This week, we saw one of the key differences between President Bush and his ally British prime minister Tony Blair.
Charles Clarke was home secretary in Blair's government; while there is no exact equivalent in the US government, the position is comparable to the Homeland Security Secretary. A furor erupted when it was revealed that the Home Office inadvertantly released many foreign prisoners onto British streets rather than deporting them back to their home countries.
Clarke acknowledged the errors but insisted that he was the man to fix the problems.
High-ranking Bush administration officials have admittedly errors regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (Grudgingly, under pressure and in the most flippant way possible). They also insisted that they were the ones to fix the problems.
Blair rejected Clarke's argument and held him accountable. Clarke was fired yesterday.
Bush accepted the arguments of his people and has never held anyone accountable (except when he needed a sacrificial lamb like Mike Brown to save his skin). Some, like War Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney, are still in office. Others saw their disastrous errors rewarded with presidential medals of freedom. Then again, voters can't complain because they refused to hold Bush himself accountable in 2004.
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The term of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will come to an end next year. As discussion of who will succeed the widely respected Nobel peace laureate Annan heats up, The Namibian offers a developing country perspective on what the position requires.
Though the post of UN secretary general has been described as that of 'secular pope,' it was also called 'the most impossible job on Earth' by the first holder of the job. The job has only gotten many times more challenging since that accurate statement was made.
The secretary general is expected to make things happen but is given no executive authority (outside UN personnel decisions) to do so. His arms are handcuffed behind his back but he is frequently blamed for 'not doing enough' by those very same people who hold the keys to those handcuffs.
As The Namibian explained:
The Secretary General is expected to enjoy the backing of governments, especially the five permanent members of the Security Council, but be above partiality to any of them.
He establishes his credentials by bureaucratic or diplomatic service, but, once elected, must transcend his past and serve as a voice of the world, even a "secular Pope."
The Secretary General is entrusted with assisting member states to make sound and well-informed decisions, which he is then obliged to execute, but he is also authorised to influence their work and even to propose actions that they should undertake.
He administers a complex organisation and serves as head of the UN agencies, but must exercise this role within budgetary and regulatory constraints imposed by the member governments.
True, the Secretary General has an unparalleled agenda-shaping authority.
But he does not have the power to execute all his ideas, and he articulates a vision that only governments can fulfil.
He moves the world, but he cannot direct it.
Far from condemning Annan for not doing enough, I can only marvel at how much he has accomplished, despite the handcuffs, in his ten years. Granted, he couldn't stop the Iraq aggression and his reputation did take a hit during the oil-for-food scandal.
Annan never wanted the UN to admister oil-for-food because he knew that corruption and oil go hand in hand and he knew that the UN had never done anything like it before; but it was forced upon him by the US and the Security Council.
Many have argued that the post needs to be split up in two positions: one as diplomat-in-chief (the public face of the UN) and one as administrator-in-chief (the internal boss). Annan was brilliant at the former but I'm not sure how good he was at the latter.
Regardless, he remains not only one of the most successful leaders in the organization's history but easily one of the most respected statesmen in the world today. His successor will have big shoes to fill
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Speaking of Namibia, Leonard Pitts has a great column trashing the tabloid predators.
America doesn't have a royal family like Britain, but we do have celebrities. They serve the same function as far as the paparazzi jackals are concerned.
Famous actors, politicians and athletes basically have no privacy. I have no objection to them being raked over the coals for making bad films, bad policy or having bad seasons.
But I don't care who's having a baby. I don't care who's splitting with his spouse or significant other. I REALLY don't care who's going to eat his newborn's placenta.
I do, however, care that there's a autocracy starving its citizens to death not far from Namibia in Zimbabwe. I do care that there's genocide in Darfur. I do care that Americans spend far more on health care but are less healthy than other westerners. I do care that the US government is spying on peaceful protesters for no good reason. I care that authorities are spying on non-protesters as well.
So why am I being bothered by 'news' of Angelina Jolie ordering a KFC Twister in southern Africa?
Well, I would be if I watched American TV news.
While it's easy to blame tabloid scum, and lord knows they deserve it, it's too easy to stop there. If people weren't interested in these non-events, the tabloids wouldn't be routinely invading the privacy of these actors, athletes and politicians. So blame yourself too.
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I used to be a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. So much so that my blog's name was inspired by his book Letters to a Young Contrarian. I always admired Hitchens because he was never afraid to challenge some un-progressive tendencies of the left. He also unafraid to challenge some of the intellectual sloppiness that plagued the defense of many fashionable leftist causes.
I found him more nuanced and less dogmatic (and thus more faithful to principles instead of ideology) than other left-wing icons like Noam Chomsky. He had the cajones to challenge the iconography surrounding people like Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger; whether you agree or disagree with the specifics, you had to admire his willingness to challenge cults of personality.
But Hitch has gone a bit loopy over Iraq. He was always an ardent critic of both Saddam Hussein and of Islamic extremism. So it wasn't shocking that he supported the US invasion against Iraq. He was never a pacifist.
However, some of his rhetoric has gone far beyond simply defending the principle of 'liberating' Iraq. Much of it appears to me a shameful sycophantic defense of both the Bush administration in general and its abuses and blunders in particular. Some of his pieces are so belligerent, they leave me wondering if they were written by Christopher Hitchens or Scott McClellan.
(It was odd, however, that Hitchens has become so sycophantic in defense of the Iraq aggression at the same time he was ratcheting up his campaign against Henry Kissinger for the conduct of the Vietnam aggression)
Now, Prof. Juan Cole alleges that Hitchens has hacked into private email discussions and published articles based on them.
Has Hitch gone mad?
Or perhaps I forgot my own maxim.
I've always said that the political spectrum is not a line but a circle. The far left has much more in common with the far right than it does with the moderate left (and vice versa of course). Has Hitchens gone so far left that he's now far right?
I really don't care if he's a neo-con or a Trotskyist or whatever he'd call himself. I'm just saddened that he appears to have acted so unethically; even worse in that it was done to advance an unethical cause.
I may not change my blog's title. I still consider myself a bit of a contrarian even if Hitch has become a sycophant. But I am disappointed nonetheless.
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