Avuncular American

Deaths of Saddam and Benazir: Bookends to a Hellish Year

Yesterday, other than a few headlines noting that 365 days had come and gone since the hanging/decapitation of Saddam Hussein, few mourned the passing of a man who was, except for certain Sunnis in Iraq and admirers of his defiant brand of Arab nationalism, a rather despicable and cruel dictator.  I can say this, though I will also say that the US decision to invade Iraq under multiple false pretenses was the biggest US blunder of all time.  Why trade a despicably cruel dictator that you know, for unknown devils that have now been unleashed?

The Fate of Uppity Arab Nationalists

It's almost guaranteed that even Democratic opponents of the US invasion of Iraq (or at least opponents of the continued US occupation of Iraq) will say something like "a great success" (John Edwards) when queried on whether Iraqis (and the US) are better off without Saddam Hussein.  I am not so sure.  While it was necessary to keep Saddam in a box (no fly zones, arms embargoes, eviction from Kuwait), at least Iraq was a sovereign entity, counterbalancing a restive Shia Iran next door.  That's all gone now - the stability, the unity, the balance of power - and what is left?  An independent-minded Iraqi Kurdistan that gets bombed by Turkey with increasing regularity; a Shia-dominated government linked to fundamentalist clerics in Iraq and Iran; a surge-induced calm, dependent on the (purchased) goodwill of Sunni tribal elders.  Not quite the new dawn promised by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz 5 years ago.

Here is how Dilem, the Algerian political cartoonist of "Liberte" summed up the beginning of Annus Horribilis 2007.  President George W. Bush, who actually appeared to be bothered by the circumstances of Saddam's execution (he said it resembled a "revenge killing"), is shown here as telling the Arabs: "Happy New Year," with the French greeting "Meilleurs voeux" converted to "Meilleurs noeuds," a dark pun on the hangman's knot.

At the time, I happened to be phoning Algiers in connection with a conference that I was preparing.  An Algerian contact, one who had studied in the US, and was sympathetic to what he saw as the shared  Algerian-American struggle against terrorism, was nonetheless appalled at the atmospherics, at the message, at the sheer bad timing (Saddam was executed by what had all the hallmarks of an official Shia lynch mob on the very morning of the Eid al Kebir, what is normally a joyous Muslim feast day).  Last year the Eid fell in between Christmas and New Year's, and should have been a nonstop time of Muslim-Christian festivities.  Instead, my Algerian friend told me, some people could barely bring themselves to sacrifice the traditional lamb, so sickened were they by the expeditious execution of this still proud and defiant leader.

Blowback on Blowback: "No Ideas, Only Bombers"

Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged too, by the military dictator who had overthrown him.  At the time, his hanging was seen as another illustration of the near impossibility of peaceful transfer of power in the modern world's first Islamic state.  Now, almost thirty years later, his daughter is the latest martyr of - what?  The cause of democracy?  Maybe, but her record was not flawless in that regard.  A martyr for American interests?  Her death certainly does show the fragility of building plans based on personalities, who can be here today, gone tomorrow.  As to "what should Washington do now?" the author of "The New American Militarism," Andrew Bacevich says in yesterday's LA Times

To pose such questions is to presume that decisions made in Washington will decisively influence the course of events in Islamabad. Yet the lesson to be drawn from the developments of the last several days -- and from U.S. involvement in Pakistan over the course of decades -- suggests just the opposite: The United States has next to no ability to determine Pakistan's fate.

And yet the US will try just that - to mold events to suit American interests.  But when previous efforts have been such a dismal failure, aren't all such attempts only guaranteed to make things worse?

"SWA" or "Southwest Asia," is only useful as a geographic concept if you're in the US military, from which the term derives.  Lumping linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups, not to speak of widely varied historical/cultural contexts, because they happen to fit into a quadrant of the globe, balancing the Southeast Asia of the Vietnam era, is probably a bad idea.  But using the faulty term for the sake of argument, to say that the US has made rather a mess of an area from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley, the area that it once tried to make into a NATO clone with the Central Treaty Organization - that's the link I'm trying to show in juxtaposing the deaths of Saddam Hussein and Benazir Bhutto.

I leave you with this excellent essay from Ambassador (Ret'd) Chas Freeman, who wrote of his Impressions of Arabia in "Snuffysmith's Blog," a somewhat oddly-named (can I talk?) blog of really terrific foreign policy writing.  Discussing a recent trip through the Middle East (Freeman served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia 1989-92), he ends with this rumination on the fallen position of the US

In urging action to counter Tehran, most are simply expressing nostalgia for a past in which they routinely looked to the United States as patron-protector to come up with some way of solving problems without demanding anything of them except, perhaps, some of their money. But the U.S. now seems to have no ideas, only bombers.

"No idea, only bombers..."  Not a very rich panoply of "elements of national power," as practitioners of foreign policy like to deploy.  To engage in ideas, "SWA" will have to await a new US president.

"Elective Feudalism:" Essential Reading on Pakistan From William Dalrymple

I am not a South Asia expert; I have never set foot in Pakistan.

William Dalrymple, the Scottish writer of "From the Holy Mountain," and a slew of books on South Asia, is such an expert, and writes perceptively today in The Observer (London) via the Guardian's "Comment is Free" op-ed feature.  His article is an antidote to the tendency in the West to beatify Benazir Bhutto:

Today, Benazir is being hailed as a martyr for freedom and democracy, but far from being a natural democrat, in many ways, Benazir was the person who brought Pakistan's strange variety of democracy, really a form of 'elective feudalism', into disrepute and who helped fuel the current, apparently unstoppable, growth of the Islamists. For Bhutto was no Aung San Suu Kyi. During her first 20-month premiership, astonishingly, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world's worst records of custodial deaths, killings and torture

Though I don't know Pakistan personally, I have lived in other countries where "democracy" and "secularism" mean something different to the West's usual interpretation of the terms.

In Algeria, post-independence governments have largely hailed from the military "nomenklatura," the use of the Soviet term appropriate given the trend in the sixties and seventies to jettison all that was French, capitalist, and agricultural for a socialist, heavy-industrial Soviet style, turning Algeria into a Third World beacon of liberation movements.  When that self-image fell flat in the late eighties and early nineties, Islamists channeled popular frustration at rule by a nomenklatura of some 400 families and won a series of local and national elections.  When the military canceled the elections in early 1992, it unleashed a decade and a half of violence, and made Algeria synonymous with Islamist terrorism.  But the nomenklatura is still there, bolstered by record world prices for Algeria's precious natural gas exports.

In Egypt, a similar military-rooted clique has been in power since the overthrow of King Farouk in the 1950s.  Nasser to Sadat, Sadat to Mubarak, Mubarak to... Mubarak?  Yes, the Egyptian ruling elite is secular, but it too has had serious competition from Islamists, and over the years has alternated between accommodation (including ex-Muslim Brotherhood candidates in the ruling party) and repression.  Go watch the excellent "Yacoubian Building" for a two hour introduction to the contradictions in Egyptian society.

Back to Pakistan and William Dalrymple

Behind Pakistan's endless swings between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of elitist interests: to some extent, Pakistan's industrial, military and landowning classes are all interrelated and they look after each other. They do not, however, do much to look after the poor. The government education system barely functions in Pakistan and for the poor, justice is almost impossible to come by. According to political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa: 'Both the military and the political parties have all failed to create an environment where the poor can get what they need from the state. So the poor have begun to look to alternatives for justice. In the long term, flaws in the system will create more room for the fundamentalists.'

In the West, many right-wing commentators on the Islamic world tend to see the march of political Islam as the triumph of an anti-liberal and irrational 'Islamo-fascism'. Yet much of the success of the Islamists in countries such as Pakistan comes from the Islamists' ability to portray themselves as champions of social justice, fighting people such as Benazir Bhutto from the Islamic elite that rules most of the Muslim world from Karachi to Beirut, Ramallah and Cairo.

When we witness repeated electoral victories by Islamists in countries as varied as Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and - lest we forget - the Palestinian Authority, either we accept that the Islamists are recognized by electors as worthy of their vote, or we reject the very premise of elections and democracy.

The US is still encouraging Pakistan to go forth with elections on January 8

After signing a condolence book for Bhutto at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, Rice said the United States is in contact with "all" of the parties in Pakistan and stressed that the Jan. 8 elections should not be postponed. "Obviously, it's just very important that the democratic process go forward," she told reporters.

But Pakistanis themselves are questioning the wisdom of such a course, given Bhutto's assassination and the attempted assassination on the same day of Nawaz Sharif.  If elections happen - remember Dalrymple's term "elective feudalism" - will the US accept the outcome if it leads to a strengthening of the Islamists?

The Perils of Pakistan: Whose Finger Will Control Nuclear Trigger?

The tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan underlines the danger lurking in that crucial corner of South Asia.  Our man in the GWOT*, General President Pervez Musharraf, is looking increasingly isolated and under fire, as her killing took place in the headquarters city of the Pakistani Army, Rawalpindi, adjacent to the capital Islamabad (which itself has been the scene of large-scale Islamist violence in recent months).  We know that Pakistani government control is sketchy in the wild tribal zones of Waziristan (one of my favorite names for being evocative of the places they describe).  How about the streets of the capital and its military headquarters?

Teresita Schafer, a former career diplomat and US Ambassador to Pakistan from 1992 to 1995, has a very sober assessment of Pakistan's prospects in today's Washington Post

It was unrealistic to expect a "soft landing" from Musharraf's hybrid government to a partial democracy mediated by Benazir. Musharraf never wanted to share power; indeed, he emphasized his belief in "unity of command." Especially after the six-week state of emergency this fall, Musharraf and the army had overwhelming incentive to ensure that the PPP [Bhutto's party] did not emerge from the January elections with a credible claim to the prime minister's job.

The article, attesting to Schaffer's experience in Pakistan stretching back to the 1970s, cannot make for happy reading in Bush Administration circles, especially when combined with another Washington Post article chronicling the year-long American diplomatic effort to persuade Ms. Bhutto to return to Pakistan:

The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability, but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact," said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

"The only possible way [to] guarantee stability and keep the Musharraf presidency intact..."  The article quotes Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and National Security Council staff member now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, on the plan to graft Bhutto to Musharraf

Many career foreign policy officials were skeptical of the U.S. plan. "There were many inside the administration, at the State and Defense Departments and in intelligence, who thought this was a bad idea from the beginning because the prospects that the two could work together to run the country effectively were nil," said Riedel.

We know from Iraq the extent to which career officials are listened to in Washington these days.

In case you missed it on Christmas Eve, here's a prescient NYT story that bears reading in light of yesterday's catapulting of Pakistan onto the screen.  You'll be happy to know that we have

After Six Years, a Plan:  Early last week, six years after President Bush first began pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan’s military after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon completed a review that produced a classified plan to help the Pakistani military build an effective counterinsurgency force.  The plan, which now goes to the United States Embassy in Islamabad to carry out, seeks to focus American military aid toward specific equipment and training for Pakistani forces operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Qaeda leaders and local militants hold sway.

Why is this significant?  Because up to now, the article says, "Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban." (my emphasis)

Yep.  Old Pervez, who knows how to string along an Administration that starts salivating at the very mention of Al Qaeda (and little matter which dictatorship invokes "terrorism"), has been using US money to help him in Pakistan's six decade confrontation with democratic India (which is also supposed to be a US friend).  If GWOT* has friends like this, who needs enemies?  That said, Musharraf will probably always look preferable to the guys from Waziristan.

But if the US plan was to have Benazir Bhutto "save" Musharraf, where does it (and he) stand now?

*(GWOT = "Global War on Terror")

Econ 101: If You Can't Enroll, Then Read Paul Krugman

If you thought that most people vote according to their self-interest, then how is it that George W. Bush is the two-term US President?  Okay, the first time was thanks to the Supreme Court "sorting out" a very messy situation in Florida, but the second time was a very conscious popular vote majority.  And yet:

• the budget surplus Bush inherited was given away to the top 0.5 percent of Americans
• more Americans are added every year to the ranks of the medically uninsured
• the "credit card" war in Iraq will continue up to and beyond his last day in office
• the long post war (WW II, that is) housing boom has tanked on his watch, and millions of Americans are losing their homes

Now, when you juxtapose this with the oft-related story of Americans' response to pollsters ("I'd rather have a drink with Bush than with Kerry or Gore"), you truly must wonder if people link their political choices to their pocketbooks.  Time to enroll in your local Economics 101 course, or at least read what is available for free on the web.  Here's my honor roll:

• Paul Krugman, who writes Mondays and Fridays in the New York Times, freely dispenses world class economics that costs students thousands at Princeton and MIT
• Thomas Friedman, also of the NYT Op-Ed Page (currently on book leave), has a wider political scope, but has done yeoman work in focusing on the national security - energy security link
• Naomi Klein hails from the left of most Americans, but is worth reading for her pitiless coverage of neocon economics.  Her latest book, "Shock Doctrine," has hit bestseller lists worldwide
• Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, often prescribes sensible policy solutions in The American Prospect, the political monthly he helped found
• Jane Bryant Quinn of Newsweek, whose practical advice also has a very responsible social element
• William Greider of The Nation, has a long view of what a fair economy can be, as shown in his most recent book, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to A Moral Economy
• Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post, whose column The Color of Money extends practical advice informed by a social conscience

Finally, in case you don't want to read about the "Dismal Science" (if ever there was a misnomer to the single most important social science, this has to be it), you can listen to it.  If you're in the US, National Public Radio plays "Marketplace" daily, but if you're out of range of NPR like me, you can catch it on their excellent website.

So, "Uncle" doesn't want any more complaining about how voters were tricked into policies inimical to their interests.  Read, listen, and learn, and realize how politics, above all, influences economics - in other words, the way we all live.

And for the neocons out there who might chance upon this blog, take a risk and read some of the links above.  My feeling is that their views will become ever more influential in a future Democratic White House.

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Election Day (In America)

Today, Thursday 27 December, is election day in Kenya.  Why Thursday?  Why not Sunday, as it is done in large parts of the world?  In Kenya, Thursday is not the first day of the weekend either, like it is in Algeria and other predominately Muslim countries - and where it is the preferred day for elections.

I guess Kenya's choice of Thursday is akin to the choice of Tuesday in the United States: random.  Nothing in the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence sets out Tuesdays as any more significant than Wednesday or any other weekday.  The main purpose of Tuesday as election day in the US is that it is NOT SUNDAY.

In these days of 24/7, 7/7, year-round shopping, some Americans may wonder why voting on Sunday would be the Devil's Work?  Well you might ask, since it appears that the seat of Christendom (or at least Catholicism), Rome, has been practicing voting on Sunday for ages.  That's also the case for other mainly Christian countries, and even those where the state religion is Communism.

If the people who make money when you shop at their malls on Sundays can pocket their profits and still go to church with a clear conscience, how is it that the essential ingredient of democracy - voting - cannot be accomplished in America on Sundays, when most people have all day off?  Maybe it's because the people who don't want you to vote - the same people who oppose "motor-voter" registration, who insist on 80 pound unwaxed paper to complete applications, and other more sinister voter suppression tactics - see Tuesday voting as a way of keeping the US turnout among the lowest in the world.

Americans tend to think that their voting systems (whether computerized or otherwise) are world class, but that's maybe because so little attention is paid to the mechanics of elections in other countries.  Even countries where ballots are slipped into boxes - the norm in many extremely democratic countries - somehow manage to have very clean elections, where costs are a fraction of those in the United States.

Who ever decreed that the American Presidential elections begin years before the deed in November 2008?  That every time you turn on CNN there's another debate?  That "Meet the Press" and other Sunday news talk shows can only - boringly, repetitively - feature candidates or talking heads discussing candidates?  And that this whole laborious process costs more than the GNP of many countries?

In the aftermath of the 2000 "Supreme Court" election, when George W. Bush squeaked into the White House, hanging chads weren't the only problem with American democracy.  There were incidents of disinformation disseminated in certain communities (African American, Hispanic) to confuse potential voters into missing the election.  In the 2004 Bush-Kerry race, Congressman John Conyers's book-length investigation into electoral malpractice went nowhere in terms of follow up, though Conyers is still vigilant on continuing electoral shenanigans.  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, of which the US is a member) sent observers to the US in 2004 - the first time in the organization's history.

So next time American voters are forced to take off time from work to vote (will their bosses let them?) or arrive too late at a polling station after work on Tuesday, they should give a little thought to how it's done in the rest of the world.  Making sure Americans can actually vote, and that their votes can be counted, would seem to be more important than scheduling "debates" every other week.

Christmas Eve and the End of the Spirit of Annapolis

I'm not sure that there ever really was a "Spirit of Annapolis," but if there was, it is gone by now.  Annapolis: it seems so far away, but we will hear it evoked in a week or so, when President Bush makes his January 8-16 trip to Israel and the West Bank, his first - exactly one year before the formal end of his presidency.  But if Annapolis was not an end in itself, at least its premise of a "launch pad" for further negotiations left some hope that quietly, once away from the media spotlight at the US Naval Academy, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would be able to tackle the thorniest issues, those that have eluded American peacemakers from Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton.

But this Christmas eve in the Holy Land, the reality on the ground is devoid of any Yuletide Cheer.  Last week, veteran Middle East observer Helena Cobban in her excellent blog "Just World News" reported on behind-the-scenes developments showing that elements of the Israeli security establishment were open to overtures from - of all people - the Hamas leadership in Gaza.  Now, we read that any such moves have been rejected by the Olmert government.

In my book, however, it's what you don't read about on page one that shows how the atmosphere may be irredeemably poisoned.  The ink had barely dried on the Annapolis declaration when an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed East Jerusalem leaked out.  Here we are on Christmas Eve, when the stress is on last-minute shopping and End-of-Year messages, and the Israeli settlement plan is shown as even bigger, with more than 700 homes planned to settlements that are on land confiscated/"purchased" from Palestinians. (Photo Source: BBC "Israel Confirms Settlement Plans")

Here's the problem: while Jerusalem - split by the 1949 UN Green Line, "reunited" (i.e., Arab East Jerusalem annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War), whose municipal boundaries have been expanded by successive Israeli governments to include large swaths of Palestinian West Bank land - is evoked by the Palestinians as a "final status" issue, Israelis see the matter of Jerusalem as off the table.  Now, in any land dispute, if I have a legitimate claim to my own property, but I happen to use your access road over the years, then I lay a formal claim to your road, put up "no entry" signs to keep you out, and shoot at you if you dare to reclaim your access road - this would eventually look bad for me in a property tribunal.

But the "tribunal" in this case is the court of international public opinion.  Israel has created an industry of spin, trotting out a whole stable of multilingual (indeed, native speakers of important world languages) Israelis who are able to defend Israel's talking points in front of world media.  On the Palestinian side, while there are some very able spokespersons, the split - between the Fatah/PLO leadership in the West Bank (Mahmoud Abbas, the "President of Ramallah," as some Israeli and Palestinian observers have called him) and the elected Hamas leadership in Gaza under Ismail Haniya - has weakened and diluted the Palestinian voice.

Last month, at a Brussels conference on the Mideast,  moderate Israeli and Palestinian speakers despaired at the state of Palestinian Authority leadership (a "dead body" in the view of one observer, "corrupt" according to all).  One former Israeli Army intelligence officer, Dr. Avraham Sela, now a respected academic at Hebrew University, made the case for inclusion of Hamas in the peace process.  The biggest missing piece in Annapolis, many agreed, was the absence of Hamas.  No "peace process" worthy of the name (or with even half a chance of success) can ignore the over half of the Palestinian population that is represented by Hamas.

So, on this Christmas Eve, it's really hard to be optimistic about peace prospects for the Holy Land.  So let's wish the negotiators good luck, but keep in mind the question asked by peace processors more than a decade ago: "What Will Be Left to Negotiate?"  Merry Christmas.

Belgium: New Government Issues Terrorism Alert (Updated 22 Dec)

See Update Below.

After more than six months of negotiation, vacillation, trepidation, and resignation(s), Belgium has finally been given a Christmas present by its stalwart "current affairs" Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt: a new government, though an "interim" one that will end in March 2008.  That's just fine for now, to instill a measure of confidence in the population - and among foreign investors.  And just in time to deal with a terrorist alert, on the same morning as the cabinet was sworn in by King Albert II.

According to news reports, Belgian authorities acted to prevent associates of Nizar Trabelsi from liberating him.  He's serving a ten year prison sentence.  Trabelsi had been convicted of plotting to attack American interests in Europe in the wake of September 11, 2001, and was arrested days after the attacks on New York and Washington.

Also arrested: Malika El Aroud, widow of the assassin of the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, killed in Afghanistan on September 9, 2001.  In all, 14 people, mostly of North African origin, were arrested (Update: Belgian radio announced Saturday morning 22 December that all 14 suspects had been released).

This news comes at a time when there is increasing concern in Europe about a resurgent North African terrorist connection.  Though Belgium's colonial past was concentrated in Central Africa (Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi), it has a large North African (largely Moroccan) community.  Brussels also has a sizable Turkish community.  Most importantly, Brussels is symbolically important, as the seat of NATO (active in Afghanistan) and the European Union.

Too bad for the Maghrebi community, which is increasingly integrated into Belgian life.  Local elections in Brussels feature second-generation candidates from the North African (and sub-Saharan African) communities, and they are frequently elected.  And their presence in respectable politics is a nice counter to Flemish extremists from the "Vlams Belang" and other right wing groups, who persist in the notion that Islam and Arabs are trying to take over Belgian society and convert churches into mosques.

Overall, definitely not a nice development for those Muslim families trying to have a quiet Eid holiday, nor for those Brussels residents trying to complete Christmas shopping in peace.

Schengen Enlargement: Cause for Celebration?

It was appropriate, yesterday, for us to cross the guard-less Franco-Belgian border on the way back to Brussels.  Though there were a few "flying patrol" French Customs agents at the last motorway toll booth in France, the border, as usual, was a spookily empty no-man's land.  As soon as we entered Belgium, a gray "freezing fog" enveloped us.  At least a new government had been formed in our absence.

Anyway, as of midnight last night, several other European borders will be customs/immigration/police free.  Schengen, the little Luxembourg town where intra-European Union borders started being dismantled in 1985, has been a feature of life in the old EU for more than two decades.  Now more of the recent EU states (Donald Rumsfeld divisively called them "New Europe") have joined the club.

I have mixed feelings about Schengen and its expansion.  Europe's external borders are only as good as the enforcement exerted by its "front line" states.  Originally, these were seven of its founding members, clustered around the Rhine and the Alps.  As Europe has extended south and east, the outer borders run up against countries with some serious trafficking, security, and immigration problems.  Are the new Schengen members up to the challenge?

Europe's outer borders (and for that matter, its endless coastline) are under constant threat of clandestine  entry.  The EU's western island members, Ireland and the UK, have not yet seen fit to enter the Schengen group, and in France, asylum seekers pile up in the Channel ports trying to enter the UK by any means possible.  Boat people, illegal immigrants - these groups can be infiltrated by others, including potential terrorists.  People trafficking is accomplished by some of the same circles who deal in weapons smuggling and drug smuggling.  I have yet to be convinced that the outer Schengen controls protect Europe's security.  Yes, borders breaking the traffic flow can cause delays to commercial truck traffic and tourists in a hurry, but is the cost greater than entrusting your border to some guard on the Slovakian/Ukrainian frontier?  I am not so sure.

100 Years: The Golden Years in France

Now that I'm back with my trusty QWERTY keyboard, I can resume blogging.  For the last few days, other than checking email, the AZERTY keys at our relatives' home allowed hunting and pecking, not much more.  We've been in France, in the lovely Anjou region north of the Loire, where my wife's Aunt Marguerite - "Tante Guite" - has just celebrated her centenary.

Tante Guite had, until very recently, been living at home, a little rented row house in a slate mining suburb of Angers.  She'd been able to do so mostly because of a pretty good (extraordinary, when compared to the American system) medico-social support system, which included a hot meal brought to her daily, health visits for essential treatment and medications, and an emergency link "hot button."

Now that she's no longer able to get around without a wheelchair, she's in a public/private retirement home adjacent to the Loire.  Wednesday's birthday party brought a few local journalists and dignitaries, and of course family members from France (and us).  Tante Guite, bless her, still loves reading, so there were additions to her library, which is mostly history of her native Brittany and the Anjou, where she spent equal halves of her long life.

Tante Guite, who's also been a widow for half her life, grew up as World War I was devastating more distant parts of northern and eastern France.  Her village in Brittany was not spared, nor was her family; the "Monument aux Morts" in her village includes the name of her uncle, killed in the first weeks of the war somewhere in Belgium.  Tante Guite, a schoolgirl at the time, remembers soldiers coming home, and of course the Armistice and 14 July celebrations afterward, when the triumphant French Army was considered invincible.  She was a wife and mother when Brittany was occupied by the Germans in WW II, and enthralls her audience with details on life under foreign occupation.

At the retirement home, she is among the most lucid in a group that is mostly ladies - all younger than her.  France is grappling with an aging population, though its tradition of social solidarity gives it flexibility that is sometimes hard to come by in societies like the US.  The home's staff of nurses, aides, and others are civil servants.  Tante Guite's relatively modest survivor's pension and other benefits go toward her upkeep, and she is expected to deplete her life's savings.  Eventually, her children (the law even extends responsibility to grandchildren) will be expected to make up the difference.

Seeing Tante Guite and her fellow residents at the home gave us all food for thought on extreme old age.  Our hosts and favorite French cousins, Marie-Josee and Michel, live in a cozy house a few kilometers away from Tante Guite, but know that they won't always be able to negotiate the stairs or semi-rural living.  We live in an apartment in Brussels, but will always have to deal with the oddities of expatriation (different health insurance systems, different currencies, etc.).  And wherever we are, at least one of us will always be a foreigner.  Tante Guite, who has survived wars, occupation, widowhood, and privation has managed to stay dignified at her advanced age.  Who could ask for anything more?

Bali: The Bush Signing Statement: "What Agreement?"

The delegates at the Bali Climate Change conference had barely left the negotiating table.  Maybe some of them were mercifully incommunicado, already in deep slumber on a long haul flight back home.  Other, more stalwart ones, may have even have had a glass or two of bubbly to celebrate the eleventh hour turnaround by the United States, which finally meant consensus after weeks of wrangling.

Maybe even Papua New Guinea delegate Kevin Conrad, who had shamed the US Delegation with his "provide leadership, or get out of the way" zinger, maybe even he allowed himself a little self-congratulatory tipple.  But all of these reactions could not account for the man in Washington, the one who had his fingers crossed behind his back the whole time.  Saying one thing, while thinking another; acquiescing to a law banning torture, then doing another "signing statement," taking it all back.  This is the Bush Method.

"Serious Concerns" was what the world heard coming from the White House, about what it thought was a done deal only hours old.  Look at the body language, the tone of voice, the resigned frown on US Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky as she says that the US was finally, after being the butt of booing and hissing from the rest of the world, "joining consensus."  I don't know where she was, hours later, when the White House issued its "signing statement."  If she, by joining consensus, had overstepped her remit, then she probably had a hollow feeling in her stomach.  If - much more likely - it had all been a ploy to dilute serious proposals to act to counter climate change, just so the prodigal US could be brought back inside the tent, then she and the rest of the US delegation could go back to their champagne.

As someone who used to sit at the table behind a "United States" nameplate, I used to keep in mind the classic Harvard Negotiation Project "Getting To Yes" principle of BATNA.  The Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.  In other words, you did your best to obtain what was the bottom line for the US (in my case, they were nuts-and-bolts issues involving NATO and the OECD).  If you knew your BATNA, you could always stick to your guns, knowing that if consensus on the agreement in question was not achievable, you could walk away.

But if you wanted to return to negotiate with the same people (representing the same countries) another day, you didn't say, "Sure, I'll join the consensus," only to take it back when the session was over.  That would be called negotiating in bad faith.  Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, like the apostle who denied his master, like all those good folk expressions ("cheat me once, shame on you; cheat me twice, shame on me"), who is going to trust the American Delegation next time?  On Climate Change.  On missiles in Europe.  On anything where the good name of the United States is the one thing that counts.

With his "signing statement" post Bali, President Bush has effectively done what he has already done vis-a-vis Iraq: "It's over to you, Hillary (or Barack, or John, or whoever inherits the Oval Office in 2009).  The list of major issues to be resolved by that lucky person has just gotten longer.