Avuncular American

What's the Bush Legacy Worth? I'd Say 20 Years

If you can stomach it, read excerpts from George W. Bush's "interview" with his sister (?) for National Public Radio on his legacy: "I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values."

Values.  I did a word search in the White House transcript for words like "torture," "financial crisis," and "depression," but came up with naught.

True to form, the born-again President looks to a higher Father: "I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption."  How convenient.  We'll never know whether he'll be redeemed, as that's between him and his Creator.

Earthbound punishment for torture is another matter.  According to lawyer Scott Horton - Justice After Bush: Prosecuting An Outlaw Administration - in the current Harpers

18 U.S.C. § 2340 makes it a crime for any “person acting under the color of law” to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.” The penalty for this crime—as Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel carefully noted in a 2003 memo on the subject—is up to twenty years in federal prison.

Twenty years...  That's about as long as it will take for the United States to dig out from the mess he has created.  Two decades of undoing the harm to the nation's working and middle classes.  Twenty long years of hard labor - starting with an Obama Administration - to build up the nation's moral standing in the world, after the blustering buffoons (Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) squandered the country's ability to lead.

The White House released the transcript on "Black Friday."  How appropriate.  As he prepares to scurry off to Crawford - maybe the only place safe from international arrest warrants - Bush leaves behind a country where Black Friday shoppers literally - and lethally - stampede in the rush to the bottom.  Into a Wal-Mart, to buy what?  Melamine-tainted Chinese-made candy?  Toxic toys?  Quite a Christmas that will make.

Quite a legacy, Mr. Bush.

The Georgian MAP to NATO: Sidetrack or Fast Track?

Georgia has a pretty flag.  Whether it should fly any time soon in front of NATO headquarters in Brussels will again be the hot topic during next week's meeting of the Alliance's foreign ministers.

Several European NATO members think that Georgia is not quite ready for prime time.  The Bush Administration has been eager to push Georgian membership, but European resistance - already made clear at NATO's Bucharest summit last April - has only intensified after the August 2008 war in South Ossetia.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried both spoke recently of a new US (or is it British?) initiative to deal with the Georgian membership question.  Their pre-Thanksgiving publicity blitz was in answer to news circulating in Europe that the US was pressuring its European allies to fast track Georgian (and Ukrainian) membership, both very sensitive issues with neighboring Russia.  Here's the New York Times on November 25:

“This is a real turnaround of the U.S. position,” said a senior NATO diplomat who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “We reached a compromise in Bucharest after much haggling. Now, we are being asked to cancel it and effectively discard the MAP program. This is putting the unity and credibility of the alliance at stake.”

The anonymous diplomat was reflecting European concerns that NATO's Article V mutual defense pact means what it says: in the event of membership, NATO (that means also the United States, and primarily the US) would have to defend Georgia in the event of future hostilities with Russia.

So the US effort to sidetrack NATO's MAP (Membership Action Plan) in favor of "bilateral" Georgia-NATO and Ukraine-NATO Commissions has huge ramifications.  Unless it's just a smokescreen for inaction.

Which is how Russian President Dimitry Medvedev has chosen to greet it: “I don’t know what their position is based on, but I’m satisfied that reason has triumphed -- unfortunately, at the end of the current administration’s term." (Bloomberg, November 28).

Medvedev, presumably, interpreted Condoleezza Rice's explanation of the shift as a pull back.  Here's what she said:

Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear. The point of view of the United States was stated at Bucharest that we think – thought that MAP is a way to prepare countries for membership. But there are other ways to prepare countries for membership.

So, are the Russians right to take comfort in the new US approach, or are the European members of NATO correct in seeing this as another Bush Administration about-face to the rest of the alliance?  We'll know more next week.

Georgia has a pretty flag.  But it does not fly above significant portions of its own territory: breakaway South Ossetia, but also Abkhazia.  Another restive region, Ajaria, has hovered between insurrection and semi-autonomy.  Not very reassuring when the member states of NATO must decide whether to offer membership in an alliance that exists to guarantee stability, not provide life-support to unstable territories.

To paraphrase President-Elect Obama ("words mean something"), Article V means something.  Thankfully, he will have a Defense Secretary - Robert Gates - who shares those same European concerns about loose application of defense guarantees.  On a continent where blind adherence to mutual defense pacts turned a spark in Sarajevo into World War I, it's best to be prudent when widening the security safety net.

Thankful and Hopeful

Just a short word to wish Americans and those who celebrate with them a happy Thanksgiving Day.

Thanks to the sacrifice (literal) of millions of turkeys, Americans will be reminded of the early days when their cold, hungry and needy forebears were introduced to the delicacy by the First Americans.  Well, maybe not the cold part: we now know that the first "Thanksgiving" by Europeans in America was French, and was celebrated in Florida.

President-Elect Obama brought his family yesterday to a Chicago food distribution center, where he noted that the number of people showing up for food has increased 33% this year.  The slide show and video in this Huffington Post article are worth watching - check the look of pure joy on the faces of the little kids lining up to touch Obama, and the handwritten sign in the school window "We love our Prez."

It's good that Obama took his daughters there "to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they're giving back."  Good that he's putting the accent on the original sharing part of Thanksgiving, in these times when millions of Americans are spending first Thanksgiving in homeless shelters, or camping out with the in laws ... or God knows where after losing their homes.

Next year, he will have to perform the usual Presidential charade of pardoning a turkey.  It's almost certain that he will visit the remaining troops in Iraq, or perhaps the reinforced contingent in Afghanistan.  Hopefully, this time next year, things will be looking better for Americans - and all the others touched by the economic crisis Made-in-USA - after 11 months of an Obama Administration.

And thankfully, we have that to look forward to.

(photo source: Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.)

"The Victory So Far" In Iraq Is Reversible

We believe that the conditions are such now that we are able to celebrate the victory that we've had so far

Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary, November 19, 2008

The progress does remain fragile and does remain reversible

General David Petraeus, October 7, 2008

"Victory" is a dangerous word to deploy, especially when your generals on the ground avoid using it, and especially not loosely.  Ever since "Mission Accomplished," the Bush Administration has been searching for formulas to describe kicking the Iraq can down the road to January 20, finally seizing on the amorphous "upon success."  Where "success" can be defined whichever way they choose.  The benchmark is now the Thanksgiving Day passage by the Iraqi Parliament of the Strategic Framework for Iraqi-US Relations, plus the Status of Forces Agreement.  At least the Iraqis get to have their say: no such vote is scheduled for the US Congress.

But Ms. Perino's odd formulation - "the victory that we've had so far" - is so weaselly.  "So far," meaning until January 20, 2009?  No guarantees for what happens after that.  And what if Iraqi passage is just the prelude to disagreements over the interpretation of the texts?  After all, the Arabic version of the documents calls them the "withdrawal accords."

Here's an important McClatchy piece on the curious silence coming out of Washington on what the agreements mean, depending on where you're sitting:

The Bush administration has adopted a much looser interpretation than the Iraqi government of several key provisions of the pending U.S.-Iraq security agreement, U.S. officials said Tuesday — just hours before the Iraqi parliament was to hold its historic vote.

These include a provision that bans the launch of attacks on other countries from Iraq, a requirement to notify the Iraqis in advance of U.S. military operations and the question of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over American troops and military contractors.

Officials in Washington said the administration has withheld the official English translation of the agreement in an effort to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the Iraqi parliament votes.

Those differences in interpretation could be exactly the kind of poisonous legacy that the Obama Administration will have to contend with when it first meets with the Iraqi Government.  And these are not over minor technicalities: launching attacks from Iraq (on Iran? Syria?); notification of US military operations on (presumably sovereign) Iraqi soil; legal jurisdiction over US troops and contractors (see Abu Ghraib, Blackwater shootings).

"The victory we've had so far," when 146,000 US troops maintain a tenuous status quo amidst Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations that have been driven apart by Bush's 2003 invasion, is indeed "fragile and reversible."

Enter President-Elect Barack Obama, who will want to carry through responsibly with his commitment to withdraw US troops from Iraq.  In less than two months, he'll be Commander in Chief.  Which means he'll have to contend with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose Chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, has been calling attention of late to the massive logistical tail in Iraq, and the time-consuming difficulties of removing it as troops draw down.

Now, I appreciate the need to "power-wash" thousands of military vehicles before they're shipped back to the US, and to shrink-wrap helicopters to protect them from the salt air en route to their home bases (see this excellent article on the logistical logjam of pulling out from Iraq in Tom Dispatch).

But the logistical tail cannot wag the political dog.  Pulling out might be hard, it might be dangerous, but the Withdrawal party just won big on November 4 over the War party.  It's as simple as that.  And remember, when the Iraqi Parliament ratifies the SOFA and the Strategic Framework, their copy of the agreement will read "The Withdrawal Accords."

Just-in-Time: Obama Takes Long View, Builds-to-Last

The president-elect’s recovery plan emphasizes job creation, and the path to that end winds through the nation’s long-neglected infrastructure.  The idea that the nation had all but stopped investing in its infrastructure, and that officials in Washington have ignored the crucial role of job creation as the cornerstone of a thriving economy is beyond mind-boggling. It’s impossible to understand.

Impossible, that is, until you realize that bandits don’t waste time repairing a building that they’re looting.

Bob Herbert Op-Ed "Not a Moment Too Soon," New York Times, November 24, 2008

Reading Bob Herbert's column this morning, I remembered two "business books" from the nineties that bear re-reading: "The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World" by Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network, and "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" by Stanford Graduate School of Business professors James Collins and Jerry Porras.

"Just-in-Time," applied to the election of Barack Obama, is to be taken in Bob Herbert's literal sense: "not a moment too soon," not the JIT of management-speak (reducing inventories and related costs).  Just in time, before the economy suffers even more at the hands of the "bandits."  Time to start building tangible, lasting structures, not just impossible-to-fathom structured financial instruments.

Infrastructure is a word that we're going to hear much more often as we approach January 20.  This should make the American Society of Civil Engineers happier: every year they update their "Infrastructure Report Card" to show how far the US has fallen behind in maintaining its roads, bridges, levees... and every so often a Katrina strikes or an I-35W bridge collapses to remind us that infrastructure is for real, and ignored at our peril.

The ASCE Report Card is the point of departure for Felix Rohatyn and Everett Ehrlich, writing in the October 9 New York Review of Books, "A New Bank to Save Our Infrastructure."  They propose the creation of a

National Infrastructure Bank, an institution that would be similar to the World Bank, a private investment bank, or any other entity that evaluates project proposals and assembles a portfolio of investments to pay for them.

Before you wince at the idea of yet more government spending on - of all things - another bank, just remember the $4.28 trillion (not a typo) bailout tab thus far.  Incredulous?  Then check this must-read from CNBC, and be sure to look at the graph.  At least with the Rohatyn/Ehrlich NIB, the public gets to own and use the investment, which will hopefully be built-to-last.  As far as the bailout to Wall Street is concerned, don't ever count on seeing your $4.28 trillion again.  Add it to I.O.U.S.A.

Infrastructure doesn't just mean bricks-and-mortar; it can be as high-tech as the networks that will be needed to re-route electricity produced in remote solar and wind farms to the national grid, or the lines necessary to hook everyone up to high-speed internet.  As internet pioneer George Gilder told the BBC's "Global Business" host Peter Day, "if you don't build it, they won't come."  And if the US doesn't build it, China certainly will.

The long view is exactly the outlook that has been missing-in-action in recent years.  It's not all the fault of capitalism, nor the fault of all capitalists.  People like Felix Rohatyn, Warren Buffet, and George Soros like to make a buck, but the difference is that they can keep their perspective and remember that something has to remain, not only for their grandchildren, but for ours too.

They Killed the U.S. Auto Industry's Best Hope

The Movie

Who Killed the Electric Car? wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times when the film was released in 2006, is "a murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage."  If that was true two years ago, it is even more rage-inducing now that the killers - primary among them, GM, creator and destroyer of the little EV1 - are themselves fighting for their lives.  Recommendation: before they lift a finger to bail out Detroit, the Obama Transition team and the current and future members of Congress should check out Chris Paine's excellent documentary from their local Blockbuster or rent it from Netflix, posthaste.

It wouldn't surprise me if most Americans outside the California test market had never heard of the EV1.  Introduced in LA and other California markets in 1996, the EV1 was doomed from the start.  Why?  It was too good: great mileage, few spare parts, little maintenance - lots of rice bowls were threatened.  Introduced as an answer to California's 1990 Zero Emission mandate, GM preferred to fight the regulations while it pointed to the Electric Vehicle as proof that it was doing something for the environment.  Its advertising campaign for the EV1 has to be seen to be believed.  Never was there a scarier introduction to a new product - post-apocalyptic images and sound - you'd be forgiven for staying away from an EV1 after seeing the GM ads.

Watching Who Killed the Electric Car? produced a little pang of nostalgia along with the rage.  In two of the three short periods when we lived in the States, we owned Saturns, which in the 90s were truly imaginative alternatives to gas-guzzling American cars - they were American-made, but looked and handled like more expensive imports.  The EV1 was marketed by Saturn, but Saturn was on the Dark Side of GM in this story.

The good guys?  S. David Freeman, with his folksy tone, was Energy Adviser to President Jimmy Carter (the last President to understand and take action to reduce America's energy dependence) and Stan and Iris Ovshinsky, whose batteries powered the EV1 and many hybrids.  They and a host of Electric Vehicle aficionados paint a picture of a wonderful experiment that could have - more than a decade ago - put the United States on the track of energy sustainability and being on the right side of climate change.

This, however, is what happened: EV1s, which had been leased (not sold) to customers, were recalled.  The film's most poignant moments show loyal customers trying to save the sequestered cars from the shredders.  I never saw a car shredder before, but picture an industrial-strength version of your standard paper shredder, then insert Electric Vehicle.  Dust.

If ever there was a clearer illustration of GM's desire to erase any trace of this car, it is The Shredder shot.  EV1 customers couldn't even buy the cars back, so eager was GM to disappear all evidence of their existence.  Just like the auto-oil-tire industry collusion of the 40s and 50s, when Los Angeles and other American cities were hoodwinked into trashing their clean public transit trams and trolleys for pollution-spewing mass-produced Detroit buses and cars.

The Culprits

OK, so GM stinks.  Is that a reason to let them wither and die?  Some think so:

• "A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs."  Mitt Romney, son of Detroit, in "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," November 18 2008 NYT.
• "By propping up GM and saving some jobs now, we will see many more lost just down the road."  Nicholas Von Hoffman, The Nation, November 18.

Others aren't so sure.  Says Spencer Abraham, former Bush Energy Secretary, in today's NYT:

If we knew then what we know now about the systemic shock to our economy, would we have allowed Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt? Absolutely not. If we let any of the Big Three go bankrupt, we will set in motion a chain of events that will cause us, in six months, to ask again: How did we let this happen?

Irwin Stelzer of the conservative Hudson Institute, writing in yesterday's Times of London, called for

a government guarantee of all warranties backing vehicles sold while GM (or Chrysler) is in bankruptcy. Throw in government guarantees of pension obligations, some retraining and other protection for older workers who might be adversely affected by rulings of the bankruptcy courts, and you have a compassionately conservative and economically efficient solution to the industry’s problems.

Here's my bottom line, and it's what the good people at "Revenge of the Electric Car" (Chris Paine's sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car? to be released in 2010) propose:

[We] urge Congress to withhold any bailout funds from the auto industry, unless and until the industry agrees to mass-produce fuel efficient automobiles - electric cars. 

Congress should not, under any circumstances, release the bailout money to automobile manufacturers without making these demands. Without these demands, the automobile manufacturers will just continue with “business as usual,” manufacturing gas-guzzlers, which would increase our dependency on the Middle-East oil producing countries. This dependency must end now!

In my view, Detroit and the related American car industry is truly "too big to fail."  For many of the same reasons that Wall Street institutions were propped up, Washington will probably in the end have to inject money into the Big Three car makers (it's not like this wasn't done before; see Chrysler rescue, 1979).

But, dear Congress and (future) Obama Administration: do extract meaningful reforms while you're at it.  Those EV1 blueprints are somewhere in GM headquarters; what's more, as Who Killed the Electric Car? shows, the technology - especially battery performance - has greatly improved since the EV1's truncated life on earth.

Nothing would make more sense than to require immediate retooling to reactivate the Electric Vehicle production line.  Poetic justice for all those drivers who experienced the EV1 and were crestfallen to have it taken away.  And fresher air for the rest of us.

When Egypt Was Also Mediterranean & Levantine

I haven't - yet - seen Nadia Kamel's Salata Baladi (House Salad), her documentary about her multi-national, multi-confessional extended family in Egypt.  But today's BBC World Service program "Heart and Soul" (available here in podcast) provides a delightful introduction her film.

The notion of Egypt as a "land of opportunity" for Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, Armenians and others might strike readers as surprising - isn't Egypt a poor country, suffering high unemployment, a major aid recipient?  Ah, but it was not always so.

And it wasn't just related to the construction and maintenance of the Suez Canal.  The preponderance of French and Italian car mechanics made a lasting linguistic impression; names for car parts are Arabized versions of terms left behind by Jean-le-mecano.

When we lived in Alexandria in the early eighties, there were still remnants of these communities.  The Greek had been the largest - several hundred thousand - though by 1983 they had dwindled to a couple of thousand.  The others were even smaller.  There was still a lingering sense of what Lawrence Durrell might have observed while gathering material for the Alexandria Quartet.

The BBC program features interviews with filmmaker Nadia Kamel (who was a longtime assistant to the late Youssef Chahine) and Professor Khaled Fahmy of New York University. They trace the often complicated family histories that resulted from this influx of foreigners into 19th and 20th century Egypt.  For anyone who knows Egypt or Egyptians, the radio program's combination of music, excerpts from the film, and conversation succeeds in evoking the gentle warmth of Egyptians.

Egypt is not only Mediterranean and Levantine - but today it is easy to forget that it also has this rich multicultural heritage.  Probably the best place to get a feel for this side of Egypt is Alexandria, the metropolis on the Mediterranean so dear to the heart of Youssef Chahine.  Listen to the BBC podcast, and hear why Egypt does not always equate to Arab, Arab does not always connote Muslim, and Islam is not the only religion in the Middle East's most populous country.

Road Movies From the Edges of Francophonie

Michael Kimmelman's "In France, It’s Vive Le Cinéma of Denial" (NYT, 3 November 2008) prompted me to write this post, instead of an irate letter to the editor.  This is Kimmelman's picture of French cinema: escapist, self-indulgent, "intellectual."  He bemoans an absence of political films, comparing it with the situation in Hollywood:

Meanwhile, never mind poor box office results, the United States keeps churning out ambitious pictures with big stars or directors, like “In the Valley of Elah,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Rendition,” “Redacted” and “Body of Lies,” questioning American policy in the Middle East or otherwise seizing on the headlines.

Well - just maybe - with simultaneous wars going on throughout the world, US directors have plenty of raw material not available to French directors.  I haven't seen any of the GWOT/Iraq War films he mentions, not for lack of interest in the subject, but because my reading of the reviews sent me in other directions.

Notably, in the direction of some decidedly offbeat, but wildly original films from the periphery of la Francophonie: Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada.  The latter is a stretch, but the co-director and co-star of "Rumba" is a Canadian, Fiona Gordon.

Home

The trio of films I have in mind - Rumba, El Dorado, and Home - all have elements of the burlesque and the surrealistic, and could be described as "road movies."  Indeed, Ursula Meier's Home has been described as "a road movie in reverse," in this interview with the director in Cineuropa:

It is a contemporary family tale; it is about isolation turning into madness. There are quite strong intimate ties between the characters, which will be revealed by the highway. It becomes the place where each one of the characters projects their own neurosis. It is also a mirror of the world – violent, aggressive, and polluted – which enters the homes of people who thought they would be able to live alone, set apart from society.

The "Home" of the title is on the edge of an expressway, suddenly completed and opened to traffic after years of dormancy.  Meier - whose film has garnered critical praise - is making her feature film debut with "Home," the idea for which came from her casual observation of people living along expressways in Belgium and France.  Veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert's depiction of a mother on the edge is matched in its manic depression by Belgian Olivier Gourmet (Cannes Best Actor 2002).

Rumba

Rumba, my second choice in the quirky category, has some plot turns that could be downers in any other hands: car accident leading to amputation and memory loss, house burning and homelessness.  But in the hands of Belgian Dominique Abel and Canadian Fiona Gordon, it's just more grist for their hyperactive imaginations.  In another Cineuropa interview, they reveal their approach to film:

Our relationship with film has nothing to do with realism; we would never use a sound in order to give the impression of reality. We come from a more theatrical world; we’re used to imagining situations and if a sound is present, it’s because of its musicality. We could compare the soundtrack to our films with the clear-line drawing style in comic strips. Hergé said he would never draw a telephone on a desk if the telephone wasn’t going to ring.

You can't come out of Rumba feeling anything but admiration for this Tati-esque couple who aren't dancers, but who "like to move."  Minimal dialogue, maximum visuals, and great Cuban rumba soundtrack.  Pure joy.

Eldorado

The last in my trio, Eldorado, is the only literal road movie.  It doesn't matter that Belgium is the size of Maryland and that director/star Bouli Lanners' gas-guzzling Chevy never leaves the kingdom.  He's behind the wheel of car with a taciturn young hitchhiker, and what might have been a short ride from A to B becomes a meandering detour via all that is strange on the back roads of le plat pays.  Lanners, bewildered, hirsute and in shorts, also bears an uncanny resemblance to The Dude of Big Lebowski fame.  You see where I'm heading.

Maybe I've lived in Europe too long, but I think that if you like the films of the Coen brothers, Tim Burton, or Emir Kusturica, you will appreciate this trio of quirky francophone films.  Which brings me back to Michael Kimmelman's complaint about French films.  Okay, none of my trio are purely French films from France, but I have seen numerous films coming out of France in recent years that are excellent stories, played by top actors, on subjects that - while they may not reach Kimmelman's criteria of political relevance - treat the human condition with intelligence and subtlety.

Oh, and Mr. Kimmelman, what's this about:

As for a French version of “W.,” any film skewering a sitting French president “would be nearly impossible to make here,” said [producer] Caroline Benjo, echoing what other French filmmakers contend.

I guess Kimmelman's French interlocutors forgot to mention Karl Zero and his "Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac" (shown while Chirac was still in office), not to speak of his superior (to Oliver Stone's "W.") "Being W.," as effective a "skewering" as any applied by Michael Moore.

French - and neighboring francophone - cinema is alive and well, and if it indulges in escapism from time to time, well, who's to deny them that?

US Diplomacy Is Also FDA, USDA, EPA ...

The United States has opened a Food and Drug Administration office in Beijing, as the first step in an FDA strategy to try to improve food and drug safety standards around the world.

VOA, 19 November 2008

Sounds like a no-brainer to me: amidst fears of melamine contamination, it's a bit more than a "do something!!" response to fears of what might be coming next in Chinese container ships.  Already, in response to fears generated by 9/11, we have had US Customs agents in huge overseas ports like Rotterdam as part of the Container Security Initiative.

Many people are unclear as to what "diplomacy" consists of, and generations of American Foreign Service Officers have tales of how they explain to friends and family that working for the "State" Department does not mean a dreary job in Harrisburg or Tallahassee or some other state capital.  "What do you do?" in an embassy, anyway?

Well, anything that the US Government does, to be concise.  In small embassies in small countries, that often entails a State Department FSO representing the interests of agencies not present.  In Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, that meant me handling monthly US Air Force flights and occasional US Navy ship visits, since there was no Defense Attache at our embassy at the time.

In Beijing, the task of food inspection (or more likely, liaising with Chinese food inspectors) is much more technical than ensuring flight clearances, so it makes sense to send in the FDA.  In large embassies like Beijing, London, Cairo and elsewhere, the Ambassador's "Country Team" of US agency representatives is a veritable alphabet soup of specializations.

The State Department, in tandem with GAO concerns about the burgeoning presence at US embassies abroad, set up an Office of Rightsizing the U.S. Government (USG) Overseas Presence.  They even put together this handy "Guide for U.S. Agencies Planning Overseas Representation."

"Rightsizing" is an appropriate term.  Even in small countries, the US Embassy is often the largest one in town, since there is a kind of minimum staffing threshold below which the US does not seem to be able to conduct its business.  So, given longstanding American practice of having universal representation - an embassy in every country (some exceptions permitting) - what is the addition of a few more bodies in Beijing?

"Downsizing" the American presence overseas has sometimes been carried to extremes.  About ten years ago, I remember seeing a large empty space in the middle of the Economic Section in the US Embassy in London.  "Oh, that's where the Treasury people used to sit" was the explanation.  In one of the world's financial capitals - the home of The City, LIBOR, the EBRD - the US Treasury Department had decided to pull its people out.

Right after September 11 2001, when we were organizing a conference in Luxembourg on countering terrorist financing, we had the able assistance of the sole remaining Treasury official overseas.  He was based in Frankfurt, recognition by Treasury that perhaps the home of the Euro, the European Central Bank, should have someone to answer the phone.  Things appear to have improved since then.

When these FDA people settle into Beijing, I would hope that their colleagues from State, Defense, and the other more "established" foreign affairs agencies treat them like the genuine diplomats that they can become.  For if there is anything that should become clearer under an Obama Administration, it is that US engagement with the world must be inclusive and interconnected.  No more simple recourse to "bomb 'em" or "with us or against us."  Doesn't work in the international financial crisis.

American Embassies in a world where combating climate change is a central (inter)national security priority may require even more of an alphabet-soup presence: EPA attaches, NOAA counselors, etc.

When the Gulf War loomed in late 1990 and flared briefly in early 1991, the US Embassy in Algiers drew down, evacuating families and nonessential staff.  The skeleton staff remaining was tiny, but allowed the US to maintain essential operations.  One officer that the Ambassador insisted on retaining was the Agricultural Attache.  Why, when he sent away such key people as the consular and public affairs officers?  Simple: Algeria depended on imports of US grain to feed its people.  No US wheat: riots in the streets.  The agricultural trade relationship was a key factor in stability.

Next time someone asks what diplomats do, give a thought to the unsung diplomats of the USDA.  And the FDA, the FAA...

L'Ennemi Intime - France in Algeria

Florent-Emilio Siri's 2007 film "L'Ennemi Intime" (The Intimate Enemy) has been referred to by more than one reviewer as "the French 'Platoon.'"  While it happens to be an excellent Vietnam film and one of Oliver Stone's best, I wouldn't rate "Platoon" in quite the same historical category as "L'Ennemi Intime."

The main difference?  Siri's film is written by French historian and documentary film maker Patrick Rotman, who himself made a three part documentary by the same title in 2002.  "L'Ennemi Intime," whether the Siri/Rotman feature film or the Rotman documentary, transports the audience into the hell that was France's war in Algeria from 1954 to Algerian independence in 1962.

For those whose sole reference for cinematic treatment of the Algerian war is the timeless "Battle of Algiers," I highly recommend "L'Ennemi Intime" (for an excellent resume of the Algerian war oeuvre - in French - see DVDtoile.com and this in the Herald Tribune).  Siri and Rotman, while trying to make this tough subject accessible to the film-going public, obviously had both education and posterity in mind when they created the film's official website.  Few film makers have exhibited such a serious approach to educating their public: there's a teaching guide, bibliography, interactive map, lexicon...

But what about the film, you're asking?  Steel yourself for: the aftereffects of napalm (not only used in Vietnam); torture of captured Algerians by French soldiers; collective punishment of civilians by both sides; and the "sourire Kabyle" (throat-slitting by FLN of French soldiers or suspected sympathizers)... It's a tough film, but portrays this "sale guerre" with true attention to historical detail.

The casting is first rate: just compare Rotman's documentary to Siri's film, and you see how much lead actors Benoit Magimel and Albert Dupontel look like the real conscripts sent off to maintain "Algerie Francaise."  Fellag (playing, appropriately, a captive FLN "fellagha") and other North African actors have key roles, showing how torn Algerians were between colonial occupiers and guerrillas fighting in the "zone interdite."  The location filming in next-door Morocco is an excellent stand-in for Kabylie of 1959; Cesar-nominated cinematographer Gianni Fiore Coltellacci provides haunting images.

The "fog of war" is ever-present; whether on night patrol or scanning the craggy valleys with binoculars by day, no one is ever quite sure whose side the others are on.  And as Patrick Rotman shows in his documentary of the same name, "the intimate enemy" is sometimes yourself.  How do you go back to life in Swinging Sixties France after you've tortured a prisoner?

Some day, a director might make an "American Ennemi Intime," where the moral fog of the War on Terror catches up with those who carried out - or who ordered - "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Alistair Horne, whose book "A Savage War of Peace" remains the English-language reference on the Algerian war of independence, and has been called "Bush's Favorite Historian," tried to instruct former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the parallels between Algeria and Iraq after seeing the news from Abu Ghraib.  Appropriate in its lack of appreciation for irony, Rumsfeld wrote this back to Horne: "as you well know, we do not believe in torture..."

As the poster for "L'Ennemi Intime" says: "Il n'y a pas pire ennemi que soi-meme" - you're your own worst enemy.  We may have to wait a long time for an American equivalent.