Does world opinion matter?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Does world opinion matter?
44
Tue, 12-02-2003 - 4:39pm
This is just one of three items I read today that deals with world opinion.

Bush's PR Problem

By Fareed Zakaria

Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27

President Bush's Thanksgiving trip to Iraq was a generous and bold-hearted gesture of support to American troops. What made it such a success, however, was that it managed to severely limit an otherwise unavoidable aspect of travel: contact with foreigners. When Bush has had to go beyond U.S. Army bases in recent weeks, the tours have not gone so well.

Traveling through East Asia last week, I noted how poorly most observers rated Bush's recent trip there. Even more striking, however, was the comparison repeatedly made between Bush's visit and that of Chinese President Hu Jintao -- with a thumping majority believing Hu had done better.

In Thailand at the meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, "there was no question that Hu was the better appreciated one," a Thai official said to me. "He outshone Bush in most of the attendees' eyes." The trips ended with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament. "It is Hu's visit rather than George W. Bush's that will provide a lingering sense of satisfaction and security about Australia's place in the region," wrote the Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

What is going on here? How does the chief representative of the world's oldest constitutional democracy lose a popularity contest to the leader of a Leninist party?

Let's start with the atmospherics. Everywhere Bush travels, his security is handled with the usual American overkill: huge numbers of guards and aides, walled-off compounds, tightly scripted movements from one bubble to another. Hu, by contrast, had a modest security detail, traveled freely and mingled with other leaders and even the general public. (Tony Blair sometimes manages to travel abroad with a total of six people.)

Bush's trip to London two weeks ago is now being heralded as a great success. But here is how one of the president's most ardent supporters, his former speechwriter David Frum, saw it while in London himself. "Bush was sealed away from London for the entire visit. There was no drive down the Mall, no address to Parliament, no public events at all," Frum wrote in his Weblog on National Review Online. "The trip's planners reduced the risk of confrontations -- but only by broadcasting to the British public their tacit acknowledgement that the visit was unpopular and unwelcome. By eliminating from the president's schedule events with any touch of spontaneity or public contact, the trip planners made the president look as if he could not or would not engage with ordinary British people." In Great Britain, Frum concluded, "the United States has a problem, a big one -- and it was made worse, not better, by this recent visit."

But the deeper problem is not one of style but of substance. Bush's trips to Southeast Asia and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war on terror. Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction: "Bush came to an economic group and talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that's not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We're retooling our economies, we're wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we're trying to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda."

There is a lack of empathy emanating from Washington. After the Bali bombings, which were Australia's Sept. 11, the administration did not bother to send a high-level envoy to a steadfast ally for condolences. Australians had to make do with a videotape of George Bush. Even last week, Bush could surely have arranged to meet in Baghdad with a few troops from allied countries who are also fighting and dying in Iraq.

What is most dismaying about this state of affairs is that for the past 50 years the United States has skillfully merged its own agenda with the agendas of others, creating a sense of shared interests and values. When Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the Cold War, they also presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty and health. They fought communism with one hand and offered hope with the other. We have fallen far from that model if the head of the Chinese Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a more progressive agenda than the president of the world's leading democracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27057-2003Dec1.html

The second covers the rift between the US and the EU over Iran.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27063-2003Dec1.html

This article sheds an a less victorious light on the Samarra Massacre

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=68502c5eae5b193f0d75af16d5b0ce6b

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Fri, 12-05-2003 - 2:39pm

>"Gee, which party accused Clinton of wagging the dog and trying to divert attention away from the Monica scandal when he attacked terrorist camps and wanted to do more.

Clinton was no more responsible for 9/11 than Bush was, to say ANY AMERICAN was is blind partisan stupidity."<


You're correct. Some have very short memories &/or listen or read too much right wing propaganda.

cl-Libraone

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Fri, 12-05-2003 - 5:00pm
>

He shot a few million dollars worth of missiles into tents--now there's a highly effective operation.

Republicans didn't disagree with the need for action on any of the occasions that he attacked training camps or bomb factories. The ones that occured during the Lewinsky scandal opened questions about his timing and the effectiveness of the attacks, not the need for them. The ones that were not during the Scandal were supported by Republicans.

<>

Clinton had 2 opportunities handed to him to arrest OBL, and in 1999 the CIA reported to him that OBL might be planning to hijack planes and fly them into the Pentagon & other buildings...The analysts suggested that the attacks could come as possible retribution for air strikes ordered by President Clinton in 1998 against bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/685344/posts

Rich Lowry has a new book out on this subject:

Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895261294/qid=1070659037/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-2514476-5369437

"Showing how a politician with grandiose ambitions became a cautious, poll-driven placeholder and how a president who yearned to confront a great international crisis cringed and still shrank from the threat of Islamic terrorism when it arrived, Lowry destroys Clinton's record as president and sparks an intense debate about the nature of his legacy.

Lowry reveals how...Clinton sold out US national security to campaign contributors...Attorney General Janet Reno was AWOL on domestic security...Clinton's unwillingness to use force abroad emboldened America's enemies...Clinton left the country vulnerable to September 11 terrorist attacks."

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sun, 12-07-2003 - 3:03pm
How about cutting out the rhetoric & responding to some facts:

The CIA reported to the administration that they were working on a plan to hijack jets & fly them into govt. buildings including the Pentagon. Clinton did nothing to find out if this was accurate or to beef up security.

The did nothing on two separate occasions they had to apprehend him.

In response to the Cole attack:

Except for counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, the entire Clinton team wanted to take no military action in response. Janet Reno thought it was against "international law." Madeleine Albright thought it would hurt America in "world opinion." Even Defense Secretary Bill Cohen was a no. One friend told Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?"

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/bb20030917.shtml

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sun, 12-07-2003 - 7:22pm
ALL leading economic indicators are pointing in the same direction--up.

US factory orders rise in October at 15-month record

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031205/bs_afp/us_economy_orders_031205155725

Unemployment Lower for Second Month:

http://www.steveverdon.com/archives/2003_12.html#000805


GDP growth to hit 20-year high: Business economists see U.S. GDP growing 4.5% next year, the strongest increase since 1984...the NABE poll forecast job growth of just under 2.0 percent next year, pushing the average unemployment rate down to 5.8 percent.

The panel sees business spending surging 10 percent and a 7.5 percent increase in exports during 2004, helping to broaden the halting, consumer-led recovery from the 2001 recession.

The NABE forecasters expect consumers to retain a big role in the expansion, with personal spending forecast to grow 3.7 percent in 2004, after a projected 3.1 percent rise in 2003.

The panelists said the gradual climb in mortgage rates from lows in June will have a small impact on home sales and housing starts next year, with 65 percent of respondents predicting only a slight decline -- defined as a drop of between 5 percent and 15 percent in volume -- in that key sector.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/11/24/news/economy/nabe.reut/index.htm

Renee

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