Granted, America was the original source, in the 1930s, of this ultimate free-market, real estate buying-and-selling competition (looked at it that way, where else could it have come from?), and Wyssuwa informs us that all of this world-wide Monopoly tournament activity is in preparation for the World Championship to take place later this year in Las Vegas. That’s also a fitting choice, except that Atlantic City – whose street-names are the ones you find used in the classic American edition of the game, you’ll recall – would have been even better. Of course, it’s German street-names that are used in the German edition; for example, Hans-Georg Schellinger, the ultimate winner of this 2009 German championship, is said by Wyssuwa in the final round to build up a real estate empire “from the Badstraße to the Opernplatz.”

But the tournament’s organizers have taken one important cue from their American counterparts by also scheduling it this year, for the first time, at a German railway station – and not just any station, but at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) of Frankfurt-am-Main, certainly Germany’s financial capital and second only to London as Europe’s. It seems an inspired choice to open up all the Monopoly-action, behind the appropriate crowd barriers, to interested passers-by this way. Soon, however, the competitors get exposed to a downside to that particular location which you would have thought the organizers could have predicted: just as happens every weekend in the German soccer season at city railway stations, a noisy and rowdy crowd of supporters of the visiting team (this time Borussia Mönchengladbach) come along and throw a bit of a hitch in the goings-on with their loud team chants, supplemented with the odd – but most-unwelcome – shouted Monopoly strategy tips. Ultimately, though, they’ve got an important soccer game to attend to and eventually go away.

This Hans-Georg Schellinger character, in real life a refrigeration-installer from Reutlingen, near Stuttgart, turns out to be the reigning German champion and has reached the top once before as well. And while the tournament’s head-referee, Sven Kübler, is willing to expound to a news reporter about how winning in Monopoly is all about not being afraid to take on debt, in his championship-final victory Schellinger demonstrates how his mastery of the game is a bit more subtle than that. In the beginning he lets his three competitors go wild with acquiring properties, mortgaging them for cash, and then building upon them. (Admittedly, Wyssuwa’s article hints pretty broadly that this may not have really been his explicit choice as a strategy, but his rolls of the dice basically forced it on him.) But the turning point comes when he is cooling his heels in a protected position in jail, while the other players start hitting each other’s exorbitant rents and need to raise cash to survive, by selling off their properties to him. “On the suffering of others he builds his real estate empire,” Wyssuwa expounds, and Schellinger goes through to yet another Monopoly Champion title and a date with news-photographers in the grand square outside the station, so they can catch the victor’s image against the background of Frankfurt’s famous bank-skyscrapers. Could this mere game-in-a-railroad-station be a parable for our times?

                          

(Maybe I should have just stolen that title to make a more eye-catching heading for this blogpost, but I decided against it. By the way, the only other European columnist I can think of that I would want to watch specifically for any reaction to the election would be Agnès Giard, sex-blogger for France’s Libération, whom I have certainly covered before. But it seems politics generally lie outside of what she regards as her journalistic remit; the article she happened to post right after the election was actually entitled Declaration of love to the zombies. So there you have the link, although I’m not going to deal with that one, you’ll have to read the piece in French yourself. But no, rest assured that it has nothing to do with any politician, whether American or not.)

Why are you Europeans so interested in an American election? That’s the question Høi says he has been asked all the time, both by Americans he knew and those he didn’t but just happened to run across in a bar during time off from his reporting duties for Berlingske Tidende in the States – but in the latter case probably only after his new buddies finally noticed his accent and were moved to ask “Are you from France?”

That they are even asking this question – I mean “Why are you so interested?” – reveals (or confirms) something to Høi, namely “the American ambivalence towards the Old World.” And he goes on; check this out:

Americans are the newly-rich members of the family, who have nothing against posing with their giant, expensive house with newly-acquired art on the walls, but at the same time crave acceptance from the rest of the family, as they continue to doubt slightly their own table-manners.”

“Why are you so interested?”, then, according to Høi is a question that is trying to elicit two answers, often at the same time: 1) “Of course I’m interested, because everyone in the world is!” and 2) “Yes, I’m interested after all, believe it or not, for the following flattering reason . . .”

Alright then, but: So why are you Europeans so interested? Høi provides three reasons:

1. American elections are always compelling, by definition. No one, anywhere, who is plugged into the events of the day can afford to be indifferent. (In other words, answer #1 above – “Of course I’m interested . . .”) One really could not have been indifferent even to Clinton vs. Dole in 1996, claims Høi.
2. We’re interested because American elections are unusually decisive by European standards, and thus they enable Europeans “to live out our own political ideas” – yes, even more than they can “live them out” in their own, native elections! Høi certainly has an interesting point here since it’s true that elections in democracies running a parliamentary rather than presidential system of government together with some variant of proportional representation – such as is the case in his native Denmark, also in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and certain other European states (e.g. certainly Italy) – usually turn out to be a matter, as he puts it, of just “plus or minus ten percent,” i.e. results that bring only small changes to the make up of a governing coalition and/or government – such little payoff for all that trouble and expense! (But that is much less true in France, for example – a presidential system more similar to that in the US – or actually in the UK, which ostensibly is parliamentary but is in reality highly “presidential” in the impact of its national elections primarily because of its “first-past-the-post” electoral system, combined with what is in broad lines still mainly a two-party structure. Of course Høi is abstracting from these counterexamples in order to continue setting forth his point.) Whereas, on the other hand, the momentous potential for change that Obama’s election has brought about is obvious to all; as an appetizer, there are even reports already about how his transition team has identified 200 Bush-issued executive orders that he will be countermanding on 20 January or soon thereafter.
3. Finally, this election was especially interesting, Høi declares, frankly because over here in Europe the picture of the United States as one mighty racist society still endures. Indeed, Høi does not put it in such terms, but it’s quite likely he feels that Europe considers the US to be more racist than Americans do themselves. So naturally, contemplating the candidacy of Barack Obama, very many European felt, as Høi puts it, that “it would do the Americans a world of good to get a black president” (amerikanerne ville have rigtig godt af at få en sort præsident). And now they have.
   

                          

Now, the good professor is fully willing to name Russian accomplishments inside Georgia for what they are. Through cynical manipulation of the terms of the cease-fire agreement it signed with Georgia, brokered by acting EU President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Red Army has managed to entrench itself at key positions within that country that will amount to powerful cards in any future negotiations, and which in the interval until such negotiations convene (if ever) are awfully handy for throttling Georgian transport and thus economic activity. (Prof. Münkler clearly wrote this article prior to Russia’s unilateral recognition of the “independence” of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or he would have added to his list those political accomplishments, which push way into a theoretical future any consolidation by Georgia of the territory she feels belongs rightly within her borders.) Russia is now back in the world’s consciousness as a geopolitical actor to be reckoned with, leaving the disorganization and weakness of the Yeltsin era far behind and prompting hurried re-calibrations of the balance-of-power in any number of the world’s chancelleries.

But we should take a step back here, he says, and view what has happened within a larger context. “Beating a couple of Georgian Brigades in South Ossetia is one thing, playing as a World Power is another. And for claiming a World Power’s position according to the USSR’s example there are too many prerequisites unmet.” Prof. Münkler judges that status as a true World Power is still somewhat beyond Russia’s grasp – “and presumably the Kremlin leadership knows that.” It’s really only around its periphery that it can throw its weight around – and not everywhere there, in fact (think of Finland, China).

What weapons does it have to do that? Oil and gas: that’s about it on the economic front. There is no other source of trade or financial inflluence, and certainly no sort of ideological power. The Czars had the Russian Orthodox Church, the USSR had Marxism-Leninism, but present-day Russia has not only no ideological appeal to project beyond its borders, but also no actual ideology other than a crude nationalism. To sum up: there’s oil & gas, and if that doesn’t work the only remaining choice is the Russian military. He doesn’t really evaluate the size or nature of the Red Army’s threat to other countries on Russia’s periphery than Georgia, but you can speculate that it might not be all that great. Certainly the continued Russian efforts to subdue Chechnya do not bode well for that army’s effectiveness.

Prof. Münkler does feel obliged to devote precious space, at the very beginning of his piece, to one secondary aspect of the Russian-Georgian conflict that is really starting to rile Europeans. It was all mighty convenient, this geopolitical crisis, for John McCain and the Republicans, who suddenly had an Exhibit A for reminding American voters how the world can be an unpredictable and dangerous place that requires the sort of “A Team” for foreign and security policy that they claim only they can provide. And now McCain has come even with Obama in the opinion polls. Still, he writes, “[o]ne should not allow oneself to be diverted by this observation to construct wild conspiracies by which the gainers from these events were also their cause.” What, Professor, you never heard about Randy Scheuneman?

                          

As usual, “day-after” is sometimes too early when it comes to significant, multi-dimensioned world events, as journalists and editors get all caught up with the reporting and don’t yet have time to sit back and think about what it all really meant. If you want an example of what I’m talking about here, and can read French yourself, I refer you to Le Monde’s editorial this morning, The Iraqi Wager. Spotlight on young French-Iraqi student; for her and her mother, being able to vote for the first time is truly a moving experience. (And this in what Le Monde explicitly labels its “editorial,” written collectively by the editors.) Yes yes, and you know, Iraq has truly never had elections. These first were admittedly imperfect: Sunni underrepresentation, the threat of violence. Still, they were at least a relative success, and hopefully Iraqis can look forward to much less imperfect elections next December. Right, moving on . . .

Libération is a bit better in analyzing what author Jean-Pierre Perrin terms in his piece’s title The Lessons of a Confessionalized Election.

OK, Iraqis showed remarkable courage yesterday in braving the violence to produce what looks like around a 60% turn-out at the polls. But take a closer look at what informal, “exit poll”-type inquiries seem to reveal about who they voted for: Shi’ites for Shi’ites; Kurds for Kurds; and Sunnis for Sunnis, when Sunnis voted at all. Unfortunately, the election was more-or-less set up to encourage this sort of voting behavior, in the way the grand electoral alliances that contested it were formed behind religious/national identities (even with the occasional secular or other-religion faction thrown in to give the appearance of inclusiveness). These included most especially the Shi’ite flagship List 169, fronted by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, named by Perrin as head of Shi’ite militia, and blessed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And this factionalism goes even further back to American decisions to form the Governing Council in July, 2003, out of national quotas: thirteen seats for the Shi’ites, five each for the Sunnis and the Kurds (and two for others), a composition which was carried over into the make-up of the Provisional Government that “took power” at the end of last June.

Perrin hints that many aggressive attitude still lurk behind what was yesterday’s mostly peaceable electoral behavior, mostly derived from long memories of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Saddam repressed the Shi’ites, including wiping out many thousands after their ill-fated revolt in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, and he repressed, gassed, and tried to exterminate totally the nationhood of the Kurds. Saddam may be no more of a threat to anyone, languishing in prison outside the country, but in the eyes of Iraqis – Shi’ites, Kurds, and yes, the Sunnis themselves – he is identified with Sunni interests. Not that Sunnis will necessarily take to violence – the limited impact violence had on the election also showed the isolation of the violent rejectionists – but the potential for settling old scores is great.

BUSH WINS AGAIN

Finally, the Washington correspondent for the conservative daily Le Figaro, Philippe Gélie, takes a crack at analyzing the Iraqi elections from the American perspective, in Bush Has Won His Electoral Bet. “This is the second election in three months that George W. Bush has won,” is the way he starts his piece, and perhaps the Iraqi poll was rather the more risky one. It’s certainly clear that Bush didn’t know what to expect; the tell-tale clue Gélie gives here is that the President for once actually refrained from taking the weekend off at Camp David to stay at the White House and receive the latest CIA briefings on Saturday (from the new Agency head, Porter Goss, himself) and monitor events in Iraq on Sunday.

But things seemed to turn out well, and Bush was quick to note that in statements he made to the press, even as the new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took up the “worry cop” role to Bush’s “good cop,” reminding us that “this election is not perfect,” and “many difficulties still await us.” Naturally, Bush can expect resulting political gains in proportion to the risk he took that the elections would turn out to be a bloody mess. The operative, if not explicitly-stated phrase here is “I told you so”: to the American people, of whom 52% now doubt that involvement in Iraq has been worth the human and financial cost, and more and more of whose Congressional representatives (Senator Kennedy being the latest) have started calling for troop withdrawal; and to the doubting Europeans, whom Bush gets to visit in a few weeks’ time in a “voyage of reconciliation.” Gélie cites here a remark from the editors of the Washington Post to the effect that those who had reduced the situation in Iraq to occupation-versus-resistance are now going to have to explain how the election fits into that picture.

What’s more, even as virtually every electoral slate on the ballot promised to demand a Coalition troop withdrawal, recently most have had a rethink about how handy the troops would be to still have around, for sheer security’s sake against those violent elements which did their best to assassinate candidates and bomb polling-places and which would presumably transfer their deadly attentions to fresh office-holders. So that, even though Bush recently told the New York Times that American troops would depart if asked, it seems less likely that anything of that sort will actually happen.

The last straw would have to be if it turns out that the electoral slate headed by hand-picked current Iraqi prime minster Iyad Allawi comes out on top to dominate the new government. Then France, Germany, and all the others (including, I suppose, the Democrats) would have to wonder about the utility of opposing a political actor so clearly kissed by Good Fortune.

                          

The subject was tomorrow’s long-awaited (long-feared?) Iraqi general elections. And Kharazi was delighted about them. Not only that, but he was also glad to give the Bush administration props (strictly within what he thought was the limited scope of a private dinner party, you understand) for its grim determination that they were going to happen on 30 January 2005, and not a day later. Postponing them in any way, according to him, would have been a victory for the Baathists and the terrorists.

Now, Washington and Tehran are mainly known these days for taking opposite positions on almost everything, but in this case, as Joffe outlines, it’s really not so surprising that they’re on the same page. Quite simply, the Shi’ites dominate Iraq’s population (as they do Iran’s) but haven’t had anything close to the corresponding political power in the country for years. These elections can be expected finally to set that straight. And that’s also the reason, Joffe goes on, why Iraq’s neighbors to the West and South have not been so enthusiastic about the elections, as they are Sunni Moslem states.

Except for Syria, which is Alawite. And while that falls under “Moslem” (more or less), it’s damnably hard to figure out whether that puts Syria more in the Shi’ite or the Sunni camp, even from the Wikipedia entry. Joffe implies that Syria also doesn’t look forward to the Iraqi elections, but according to the Washington Post correspondent there, he’s got that precisely wrong (article in English, of course): they are “a key step toward establishing stability there,” says Syria’s information minister.

DULY NOTED BY AMERICAN SPY

My goodness! Here we have both Iran and Syria on board with what the Americans are trying to accomplish! What’s more, Kharazi also discussed at that dinner the idea that after the elections the US troops can withdraw, that it’s mainly their presence that prompts all the violence. Does he finally stray off of common ground with the Bush administration here? Not at all: this is an idea that is steadily gaining ground among US officials, with the exception of military authorities who aren’t disposed to think so broadly and have instead recently discussed maintaining present troop levels for a number of years.

Joffe carefully notes that there was no wine served at the dinner – of course: Kharazi must be a good Muslim – so all this talk came out unprompted by alcohol. (He also says the meal had “no meat” – kein Fleisch – but one hopes he really meant “no pork.”) He also notes that there was at least one American present, namely the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph Biden (D. – Del.) Clearly the Bush administration need not rely on its subscription to Die Zeit to gain its knowledge of what Kharazi was willing to say at that private evening get-together.

                          

But the President’s engagement was supposed to have been preceded by an appearance by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the yearly Munich Security Conference (this year on 12-13 February). Now Rumsfeld has sent word that he won’t be coming, reports Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung (Rumsfeld Cancels Participation at Security Conference).

This definitely raises eyebrows, as the conference ranks among those which nearly “everyone” attends – granted, not generally including the current US President, but including for sure figures such as the German Chancellor and UN Secretary General, in addition to Ministers of Defense from all over the globe. And this meeting is when notable things happen, where even sparks fly, as has been seen there in the past. For example, for those of you with a taste for ancient history, the Munich Conference was where prominent US Senators (usually Democratic: Mike Mansfield, Sam Nunn) would regularly show up to wield the threat of a full or partial withdrawal of US forces from Europe (back in the days of the Cold War) if Europeans did not start to pony up more of their own manpower and resources in the cause of their own defense. More recently, and spectacularly, Munich in February, 2003, was also where German Foreign Secretary Joschka Fischer told Rumsfeld straight-up, interrupting his address to speak in English, that “I’m just not convinced” by the American case against Saddam Hussein. That was also where Rumsfeld first brought forth for public airing his famous distinction between “Old Europe” and “New Europe.”

So what could possibly move the Secretary of Defense to cancel his participation in this year’s conference, in view of what has at least been declared to be the Bush II administration’s incipient diplomatic offensive to win Europe back to its side? He pleads “prior commitments,” but we can swiftly lump that excuse together in the same plausibility category as Bernard Kerik’s illegally-compensated babysitter; as I say, this is a big event in the international defense calendar, and it happens every year, always in the same early-February slot. For all of the (few) English-language news sources covering this affair which a Google search will turn up for you, the answer is clear: It’s all about the fact that a criminal complaint has been filed against him in a German court accusing him of war crimes, and taking advantage of the “universal competence” which the German legal system reserves for itself in such cases, meaning it can prosecute anyone in the world for war crimes if German government officials can somehow lure the accused onto German soil to apprehend him or her.

“APPEARANCE” OF INVESTIGATION

But the SZ article (credited to the AP and to the dpa, or the German press-agency) is rather more demure about this theory. Horst Teltschik, the German official in charge of the conference, is quoted as telling another Munich newspaper, “The legal case was not brought forward as an argument. But it certainly wasn’t very helpful.” Well, but he wouldn’t bring the legal case forward as an argument, would he? And, in any case, as the SZ article reports, Rumsfeld had already made his position clear last month, letting the German government know that it should not expect him to show up in Munich if there were even “the appearance of an investigation” into him, presumably preparatory to an eventual indictment. Now, there is certainly no such investigation currently going on; rather, German federal prosecutors are still deciding whether such an investigation is called for. (And you can expect that this decision-making process is not necessarily confining its deliberations to the mere facts of the case.) But is that enough for the “appearance”? It seems so – or else maybe you believe that Rumsfeld truly has other pressing engagements for mid-February.

In the meantime there will be no Secretary of Defense at Munich, and Teltschik certainly regrets this: “That’s going to lead to some disappointment in Europe, for there is a considerable need for discussion in view of Iraq crisis.” But there will be Dept. of Defense civilian #3 attending instead, namely Douglas Feith, well-known to be just as much a “neo-conservative” as the two civilians ahead of him in the Department’s ranks, namely Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The Bush administration certainly can’t be accused of bowing to European sentiment by sending someone with a background and convictions more to continental taste. Plainly, it merely can justifiably be accused of sending someone lacking enough decision-making authority to make this year’s American participation there anything more than a show-the-flag seat-warming exercise.

WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN

Naturally, there’s a wider lesson to be drawn out of all this. Bush is now re-elected; most European governments are deeply disappointed, but know they’re not allowed to express such sentiments publicly. Instead, the usual sentiments have been forthcoming about letting by-gones be by-gones, about how American and Europe need to cast aside their differences to work together, in the cause of “advancing freedom” or whatever your the current goal you have in mind is. Yet we’re likely to find out ultimately that that is no more possible than during the first Bush administration, because little has fundamentally changed to make such nice-sounding sentiments reality. Most Europeans (especially European constituents, as opposed to their governments) are still seriously disturbed about not only the War in Iraq but also about the downright torture that that has apparently given rise to. (And not only committed by American forces, but now – as we’re seeing – also by the British, and yes, even by the Danes, it is said; I’ll see whether I can work up something about that Danish case for you.) On the other side, we all can see from Bush’s famous recent remark in a Washington Post interview – that the “accountability moment” for what he has done in Iraq was the election, and since he won that, he also has won approval for what he has done in Iraq – that there has been no attitude change on the side of the American administration, either. Bush and his administration all the way on down still think they were and are right in Iraq, and it is transparent that this trip he will make to Europe in February is a concession to the Europeans only insofar as he is committing American government resources, and his own presidential time, to go visit the Europeans rather than force them to troop on over the Atlantic and come visit him. Yes, he’s glad to go over and pay a visit, so that he can magnanimously make available to them the opportunity to tell him that he was right all along.

It’s not going to happen that way. Indeed, the American people should prepare themselves now for the sight of their president catalyzing mass demonstrations of Europeans in the streets graphically making known their displeasure over the American president and his policies wherever he goes in late February. Sorry, maybe it’s no longer true in the land of the free and home of the brave, but over in Europe everywhere is truly a “free speech zone.” By now it’s well-known that the President always takes care to ensure that he is packed in a sound-proof bubble wherever he goes, but at least that visit might be a chance to let the American public realize that, notwithstanding all the pious talk of reconciliation after Bush’s re-election, nothing fundamentally has changed in American-European relations.

                          

At first glance, the tale now unfolding seems to be your standard political romantic scandal: a (male) politician falls for someone he shouldn’t, and translates his feelings into various sorts of actions he really shouldn’t do, which inevitably are found out – typically first by the tabloid press, with their paparazzi and ace reporters-in-brown-raincoats specialized in tracking down and documenting the dirt on people, to be later taken up by the mainstream press. Blunkett, 57 years old and already divorced, entered into an amorous relationship in 2001 with a married woman, namely the now-43-year-old Kimberley Quinn, publisher of the prominent English magazine the Spectator, owned by her husband, the 60-year-old Stephen Quinn. Indeed, it seems they started all this only shortly after the Quinn’s marriage that same year. Mrs. Quinn has a two-year-old son William, and is currently seven-months pregnant; and indications are strong that the father of both children is in fact Blunkett, and not the rightful husband. It has been Blunkett’s assertion of his right to visit William as his biological father that caused his estrangement with Mrs. Quinn, which estrangement prompted her to issue the allegation that he had improperly “fast-tracked,” on her behalf, the application of William’s Filipina nanny for permanent residence in Britain – in addition to other instances of “misusing his office” for her, such as by ensuring her house in London was protected by policemen during recent mass anti-globalization protests in London’s streets.

It’s mainly that alleged “fast-tracking” which is prompting what outrage there is in the British media. Using your public office to gain private advantage, either for yourself or for someone else: the British civil-servant culture apparently does not permit of any of that. At the same time, though, David Blunkett has been the main protagonist behind a series of measures designed to tighten security within the UK – one of the most recent such being a proposal to establish a nationwide identity card – which have rubbed many people the wrong way as encroachments on civil liberties. There are also the related measures he has taken as Home Secretary aimed at curbing what he has termed “anti-social behavior,” such as nighttime curfews in British cities and increased prosecution of even seemingly minor offenses. Now the sight of some seemingly anti-social behavior on Blunkett’s part naturally has everyone’s hypocrisy-meters reading off the chart.

CLINTON PARALLEL

From this description, it might seem that the American analogue to this would be if (outgoing) Attorney General John Ashcroft had been caught abusing his office for the sake of some woman not his wife. But in reality the parallel here is more with the amorous adventures associated with Bill Clinton’s second term in office. One reason I particularly like Morley’s press-review piece on this affair is that, unusually for him, he actually departs from the sheer “press-review” function of his article to make several interesting points. As he writes, “the ‘scandal’ of Blunkett’s unfortunate love life says something larger about 21st century Anglo-American political culture.” Only in America – and in Europe, only in the UK – would such a thing raise a stir, because “the political sex scandal, like rock and roll music, is an Anglo-Saxon art form that the Europeans [and of course he means here the continental Europeans] have never mastered. Time and again, the elites of ‘Old Europe’ have proven themselves utterly incapable of whipping themselves into a frenzy about their leaders’ love lives.”

I find that persuasive as it is, but not going far enough. For in my view, there is a singular fact here that media coverage of the Blunkett affair seems to be trying to ignore like the fabled 500-lb. guerrilla in the room. Take a look at that photo of David Blunkett stuck within Morley’s piece, of him talking on his mobile phone. Does he look a bit funny – his eyes, maybe? The man is actually blind – he’s been blind since birth, a birth which itself was into a poor family in Sheffield, England, a family made poorer by the death of his father in an accident at work when he – David – was very young. Blind, poor; but that didn’t stop him from going to university and, at age 22, becoming the youngest-ever member of the Sheffield City Council. This was the start to a meteoric political career which ultimately placed him in his present position as a key member of the governing Labour cabinet, probably ranking in importance only behind Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

BLIND TO THE BLINDNESS

Yes, yes, in none of the media coverage of this affair that you can peruse via the links Morley’s article provides is the fact of Blunkett’s blindness avoided entirely, and Morley himself calls Blunkett “the blind Home Secretary.” But every single bit of this coverage does no more than put “blind” forward as an adjective that just happens to apply to this fellow, before swiftly passing over that fact to defend or attack the man, as the case may be, with no further reference to that fact.

A favorite cartoon of mine about the Clinton affair, reproduced here, illustrated the various takes people could have about that US president’s various misdemeanors perpetrated while he was in office. Actually, even as I like the cartoon, I also have a small problem with it, in that the key element that got Clinton in trouble was the fact of his lying to a federal grand jury, something that simply cannot be allowed to anyone, not even the President of the United States – in fact, especially not to the President of the United States. That said, then, perhaps the cartoon has even more relevance to the Blunkett affair than it did to Clinton. For David Blunkett, whatever his politics (and you can agree or disagree with them), must surely be an inspiration to anyone who expends even a slight bit of effort to read his biography. Blind, poor, yet university degree, skilled politician, and now a key player of the government that is running the country, so much so that, as Andy McSmith writes in the Independent, the Queen’s Speech of a few weeks ago (the British equivalent of the State of the Union speech, in which the government sets out its legislative agenda) “was in a large measure David Blunkett’s speech.” But not only that: married, and then even divorced! (Granted, the “divorced” bit is nothing to congratulate him about, and of course I know that blind people get married all the time. But I really bet that it’s particularly hard for them to achieve that – I don’t know whether Blunkett’s ex-wife was blind herself or not – and so I do admire that.) And he doesn’t stop there: At no less than the age of 54 he falls in love again with, and wins, another woman, and not any old woman (actually, only 43 years of age) but in fact the publisher of the Spectator, and who herself has recently been married to another, to boot! (And, from the pictures placed in the various articles, she’s also quite attractive. But I guess this didn’t enter into the affair, because of Blunkett’s physical limitations. Or perhaps it did? How do things like that work in such cases?) Then, to put things semi-crudely, he proceeds to cuckold her nominal husband, not once but twice!

JUST LAY OFF THE STUD

So what if Blunkett’s relatively late-life passion moved him to perform such acts such as “fast-tracking” a nanny’s permanent residence application and even dispatching government vehicles to convey his lover to the appointed places for their weekend rendez-vous. I realize that British political culture just won’t stand for this sort of thing, but hey, this man is human and he was in love. And he remains an inspiration to us all. Naturally, I would not extend this admiration should he carry onward to committing true, clear moral crimes, like murdering someone, for example. (Although if he did so personally, with his own hands so to speak, and his victim had the full power of sight, then some grudging admiration would still sneak into all of our psyches, I suspect.)

On the other hand, if you want to keep your wife faithful by your side, then you treat her as a husband should. David Blunkett’s politics, and specifically his proposals for making Britain more secure, both from external and internal threats, are of course legitimate subjects of public debate. But the media, and the public generally, should simply lay off of him as regards this “sex scandal.” For, ultimately, David Blunkett is truly a “stud.”

                          

That means, then, that this is not the commentary that you would expect to come down the pike sooner or later bemoaning George W. Bush’s re-election. But it still makes a good point, one easily predicted by the piece’s title. We’re talking here, Le Monde’s editors remind us, of the unique hyperpuissance, that is, of the world’s “sole hyper-power,” so that the identity of its chief executive is of vital importance to people far beyond the US’ borders. That identity, the very “fate of the world” in their formulation (le sort du monde), happens to hang on what is in truth still a rather “archaic” election system. The entire political model is really in question here; “the United States has not known how to, or wanted, to reform an electoral system that, four years ago, already demonstrated its inefficiency and its iniquity.” The conclusion – very rightly – is that this is hardly what should be expected of a nation that otherwise likes to style itself as an example of democracy for the rest of the world.

Otherwise, the newspaper’s editors draw the obvious conclusions from what they could already know about the election results. “America remains divided in two,” they note, although also observing that “whether we like it or not, America has become more conservative, more religious, and more unilateralist, and Republicans mobilized [for the election] just as much as did the Democrats.”

So much for that, courtesy of the Washington Post’s initial mention. More to the point is another analysis in Le Monde, by Daniel Vernet, entitled Europeans Find Themselves Faced With a New Challenge. Bush has (probably) won; most Europeans will be disappointed, although the administrations of both France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder have been smart enough to hedge their bets so as to be able to send off the usual clichéd messages of congratulations to what they both recognize as a incommode partenaire – a rather inconvenient, hard-to-work-with partner.

The main question now, though, is where the second Bush administration goes from here. Can we put any stock in recent statements from Henry Kissinger, that foreign policy in that second Bush administration will mellow somewhat, returning more to the classic “realist” lines espoused by America’s 41st president, George H.W. Bush?

The nominations Bush makes to fill his key foreign and security policy positions in the upcoming months will give us our first indication as to whether this assertion could be true. It is a valid point that policies in a president’s second term are often quite different from what they were during the first – see Ronald Reagan’s record, for example. But, ultimately, Vernet doesn’t hold out much hope for this turn of events. After all, the latest election results – and the further control over the Senate and the House of Representatives that they give to the Republicans – put Bush in the driver’s seat to a greater degree than his selection-by-Supreme-Court of four years ago. This “ideologue president,” as Vernet calls him, should now see the way clear before him to implement all the policy initiatives closest to his heart.

This has particularly alarming repercussions for Europe. While America has steadfastly supported the process of European integration so long as it has remained economic (and lately monetary, with the introduction of the euro in 1999/2002), now that this integration is taking more of a political form – what with attempts being made towards a common European foreign policy and single foreign policy spokesman – America is no longer willing to regard it with such benevolence. Luckily, this integration has likely already reached a point of no-return, whatever the Americans might think of it (although, to be fair, we should check back on this point once we know whether the proposed European Constitution ever turns out to be actually ratified by the member-states). Indeed, it’s even likely that George W. Bush has been the best influence spurring such European political unity for a long time – that is, despite himself and even as he has tried to marginalize Europe’s role on the world stage.

(That’s a curious way to put things, and at first glance it’s not accurate in view of the way the US administration was successfully able to split Europe politically and gain the support of what it termed “New Europe” for its attack into Iraq. Still, it might be more accurate than you think lately – little remains of that Coalition, given the fact that by now most all of the allies which have contributed troops to the occupation have now set definitive deadlines for withdrawing them: the Netherlands, Poland, and lately Hungary. It’s mainly the British who remain conspicuous in that they have not done similarly – yet.)

The challenge now for European leaders, the challenge named in the piece’s title, is to define a new relationship with an America which, from these election results, has shown itself to be less interested in Europe than ever. In all, although it may be controversial whether George W. Bush has been the influence doing most to unite Europe politically, the 2004 election should at least be a sort of wake-up call to European politicians to start acting to make things happen on their own, rather than reacting all the time to policy pronouncements and initiatives out of Washington – because, heaven knows, Washington is likely to take even less notice of European concerns during the coming four years.

                          

Of Carter’s accusations, the Parool editors mostly take up that concerning the clear partisanship of Florida election officials. Four years ago it was Katherine Harris who gained notoriety as not only Florida Secretary of State – the official directly in charge of running Florida elections – but at the same time vice-chairwoman of the George W. Bush Florida campaign. She’s gone now, but in her place we have Glenda Hood, also appointed to the Secretary of State position by Florida governor Jeb Bush and no less partisan. Het Parool cites recent attempts, headed by Hood’s office, to disenfranchise 22,000 black voters (very likely to vote Democratic, you see) by unjustifiably labeling them as felons on the state election roles. (Somehow the Parool editors missed Ms. Hood’s parallel act of omission, namely that of neglecting to bar alleged Hispanic felons from voting – they tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican, you see. You can find an extensive description of this entire mess on the Legal Fiction weblog.)

The new wrinkle to this story that Het Parool has to add is a recent decision from the federal district court in Atlanta that all voting devices must leave a so-called “paper trail” (i.e. have a paper-based back-up recording the votes), to guard against the event that a recount is mandated (as would automatically be the case if first results show the winner ahead of the loser by 0.25% of the votes cast or less). Florida cannot meet this requirement; as Ms. Hood admits, “We have not yet determined how any eventual recount will be carried out.” It’s apparently simply going to be “cross your fingers and hope for the best.”

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL, ANYWAY?

Admittedly, there has hardly been blanket coverage elsewhere across the Dutch press of this potential for an electoral-process repeat in Florida, and Het Parool’s article also stands out due to its shrill tone, e.g. writing of potential “chaos.” Of course, one could ask “Why should they care at all?” Perhaps this was just an instance of the Parool editors having some extra space to fill, and so reaching out to what for the Netherlands could be seen as the more obscure areas of news to gather some interesting material.

But even a moment’s thought is enough to quash any such notions. It should be self-evident that the policies and even personality of the inhabitant of the White House are tremendously important not just for Americans, but also for the entire rest of the world. I’ve seen joking references in various European media to the idea that, for this reason, foreigners should also be allowed to vote in the US elections. (If they did, it would be Kerry all the way, as this latest WaPo article reminds us.) More seriously, this angle has been played here in the Netherlands to try to boost US absentee voter turnout, along the lines of “We can’t vote, but you can and so you had darned better do so.”

“Doing so” means absentee ballots, of course – slightly less handy for election officials to handle and process, but which embody a perfect “paper trail” for later recounting. In fact, some groups in the US who have also raised alarm about the defects of electronic voting have recommended the use of absentee ballots even by those having polling stations comfortably within their own neighborhoods, precisely because of the vote-count security they can provide. As he admits in his opinion piece, at this late stage in the 2004 election process ex-President Carter can only recommend “maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida,” but maybe he could also have recommended the expat example.

                          

I don’t quite see things that way. I think this is quite an excellent outcome for the American side, even the same sort of “divine intervention” for them that the remnants of the Mahdi Army hiding within the Imam Ali shrine (falsely) claim to be for themselves. True, I am no learned professor, and I don’t watch, hear, or read the Arabic press. (I did know Arabic in the past, but that was a while ago; that capability is now, let’s say, in remission.) But the following argument I offer for your comment and refutation.

TOO LATE FOR THE MAHDI ARMY

Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s intervention was indeed a “divine” one that has headed off confrontation with a cruel dilemma that previously seemed inevitable. But I’m not speaking here of Muqtada al-Sadr, or rather his “Mahdi Army” and the dilemma they were facing of being totally wiped-out in Najaf. That basically already happened; the confrontation around the Imam Ali shrine ultimately became little more than a “Mahdi Army hunt” for those remaining black-clad, weapons-toting fighters who were willing to stick their noses out of the shrine itself, where they knew they were safe – for a while. As was pointed out in a reference that I unfortunately have since lost, the Mahdi Army was basically comparable to the Crips or the Bloods, trying to take on the US Marines. Sure, the Crips and Bloods are both plenty bad, but the Marines and the 1st Cav are bad, too – and they have some powerful friends to call on from the air, with names like “Apache” and “Spooky” (the AC-130 gunship). Occasional news reports have spoken of Mahdi Army “sniper fire,” but I have to laugh at that: there’s no way that this spontaneous militia has either the trained personnel or the equipment for true sniper fire. Rather, that has been raining from the American side – read this excellent account (One Shot, One Kill) from Intel Dump – as Mahdi Army fighters don’t even dare show themselves on the streets anymore outside the mosque itself, day or night, for fear of being greeted with a .50-cal sniper round to the head from even a kilometer away.

Bottom line: the Americans control everything in Najaf up to the very walls of the Imam Ali mosque, and prospective future Mahdi Army volunteers have learned that making that commitment basically just creates a high-probability opportunity to get yourself killed. Unless you’re in the leadership, of course; for all his posturing about “defending Najaf to the last drop of my blood,” you certainly don’t see Muqtada al-Sadr there anymore inside the mosque. No, it’s rather “defending Najaf to the the last drop of his followers’ blood,” and you’d have to think that more and more of his followers now realize that.

A BLUFF FORESTALLED

The dilemma that has rather been headed off was the one the Americans were facing. They control everything up to the walls of the mosque, but naturally they were obliged to finish things off and take the mosque itself: the obligation was to demonstrate that when you tangle with the Americans, they will go all the way to dispose of you (a message that particularly needed to be demonstrated in view of the pull-back from completely subduing Fallujah). But that presented the Americans with the classic “dog-chases-car” problem: once you take the mosque, what do you do with it? Indeed, the problem was even more complicated than that, as infidel Americans don’t belong in that shrine, and they know they don’t belong there. Naturally, then, it was going to be Iraqi forces that would make the final assault into the mosque, if that ultimately were to become necessary. But it was by no means assured that the US disposed of a body of Iraqi troops sufficiently trained to do that job and willing to go in and kill fellow Iraqis, in a very holy place, to get it done. Imagine if it had turned out that they wouldn’t do it: what would the Americans do then, facing the need to eliminate resistance at the shrine for good, but also aware that Shi’ites around the world would not tolerate Americans actually going in there, nor of course damaging the mosque in any way?

There’s another reason why the Americans wanted to find a way to keep from having to go into the mosque, or even to have their Iraqi surrogates do that. In another weblog entry entitled Has the Shrine Been Looted?, Prof. Cole discusses the role of the Imam Ali shrine not only as a burial-place and mosque, but also as a museum of priceless articles of Muslim devotion. Those articles would hold the same potential for inflaming the Shi’ite world against infidel Americans as damage to the mosque itself would, were they to go missing in a situation that allowed any possibility that the Americans were responsible – or their Iraqi lackeys. In fact, the potential would be even greater to smear the Americans with the alleged crime of stealing these jewels, since they are hidden away within the mosque and no one can see what is happening to them, whereas the mosque complex itself stands out in public where there can be witnesses as to who perpetrates what damage. (For example, a hole has been put in one of its walls, but news reports claim that that was rather the result of a mis-firing RPG round fired from within the mosque than any munition coming from the outside.) Now neither the Americans nor their Iraqi surrogates have to go inside the mosque, so there is no chance of this – whereas, as the Washington Post recently reported, “Najaf’s police chief, Ghalib Hashim Jazaeri, said his officers had arrested leaders of the Mahdi Army carrying jewels and other treasures from the shrine.” Expect outrage at this sort of thing to widen, if/when the Imam Ali shrine is finally put back under its old management and a property inventory of the museum is taken. Indeed, Muqtada al-Sadr’s embarrassment over what such an inventory would reveal might very well turn out to be the prime reason why previous agreements he has made to vacate the shrine have fallen apart – and why the newest deal with the Ayatollah could still suffer the same fate.

Muqtada al-Sadr and his men: Thugs. Thieves of precious Muslim relics. Cowards who duck inside a holy building they know the enemy isn’t allowed to damage, thereby endangering the sacred property of hundreds of millions of world Muslims. Fools who have found out (those who are not dead) what it means to go up against US military forces. And led by someone who can talk a brave game about martyrdom, but who won’t “walk the talk” when it seems clear that martyrdom is what he is going to get. This is a “wash”?

A GRAND AYATOLLAH WE CAN WORK WITH

The Americans thought that they – or rather their surrogates – were close to having to rush the shrine, and they didn’t want to have to close their eyes, send in their Iraqi shock troops, and hope for the best. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, with his intervention (if the agreement with Muqtada al-Sadr to vacate holds), has saved them from that, and as a bonus has given them the good PR opportunity of pulling their mighty military machine back in a gesture of obedience to the ayatollah’s wishes. Ayatollah Sistani is indeed the big winner here, but that’s hardly a bad thing from the American point-of-view. The Ayatollah, with his views about the desirability of the establishment of a religious state in Iraq, is likely not the Americans’ number-one choice to put in the driver’s seat in determining the country’s political future. But clearly the Americans are now at the “we’ll take anyone we can get who is not too bad” stage, and Ayatollah Sistani is certainly good enough. Prof. Cole reports himself in his latest weblog entry that, while in London, the Ayatollah “rejected . . . vehemently” an overture to let Iran play a bigger role in Iraqi affairs. That’s certainly good. In fact, the main problem with Sistani up to now from the American point-of-view has not been his dislike of or resistance to the occupation forces – he has issued no “fatwa” calling upon Iraqis to fight them, for instance – but rather his very reluctance to engage in Iraqi politics in a way that would bring to bear his enormous religious and moral authority to contribute to the political re-building of the country. The long-term story out of the confrontation at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf in August, 2004, might turn out to be that that was the incident by which, spurred to action by his horror at the real and potential damage to a key Muslim shrine for which he felt responsible as the country’s leading Shi’ite religious authority, he finally emerged from his political cocoon. This gathering up of thousands of followers for a march on Najaf was certainly a spectacular political act, one that probably most observers were surprised to find the ayatollah had it in himself to instigate, especially after rushing back to his country prematurely and against his doctors’ orders from surgery and recuperation at a London hospital.

The Ayatollah, then, not only saved the Americans from having to take the Imam Ali shrine, when they didn’t really want it, but also the greater political prominence he won by doing that should also be welcome to the Americans. After all, the Ayatollah is already known for the great importance he attaches to the elections in Iraq scheduled for next January, and that they actually be held when scheduled. This is not only a vote of confidence in those elections from a native political figure whose voice carries considerable weight; one can easily imagine those elections becoming the pretext (in a Kerry or even Bush II administration) for occupation forces to declare Iraq reconstructed politically, and so to leave. I’ve covered the question of how long Dutch troops are likely to stay in-country, and that is surely no more than March of next year. What’s more, the United Nations mandate for foreign troops occupying Iraq expires at the end of 2005. Those elections would therefore be a handy excuse for the Americans to leave as well, presumably on the condition that they are perceived as free and fair. Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s emphasis on them is yet one more reason why the Americans can work with him, as apparently can Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, who flew to Basra to confer with him shortly after his return there.

Make no mistake: American forces have had a fine three weeks to pin down and massively kill foolhardy Shi’ite nasties in Najaf. But that confrontation was coming rather too close to a climax that seemed as inevitable as it was undesirable to the Americans and their allies. For the Marines there, the 7th cavalry regiment, etc., their own proverbial “seventh cavalry,” saving them at the last minute, arrived in the form of 75-year-old Grand Ayatollah Sistani.