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A Little Nordic Sanity: Actually Doing What You Say
I squandered a chunk of my life this week watching U.S. congressional hearings on "progress" in Iraq, and media follow-ups. In case you didn't waste your own time, let me share some of my loss.
There are supposedly two sides, for and against the war. Yet they sound the same. California Democrat Tom Lantos, who's against the war, started the hearings by saying "our" strategy is building national institutions and seeking "a political settlement."
A "Republican strategist" asked, in The New York Times, "How do we get to political stability?" Pro-war Senator John McCain, on the Straight Talk Express, his campaign bus, said "if we leave, there will be chaos and genocide." It's all about the good of the poor Iraqis.
But what evidence is there that any of them ever had those interests at heart? U.S. policy egged Iraq into eight years of bloody war with Iran. Then Washington applied a decade of sanctions that sapped ordinary life and ensconced Saddam Hussein. And now this occupation. Suddenly they care? U.S. policy-makers have other motives and Iraqis know it.
Forty-six per cent, by this week's polling, think civil war would be less likely if the U.S. just got out, chaos or not; only 35 per cent think it's more likely. Seventy-nine per cent of Sunnis and 59 per cent of Shiites have no confidence in U.S. and British forces. They don't take the benevolent talk seriously-why should anyone?
Or take troop withdrawals. What troop withdrawals? Presidential candidate Barack Obama, staking an extreme anti-war position, says he'd withdraw all troops but leave a force of unspecified size "to strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests."
Huh? Isn't that what they're doing now? That's a stay, not a leave. How is it different from the Bush position? What makes him think, perhaps correctly, that no one will notice? Is it because this is the fantasy realm of foreign policy?
The only time my eyes unglazed during the hearings came when the Code Pink protesters stood on their chairs screaming "liar" until they were ejected under the stony gaze of the (anti-war) chairman. They were reacting rationally, even if they were frantic. It was probably unavoidable. They were trying to tell the truth in a sea of nodding liars.
Why is foreign policy such a swamp of deceit and inanity? Is it because in domestic matters, people have benchmarks by which to judge? If you're told the economy is great, you can check it against your bank account or job; the same goes for schools and ERs.
That isn't the case in foreign affairs, so the mythology flows freely. Canada is not exempt. We said we'd devote 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign aid, then turned around and said we wouldn't. We use the typical bilge as reasons for joining the occupation of Afghanistan: achieve stability, build national institutions.
But Wednesday, I watched Adrienne Arsenault's report on CBC news from Sweden. They've taken 30,000 refugees from Iraq and will add 20,000 this year. Canada took fewer than 400 last year, and plans 1,400 this year. The city of 80,000 she reported from took in twice as many Iraqis as the whole United States. They get health care, language classes, income support.
Wait, this doesn't fit the mould. It isn't grandiloquent talk, it's action. They seem to mean what they say, as do other Scandinavian countries. If foreign policy is a crock, a cover for self-interest, how do they pull this off?
Is it their relative marginality, strung across the top of Europe, that has kept them somewhat immune from great power politics? The general absence of an imperial past? Their social-democratic heritage, through which they built fairly egalitarian societies and didn't have to justify or deny cruel disparities? Absence of racism? I wish I knew.
They are oddly like Canada, those places. You fly endless hours and get off the plane in Helsinki and feel you never went anywhere because it looks like home. But not in foreign policy.
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Show All"? Presidential candidate Barack Obama, staking an extreme anti-war position, says he'd withdraw all troops but leave a force of unspecified size "to strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests." Huh? Isn't that what they're doing now? That's a stay, not a leave. How is it different from the Bush position?"
The less Obama was able to make a dent in the Clinton-Cult formerly known as the Democratic Party, the more he began to echo them.
Rick says of Scandinavia: "Is it their relative marginality, strung across the top of Europe, that has kept them somewhat immune from great power politics? The general absence of an imperial past? Their social-democratic heritage, through which they built fairly egalitarian societies and didn't have to justify or deny cruel disparities? Absence of racism? I wish I knew."
Well, Rick, it's the satisfaction they take in not being first-tier world powers. Their leaders are unlike the self-hating Canadian theo-con Stephen Harper, who so deplored Canada's status as a "second-tier socialist country" that he turned Canada into just another rapacious, self-serving white supremacist patriarchy.
I'd emigrate to Sweden, if they'd take a crude Canadian.
Zoya, do please look into your anti-white phobia/racism/obessession/self-loathing(?) This is the third post in which I've seen you foam at the mouth about Whiteness/supremacy/power. Stephen Harper and George Bush do not represent every white in the world. Open the mind just a little bit.
"Zoya, do please look into your anti-white phobia/racism/obessession/self-loathing(?) This is the third post in which I've seen you foam at the mouth about Whiteness/supremacy/power. Stephen Harper and George Bush do not represent every white in the world. Open the mind just a little bit."
You are quite right, Stilba. They represent only the people who voted for them.
The Swedes have acted. They did something our congress seems unable to do -- get off their a**es. We hear the proclamations that, "We haven't got to votes to override a veto." "We haven't got the votes to stop a filibuster." "We don't have votes to stop funding." Well, I say, pass the bill. Make the President veto it. Make the Republicans and Joe Liebermann put their "we support more killing" on the official record and let's just see how much conviction is really out there for this war -- if you actually have to put your John Q on it. The same argument applies to impeachment. Let's start the investigation; get the old special prosecutor started. I bet the hard-line will soften when statements and testimony are under oath. A lie is harder to re-tell when the possibility of jail is hanging overhead. And you know Bush won't pardon everybody. That would blow the lid off it completely.
OBL once asked in 2004 "You might ask yourselves why we don't attack Sweden?"
He was responding to the claim by the Bush administration that AQ attacks the US because it is "free," that it is, has political freedoms.
Of course, AQ is a violent militia that is motivated by the idea of expelling imperial influences in their own lands. As CIA head George Tenet said in 1999: "Osama Bin Laden's overarching aim is to get us out of the Persian Gulf." As such, their primary stated motives are largely defensive, while their tactics targeting civilians are, of course, crimes against humanity.
The northern European nations lead the world's long-standing democracies in development aid to other nations on a per capita basis (see www.nationmaster.com). The US aid is about .15 percent the last time I checked. Sweden's actions tell much about their government--they respect the rule of international law and they have a benevolent foreign policy.
That is what the US needs. That is the progressive position. And having a benevolent foreign policy (based on win/win not win/lose) and respect for the global rule of law would be a complete, 180-degree reversal from US policy assumptions dating from the fateful day of February 8, 1819 when the House failed to pass either of two bills that would have required the President to abide by treaties in the case of one bill or get the permission of Congress in the case of the other to launch an attack on another nation. (It was at the end of a 12-day debate about Gen. Jackson's act of invading and conquering much of Florida in 1818.)
The article failed to mention that the supposed "anti-war" Democrats are actually corporate Democrats with a corporate, militarist foreign policy. (They pose as progressives but are not.) There are true progressive Democrats to which the author could have referred (though not highlighted in the corporate media--big surprise) such as Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Diane Watson, John Lewis, Bernie Sanders, Jim McDermott and several others in Congress. Example of a real anti-war stance: When Dennis Kucinich was asked in a debate as to why he didn't raise his hand in support of the so-called "war on terror" he replied "The war on terror is a pretext for aggressive war." THAT is a real, progressive anti-war position.
But the author's criteria for real versus phoney anti-war stances are sound. And his praise of Sweden is right on.
BTW, the northern European nations do have an imperial past. They were once Vikings, right? But they got past that phase. So should certain other nations, especially the US. (I say that because I'm a US citizen. Someone else from Canada can speak to the Canadian foreign policy, I cannot. Not my responsibility.)
P.S. I absolutely loved this line: "They were trying to tell the truth in a sea of nodding liars." How true for all progressives in the corporate media or the halls of Congress.
It is not a trivial matter that if OBL tried to convince some AQ militia to attack Sweden because they were free, he would not get far at all. They would ask, "Do they launch illegal invasions and kill women and children? Do they occupy our lands? Do they torture us? Do they give aid to dictatorships in Muslim nations? Do they send warships into our waters? Do they send their corporations to control Muslim assets such as oil with monopolistic, unfair arrangements?" Of course, the answer to all these questions would be no. And he would not get very far in convincing anyone to attack Sweden, which OBL admits openly. When a Swedish newspaper depicted The Prophet (PBBUH) disrespectfully it is noteworthy that a Swedish government official openly apologized while admitting the government cannot prevent such freedom of speech. So Sweden is not only benevolent, and abiding by the rule of international law as far as I know, and respectful of Muslims, but they are also, essentially safe from AQ attacks.
"his is the third post in which I've seen you foam at the mouth about Whiteness/supremacy/power. Stephen Harper and George Bush do not represent every white in the world. Open the mind just a little bit."
"You are quite right, Stilba. They represent only the people who voted for them."
Individual skin color has nothing to do with it, -- one can be invited into the club without it & it even needs a few handfuls of latinos, africans, etc to be able to disavow its inherent racism & present itself as 'colorblind' -- but the power relations on which the structure was built and without which it would die remain very much what they were in the 19th century. And that structure requires a substantive investmemnt in the demonization of non-whites, both in terms of imperial subjugation & domestic repression.
As regards the Nordic nations: you don't have enemies if you don't make enemies. That's pretty obvious to anyone from a school child to the leader of a nation. The people of Scandinavia are way ahead of the rest of the world on basically all issues: from global warming to all of the world's government's moral imperative to care for all of its citizens.
Yes - moral imperative.