Syrian Justice

Syria, Syria, Syria… all indications suggest that so much struggle and tragedy for the past two and a half years is about to boil down to some geopolitical wrangling and a reprieve for Assad. The West’s bizarre fixation on the use of chemical weapons has actually probably saved the man from an international onslaught, their surrender deemed sufficient to compensate for those made dead or displaced by conventional arms. Assad’s intent to brutally eradicate any vestige of resistance has taken second place to what the rest of the world deems acceptable means.

A round of applause for Putin, I suppose, he has consummately bitch-slapped his western counterparts in this particular round of diplomatic manoeuvres. His op-ed piece to the New York Times yesterday was like an international victory dance, as the Russian proposal for Syria’s chemical disarmament simultaneously distracted from the core issue of the still raging war and allowed Obama to avoid an embarrassing defeat at the House of Representatives. But everyone gets to look tough and proactive, so yippee-kai-yay.

After the breakneck pace of the last couple of weeks – the clear signs of a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the regime against a Damascus suburb, followed by rabid pronouncements of imminent action, followed by the decisive gut punch to any such action that was the UK Commons defeat on the motion – it somehow feels like a resolution of sorts is near. I say “of sorts” most generously. Here’s the potential reality we face – Assad loses his chemical weapons but is able to continue prosecuting his war courtesy of Russian and Iranian support, as the fractured movement against his regime is slowly choked out.

Russia maintains its vital Mediterranean ally, replete with warm water ports, while the balance of involvement from other regional nations shifts from military support to the rebels, to sustaining what will surely continue to be a long and painful refugee crisis, bought by Assad, paid for by Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. The international community will basically wash its hands of the scene, job done with regards to our arbitrary concern for chemical weapons, and not feeling too bad about the rest because of some decidedly symptom treating humanitarian support, pointless diplomatic pressure tantamount to screaming through sound-proof glass and because of the noxious proliferation of the narrative that Assad is only fighting terrorist Islamists.

What semblance of truth there is in that statement only exists because we stood back two or so years ago and watched Assad and the once more consolidated and honest rebellion open the doors to a broader sectarian nightmare. Would that the hammer had come down then. It seems to me that the catalyst for the current diplomatic route we’re travelling was the imminent threat of force, however stunningly deluded little Dougie Alexander might be, bleating as he his from within the Labour ranks about how they should take credit for all of this. No, rather Labour just managed to throw the whole process into disarray.

Intervention was justified, and only a consummate Milquetoast like Ed Miliband needed more proof… well, actually he didn’t, he just saw a window to beat Cameron for a change. There were more than enough indications that it could have been effective in crippling Assad’s regime. Putin and Assad were always sure to make the argument that intervention could only deteriorate the situation, it being in their deeply vested interests not to see the regime fail, and the general public of the UK and USA were all too willing to believe this after a decade of deeply controversial and largely unsuccessful actions in the Middle-East.

Oh but what about Hans Blix you say? That adherent to the UN, he warned against military action too. Yes well, the UN… an organisation, a vast organisation, with a mandate for self-preservation borne both out of the altruistic mission to hold the world together by the seams, and also by the self-interest of its employees. Military intervention would never have passed the Security Council and so would be necessarily in direct contravention to the UN. It’s ironic that Putin mentioned the League of Nations in his letter to America, as we could all be wondering how much more impotence and ineffectiveness the UN could actually survive at this point.

If nations like the USA, UK or France were constantly required to act without UN consent because of the permanently embedded impediment that is China and Russia on the Security Council, then what’s the point? Bravo, Putin, bravo.

What else is there to say? I guess this is about as much a measure of justice as those Syrians who wanted to be free of Assad are going to get. The justice of being shot, bombed and burned instead of gassed by a tyrant whose crimes somehow haven’t been deemed by the international community as so awful that his mere presence, let alone his continued rule, is as cruel an insult as one can imagine. How goddamned naïve of me.

Perspectives on Syria

I should really stop visiting the comments sections of major news organisation’s websites, particularly where currently pertaining to Syria. There is a reason that I have an almost negligible respect for the anti-interventionist brigade, which happens to be in the majority, and it can pretty much all be seen under every article on the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Huffington Post… you name it. A deluge of utter morons has descended onto these forums to fill them with the most rank and misinformed perspectives on this issue. Conspiracy theorists, racists and the plain old idiotic who haven’t tried for a second to filter through the storm of information flowing out of the embattled nation seem to be forming this bulk of public opinion.

Here’s a selection of the standard offerings that have recently caused my blood to boil.

1. “This conflict was engineered by the USA in some sort of regional power play that would benefit Israel.”

This suggestion hardly even warrants attention, as the organic nature of the Arab Spring demonstrably fed into Syria, prompting localized protests against Assad’s regime that were brutally suppressed by Syrian security forces. Assad was already playing the “terrorists” card at this nascent stage of the civil war, causing a backlash of more protests that were also violently suppressed. Large elements of the Syrian army, not to mention the Syrian people, clearly took issue with this murderous tendency of Assad’s, causing desertion and defection to a newly established opposition front. Instead of negotiating, Assad escalated the conflict into a fully fledged civil war.

This all at the same time as US and Israeli relations being as tetchy as ever, and each country having plenty to concern themselves with. Months after the Syrian conflict began, both powers were quite content to ignore what was happening in Syria as Israel once again staged a short war in the Gaza Strip and the USA were deeply involved in Egypt, Libya and ever-so-slightly in trying to unsuccessfully mediate Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Narratively, practically, logically, empirically the first point is total bunk. It likely arises from the fact that the Golan Heights have been of significant strategic important to Israel since they took control of the region following the Six Years War, a conflict that was prompted by repeated antagonisms by Egypt, Jordan and Syria against Israel. Syria used the Golan Heights, which were supposedly demilitarized, to artillery bombard Israeli settlements.

In addition to this, Hamas and Hezbollah have both received extensive support from the Assad government over the course of their lifespans in order to engage in proxy conflict with Israel, a point of no small consternation to successive Israeli governments. There is clearly little love lost between these two nations, and the Syrian conflict is ripe for conspiracy theorists.

2. “The opposition are terrorists and have perpetrated the majority of the crimes in this conflict. Assad is the noble bastion of secular hope for a country that will otherwise be overrun by jihadists.”

This one is particularly offensive. At this deep and intractable stage of the war, there are indeed terrorist elements operating in Syria, but they are still only a small minority of the fighting element, unless of course you count the entire Assad regime. The Al Nusra front are estimated to have less than 10,000 fighters and are the only group with a known affiliation to Al Qaeda. Other groups with Islamist agendas such as the Syrian Islamic Front and Syrian Islamic Liberation Front promote varying degrees of adherence to Sharia principles and yet are still outnumbered by the ostensibly secular Free Syrian Army, by far the largest opposition element in Syria.

The Free Syrian Army was the earliest manifestation of an organised opposition force, back in the days when this conflict was generously still being called an internal security crisis. They formed off the back of Assad’s repeated employment of despotic measures to suppress calls for more democratic controls in a country that has been led by an Assad since 1971. The FSA has largely been comprised of the Syrian people who put down their trades and businesses and were forced to pick up guns because of Assad’s irreconcilable actions. Their numbers and efficacy were swelled by numerous defections from Assad’s own forces.

Assad and his state media machine have been persistently plugging the myth that all the while he has been fighting unlawful dissidents who threaten the regional stability brought by his regime. Many Western observers probably wrote the entire opposition off as a barbaric entity after a certain YouTube video showed one freak incident involving a rebel fighter cutting flesh from a dead Syrian soldier and having a nibble. Atrocious, yes, but wildly misrepresentative. There are actually other more substantive examples of non-individual controversies being attributable to the opposition forces, such as the use of suicide bombings.

But broad culpability for this war in general, and for the greatest share of specific actions that should chill a person to their core, are the responsibility of Bashar al Assad. As mentioned, he kicked the conflict off by using heavy military apparatus in an indiscriminate fashion against his own people, and perpetuated it likewise. The recent evidence of his use of chemical weapons is almost a moot point.

If the international community had taken decisive action at an earlier stage, we might not now be talking about how difficult intervention is because of the convolution caused by the presence of the the Al Nusra Front. I still don’t believe the existing terrorist element is actually significant enough to erode the secular emphasis of the Syrian nation.

Trying to de-legitimise the entire opposition based on the presence of these minority elements is either painfully misinformed or wilfully disgusting.

3. “Intervention is stupid. What, you want to stop Syrians dying by killing more Syrians? Warmonger.”

Shut the f@ck up. The reductive simplicity of this statement might make me want to cause you bodily harm. As if “intervention”, a term with a large variety of potential characteristics, implicitly means the West will indiscriminately carpet-bomb Damascus or that we’ll be dumping troops into another desert to slowly perish in a protracted occupation. People have been so quick to write off the effectiveness of any form of military intervention however, that I’m almost tempted to want precisely that so these types can see exactly how effective a well-executed intervention against a fatigued security force in a morale crisis can be.

Analysts and defectors have been quite clear that an array of military targets are available for Western forces to strike, which would have a devastating impact on Assad’s regime were he to lose them.

Accusations of warmongering could not be more ill-conceived. This conflict has been raging for about two and half years and the international community has more or less sat on its hands, being definitively too pathetic to act. It’s an utter tragedy that it’s taken over 100,000 dead and the blatant use of internationally outlawed chemical weapons to stop the world from dragging its feet over Syria.

As it is, the temperament of intervention is currently that the USA have given Assad a one week ultimatum to yield his chemical weapon stocks or face punitive strikes, an ultimatum actually backed by Putin who seems finally unable to ignore his nuisance regional ally. Yeh, that’s really champing at the bit for some death and mayhem.

4. “But if we do anything at all we’ll upset the delicate regional balance and makes things worse!”

This is the closest thing yet to a respectable anti-interventionist position, as indeed there is a fairly complex network of groups and interests at this point. However, as mentioned the FSA remains the key opposition unit in a country that has largely enjoyed secularism in its recent history, and the notion of an Islamist takeover strikes me as slightly exaggerated.

The main issue I take with this is that it is the same logic that has been applied by other nations from the start. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the immediate aftermath of Libya, there has been huge hesitance to do anything about Syria and look where we are now.

So… ok. Let’s keep doing nothing and hope for the best? Yeh. It’ll work itself out. Because the conflict isn’t at all only getting worse under the current conditions.

This one is called a difficult decision, and I put my stock in action at this point. Two and half years of frustration and upset caused by the endless newsreel out of Syria is about as much as I can take. Thus god forbid I was actually a Syrian right now.

Russia, China and Iran, by the way, are about as likely to involve themselves in a war as Ed Miliband is likely to ever possess a shred of moral scruples, or testicles for that matter.

5. “Iraq here we go again!”

No, and I’m not even sure where to start with this one. I’ll keep it simple. For reasons you should be able to research yourself, Iraq and Syria are completely different and must be judged by their own set of facts. Beyond this, the entire suggested character of Western involvement in Syria is SO different to Iraq that even the French are getting involved this time.

Yes, Hollande has shown a bit more international clout over Libya and Mali than his predecessors, but then add Merkel to the coalition, and Putin marginally stepping away from his unconditioned support of Assad, and you should be wondering less as to why I was so mean about Ed Miliband earlier.

6. “Intervention is really only about making Obama and Cameron feel good about themselves. Politicians like to massage their own egos with this sort of pointless action”

Again, hideously reductive. You know how racists often say, “I’m not a racist, but…”? The people who use this argument are almost exclusively saying, “We all care deeply for the Syrian people and want their suffering to stop, but… 6.”

Frankly, given how clear this matter is to me, and despite being in the clear minority, I’m starting to suspect that people pulling these daft arguments out are genuinely apathetic to this prolonged conflict, the many tens of thousands of dead, the millions displaced and a country laid to ruin.

Intervention is about stopping this conflict, and it has been demonstrated that intervention could be effective. If you think otherwise, you’re a cynic or worse.

7. “It’s not our problem, let the Syrians sort it out themselves.”

Well, as heartless as this perspective is, at least it’s honest. I would remind these people to think about their own words the next time they peacefully protest in this country about anything, or better yet, when they go to peacefully vote out this government, or the next, or many to come. Syria might not strictly speaking be our problem but it’s mighty hypocritical not to take into account the joys of living in a country like England.

Let’s just hope we never need any help should our government ever crack down on us Assad style, eh?

I’ve temporarily exhausted myself. But like the thronging crowds at a Victorian grotesquerie who can’t help but look in horror at the Elephant Man, I’ll likely return to these threads to encounter more of the best evidence I’ve seen to date that people can well and truly be utterly deluded.

Again the Eve of Conflict

It’s looking more than likely that the USA, UK and France will once again be shipping out forces to fight a battle far removed from home. The Assad regime of Syria seems to have finally pushed too hard, with the chemical gassing of a Damascus neighbourhood resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds of other casualties. Not the first hint of this civil war crossing into more vicious territory, and it was already more than vicious enough. As governments and militaries are this very moment drawing up plans, prompted further by the Arab League’s recognition of Assad’s clear and unacceptable crimes, the British public are already beginning to react.

The tone does not seem overly favourable to the idea of intervention. A quick flick through the comments section of any media site will prove this. Whether it’s outrage over another Middle Eastern intervention before we’ve even brushed off the sand from the last three, the fact that living standards don’t seem to be faltering enough for the government to drop probably millions of pounds worth of munitions in the coming weeks or more overt brands of cynicism (oil, power conspiracies, interests etc.), you could even say there’s a fair dose of pre-emptive anger. Whether you’re Obama, Cameron, Hollande or associated foreign secretary, you can guarantee this action isn’t being taken lightly.

How could it be? It’s been over two years since Assad’s forces started shooting his own people for peacefully protesting for more democratic controls, sparking the backlash against his government that quickly devolved into a civil war, no matter how cautious global commentators were in labelling it so. Throughout this time over 100,000 people have died in Syria, despite the repeated and impotent protestations of the international community. When the red line was drawn a few months ago over the use of chemical weapons, we even had to considerably thicken that line to the tune of blatant and callous use before we would act.

I’m no hawk. Not that you need to be to view things like the mismanagement of Afghanistan, the outright disaster of Iraq and the as yet unresolved troubles of Libya as stark indictments of Western government attitudes towards intervention and more importantly, reconstruction. But it still sickens to me read comments that are simply heartless to the plight of the Syrian people, and I hope beyond hope that this now almost unavoidable intervention will somehow get it right. I can’t even suggest what the character of that would realistically look like, given that this conflict is now beyond protracted and deeply convoluted.

Here’s what I’d say to the average dick who thinks the Syrians should just sort their own mess out. They were trying to and more or less just received indiscriminate gunfire for their troubles. Would you riot and rebel if the Cameron government let blood on the Mall like this because we wanted to have more freedoms? Too f@*king right you would, and you’d be crying across the Channel and the Atlantic for help all the while. This isn’t even the most pertinent point though. For nine out of ten Syrians, this was never their fight to lose and regardless their country is now largely reduced to rubble and graveyards because of a sick, megalomaniacal despot in Assad.

I don’t much care if the Syrian opposition has added their own share of controversy to this mess, as it seems as perfectly clear who landed the first and most overtly unjust blow, as who is responsible for continuing and escalating the conflict. There is no such thing as rulers. Leaders like Obama, Cameron and Hollande are all on borrowed time, graciously lent to them by democratic peoples. The moment Syria didn’t want the Assad regime was the moment he should have gone, not that they ever had a tenable mechanism with which to remove him. He never had any legitimacy to lead his people in the first place, inheriting all that he had from his father.

Not our problem? That’s a perspective for spineless hypocrites in my opinion. Like any instance where the world has twiddled its thumbs while thousands upon thousands of innocent people have perished in a war completely beyond their control, Syria deserves help. Whether you like it not or it’s around the corner, just maybe remember your objections the next time you go to peacefully vote out Cameron because you didn’t like him. I support the intent. Just pray it isn’t another failure.

Back to America

A quick glance at the recent works and I see it has been some few months since I really looked at anything outside of the EU. Now of all times would be ideal to do so, with so much going on. Electoral concerns in Venezuela, the North Korean problem, Pervez Musharraf’s return to Pakistan… all will take second place to the sudden burst of activity coming out of nowhere else other than the illustrious United States of America.

No need for the build, I think we all know what might be touched upon. The Boston Marathon bombing was a shock and a tragedy, but in my opinion a relatively muted one. I’m not trying to write down the deaths of three people, including a young boy, but it says a huge deal about how far the world has come since 9/11 that the reaction was essentially measured. Perhaps I could be watching a bit more Fox News, but I’ve not heard any blood-curdling screams for revenge against Muslims, or any suggestions that this is entirely Obama’s fault.

Scale no doubt plays a role. The casualties have not remotely been as near to the tolls of a number of appalling attacks that have taken place in Afghanistan and Iraq recently, but who the hell cares about those dust bowls? Hopefully lots of people actually, although the disproportionate attention given to Boston in light of these other incidents suggests that isn’t the case. This fine article by Assed Baig for The Huffington Post does not only discuss this, but it’s also by far the best article I’ve read on that otherwise general repository for journalistic effluvium.

Terrible website. But I digress. The bombings were awful. Wherever such an event takes place it always is awful but clearly we’ve grown somewhat resilient to them. Whether for better or worse we have become used to a climate in which these things happen occasionally and I imagine it would take a considerably bigger bang and a higher body count to seriously start ruffling international feathers. And potentially a different target, which leads us onto the next point.

The question of who actually was responsible has also been surprisingly muted, where in this situation I would not unreasonably anticipate a brain-achingly tiresome degree of speculation. So I’d better speculate a bit now. The target suggests to my keenly honed eye for security and counter-terrorism, honed so keenly at the Institute For Anyone With A Brain Is Entitled To An Opinion, is that the culprits are either some old fashioned McVeigh anti-establishment types or an extremely localised Islamic fundamentalist group.

International terrorism has a reasonably well-defined modus operandi and a slightly niche sporting event doesn’t fit the bill. Public transport, government or financial infrastructure could have surely made for a more potent outcome in terms of physical and human damage, not to mention in a more populous and significant area than Boston. Deliciously speculative indeed, but I would have to throw my hat into the former category. It almost feels silly and xenophobic to even mention the radical Muslims these days, given how distant that fight seems to have become.

However, throw together a second term for Obama and attempts at gun control (both deeply unpopular with a hard right wing), coupled with a still intensely iffy (the professional term) economy, and I see a cocktail ripe for backwoods extremism. Oh, and add a dose of The March of the Gays, also known as a surge in political backing for LGBT rights, and we’re positively on the verge of a conflagration. In all honestly I’m surprised there hasn’t been domestic mutiny sooner.

It’s either a testament to the strong fabric of American society or the vast internal security apparatus, established by current hermit George W. Bush, that this stands out as a lone incident in recent years. Unless, that is, you were to include every casual school or public shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. And why wouldn’t you? Terrorism doesn’t demand a central organisation and political motivation, just acts of terror.

This is a hugely pertinent point, because the almost criminally negligent US Senate, or rather the truly corrupt Republican wing of that body, have just shot down the most limited attempt at imposing sanity to US gun regulation. Background checks? Nope. Assault weapons ban? Nope. It is corruption, is it not, when an interest group actively manipulates the actions of legislators for mutual gain? Just checking. The closest thing resembling a Republican moral apparently died before I started paying attention.

The reason I try and link these shootings to terrorism is because it is potentially a pathway to successful measures in this horribly troubled battle. If you weren’t aware, the IRA was for decades funded by wealthy east coast American-Irish fraternities, who kept pouring funds back into the homeland as they held to an outdated anti-Anglo sentiment that was as disingenuous as the notion any of these Yanks really were Irish.

IRA funding from the USA dried up almost overnight after 9/11 as Americans, particularly New Yorkers, were adequately reminded of what terrorism was. Suddenly the previously heroic actions of the IRA took on a hugely unsavoury tone. This is what needs to happen in the gun debate. The core argument needs to move well away from this twisted 2^nd Amendment defence and towards the idea that controls will prevent terrorism. The anti-government paranoids will always have their gripes but make no mistake. A psychotic American with a gun is potentially as much a terrorist as a psychotic Muslim with a bomb.

Correspondents Roundup

Superb. Simply superb. In case you haven’t followed up to this point there are a handful of journalists of some renown whom I track and occasionally offer a retort to, depending on how objectionable a certain discussed topic might be. To date these have been Mark Mardell, Simon Jenkins and Jonathan Freedland, although I’m always tempted to overextend my attention to others, and each has just produced a fine piece of work.

I’m not lavishing praise on them for nothing, and not simply because they are journalists of a very high standard and these are notable pieces, but actually because by sheer providence they have individually touched upon the key issues that I was looking to. Mardell’s piece studies Obama’s tour of the Levant, Jenkins approaches the outcome of Leveson and press regulation with a shared sense of dread and disappointment and Freedland goes about the Budget with a cleaver of truth.

While I do pride myself upon the creation of a well-written article of sound facts and analyses, I don’t pride myself for repeating the thoughts that others were more diligent in putting into the public sphere. As mentioned in my last article, those people do usually benefit from being employed to be so diligent, but I don’t like to make excuses. I do my best even if that is sometimes to merely offer an opinion or a more obscure angle.

On the other hand, on occasions like today it’s just nice to tip my hat to those who have completely removed the necessity to exercise my self-imposed obligation to comment. Mardell eloquently describes the pains with which Obama is tentatively manoeuvring through his overseas visit with just hint of the resignation and scepticism that has begun to characterise most grand endeavours in that part of the world.

Jenkins clearly perceives the moves of government to install press regulation in the same terms as I do. Criticism of elements of the British press was patently justified after their scandalous behaviour, and a considerable change of culture was required. But that could have been achieved by realigning core media values with the existing laws and general moralities of the age. The wealthy and powerful now have obscene control over their own public profiles.

And Freedland… oh Freedland. Perhaps more than anyone I’m loving Freedland today. I watched the Budget yesterday, yes, actually watched the Budget, and the ensuing deluge of analysis in order to actually make sense of much of it. I’m not stupid by any metric, but neither am I an economist, and nearly an hour of a speech containing nought but economy related issues is a bit dense. Understanding the measures in context can only be helped by a little interpretation.

Freedland’s article stands out for me because it attacks the issue in the manner that I would. While I’m sure he has a better grasp of the economic factors then I do, he was also looking to the politics of the Budget. And I love politics, none more so than British. It is like the perfect marriage of all the serious matters of life with a sort of tragicomic theatre, and indeed lately I’ve almost had no need for non-factual television programming.

Read these pieces, damn your eyes. Read them and give me the benefit of the doubt that had I been more focussed you might have read them here first. Would that I could provide such a service.

Freedland on Ed

I’m pleased to say another contributor to the world of information has been filtered out for my entirely less qualified attention. Jonathan Freedland is to be the third writer under the microscope, although only after some deliberation, as Caitlin Moran was making a strong case for inclusion in this journalistic canon just the other day, with a piece ranging from the role of art in society to the effects of modern pornography on young sexual expectations.

Freedland edged the focus of this article by a nose however, given the combined events of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions and an article in the Huffington Post looking at Ed Miliband’s new Reaganesque angle of attack. The lead question from the opposition leader echoed that of the Republican icon in his day, “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”. These things are pertinent to Freedland’s recent article, asking what kind of leader will Miliband be.

A brief introduction though. Freedland is a regular contributor to the Guardian, like Jenkins, and also the New York Times, but with a more political focus and journalistic style. A bit less inclined to offer personal thoughts on a given issue than that other monolith of opinion, he is more likely to drive the cognitive gears by framing a discussion. Jenkins generally achieves this with a stronger position put forward for dissection and potential objection.

As to the aforementioned discussion of Miliband’s character of leadership, he actually puts things in more specific terms. “Will Ed Miliband be an Obama or Hollande?”, he asks. The question boils down to the potential manner in which Ed may one day ascend to power; with dynamic, inspiring visions of change, or quietly and inevitably on the back of repetitive Tory failings and subsequent dissatisfaction? I think today’s PMQ’s was a further hint of which.

From my perspective, Miliband has thus far been firmly camped out in the Hollande corner, and not to repeat the statements of several previous articles I shall only here label him the… endless font of condemnation not cut with a shred of evident constructive thinking. This from the alleged ideas man of the Labour Party. Perhaps as Freedland indicates, it has simply been far too difficult to resist the regular temptations of steady government incompetence.

Despite Miliband’s efforts in the Commons today, challenging Cameron on that issue of the voter’s changing fortunes, the Prime Minister had just enough politically viable defence at hand to resist. But his closing remarks to his assailant were something of a PMQ’s knockout, as he told the House of Miliband’s “major speech on the economy”. A speech, he gleefully added, which contains no new policy initiatives. Queue the Tory benches going ballistic.

This somewhat laughable omission would be damaging enough to the idea that the Labour Party are offering a reasonable alternative, but the matter is compounded by the manner in which the man was on the assault today. It was over two years ago that the media had put the notion that Ed could be Ed to the sword, his early tenure being veritably riddled with satire. It was, in all serious terms, quite hard to take him seriously.

Last year it seems that various oscillations of personal image management finally stabilised to some degree, as with the “One Nation” party conference speech he attempted statesmanship. Aside from famously pinching the central theme of that speech from famed Conservative Disraeli, it was only otherwise notable for painfully lacking in policy and detail. Worse however, it was the beginning of his steady evolution into a 19^th Century style of barracker in the Commons.

But “One Nation” hasn’t made much of an appearance since early after the conference, and with his recent channeling of energy into the Reagan Question, it seems he is transforming yet again. Sadly for the state of healthy opposition, it is a transformation of image only and from Ed to Benjamin to Ronald the only consistent thing about Miliband and company is a lack of substance from the Labour front bench.

Freedland is right to indicate that Miliband’s tone of leadership will be more important come election time, and with a sustained healthy lead over the Tories in the polls, thanks to their masochistic tendencies, it can even be said he has no immediate reason to fill that void of usefulness. One can only hope that there is at least a semblance of a plan being squirreled away somewhere though, as an economically rudderless Labour government is a scary prospect.

I could easily be sold on a truly progressive and realistic agenda set out by Labour, admittedly due heavily to present disenfranchisement with the government, but that is not looking likely to appear from this set-up. Frankly the idea of Miliband conjuring a fervour comparable to Obama is a fantasy, with or without policy. But as Hollande aptly proved, and as the Tories are currently adding truth to the fact, all it takes is a really, really unpopular incumbent.

Earlier on in this government I had privately written off Miliband as a caretaker leader, possibly not even set to face a single general election. But Freedland’s article has reminded me of that slightly grim fact. In my defence, back then I could never have anticipated the scope of Tory blundering that led to his ascendancy. Prime Minister Miliband? Too much of a mouthful for me, but I’m not actually partisan… I just want someone to offer something truly appealing.

American Discourse

Other than last month’s article discussing gun control, I’ve devoted little attention to the USA since the immediate aftermath of Obama’s victory. Turning to other parts of the world and different issues is always a relief after the general election, it being lengthy and deeply exhausting, but a number of things have caught the eye recently. Or one thing, rather, common to several prominent debates in US politics at present.

It started just as I was happily tuning out of the American conversation, knowing what the few months between the incumbent’s November re-election and re-inauguration on 20^th January would bring. Budget wrangling and cabinet nomination sparring of the most venomous and tedious of sorts. Looking to the Middle-Eastern and domestic concerns was a welcome change of scenery, as unpleasant as that scenery often was.

Admittedly, there were passing glances back across the Atlantic but no more than to confirm the familiar scenes of impossibly childish bickering between the honest-to-god lawmakers of the most powerful country on the planet. It appeared the Republicans had gone a sorry, insular direction after their loss and ignoring the routes back towards being a functioning or at least adequate opposition, chose to recommit themselves to all things anti-Obama.

There is nothing discernibly new about cross-party feuding in general, especially for one from the UK where it has been formalised into a weekly puppet theatre, which I love, but it was slightly more concerning to witness a new degree of obstinacy. The right wing die-hards perhaps began to absorb their own demented propagandist visions of a second-term for the Democrats, and they seem possessed by a sort of crazed and apocalyptic lack of cooperation. Fiscal cliffs and credibility be damned.

While it is easy to fall into the trap of imagining that the state of things are falling steadily into decline, I’m not prepared to concede I’m merely not looking hard enough at the past for similarly vitriolic examples. I think the George W. Bush years, followed immediately by Obama’s greatly contrasting tenure, has laid out a severe dividing line in the nation that is becoming much more challenging to reach across.

Recent examples of the failures of American political discourse have run to the truly heinous with aid bills for 9/11 responders, war veterans and natural disaster victims somehow becoming sticking points in Congress. True conservatism implies a degree of caution where heavy spending is concerned but that’s not to say it is devoid of compassion. This Republican fixation on forbidding the Democratic government from extracting a single red cent, even for the most patently proper of causes, is obscene and a dereliction of public duty.

No surprise at all then that the budget talks have been so stuttering, and there is equally nothing new about the exaggerated outrage surrounding Secretary of Defence candidate Chuck Hagel. But where I’ve thus far lambasted the Republicans for their role in the stagnant political scene, the case of this long-serving politician and Vietnam veteran goes both ways. There are, of course, deep rumblings from hawks over his Eisenhower-like approach to war and the military, notably his opinion of how to deal with Iran coupled with his evident lack of impractical devotion to Israel.

More curious though is the vocal dissatisfaction from the LGBT lobby, who are distinctly and, I think unfairly, unimpressed with former senator Hagel. Way back when in 1998 he said some ill-advised things about Jim Hormel, then nominee for Ambassador to Luxembourg and homosexual. Hagel also supported “don’t ask, don’t tell” and doesn’t possess a stellar record on voting for LGBT rights but the lobby’s reaction is disappointing. Popular activism site Back2Stonewall calls him an anti-gay bigot while labelling his nomination sickening.

There is simply a remarkable lack of reasoned temperament permeating almost every facet of public debate in the USA right now. From left to right and back again, the starting disposition for nigh on every issue appears to be entrenched and combative, but reaching new extremes of disingenuity. Would that it only ran as far as the matters mentioned up to this point, but it would be painfully naïve to hope it were so.

Sadly, although it would be good to say no one could have predicated the desperately tragic events of Newtown, they extended a pattern of all too often repeated incidents that are beginning to feel predictable. The shooting of school pupils and staff by Adam Lanza further highlighted what can only be called a stunning indictment of the nation’s failure to bring but the slightest degree of rationality to gun controls. There couldn’t conceivably be a silver lining to this sort of thing, but in the very least it seems to have finally triggered another serious approach.

This debate, depending on how determined Joe Biden and his taskforce are, has the potential to be genuine political warfare. The gun lobby is about as potent as it comes and the Second Amendment tends to strike a notably emotional chord. In the current climate, and despite the shame brought down on the defenders of that antiquated “right”, it is hard to imagine this will be a smooth ride. If Texan radio host Alex Jones is a taste of things to come, buckle up. The already tattered state of American discourse will certainly be getting worse before it gets better.

Into the Wild – Republicanism

Finally, the 2012 general election in the USA is over. Even for a die hard such as myself the sheer expanse and intensity of this event is exhausting and, results aside, it’s a major relief. Our attentions can turn back to issues of importance rather than the grand and heavily disingenuous courtship between government and people that every cycle seems to get a little longer and a lot more expensive. There’s plenty to be said about the nature of the campaigns and the easily criticised system of electioneering and funding and all the rest but it would be nicer to now look forward.

Obama emerged the undisputed winner, which to myself at least was a very pleasing thing and we can only wait to see how he approaches his second term. The key interest there will be to see if he maintains his cautious approach of the first term, or rather takes the gloves off, having personally nothing to lose at this point, and aggressively pursues those unattained goals. One would hope the latter, as the cautious approach didn’t go a particularly long way the first time round.

From the start of 2009, that initial pledge to work in a bipartisan fashion was torn to shreds by a Republican opposition who rapidly adopted a mission to ensure that Obama would not see a second term in office. The first two years were a fairly stuttering affair, and though arguably the administration was successful in averting further economic catastrophe, this success wasn’t sufficiently translated into real improvements in the lives of the average American. The resulting Tea Party movement was co-opted by harder leaning Republicans who in step with Fox News went about lambasting the efforts and intentions of the president.

The result was heavy losses in the House of Representatives at the mid-terms and a further two years of legislative gridlock and increasing dissatisfaction amongst the people over the concern that government was becoming less and less a functional mechanism. Though the House was retained by the GOP, with four clear years ahead there is a strong expectation that Obama will be able to take this obstacle on in a less tender manner.

What is of greater interest to me however is the crossroads at which the Republicans now stand. Despite the spectrum of American politics being noticeably more to the right in general than in the UK, there are plenty of parallels to draw between the dire straits the Tories found themselves in during the late 90’s and where the Republicans are now. Beyond that the overall strategy has resoundingly failed, that the voting public rejected the vitriolic display of far right sentiment seen in the past four years, there are some deep and concerning factors for them.

First, the Republican party has only won the popular vote in one of six of the last elections, in 2004 when W. Bush still relatively narrowly defeated Kerry. The last convincing popular victory was in 1988 when H.W. Bush hammered Michael Dukakis in the electoral college. We should all be only too familiar with the infamous events of 2000 when W. Bush lost the popular vote to Gore and barely swung the electoral college after nefarious circumstances around the Florida recount gave that state to Bush. The problem here is that the demographics of the USA continue to shift towards more ethnic minorities who have in the past decade strongly favoured Democratic candidates. The popular vote is only going to get harder for the Republicans and there is only so much time left for the inconsistencies of the electoral college to give them a reasonable chance.

So much as Euroscepticism was the major stumbling block for the Tories, hardline xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Republican party could spell the end for them. They desperately need to find a way to appeal to those minorities through finding their moderate views again. Cameron and his compassionate conservatism did eventually see the party back from the wilderness and into power, however tenuous, and it seems clear that taking the middle ground is always the key to political success. It’s how Labour surged to victory in 1997 and it’s probably the only way forward for Republicanism.

Moderation of course shouldn’t just apply to areas like immigration. Though Romney did perform poorly amongst minorities, the other area he suffered in was with women, most likely through his party’s rather odious positions on abortion rights and other social issues like equal pay and homosexuality. These views were only reinforced by the parties collusion with the financially and socially conservative Tea Party movement which was itself over-hyped by a conservative media seeing to draw attention to any point of dissatisfaction amongst the people over the new liberal administration. This lurch to the right has patently failed.

The Democrats should have lost this election. At no point in the last 40 years has an incumbent held on to power with unemployment above 7.5% and going into the final days of this election it remained close to 8%. Romney is naturally a moderate politician, as seen in his days as governor of Massachusetts, and should in theory have been perfectly positioned to take power. But after months of a primary battle which saw him re-tailor almost every one of his natural positions in order to appeal to a more hardened base, he had very little space to manoeuvre.

In the immediate wake of the election outcome, various conservative pundits have suggested he was too moderate and this a rather scary thing. It seems far more likely that it was his shift to the right that disengaged those important voting blocks and handed a genuinely unlikely victory to Obama. With voices on the right already calling for a reaffirmation of conservative values, they seem to have entirely missed the point. Like the Tories, by rooting out or hushing up those hard elements they could conceivably find their feet.

Incidentally, aren’t we now watching the Tories lose theirs again? With a petulant little wing of the party now rearing it’s ugly anti-EU head, we can already see the extent to which it is politically hazardous. The consistency of these issues in sending conservative politics into the wilderness is startling and for the sake of a healthy state of American governance, which is important for the rest of the world, it’s about time the message was heeded.

Moderate, and quickly. It couldn’t be said with any certainty that this will happen, as with the House still under Republican control they still possibly have enough clout to, for the time being, remain an obstinate political force. But if for the next two years they remain an immovable object against what should be a determined administration, the perception of overall ineffectual governance will shift towards themselves as being the problem and they will suffer for it at the next mid-terms. Where they would go from that point is very hard to say and so all the more reason for some real introspection.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

The US Presidential race is polling at a hair’s breadth between the two major party candidates. Obama and Romney stand within few points of each other in most samples and taking the margin of error into account, the incumbent’s generally negligible lead is reduced to meaningless proportions. This, at least, is broadly the message of the domestic and international news media. There are important considerations to include, particularly the distinction between “registered” and “likely” voter polling and the fact that there are several third party candidates.

Of note, Romney has only led Obama in one Gallup Tracking poll of registered voters which took place 14-20 October in the aftermath of an excellent performance by Romney in the first presidential debate, and a highly competitive vice-presidential debate between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden.

Following Obama’s improved displays in the second and third debates, the polls tightened again and Romney has found primarily minor gains in exclusively likely voter polling of a two-way race, the key exceptions being another Gallup Tracking poll, 22-28 October, and one Rasmussen poll, 20-22 October, with a five and four point lead respectively beating the margin of error. This can still be countered with an astonishing, though outlying, twelve point lead for Obama in the Ipsos/Reuters poll of registered voters taken 24-28 October.

Polling for three, four or five-way races is direly insufficient but the most recent Zogby/JZAnalytics poll, 18-20 October, shows Obama holding a more likely two point lead over Romney in a five-way race involving Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Green candidate Jill Stein and Constitution candidate Virgil Goode.

Add to this the good fortune Obama has encountered in the past week, with New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie lauding the president’s efforts in managing the Hurricane Sandy crisis and New York’s widely respected Mayor Bloomberg providing vocal support. The momentum gained by the former Massachusetts governor throughout October was starting to diminish prior to the campaign hiatus forced by the hurricane, but Obama was effectively allowed to continue by virtue of his public obligations as president. Public perception of his presidency further recovered after his soporific first debate.

The extremely encouraging figures of 171,000 new jobs posted with unemployment held fractionally below 8%, will also have Romney struggling more than polls suggest. His most acceptable case for becoming president resides in a wealth of private sector experience that could be put to good use in improving job markets. This has been his key argument, coupled with intense criticism of Obama’s efforts in this area. Beyond what was tantamount to an endorsement from one of the Republican parties likely future leaders in Christie, the numbers are a significant blow to Romney’s advocacy for change.

With New York Times pollster Nate Silver increasing the odds of an Obama victory to 80%, it seems the boost incurred by Romney’s admirable debate efforts were short lived, or more forgivingly, not enough to beat a literal force of nature and a practically perfect response from the president.

Romney’s Foreign Policy

On Monday 8^th October, Mitt Romney treated us to another rare display, his fifth, on foreign policy throughout his broader race to the White House. It’s an area the man has clearly not been overly comfortable with and for that matter why should he be? He entirely lacks real experience in the area, never having served in the military and his highest post of public office being the governorship of Massachusetts, well away from the potential for national level select committees where many otherwise white collar American politicians learn a thing or two about the outside world. His career in the private sector could not possibly be said to have granted him any substantive knowledge, beyond perhaps trade and business, aspects not typically associated with the crux of foreign policy.

That is an assessment Romney probably agrees with if we were to take inference from his 22 minute delivery to the Virginia Military Institute. Along with other areas one might generally include in the remit of foreign affairs, such as soft power, diplomacy and international aid, trade and business were given at best a perfunctory coverage. By my count, he accrued one, or a generous two, minutes on anything other than national defence and the military.

There are issues to consider before launching into an attack on this apparently ill-conceived distribution of coverage. The first being that Romney is a Republican vying for national power and of course he is going to appeal to that more hawkish base of his. The second is obviously that he is addressing a room full of cadets and would be silly not to directly appeal to them. These are political factors that should be considered in fairness, as how rarely do the words of a campaign truly match the actions of government? Sadly rarely indeed, and though an unfortunate truth of the matter we wished wasn’t so, is still important in avoiding hypocrisy. Obama has most certainly not carried through with his every promise.

With Romney however, there is a key difference. Many of Obama’s promises were ones that we all wanted him to fulfil, closing Guantanamo Bay not the least. Through Monday’s speech I can quite happily state that I hope, should Romney take office, he forgets nearly every promise he made. Just to warm you up to the notion, would you like to see USN carrier groups in the Eastern Med and Persian Gulf applying overbearing military pressure on a region so fraught with sensitivity and already more tense than a Mormon in a strip club? The answer should be no unless you belong to an apocalyptic cult, and not trying to be glib, I do not refer to the entire Republican Party.

The Romney campaign rather misjudged this speech in my humble opinion. If the aim was to give their candidate a credible aura in this area of governance they would have done better to not start with crude references to General Marshall that, Romney not being a noted student of history, were most likely fed to him with a spoon. Association by reference to grandeur is a weak political tool in the first place, one that I attacked Ed Miliband for recently with his incessant mentioning of Disraeli. Beyond this it simply jarred and for no more a complicated reason than Romney looking about as stiff and awkward as I’ve ever seen him. All the gravitas and charm of the first Presidential debate had vanished and from introduction to conclusion he descended into near boredom, just begging the prompter to run out of text.

Maintaining consciousness though, I listened to the man hammer Obama on almost every global issue of significance, most coming out of the Middle-East. It was an academic approach. Whether it was Syria, Iran, Egypt or Libya, he provided a thin analysis that might be produced by a GCSE mid-week report to build an impression of familiarity with those issues and then blamed practically everything on the incumbent. Evidently Obama’s foreign policy is at the root of all these deeply complex dilemmas, either initiating them or in the least failing to single-handedly solve them with his divine mandate as President of the United States. Romney has the solutions though. Arm the Syrian rebels, hunt down the murderers of Ambassador Stevens, put Iran on notice and keep a watchful, arrogant eye on the Muslim Brotherhood led Egypt. It’s really that simple.

Where not attacking Obama, he promoted such outdated concepts that I think his staffers pulled the speech from 1970’s neo-conservative playbook. And why not?!? Only 3 of 28 NATO nations are committing to 2% GDP defence spending and Putin “casts a long shadow over young democracies in Europe”. America itself must reaffirm its psychotic levels of military spending that already stands at 41% of total global military spending… the impression one is left with is that some in America think the Cold War is still on or rather wish it still was. Romney himself distils this notions by suggesting that America must somehow achieve the unlikely responsibility of leading the world and shaping events without a false sense of pride. It’s an attractive image if you buy it, especially as Obama risks leading the American people into enslavement and destruction.

The entire speech was quite painful really. It screamed a belief in America’s inviolable capacity for interventionism and the moral right to maintain this. This is despite the more commonly held view that the era of superpowers tugging at the strings of their lesser regional allies is over. China, the world’s emerging superpower, is quite determined to avoid even the most stridently acceptable case of interventionism as seen in their handling of the Syrian crisis. The notion of American moral supremacy that Romney seems to hold dear is arguably more disconcerting that his outrageous material suggestions such as arbitrarily building a handful of naval vessels and submarines. What absolutely astounds me is that he doesn’t only attach this morality to military affairs.

In the brief section of the speech that Romney did talk about anything that didn’t implicitly involve lots of guns and ammunition, he loaded the institution of US aid with the most incredible stipulations. Aid would only be granted with the condition of strong oversight with a particular mind to creating free markets in those countries that would bow down to recreating themselves in America’s image. Were it possible, this is a more horrifying proposal than starting World War III in the Middle-East, which a Romney foreign policy loyal to this speech would likely cause.

His is the foreign policy of an American mind of some two decades past, all the more tragically unchanged for the intervening events to this day. His answer to the world’s problems is a sudden explosion of American power and aggression that would somehow cause all global antagonists to run in fear and capitulate to a new era of American supremacy. Did I learn more from my brief A-level studies of the Vietnam War than Romney ever did through being a red-blooded son of Uncle Sam? Almost certainly. That tempestuous disposition is the result of the misinformed belief in power taking precedence over even a basic faith in the lessons of history or a working knowledge of the state of the modern world.

In the stakes of appealing to his base, he succeeded, but where concerned with offering a realistic and nuanced set of ideas that offered any hope of the peaceful world he aspires to, it was a miserable performance. Perhaps his campaign realises the ship has sailed in this area and all he needs to do is wet the appetites of your average NRA card holder and settle the nerves of those right-leaning individuals who were so very concerned he might be moderate. I pray this is so, as almost point for point these are campaign promises that should be consigned to the dustbin.

Team America? Fuck no.