Matthew Yglesias » Learning From Europe

Nov 13th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

Learning From Europe

Some nice points from Ilan Goldenberg:

But while Obama’s election carries dramatic symbolic value, we also need to demonstrate to our allies that the way we govern and conduct foreign policy will substantively change. That means not cramming a list of demands down their throats in the first 100 days. It means building on the goodwill and sending the right signals that we care about their priorities. We should listen to their priorities early on and do some relatively easy things that send the right message on issues such as international arms control treaties, global warming treaties, international law and development issues. The signal needs to be sent that we won’t be obstructionist on these issues every chance we get and that we’re even willing to engage aggressively on them – not because they are our top priority but because we respect the views and interests of our allies and are willing to listen.

Over time and even in the relatively short term, there is no question that we should ask the Europeans to provide more troops for Afghanistan and also ask them to remove the caveats that some countries have placed on their forces. But let’s not forget that they have just dealt with the Bush administration for eight years, and while the general population is easily swayed foreign officials will need more clear proof that there really is a new approach coming from Washington.

Since I’m here in Europe and have had some opportunity to discuss things with Swiss officials, and have had some other contracts with European politicians and diplomats over the past twelve months, I would add two more points to this. One is simply that most Americans don’t fully grasp the volume of petty bullshit that European foreign ministries have been putting up with for the past eight years. Donald Rumsfeld’s bizarre decision to casually dismiss a large set of crucial American military allies and trading partners (along with the whole of European public opinion) as “old Europe” was one high-profile example, but there’s lower level interactions in large set of state capitals and it’s important for the entire mindset to be changed and replaced with the common sense dictate that if you want people to cooperate with you, you ought to ask nicely.

The other thing is that even though the US progressive community has a lot of very smart people in it and a lot of very good ideas, it’s just in the nature of things that, having been out of power for the past eight years, we have somewhat limited practical experience coping with some of these issues. Nicholas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Jan Balkenende, and Silvio Berlusconi have all led governments with soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan for some time now; Barack Obama hasn’t and it would be basic courtesy as well as good practice to genuinely solicit their opinion of the situation and take what they say into account before presenting them with our view. Clearly, the US will be taking the lead one way or another in Afghanistan, but just as the transition process will involve listening to what Bush’s people have to say, we should listen to our partners as well. Similarly, if we’re going to initiate some kind of diplomatic dialogue with the Iranians, some of the Swiss officials who’ve been representing US interests in Iran in the absence of a formal American diplomatic presence may have something useful to say.

At the end of the day, I think this kind of approach will bear much more fruit in terms of European cooperation and will probably bear some fruit in terms of substantive knowledge. There’s no need for a brand-new president to treat veteran political leaders in longtime allied countries as if they’re unruly pets who need to be brought to heel — the hunger on this continent for a better relationship with the United States is quite evident and everyone understands that we’re a big important country whose views need to be taken very seriously. Under the circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to try to be polite and respectful.

Comments
42

Filed under: Afghanistan, Europe, Transition

42 Responses to “Learning From Europe”

Richard Steven Hack Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
“But while Obama’s election carries dramatic symbolic value, we also need to demonstrate to our allies that the way we govern and conduct foreign policy will substantively change.”

Unfortunately, although the foreign policy STYLE may change, it’s fairly clear from Obama’s statements and his choice of advisers that the foreign policies themselves will not change significantly.

A LOT of people are saying this, not just me.

Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13759

On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a US Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since December 2001.

American planes have, in fact, taken out two brides in the last seven months. And don’t try to bury your dead or mark their deaths ceremonially either, because funerals have been hit as well. Mind you, those planes, which have conducted 31% more air strikes in Afghanistan in support of US troops this year, and the missile-armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) now making almost daily strikes across the border in Pakistan, remain part of George W. Bush’s Air Force, but only until
January 21, 2009. Then, they – and all the brides and grooms of Afghanistan and in the Pakistani borderlands who care to have something more than the smallest of private weddings – officially become the property of President Barack Obama.

That’s a sobering thought. He is, in fact, inheriting from the Bush administration a widening war in the region, as well as an exceedingly tenuous situation in devastated, still thoroughly factionalized, sectarian, and increasingly Iranian-influenced Iraq. There, the US is, in actuality, increasingly friendless and ever less powerful. The last
allies from the infamous “coalition of the willing” are now rushing for the door. The South Koreans, Hungarians, and Bulgarians – I’ll bet you didn’t even know the latter two had a few troops left in Iraq – are going home this year; the rump British force in the south will probably e out by next summer.

The Iraqis are beginning to truly go their own way (or, more accurately, ways); and yet, in January, when Barack Obama enters office, there will still be more American troops in Iraq than there were in April 2003 when Baghdad fell. Winning an election with an antiwar label, Obama has promised – kinda – to end the American war there and bring the troops – sorta, mostly – home. But even after his planned 16-month withdrawal of US “combat brigades,” which may not be welcomed by his commanders in the field, including former Iraq commander, now Centcom Commander David Petraeus, there are still plenty of combative non-combat forces, which will be labeled “residual” and left behind to fight “al-Qaeda.” Then, there are all those “advisors” still there to train Iraqi forces, the guards for the giant bases the Bush administration built in the country,
the many thousands of armed private security contractors from companies like Blackwater, and of course, the 1,000 “diplomats” who are to staff the newly opened US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone, possibly the largest embassy on the planet. Hmmmm.

And while the new president turns to domestic matters, it’s quite possible that significant parts of his foreign policy could be left to the oversight of Vice President Joe Biden who, in case anyone has forgotten, proposed a plan for Iraq back in 2007 so filled with imperial hubris that it still startles. In a Caesarian moment, he recommended that the US – not Iraqis – functionally divide the country into three parts. Although he preferred to call it a “federal system,” it was, for all intents and purposes, a de facto partition plan.

If Iraq remains a sorry tale of American destruction and dysfunction without, as yet, a discernible end in sight, Afghanistan may prove Iraq squared. And there, candidate Obama expressed no desire to wind the war down and withdraw American troops. Quite the opposite, during the election campaign he plunked hard for escalation, something our NATO allies are sure not to be too enthusiastic about. According to the Obama
plan, many more American troops (if available, itself an open question) are to be poured into the country in what would essentially be a massive “surge strategy” by yet another occupant of the Oval Office. Assumedly, the new Afghan policy would be aided and abetted by those CIA-run UAVs directed toward Pakistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden and pals, while
undoubtedly further destabilizing a shaky ally.

When it comes to rising civilian casualties from US air strikes in their countries, both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari have already used their congratulatory phone calls to President-elect Obama to plead for an end to the attacks, which produce both a profusion of dead bodies and a profusion of live, vengeful
enemies. Both have done the same with the Bush administration, Karzai to the point of tears.

The US military argues that the use of air power is necessary in the face of a spreading, ever more dangerous, Taliban insurgency largely because there are too few boots on the ground. (”If we got more boots on the ground, we would not have to rely as much on airstrikes” was the way Army Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, deputy commander of NATO forces in
Afghanistan, put it.) But rest assured, as the boots multiply on increasingly hostile ground, the military will discover it needs more, not less, air power to back more troops in more trouble.

So, after January 20th, expect Obama to take possession of George Bush’s disastrous Afghan War; and unless he is far more skilled than Alexander the Great, British empire builders, and the Russians, his war, too, will continue to rage without ever becoming a raging success.

How about former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, those kings of 1990s globalization, or even the towering former Fed chief from the first Bush era, Paul Volcker? Didn’t that have the look of previews for a political zombie movie, a line-up of the undead? As head of the New America Foundation Steve Clemons has been writing recently, the economic team looks suspiciously as if it were preparing
for a “Clinton 3.0″ moment.

You could scan that gathering and not see a genuine rogue thinker in sight; no off-the-reservation figures who might represent a breath of fresh air and fresh thinking (other than, being hopeful, the president-elect himself). Clemons offers an interesting list of just some obvious names left off stage: “Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, James Galbraith, Leo Hindery, Clyde Prestowitz, Charlene Barshefsky, C. Fred Bergsten, Adam Posen, Robert Kuttner, Robert
Samuelson, Alan Murray, William Bonvillian, Doug & Heidi Rediker, Bernard Schwartz, Tom Gallagher, Sheila Bair, Sherle Schwenninger, and Kevin Phillips.”

[Note for TomDispatch readers: For those who want to follow issues of war and peace, especially in the "arc of instability," I want to recommend four sites that are sure to prove as invaluable in the Obama era as they have been (to me at least) during the Bush years: Juan Cole's never miss-able Informed Comment blog, Antiwar.com (which has recently added Jason Ditz's useful daily summaries of the latest news developments like this Iraqi one), Paul Woodward's sharp-eyed site The War in Context, and the always fascinating and provocative online newspaper, Asia Times. I check in with all of them daily.]

He’s right about that list of Web sites. If Matt paid attention to them, especially Asia Times, he wouldn’t so frickin’ ignorant about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Audacity of Hype
Dissent in the Age of Obama
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13754

Groupthink is all the rage, and the media has joined in the fun. Due to this love-fest, they’re oblivious to the warning signs that worry us few and scattered skeptics. They somehow missed the Dear Leader’s call for a civilian “national security force,” for example, one that is “just as well-funded” and “just as powerful” as the U.S. military.

Media Matters for America, which is shaping up rather nicely as Obama’s semi-official media shill, claims Obama’s remarks were just about expanding the already existing Americorps program and the president-elect was taken out of context. Yet his words speak for themselves, as do the words of his recently chosen chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who declared in his book:

“It’s time for a real PATRIOT Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service.”

Some Republicans, Rahm brays, “will squeal about individual freedom.”Well, let’s hope that part isn’t true. Because if it’s only Republicans who object to this militaristic scheme to solve the unemployment problem by outfitting the out-of-work with spiffy new uniforms, then we’re really in a lot more trouble than even I imagined.

If George W. Bush and/or John McCain had called for the creation of a domestic paramilitary force, the liberals and certainly the Left would have seen it as an ominous development, with the more excitable types raising the specter of fascism. Is it left to good old Joe Farah alone to point out the dangers inherent in such a far out proposal?

“If we’re going to create some kind of national force as big, powerful, and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal? I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will
be even bigger than the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force put together? Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?”

We’ll soon find out what he meant, perhaps a lot sooner than any of us would like. The pool of unemployed young males is growing larger by the week – always a dangerous development for our rulers – and it’s a matter of some urgency for the incoming administration. The Obama-Emanuel plan would, in effect, militarize labor short of actually going to war. How
else to sop up this deepening pool of idleness and inevitable social and political unrest? Either draft them into the army or jail them, whichever comes first.

Militarism has infected American life to an enormous degree: that’s one of the consequences of 9/11 we’re still living with, although in the Age of Obama it will be given a leftish gloss. The “battle” for economic recovery will be framed in military terms, as, amid calls for “national unity,” a cult of personality forms around a charismatic leader. With government even more bloated with power and self-regard than ever before, this is a dangerous moment in our history, one that could easily see the country fall prey, once again, to the hubris of “idealists.”

And don’t forget we’re still engaged in two foreign wars. Obama’s battlefields of choice are Afghanistan and the wilds of Waziristan, instead of boring old Iraq – which is, at any rate, just about played out as an effective narrative in the ongoing story of our eternal “war on terrorism.”

Prepare yourself. From now on we’ll be hearing the Obama-ites hailing the “surge” on the Afghan front, amid renewed vows to catch the long-gone Osama bin Laden and support the precarious authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – the best dressed and least powerful ruler in the region. Popularly known as the mayor of Kabul, since his domain seems not to extend beyond the boundaries of his capital city, Karzai is a pathetic and tragic figure, whose task of keeping order in a country
that has never known it is positively Sisyphean. He has been gaining some political traction and even a degree of credibility lately by openly imploring Obama to cut out the NATO bombing that is “mistakenly” slaughtering scores of civilians on what seems like a daily basis. Obama’s promise to escalate the war on that front is likely to ratchet
up tensions within NATO as well as with our Afghan ally.

If Iraq was and is a quagmire, then Afghanistan is a boneyard that– if the fate of would-be conquerors over the years is any indication – we’ll soon find ourselves buried in. The British tried and failed, as did the Russians, who, it could be argued, spent the last energies of their fading power trying to incorporate the Afghans into the Soviet empire. I hate to tell the Obama cult this, but no, we can’t – and we shouldn’t
even try.

Obama hasn’t even taken office yet, and already he’s announcing an “international effort” to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, their pursuit of which, according to our own CIA, has long since been dropped. If this is the Obama style of diplomacy, then the value of those much-touted “negotiations” with the Iranians, the Syrians, etc., which we were promised during the campaign will be questionable at best.
Sara Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I always find it interesting how everyone is focusing on the relationship between the USA and Europe. It seems Canada is not important enough? Canadian troops have been on the ground in Afghanistan doing the heavy lifting in the most dangerous parts for years now while the other countries have been playing it safe. If the US should repair any relationship it should be with Canada, they left our troops high and dry with their boondoggle into Iraq.
rufustfyrfly Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
To add some substance to the “volume of petty bullshit” I’ll give an example. One of my professors was invited to be a guest lecturer at a university in Europe. As a matter of diplomatic protocol, the ambassadors of the respective countries sign off on this. Typically, they just pull out their Rubberstamp of International Goodwill, and don’t interfere with the professor exchange.

This time, though, the Bush Administration’s ambassador decided that the professor was too liberal, and vetoed the exchange at the last minute. This left the European University scrambling, without a professor for one of its courses, and the professor had to throw out his plans for the year. It made it clear that the Ambassador wasn’t just there to remember everyone’s names at the cocktail parties, but would be playing politics and disrespecting the host country’s decisions.

It’s not the kind of major diplomatic incident that makes headlines, and certainly nothing of life or death consequences. But it unnecessarily turned a friendly interaction between nations into a cause of friction. As Yglesias notes, these kinds of petty unfriendly exchanges have been pretty common.
JS Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Since I’m here in Europe

Yeah right.
cmholm Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
RSH: I realize I’m prolly banging my head against a wall, but I’ll again suggest that linking to vast swaths of text is a lot easier to deal with than massive Cut-N-Paste of someone else’s content.
Don Williams Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Re refusfyrfly’s comment “This time, though, the Bush Administration’s ambassador decided that the professor was too liberal, and vetoed the exchange at the last minute. This left the European University scrambling, without a professor for one of its courses, and the professor had to throw out his plans for the year ”
————–
Why was that? Any professor worth his salt should go overseas and speak where he wants — and if a US Ambassador doesn’t approve, the professor should write the White House telling President Bush to suck his dick.

What the hell is the matter with people? Anyone ever heard of the First Amendment?
Robert Waldmann Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
All very convincing except for two words “Silvio Berlusconi.” Would you tell the Swiss that they have to recognise that part of Alaska is closer to part of Russia than is any part of Switzerland so they should listen to Sarah Palin ? We’re talking the same level of seriousness about policy.

Nah only thing that Obama should say to Berlusconi is “nice tan”.
rufustfyrfly Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Re: Don Williams

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the professor in question wrote a message to President Bush very similar to that one. Unfortunately, however, the First Amendment doesn’t help very much when the ambassador decides to blackball your visa.
burritoboy Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
“Why was that? Any professor worth his salt should go overseas and speak where he wants — and if a US Ambassador doesn’t approve”

No, the Ambassador didn’t approve the visa for the European professor to come TO the US (the other half of the exchange). A US citizen (or resident) doesn’t need for the US to approve a visa to visit another country – the Ambassador, or even the President or even the President+Congress, couldn’t block the American professor from going to Europe. What they can (and, in this case, seemingly did) is control who gets INTO the US. Thus, the US university was going to lose their professor’s salary (he would be teaching in Europe) and not get a European professor back – i.e. it’s a reasonable trade to just have professors switch positions, but it’s not a good trade to just send your staff to teach at other institutions while you still pick up their paychecks.
Don Williams Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Re rufusfyrfly’s comment “the First Amendment doesn’t help very much when the ambassador decides to blackball your visa.”
————
How can the US ambassador do that? The Visa requirement is a requirement imposed by the HOST country, not by the US government.

Couldn’t the university issuing the invitation to the US professor ask their government to issue a visa anyway?
Don Williams Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Sorry burritoboy — your post came up while I was typing up my post — and I didn’t see your explanation in time.
wiley Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Why are any troops in Afghanistan? I’m sorry, I just don’t find the argument for this seven year occupation and slaughter to be any more compelling than our invasion of Iraq. Bomb a country for seven years to (supposedly) catch a man who hasn’t been indicted because there isn’t sufficient evidence to do so.

Get tf out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Syria… and Iraq.

OUT! OUT! OUT!
Ddunk Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I’d like to echo both Sara and Robert Waldmann.

Certainly Balkenende’s opinion should be solicited with regards to Afghanistan, and perhaps Sarkozy’s. But to suggest that Merkel or Berlusconi have “soldiers” on the ground is a generous description of their role.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1580572/General-criticises-Afghanistan-troop-restrictions.html

No disrespect to the men and women of the German and Italian forces, but they are functioning almost exclusively in a reconstruction role.

Read this http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,554033,00.html and tell me that the Germans are functioning as soldiers.

The larger point of courteously soliciting the opinion of ISAF contributors is certainly valid. But my friends who have come back from Kandahar do not have a particularly high opinion of the Italian and German commands.
gordon gekko Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
So, we need to look for advice from a bunch of countries who are only in Afghanistan to symbolically show their support for America? And it’s not like they are really even in Afghanistan. Sure, Obama can try different strategies than Bush but at the end of the day he is going to have to use America’s power and influence to persuade Europe to support our interests. I just hope he doesn’t let his global popularity get in the way of being president of America.
Don Williams Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “The other thing is that even though the US progressive community has a lot of very smart people in it and a lot of very good ideas, it’s just in the nature of things that, having been out of power for the past eight years, ”
———-
More like out of power for 90 years.

That’s assuming that you’re talking about the REAL Progressives.
Wrye Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
And it’s not like they are really even in Afghanistan.

Well, their soldiers are really getting killed, certainly. Nothing symbolic about that. So I wouldn’t suggest that President Obama use your argument. This is all about asking nicely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan.
gordon gekko Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Wyre,
If we can agree that Afghanistan is in our Western collective interests, it is safe to say certain European countries are getting a free pass. America should do more to discourage this behaviour, even if that means asking nicely. But sometimes asking nicely doesn’t work and being soft leads to being taken advantage of. I agree Obama should use his celebrity-like status in a respectful way, but he also shouldn’t be afraid to give it up if need be.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
gekko? Stop talking shite.

My earlier comment’s in moderation, but in brief: Rory Stewart’s sceptical about Obama’s plan for Afghanistan. He’s going to be at the Kennedy School next year.
cmholm Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Wiley said: …to (supposedly) catch a man who hasn’t been indicted because there isn’t sufficient evidence to do so…

Reality check: in most cases, anywhere, a suspect is caught before the legal indictment. Doing it in absentia is the exception, not the rule.
wiley Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Well, cmholm, if police routinely sent in the military to carpet bomb every neighborhood where the suspect might be hiding you’d have the argument that two wrongs make a right.
Ed Marshall Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Wiley, I don’t think you are going to get what you want instantly, but it’s not what you think. People I trust (not Bob Woodward) say the DOD are locating the top AQ, including bin Ladin and they happen to be in Pakistan. Obama is going to pull the trigger on them, he has to, I doubt he will get more than pro forma criticism of Pakistan for doing it. After that, I think the Taliban that doesn’t want to talk is cut out of every source of funding they have.

We aren’t doing anything helpful in Afghanistan right now, and if our forward mission looks anything like the last eight years (sit around in forward bases and wait to get mortared and reverse zenith mortars and open up 160 mm artillery on them, go out once in awhile and be bait) that’s foolish and we should hang it up.
Glentok Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I just like the idea of a foreign policy that involves listening to other people.
gr Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Ddunk at 13 is missing the point. If your aim is to get those countries to make a different kind of contribution, you’ll have to talk to them diplomatically, instead of going on and on about how they’re cowards and such for not killing enough brown people. Here’s a newsflash: If Italy and Germany don’t want to ‘help’ with that, there’s nothing the US can do. Ask nicely and offer an incentive.
Chris Dornan Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Very well said Matt. It seems incredibly obvious when you say it but it is actually quite rare to see this said so clearly on either side of the Atlantic. For some reason this kind of common sense is eschewed for extremes: extreme arrogance, extreme cravenness, extreme anti-Americanism.
Why oh why Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 9:09 am
everyone understands that we’re a big important country whose views need to be taken very seriously. Under the circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to try to be polite and respectful

But it won’t be enough. Europe has had a very negative image of the US lately not because of a few Rumsfeld’s comments, but because of American actual policies. Europeans expect real change, not some kind of “polite and respectful” new tone from US officials.
John A Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Swiss officials…are you kidding me? Your use of the term petty bull shit suggests you may have no real clue and suffer from a substantial amount of Europe envy. Yes, envy that these cowering Europeans really matter in global politics. Please get your facts straight before you decide to tell us what’s going on from the European point of view. You ignore history and your choose to point the finger again and again at George Bush and fail to realize the separation in global views between Europe and the USA occurred following the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s widely known by anyone who studies global politics that Europeans hold all Americans in contempt as backwards hicks with no culture. these europeans you cite pulled away, not the U.S. when they felt secure again. They resent the U.S. for our ability to create, prosper and lead the world. This notion that Geroge Bushg’s administration attempted to bully Europe is delusional at best. Under the Clinton administration the politics of self U.S. interest began in response to indifference from your European friends. You sir, are a moron!
One Tired Liberal Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
One is simply that most Americans don’t fully grasp the volume of petty bullshit that European foreign ministries have been putting up with for the past eight years.

Alas, “most Americans” aren’t on paid junkets, lapping up what they’re told.

Man, this is a very sad parody of journalism.

One that ostensible 21st century progressives (not the bigoted yahoos of ye olden times that the inimitable Don Williams recalls with such touching nostalgia) probably should note, and perhaps even care about.

Yglesias wrote on November 7th that he’s on “week-long trip to Switzerland courtesy of the Swiss-America Foundation during which time I’ll be learning important things about the Switzerland, the Swiss-American relationship, and of course how to implement European-style socialism here in the USA.”

No “Swiss-American Foundation” can be found via Google!

Dear Lord! No doubt the boy blogger just got the name wrong! Still, this is a bad joke on so, so many levels!

Look – step one would be the basic questions. 1) What are you doing, Yglesias? 2) Who’s paying for it?

Can we please just get that out of the way?

I’m sure it’s nothing horrendous. But Yglesias needs to at least pretend he’s an adult with respect for both his craft and his readers.

Have no fear, folks. Once we get that rudimentary bit out of the way the commentators can return to their usual M.O.’s: ranting about various Jewish millionaires (complete with links), fascinating tales about their past lives as anarchist bank robbers, random autographically digressions and bursts of self-pity, etc.
novakant Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Germany won’t send any more troops for two reasons:

1.) The German public (right, middle and left alike) won’t have it. The current scope of the German engagement is already pushing the limit as far as public acceptance goes.

2.) Germany, and other European countries, simply disagree with the US on what should be done to solve the problems in Afghanistan. These are genuine policy differences and they won’t go away under Obama.
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December 8th, 2008 at 5:59 am
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On Reagan's Eternal Infamy Says:
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The American people trust that Barack Obama will conscientiously address foreign issues.

LONG LIVE PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA!

Barack Obama is a racial-minority individual and does not like racism:

There is bad news.

I know it may be hard to believe.

However, it is absolutely true that Ronald Wilson Reagan committed horrible, racist, hate crimes during his presidency.

A lot of people know about Reagan’s infamy.

And a lot of people will know about Reagan’s infamy—even until the end of human existence: they’ll find out.

Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sins will find you out.”

Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., With the Highest Level of Academic Honors at Graduation, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. And there are thousands of copies in very many countries around the world.)
_________________
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Learning From Europe

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