some 42 months later, we can see the ghastly results....