Yaolee Chen

English 101 The Cause of the War in Afghanistan

Annotation

Glenn Simshaw

John M. Broder, “Wuietly and Dexterously, Senate Republicans Set a Trap, “New York Times, Oct. 14, 1999.

According to New York Times reporter John M. Broder, “Democrats did not see the opposition to the treaty hardening in large part because relations between the parties are so bad that Democrats and Republicans often do not talk to each other about pending business. The White House’s legislative affairs operation likewise did not detect the looming disaster for the President, according to a senior Administration official. (political cause)

News conference by president Clinton, Washington, D.C., Oct. 14, 1999.

As the president said, with regard to Britain, France, and Germany, “We say, ‘OK, you guys are with us every time we need you – the Gulf War, the Balkans, always in NATO. But you ask us to do something for your common safety? Go take a hike.’” It damaged nonproliferation efforts already under way, by implying that the United States lacked steadiness and political will. (political cause)

Quoted in Barbara Crossette, “Around the World, Dismay over Senate Vote on Treaty,” New York Times, Oct. 15, 1999.

“Not only has the Senate said no to an added line of defense against proliferation; it has also weakened a potent defense barrier we had already constructed. (propaganda)

“A damaging Arms Control Defeat,” New York Times, Oct. 14, 1999.

“[S]ome of the worst fears expressed by treaty opponents may now be more likely to come about… These include nuclear weapons development by countries that have not yet signed the treaty, erosion of American’s current lead in weapons technology and secret low-yield testing by Russia or other nuclear powers.” (international cause)

Gerald Tomlinson, Speaker’s Treasury of Political Stories, Anecdotes and Humor (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), p.89.

Gover Cleveland’s illegitimate child with Maria Halprin gave his Republican opponents fodder for one of the most memorable campaign ditties of all time: “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha.” (Democrats got back with a tune of their own when Cleveland won: ”Hurrah for Maria! Hurrah for the kid! I voted for Cleveland, and I’m damned glad I did!”) (political and social cause)

E.J. Dionne, They only look dead (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p.20.

Now the only test of victory is whether an adversary’s moral standing is thoroughly shredded and destroyed. A political rival or philosophical adversary cannot be simply mistaken, foolish, impractical or wrongheaded. He or she has to be made into the moral equivalent of Hitler or Stalin, the Marquis de Sade or Al Capone. (psychology cause)

“Politics Brief: Is There a Crisis?” The Economist, July 17, 1999.

The kind of cynicism we are seeing today breeds apathy and damages democracy. Opinion polls suggest that the favorable opinion Americans had of their government has declined steadily over the past four decades. In 1999, the Council for Excellence in Government found that while just 6 percent of adults say they feel very connected to their federal government, 29 percent—almost five times as many—feel very disconnected. This great Divide between the public and the government is present elsewhere as well. In eleven out of fourteen mature democracies, including Britain, Canada, and Germany, surveys indicate that confidence in parliament has dropped. Trust in politicians has fallen from Italy to Japan. (psychology cause)

Ibid.

During the 1992 election, more than 80 percent of network news stories on the Democratic Party were unfavorable, as were 87 percent of stories about the Republicans. Nine stories out of ten about Congress were bad; stories about the federal government in general were 93 percent negative. (psychology cause)

Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 11-15.

Harvard’s Thomas Patterson points out, journalists exaggerate the extent to which politicians renege on campaign promises—which, during campaigns, they cynically portray as transparent ploys for votes. Analysis of recent administrations show that presidents largely uphold their campaign pledges, except in cases of conflict with Congress, changes in conditions, or a higher priority commitment. Yet press coverage focuses on broken promises and on issues that require negotiation with Congress,

portraying compromise as failure or retreat rather than a natural part of American Democracy. (social cause)

Molly Ivins, “Garbage Town,” Washington Post, Oct. 12, 1999.

“Politics may not touch our lives, but government sure as daybreak does… Back in the real world, where may parents are trying to support their children by working more than one minimum wage job; where working mothers are often caught between aging parents who need long-term care and children who need day care; where the median income is a little more than $40,000 a year for a family of four, with half the people in this country living on less than that and lots of them on a whole lot less than that; where there is no such thing as affordable housing for the people who are not in the upper part of our hourglass economy—back in that world, what government does makes a big difference. (psychology cause)

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Public Appetite for Government Misjudged: Washington Leaders Wary of Public Opinion,” www.people-press.org/leadrpt.htm.

A majority of government respondents to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said they believe the public wants federal programs cut back, when in fact 57 percent of the public, asked the same question, favored an activist approach to government. (political, psychology, and propaganda causes)

Remarks by President Clinton at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Washington D.C., May1, 1999.

This dubious joke by President Clinton at the 1999 annual White House correspondents’ dinner, for example: You may have seen a list compiled by the Newseum of the top 100 news stories of the century—everything from putting a man on the moon to the polio vaccine, ranked in order of importance. I don’t mind telling you, I made the Newseum list—something about the events of last year, number 53—53! I mean, what does a guy have to do to make the top 50 around here?

Not just because our politics have become absurd almost beyond the point of parody, but because the politics already have become a form of show business. (political cause)

Ronald Brownstein, “New Appeals for a return to Civility,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15, 1999.

Texas Democrat and Speaker of the House Jim Wright, who was forced from office in 1989 by an investigation into his financial dealings led by Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, described the mood as “mindless cannibalism.” And called for an end to period in which “vengeance becomes more desirable than vindication.” Yet, a few years later, when Gingrich became Speaker, Wright’s party immediately launched an ethics investigation into him. (political, psychology causes)

Quoted in James Kitfield, “A Return to Isolationism,” National Journal, Oct. 8, 1999.

As Senator John McCain told the National Journal. “Fewer and fewer members of Congress today have any real interest in national security issues, and they don’t appreciate that we live in a less dangerous, bu far less predicatable, orld. That’s led to an incredible increase in pork barreling in the defense budget and a lack of concern for its impact on the men and women in the military. (propaganda cause)

Ibid.

Quoted in James Kitfield, “A Return to Isolationism,” National Journal, Oct. 8, 1999.

“Committed internationalists have retired or been replaced, and their inheritors have a different point of view. “I’ve been to Europe once—I don’t need to go again,” House Majority Leader Dick Armey has boasted. Armey also says he hasn’t set foot off American soil since 1986. (propaganda cause)

Lake, Anthony. 6 Nightmares, “The Real Threats to American Security”. (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 2000). P. 254-255

People in the White House need the new jobs: [S]ome members of Congress apparently don’t even hold passports.(propaganda cause)

Ibid.

The current Republican Chairmen of the House and Senate committees with primary authority over foreign policy and national security—Benjamin Gilman, Floyd Spences, Jesse Helms, and Strom Thurmond—have an average age of eighty. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, describes one of the consequences this way: “In fairness, Chairman Helms hasn’t been feeling well, but the truth is the Committee hardly meets anymore. Back in those days [the mid 1980s], I would travel around the world at the President’s request, helping take care of crises in the Philippines or Guatemala, or being on hand for the transition to democracy in Latin American or South Africa. That just doesn’t happen anymore. (propaganda cause)

George Stephanopoulos, all Too Human (New York: Little Brown, 1999), p. 328.

The President instructed me never to meet or discuss national security polling numbers with Dick Morris, the strategic advisor the President increasingly turned to in the run-up to the 1996 campaign (and who George Stephanopoulos later memorably described as the “dark Buddha whose belly Clinton rubbed in desperate time”) (Propaganda Cause)

Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office (New York: Random House, 1997), p.247.

Morris felt differently, as he later wrote, “The charade, carefully preserved by Lake, that foreign policy in a democracy could or should be determined without regard to ‘politics’ was, in my view, nonsense.” (political cause)

Ibid., p. 254.

One of the few times I ran into Morris was when he was leaving the President’s family quarters. As he left, I heard him say, “Good night, Bill.” It was the only time I ever heard anyone, other than the President’s wife, call him by his first name—and a sign of how serious Morris took the office to which he had helped his clients aspire. Morris, for his part, claims that his particular meeting—in fact, our first—was the only time I didn’t give him my “evil-rodent look.” (political cause)

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, “Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media,” The Century Fun, New York, 1999.

“A newly diversified mass media in which the cultures of entertainment, infotainment, argument, analysis, tabloid and mainstream press not only work side by side but intermingle and merge. It is a culture in which Matt Drudge sits alongside William Safire on Meet the Press and Ted Koppel talks about the nuances of oral sex, in which Hard Copy and CBS News jostle for camera position outside the federal grand jury to hear from a special prosecutor. (media control)

Lake, Anthony. 6 Nightmares, “The Real Threats to American Security”. Boston” (Little Brown and Company. 2000)

A declining quality on the news: The emergence of CNN and the twenty-four-hour news cycle may be particularly important. The written press is no longer able to compete on breaking news, so it tends to explain more than simply report. Editorials masquerading as news. In any case, reporters also feel less inclined to disguise their own views. In the old days, if I wanted to know that a reporter really thought on policy or politics, I would need to catch him or her at an unguarded moment of inebriation. Today, all I need to do is watch him or her on a television talk show. Newsweek even offers incentives to its reporters to appear on radio and TV. (media control)

Ibid.

In 1964, J. Edgar Hoover attempted to ruin Martin Luther King, Jr., by shopping secret tape transcripts of King cheatin on his wife to various reporters in Washington. Not a sigle journalist took the bait, even those who were no fans of King. But imagine, as Kovach and Rosensitiel do, what would have happened in the current media climate. “Would rumor of King’s extramarital activities be ‘Issue One’ on the McLaughlin Group? Or ferried into a debate on talk radio or Crossfire?” (media control)

David Ignatius, “Serial Hysterics,” Washington Post, Sept. 15, 1999, p. A25.

David Ignatius aptly describes as “sequential hysteria,” in which each story gets its fifteen minutes of fame and is then nearly forgotten. As Ignatius writes, “Nothing is done about a problem until it reaches this critical ‘meltdown’ state—and then, for a few brief days or weeks, too much is done. Then it’s back to normal inattention. It’s like a dinner party where there’s only one conversation going on at any given time—a screaming, hysterical conversation at that.” (media control)

James F. Hoge, Jr., “Foreign News: Who Gives a Damn?,” Columbia Journalism Review, Now.-Dec. 1997.

The diminishing amount of time and space accorded t international news. A survey by Claude Moisy for Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center found that the time devoted do foreign news on US networks dropped from 45 percent in the 1970s to 13.5 percent by 1995. (media control)

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, op. cit.

“Among members of Congress, just 31% think Americans know enough about issues to make wise decisions about public policy. Even fewer political appointees (13%) and senior civil servants (14%) feel this way. Those in the executive branch also have far less confidence than members of congress in the public’s decision making on Election Day. Just 34% of presidential appointees and career civil servants express a great deal of confidence on this regard, compared to 64% of those in Congress.” (media control)

For this and previous statistics see American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy 1999, ed. John E. Reilly (Chicago: The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1999).

For the first time since 1978, the Chicago poll indicates, there is more public support for expanding defense spending than for reducing it, though a plurality of Americans would like it to stay the same. (increasing militant)

“New Kosovo Study Finds Public Shows More Tolerance of Possible Fatalities Than Assumed,” Program on International Policy Attitudes press release, Washington, D.C., May 19, 1999.

Surveys also show that the American public is willing to accept more casualties for a good cause than most in Washing believe. For example, a May 1999 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that if NATO undertook a more extensive operation in Kosovo and American troops were killed, only a minority would want to end the operation, while most would want to persist and would even favor “beefing up forces or striking back hard.” (increasing militant)

EPILOGUE

An Economic Report of the President transmitted to the Congress Feb. 1999.

“We have the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation in three decades. Employment rose by 2.9 million in 1998 alone—an average rate of 242,000 new jobs every month. At the same time, the federal government recorded its first unified budget surplus since 1969.” (propaganda cause)

Children’s Defense Fund, “The State of America’s Children Yearbook 2000: 25 Key Facts About American Children,” www.childrensdefense.org/keyfacts.html.

…when one in five American children lives in a family receiving food stamps. One in six has no health insurance. And in 1997 alone, 4,205 children and teens lost their lives to gunfire—the equivalent of one child every two hours. (psychology cause)

“A Foreign Policy Agenda for the Second Term,” remarks by Samuel R. Berger, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C., Mar. 27, 1997.

“A stunning fact: Traders, buyers and investors move well over a trillion dollars around the world every day. (Propaganda cause)

“Markets Go Global, “ The Economist (The World Economy Survey), Sept. 20, 1997, p. 24.

The daily turnover on the currency markets is greater than the entire global stock of official foreign-exchange reserves. (propaganda)

Frances Cairncross, The death of Distance (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), p. 87; and “Over 150 Million Internet Users Worldwide at Year-End 1998,” press release Computer Industry Almanac (www.c-I-a.com), April 30, 1999.

From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, the number of people logging onto the Internet doubled every year. Predictions are that by early in this century, more than 300 milion people will be on-line.(psychology and propaganda)

“Global Trade and Travel Import Health Threats, Report Warns,” Washington Post, June 22, 1997, p.A4.

With some two million people crossing an international border every day—and 115.5 milion visitors to the United States in 1996 alone—it is harder to shield and sequester ourselves from dangerous infectious diseases. Anytime, anywhere that anyone travels, invisible germs tag along. AIDs, which originated in Africa, became the number-one killer of American men aged fifteen to forty-five. Mosquitoes capable of carring dengue fever, viral encephalitis, and yellow fever journeyed to the United States in 1985 on tires imported from Asia. (Anti-foreigners)

Laurie Garrett, “The Return of Infectious Disease,” Foreign Affairs, Jan.-Feb. 1996.

“Airport malaria” has entered the annals of public-health problems, as travelers pick up and take home diseases like gift shop souvenirs. Infectious disease expert Laurie Garrett points out “Even before commercial air travel, swine flu in 1918-19 managed to circumnavigate the planet five times in 18 months, killing 22 million people, 500,000 in the United State.” (Anti-foreigners)

“World Airline Traffic and Load Factors Highest Ever in 1997,” Montreal PIO 26/27 (www.icao.int/icao/en/nr/pio9726.htm), Dec. 23, 1997.

Imagine how many lives a virulent flu could claim today, with airlines carrying well over a billion passengers each year. (Anti-foreigners)

Victoria Holt, “Briefing Book on Peacekeeping: The U.S. Role in United Nation Peace Operations,” Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Washington D.C., Dec. 1944, p. 12

Concern over US participation in peacekeeping is not a new phenomenon. While the United States sent aircraft, military observers, pilots, radio operators, and mediators to the firs UN observer million in Palestine in 1948, we did not contribute that many military officials to a UN mission again until the early 1990s. (United Nation)

John Hillen, “Picking Up UN Peacekeeping Pieces: Knowing When to say when,” Foreign Affairs, July-Aug. 1998.

No new UN peace operations were approved from 1978 to 1988. (Even Ronald Reagan, however, called for ‘a standing UN Force, an army of conscience—that is fully equipped and prepared to carve out humanitarian sanctuaries through force if necessary.” (increasing militant and United Nation)

Holt, op. cit., p.13

President Bush clearly saw the United Nations’ potential to advance American interests. In addition to pledging to “explore new days to ensure adequate American financial support for UN peacekeeping.” His Administration supported the start of twelve new peace operations, and Bush a large U.S. field hospital unit to Croatia and observers to Cambodia, Kuwait, and Western Sahara. (United Nation)

“The United Nations,” U.S. Department of State fact sheet, Jan. 2000.

Presidents Bush and Clinton both have recognized that peacekeeping efforts serve our interests and respond to the best instincts of the American people. Future Presidents are very likely to reach the same conclusion. They are also likely to recognize that peacekeeping through the United Nations is a cost effective investment For every dollar that all governments spent on military activities in 1997, less than a quarter of a cent went to UN peacekeeping And the American share of UN peacekeeping in 1999 was less than $1.22 per U.S. citizen – about the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks. (United Nation)

Quoted in Joseph Kahn and David E. Sanger, “Impasse on Trade Delivers a Stinging Blow to Clinton,” New York Times, Dec. 5, 1999.

Trade will continue, with less rather than more regulation thanks to the delay Seattle brought about. Fewer rules will mean more power to the already powerful, at the expense of poorer nations. But chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, the WTO has got to go,” these unilateralists of the left are caught in a dangerous time warp. As one protester said, “We have succeeded in turning back the invasion of the WTO into domestic policy decisions” (political, psychology, propaganda, media control, militant, United Nation causes)

“America’s World,” The Economist, Oct. 23, 1999, p15.

A passive America, even massively armour-plated, is not much use either to others, or to itself. In order to impose stability on a chaotic, constantly surprising world, America needs to work with allies. When Saddam Hussein threatened America’s oil supplies, the biggest alliance ever seen was put together at American’s behest. When outlaw states such as North Korea or Iraq threaten the peace with nuclear or biological weapons, international cooperation is needed to try to contain them. Such cooperation is not created out of thin air. It needs a constant process of negotiation, communication, and mutual help that may involve (as Mr. Clinton, for all his faults, has understood) the putting of money and manpower into places where, on the fact of it, America has no interest. (Conclusion)

Lake p.289

We must find ways to help new democracies carry out necessary economic reforms without so damaging the poor that the reforms—or democracy itself—are lost in the resulting backlash