from Political Theater:
Cain sums up world powers with foreign policy map
Herman Cain's presidential campaign has released its "Vision For Foreign Policy & National Security," a tidy seven-page summary of the candidate's take on exactly twenty countries, accompanied by an even tidier map classifying the states in Cain's own terms.
Canada, in Cain terminology, is a "Friend and Ally," Brazil, merely a "Friend," and the UK is "Our Special Relationship." Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea are each deemed an "Adversary Regime," while Russia is a "Rival," China a "Competitor," and Libya is "Clarity Needed."
Cain brands Egypt "Danger and Opportunity," noting in the memo that "Under President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was a friend. With Mubarak shoved out by Arab Spring protests – with help from President Obama – Egypt could be a nightmare unfolding."
The document contains a similarly sympathetic description of the decades-long autocratic leader of Yemen ("Strategic Partner"), President Saleh, who stepped down, at least formally, last week after ten months of protests -- although Cain doesn't acknowledge his resignation:
A key U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been battling Iranian-backed rebels in the north and an Al Qaeda-backed secessionist movement in the south.He has been working closely with U.S. covert operatives to combat Al Qaeda itself. Taking the path of least resistance in the face of Al Qaeda-backed protestors, President Obama has insisted that Saleh step down.
Mr. Cain recognizes this as a flawed policy - one that will strengthen the terrorists. Instead, we should be working with President Saleh and potential successors to engineer a soft-landing for this pro-U.S. partner.
A note at the bottom of the map explains that its coloring illustrates "the density of Facebook connection around the world" in order to show "how entrepreneurship and freedom can light up the world with friendship."
Just the right tavern to celebrate 200 years of U.S.-French military ties
Not every U.S. ally who visits the Pentagon needs to be treated to a dinner that evokes more than 200 years of peaceful military relations.
France is the rare exception.
So when Defense Minister Alain Juppe traveled to Washington this week for talks with Robert Gates, the U.S. defense secretary found just the right venue: Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the few establishments in the United States that can boast of “fine dining since 1770.”
Its historical guest list includes the likes of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison and James Monroe.
Gates had his eye on a slightly different pair of clients when he hosted Juppe for dinner the evening before the two signed a space cooperation agreement.
“I had the pleasure of hosting Minister Juppe along with other French and U.S. officials for dinner at a tavern where Secretary of State John Quincy Adams played host to General Lafayette in 1824,” Gates told reporters during the signing ceremony.
“Two centuries later, France remains our strong and valued partner on the global stage. We’re grateful now, as ever, for their support and their friendship.”
Rice returns to White House for audience with another president
Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state to former President George W. Bush, returns to the White House this afternoon for a chat with the man who succeeded her boss, President Barack Obama.
It’s not totally unheard of for presidents to chat with predecessors’ Cabinet members. And the one-on-one in the Oval Office is probably just a show of respect for a former U.S. foreign policy leader.
But the private meeting was at least worth raising even half an eyebrow, although observers didn’t quite know what to make of it. (Obama does like to cast a wide net for advice on foreign policy, economics and other issues).
Rice is on a tour for her just published book about her childhood — “Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me” – and has been giving media interviews to promote it.
CNN reports that before the White House meeting, Rice said in an interview that the invitation from a sitting president to a former Cabinet member is “not that unusual” and that they would discuss a range of foreign policy issues. ”It’s whatever the president wants to talk about,” she told CNN.
The White House said the meeting was expected to last about 30 minutes. Our White House correspondent Caren Bohan tells us that Rice had chatted with Obama before his election about foreign policy, including a phone call during the campaign before Obama’s July 2008 trip abroad.
“She was going to be in town, and the president obviously couldn’t make her book party later today. But he wanted to bring her in and have a chat with her. I’m sure they’ll talk about a wide range of foreign policy issues,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
Kingfisher,
speak english and stop visualizing imminent entry’s of synopsis assimilated with prevailing whatevers.
This is a comment section, not political theory 101 @ Haaarvaaad. Lower your nose and speak.
Obama wants Condi to pull him from 43% back to something positive. Condi wants another good job. Dunski – and all in two simple sentences.
When seen from Capitol Hill, Jerusalem looks a bit different
What’s the U.S. policy toward Israel? It may depend on which branch of government you ask.
On Capitol Hill, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a warm reception during his Washington visit this week. Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, says Congress is on “a different page” than the Obama administration over Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and the overall U.S. relationship with Israel.
Netanyahu got a less obviously effusive welcome from the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met him at a hotel on Monday and his White House meeting with the president on Tuesday took place behind closed doors, without photographers present.
But on Capitol Hill he was warmly, openly and officially received by leading lawmakers. Cameras clicked and rolled as Netanyahu was greeted in ornate reception rooms, first in the House of Representatives, then in the Senate Tuesday. In between, he lunched with lawmakers.
The Israeli prime minister got to hear his own words echo around the hallowed halls of Congress as well. At the morning meeting with Netanyahu, “Many of us said, Jerusalem is not a settlement,” Cantor told Reuters afterwards.
This had been Netanyahu’s line in a speech to the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC on Monday evening, where he struck a defiant note after new criticism from Clinton of Jewish home construction in disputed territory in and around Jerusalem.
Cantor, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said he and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, are circulating for lawmakers’ signatures a letter to Clinton expressing concerns about the direction of U.S. policy. ”We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists bewteen our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension,” the letter says.
Different enough to tell them to stand on their own two feet? Cut ties and stop policing the world. We cannot afford it any longer
Hillary says Congressional gridlock challenges U.S. world stature
The partisan gridlock that has paralyzed Congress during much of the Obama administration may have far-reaching implications for America’s stature in the world, according to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton said U.S. partners overseas have been confused about the Senate’s inability to approve President Barack Obama’s appointments to top diplomatic jobs, including assistant secretary of state positions and ambassadorships.
“It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with,” Clinton told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Obama budget plan for fiscal year 2011.
She said the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers U.S. civilian foreign aid to countries including quake-stricken Haiti, still lacks a complete team to run its operations.
Clinton als0 went further, under questioning from Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former Republican who jumped to the Democratic Party in 2009.
Specter asked if she could confirm his perception that congressional gridlock has weakened Obama and the U.S. presidency overseas during the past year.
“There is certainly a perception that I encounter in representing our country around the world that supports your characterization. People just don’t understand the way our system operates, they just don’t get it,” replied Clinton, who is Obama’s top adviser on foreign policy.
I imagine it would have to be quite difficult for officials in other countries to understand why key American posts were left vacant for months, or worse, are still empty now. What’s the Secretary of State supposed to say, “Well, I’m terribly sorry, Prime Minister, but we have no under-secretary for you to work with because Richard Shelby wants some pork for Alabama”?
Or maybe, “I’d like to refer you, Foreign Minister, to our ambassador, but more than a year after the president took office, only a majority of our Senate approves of the nomination, which means she can’t get confirmed”?
The consequences of Republicans denying up-or-down votes to key administration nominees go beyond mere annoyance. Deliberately or not, the genuinely scandalous GOP tactics are not only blocking the ability of policymakers to govern domestically, but also undercutting U.S. influence around the world.
If only Republicans could get past their petty partisanship long enough to care.
Time for Obama to act on Afghanistan – Cheney
Former Vice President Dick Cheney tonight joins a chorus of critics who say President Barack Obama is taking way too long to decide whether to send another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Cheney, no fan of any of the current administration’s foreign policy initiatives, prodded the White House to fulfill the president’s promise to give the U.S. armed forces a clear mission in Afghanistan and to do it now.
“It’s time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger, ” Cheney said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think-tank.
“Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission,” Cheney said.
Cheney also refuted what he said was a complaint by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that “the Obama administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.”
“The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them,” Cheney said.
“Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity,” he added.
Mr. Cheney, Have you no honor? I thought that when Bush stole the election back in ’01 that at least he would have wisdom provided by you. I trusted you to guide the idiot in the proper ways…boy was I wrong and now you stand up there commenting on a man that is trying to undo the mess the you and your administration got us into. Please, step back you’ve done enough.
from Summit Notebook:
Grassley grades Obama’s performance C to F
We asked Senator Charles Grassley to grade President Barack Obama's performance (close your ears Sasha and Malia) and the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee was a bit of a tough schoolmaster.
"He's still learning an awful lot," Grassley said at a Reuters Washington Summit.
But Obama gets a D on foreign policy, a C on domestic policy, and an F on trade (ouch!)
We asked him to explain the grading.
"If you go to class, college, and you don't do anything you get an F," Grassley said on trade. He noted that Obama has put a 35 percent duty on tires from China, which the senator believed was not a good idea, but he would have been willing to overlook that if the president was pushing forward on trade agreements.
And why the D on foreign policy?
"He's taken a month to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan," Grassley said.
Clinton finds the jazz in her job, honors King and Gandhi
With jazz great Herbie Hancock and Congressman John Lewis at her side, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a State Department ceremony on Thursday to mark the departure of a cultural delegation to India to commemorate civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s trip there 50 years ago.
King and his wife, Coretta, traveled to India in 1959 to study the life and works of India’s legendary nonviolent independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. King adopted many of Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence to the U.S. civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Clinton said she was “jealous” of the trip by the delegation, which includes Hancock, civil rights veteran Lewis, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, and Alabama Congressman Spencer Bachus. The group will travel to New Delhi and other sites associated with Gandhi.
Hancock said the philosophy of cooperation, communication and harmony espoused by King and Gandhi “are also essential elements of every jazz band.”
Clinton, meanwhile, said the delegation was “exactly what the State Department should be doing even more of.”
“Jazz is not just about music,” the newly installed diplomat said. “As secretary of state, I’m improvising every day.”
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Parker (Herbie Hancock and trumpeter Roy Hargrove play at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis on Sept. 28, 2001)
So let me see if I understand the sentiments…it’s ok to spend Billions and Billions of dollars on senseless wars in two middle eastern countries, completely destroy the reputation of the United States throughout the world by proliferating our skewed view of freedom and democracy, and allow the Bush Adminstration to take a budget surplus of close to a Trillion dollars in 2001 and turn it into the largest deficit on record in a matter of a few years, BUT…it’s NOT OK to spend a little money on sending a delegation to promote peaceful dialog and cooperation around the world in order to restore that reputation. Which would allow the U.S. to re-establish needed connections with businesses around the world, who might want or need our products. Thereby creating the jobs we all so much want to get and keep. Your right, stay home, stop spending, and wait for those Bush Tax Cuts to really jolt the economy.
Hillary on the Hill
WASHINGTON – Bill Clinton was not in the room, but his presence was certainly felt at Hillary Clinton’s long confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considered her nomination to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, Republicans on the panel raised the potentially thorny subject of the former president’s charity, which has received donations from several nations including the governments of Saudi Arabia and Norway.
They questioned whether appropriate steps had been taken to avoid possible foreign policy conflicts if Sen. Clinton, of New York, is confirmed.
“I think a lot of folks legitimately share these concerns across the spectrum, from the New York Times to Senator Lugar, who submitted some questions about it to me,” Louisiana Republican David Vitter said.
Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel’s senior Republican, had raised the issue earlier in the hearing. Clinton gave a lengthy response to Vitter and offered to go into even more detail. But Vitter was concerned about running out of time.
“Mr. Chairman, I have no objection listening to this, but I’d like it not to come out of my time, because I’d like to pursue these questions,” Vitter said.
“Well, I guess it’s fair to say that if you ask a question, you deserve an answer, and the answer traditionally comes out of the time of the senator,” committee Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts responded.
It is possible 9/11 would not have happened had Clinton done his job. Fortunately for America, it didn’t happen on Clinton’s watch. Otherwise, more attacks would have followed. Oh, I forgot, that was the second time the World Trade Center was bombed. The first was during the Clinton presidency.
So, the Clinton’s did nothing swell in a foreign policy arena. Confirming Hillary as Secretary of State (SOS), will be just that an SOS for the United States.
The First Draft: Monday, Dec 1
With the images of death and destruction in Mumbai last week fresh in everyone’s minds, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is set on Monday to name his national security team. At a 10:40 EST (1540 GMT) news conference in Chicago, Obama is expected to name former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and nominate Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on in that role. In addition he is expected to name Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary, Eric Holder as attorney general and adviser Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. After a series of three straight news conferences last week focused on the ailing U.S. economy, Obama will switch gears today as he will likely face questions about India and Pakistan and his proposed policies toward the two nuclear-armed nations. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to India on Wednesday. She has been in contact with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in recent days to ease tensions between the states.
Indian investigators said the militants who attacked Mumbai underwent months of commando training in Pakistan, raising tensions between the neighboring nations as recriminations mounted in India.
In an interview with the Financial Times , Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has appealed to India not to punish his country for the Mumbai attacks, saying militants have the power to precipitate a war in the region. In economic news back home, stocks appeared set to fall after poor manufacturing figures from China and a raft of economic data expected in the U.S. this week.
Though retailers reported a solid start to holiday shopping with consumers spending more on bargains over the Thanksgiving weekend, overall holiday sales are likely to be worse than thought.
The Big Three U.S. automakers will try a second time this week to pursuade Congress to give them $25 billion to rescue their struggling industry. The Financial Times reported that GM, which owns Saab, and Volvo-owner Ford had approached Sweden’s government for financial help.
