Monthly Archives: May 2011

Even bleaker for the Republicans

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After past week’s developments, the situation has gotten even bleaker for the Republican Party in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who did well in 2008 before John McCain became the party’s candidate, announced that he was not a candidate. He prefers to continue as a well-paid employee at Fox television. “My heart was not in it,” he said. Huckabee joined Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, South Dakota Senator John Thune, and Mike Pence, congressman from Indiana, all of whom had earlier announced that they are will not run.

Newt Gingrich, however, is running. Now 67 years old and a throwback to the 90′s monumental confrontations with President Bill Clinton, Gingrich is a man with a politically and personally controversial past. Last week, a New York Times editorial called what Gingrich stands for “repellent.” Such a comment from the liberal Times can be an advantage for him among the party’s right wing and the Tea Party-movement, but, when it comes down to it, Gingrich is judged to have little or no chance to win the nomination.

Mitt Romney continues to insist that he is a candidate and that he should be taken seriously. But it does not look good for him after his attempt this past week to explain and explain away his health care reform in Massachusetts a few years ago and how he, at the same time, can sharply criticize President Obama’s health care reform. The whole thing is odd and rings false. The truth is that Romney’s reform is very similar to Obama’s, so hated by the Republicans, as expressed by a Wall Street Journal editorial last week, which brutally attacked Romney, saying that he might as well be Obama’s running mate next year.

So where are we today? Well, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty leads a weak and largely unknown field of candidates, now weakened further by Huckabee’s decision. It remains to be seen whether the 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin or Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann decide to run. Palin: probably not. Bachmann: probably. Or what Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels decides do to. No one seems yet to know.

No matter what they decide, it does not fundamentally change the Republicans’ problem: they have no serious challenger to President Obama, who now plays with much better cards after the operation against Osama bin Laden, and who will be, at about a billion dollars, very expensive to defeat.

Maybe the chances are greater to win back the majority in the Senate and to preserve the majority in the House of Representatives, thereby making it very difficult for a re-elected Obama. That prospect may prove to be a good consolation prize for the Republicans.

Georgia On My Mind…

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Onwards, on my trip through the South.

At the Georgia border, the welcome sign read “Georgia on My Mind,” and, of course, I immediately thought of Ray Charles and his version of the song, which is now Georgia’s national anthem.

Ray Charles came from Georgia, and so did Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom have become some of the most famous of Georgia’s citizens, deceased and contemporary, with their own places of pilgrimage, Albany and Atlanta. Two black legends of the old South…

In downtown Albany, next to Flint River, I visited Ray Charles Plaza and its statue of the music legend, born here in 1930. He sits at his piano and his songs and music flows out in the heat over the river and the city, as the entire statue slowly spins round and round…”What’d I Say. “

Albany, a town of 75 000 people of whom over two thirds today are black, was once dominated by large cotton plantations with its black slaves. The city’s old museum, once built with the help of Andrew Carnegie’s money, was closed to blacks until the 1964 civil rights law. In the early 1960s, the Albany Movement became an important part of the civil rights struggle. Martin Luther King came here from Atlanta with his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but was met with fierce resistance from the white establishment.

Today, Albany has a black mayor, but downtown, despite attempts to revive the city center after new suburban malls took away most customers, feels sad and desolate. Not far from Ray Charles Plaza, a wretchedly poor black part of town can be found, with folks sitting on the porches of their “shotgun shacks”… here on America’s dark side.

A few hours north, in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1934, Ebenezer Baptist Church lies, where King was pastor until his death in 1968, and his grandfather and father before him. The church from 1922 on Auburn Avenue with Atlanta’s downtown in sight, has just reopened after an extensive renovation and is now a museum and part of Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site with a new, large and shining church, the Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and with the King’s and his wife Coretta Scott’s graves.

I have visited the Ebenezer church before, but it was long ago, on January 21, 1986, when the new Martin Luther King holiday was first celebrated. The church was overfull. Journalists crowded on the old balcony. Everyone seemed to have come to Atlanta on that sunny January day: Vice President George Bush, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Andrew Young, and all the way from apartheid’s South Africa, Bishop Desmond Tutu. Rosa Parks sat in the front row. In Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, she refused to sit in the back of the bus. Her defiant act was the signal to the black residents’ year-long and successful bus boycott, a battle led by Martin Luther King.

Those who came to the Ebenezer church that day in 1986, laid a wreath at King’s tomb and filled the old church with paint peeling from its ceiling and walls, and where the choir sang so beautifully to hand clapping and stomping feet.

Many memories there in the old church… where everything is now repaired, shining clean, and newly painted, and where the tourists sit in the pews and listen attentively to recordings of King’s speeches from another time in America.

In search of good food and coffee in the South

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I have taken a little trip. To take a look at America beyond the Beltway. Come along, and I’ll tell you all about it in the next few days!

I headed south from Washington through parts of the old South – Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and then north to Tennessee and home, again through Virginia. Lovely spring weather, splendid roads. No problems in finding a hotel- or motel room anywhere at this time, just before the tourist summer rush.

America is big. That was re-confirmed to me, even if the driving never felt tiresome or hectic. Smooth pace, nice and even speeds, and courteous drivers –most everywhere.

In the past, I always thought it was cheap to drive around in this big country. Not so, this time. Gasoline prices are record high. In the South, I paid between 3.75 and 4 dollars per gallon. Maybe the reason for the light traffic? Yes, it seems that the high gas prices have begun to affect driving habits, even though that is hard to comprehend for Europeans, who still think that gasoline is cheap in America.

Approaching Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the beautiful seaside resort on the Atlantic coast, the usual fast food chains lined up: McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, block after block, plus some Southern variations on the same theme: Waffle House and Cracker Barrel. I searched and searched for something different and ended up at the Pier House by the sea, and ordered fish and chips – a safe bet, I thought. But: frozen flounder, frozen shrimp, soggy fries…

That food is generally a problem out there in America, beyond the larger towns and cities, was also again confirmed to me. What do you do when you only find a McDonald’s or a Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is so often the case? You feel like a prisoner in a fast food culture. Yes, I also know there are many exceptions, like at the Blossoms restaurant in the fine city of Charleston, South Carolina, and at B.Matthew ‘s Eatery in equally charming Savannah, Georgia. Good food, even something as unusual as good fish. And an espresso!

Oh, coffee, it has its own and sad story, not just in the South but all over America, during mile after mile along the freeways and at motel after motel. So maybe you can identify with me when I one morning, driving north through Georgia, suddenly saw a Starbucks sign and pulled in. Finally, a good cup of coffee, and a New York Times on top of it. What joy!

First debate tonight — where are all the candidates?

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Tonight, in Greenville, South Carolina, the first debate with Republican presidential candidates will be held. But they are such a weak group that the debate might as well be canceled.

Of the five participants, only former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is potentially a serious candidate. The other, former head of Godfather’s Pizza, Herman Cain, two libertarians — former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and Texas congressman Ron Paul, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, are not serious contenders.

All of the better known names — Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitch Daniels, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann – are absent. None of them have yet to enter the contest full-heartedly. Some of them are sort of half the candidates, others are waiting. Their reluctance has increased the uncertainty in the Republican Party about who will be the party’s candidate against Obama next year. With growing uncertainty comes increasing nervousness.

Osama bin Laden’s death has not made things any easier for the Republican candidates, quite the contrary. Bin Laden’s death is a huge security policy success for Obama, perhaps the biggest victory in years for a democratic president, writes Dan Gonyea on National Public Radio’s website.

This week’s poll numbers also point to an upside for the president. The Washington Post / Pew Research survey increases support for Obama by 9 percent, from 46 to 55 percent. Other polls indicate smaller gains, as FiveThirtyEight reports in its analysis of the political mood in the country.

American voters now have a new perspective on Obama as a forceful foreign policy leader. However, that does not automatically translate into a victory next year. The economy is still too fragile and unemployment too high – those issues determine elections, not foreign policy. Remember: “it’s the economy, stupid.”

Perhaps this gives hesitant Republican candidates some hope, but it is also a fact that they now have an even more formidable opponent than they had just a few days ago.

Correct not to publish photos of bin Laden

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President Barack Obama decided on Wednesday not to publish pictures of the killed Osama bin Laden.

Obama released the news about the pictures in an interview on CBS 60 Minutes to be broadcast on Sunday evening. Today, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained the decision at length.

It is a completely correct decision, I believe. Bin Laden is dead. There is no doubt about that. The photos are not needed to prove this. And for those who do not believe that bin Laden is dead, photos of his dead body would not change their minds. They will continue to believe that he is alive and that the United States is lying, which is what has happened after Obama released his birth certificate recently. The members of “birther” movement still do not believe in him or that the certificate is genuine. No evidence is enough, for some.

“Torture apologists” and Osama bin Laden’s death

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As I pointed out yesterday, with every hour we learn more about how Osama bin Laden was tracked down and killed.

Front-page articles in today’s New York Times and Washington Post are, of course, a must to read, but I would also point to The New Yorker’s website, and its blog News Desk, where invaluable reading can be found in a number of articles by the staff, in particular Jane Mayer’s piece on the new torture debate in the “Bin Laden Dead: Torture Debate Lives On.”

In comments about bin Laden’s death, leading Republicans like Dick Cheney have praised President Obama, but many of the comments have been stingy and some have completely avoided giving Obama any credit, as Sarah Palin did not do in a speech yesterday in Colorado. In many of the Republican comments Obama’s success is really the result of the foundation laid by President George W. Bush, including the harsh interrogation methods – - torture, plain and simple — against al Qaeda members in secret prisons and at Guantanamo.

Jane Mayer writes:

Well, that didn’t take long. It may have taken nearly a decade to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but it took less than twenty-four hours for torture apologists to claim credit for his downfall.

Mayer refers to the organization “Keep America Safe”, where Cheney’s daughter Liz and Bill Kristol published a “victory statement” that praised the Bush administration’s interrogation methods, without mentioning President Obama at all.

Also Slate’s legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick writes about “torture apologists” in her comments, “Closing Pandora’s Box”.

She writes: we can never prove or disprove, that the Bush administration’s interrogation practices led to bin Laden’s death. All we can say with certainty is that we tortured. And we must now decide if we want to continue to live like that.

With Bin Laden’s death, let’s simply agree that the objectives of the Bush administration’s massive anti-terror campaign have finally been achieved, and that the time for extra-legal, extra-judicial government programs—from torture, to illegal surveillance, to indefinite detention, to secret trials, to non-trials, to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay—has now passed. There will be no better marker for the end of this era. There will be no better time to inform the world that our flirtation with a system of shadow-laws was merely situational and that the situation now is over.

Conclusion: a better America!

Secret elite force killed Osama bin Laden

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With almost every hour, we learn a bit more about the American attack on Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad in Pakistan. An article on National Journal’s website today is interesting reading about how the U.S. tracked bin Laden and how the attack was executed by a top secret team, the SEAL Team Six, whose official name is Naval Special Warfare Development Group, which in turn belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) .

Since 11 September 2001, JSOC has become the U.S. government’s most efficient and deadliest weapon in the fight against international terrorism. JSOC has about 4,000 civilians and soldiers and costs the U.S. government a billion dollars a year. But few details are known about JSOC.

Yesterday’s attack on bin Laden took place in cooperation with the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, based on data from the National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

In all 22 people were killed or captured in the attack. Bin Laden shot twice in the face when attempting to fight back. His body was taken away in one of the helicopters from the Ghazi air base in Pakistan that brought the force to bin Laden’s home. Then, bin Laden’s body was first transported to Afghanistan and later buried at sea.

Cheers and joy, but also dark memories

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All of America is cheering President Obama’s dramatic statement last night that Osama bin Laden had been killed. Obama’s statement that “justice now been done” reflects well the satisfaction and relief around the country.

Osama bin Laden had by now almost been forgotten, and most Americans had given up hope that the United States would ever catch him. This fact contributed to the total surprise of the news.

The relief and satisfaction were particularly felt among relatives of the nearly 3,000 Americans who were killed in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington ten years ago. The face behind the biggest terrorist attack ever on American soil, Osama bin Laden, was dead. This was big and the news evoked strong emotions, but also nervousness and, maybe, a little fear for the future.

For many, the news also brought old and dark memories, also for me personally. On September 11, 2001, I lived with my family on John Street, just three blocks from Ground Zero. Memories of the terrible events that beautiful September morning, when the World Trade Center’s two huge towers came crashing down and everything suddenly turned pitch black around us, are unforgettable. Like for many Americans, bin Laden’s death was for us the end of a long and dark chapter but with many new concerns and questions about the future. Alert levels have been raised around the U.S. as well as on military bases and U.S. embassies around the world.

Bin Laden’s death is seen as a major step forward in the fight against al Qaeda, a milestone, but officials have also underlined the need for continued vigilance. His death is also seen as a great personal achievement for President Obama, who won praise across the political spectrum. Republican congressman Peter King from New York, with hundreds of casualties among the residents of his constituency and who has often been critical of Obama, congratulated him on the success.

It was a new lead in August last year on bin Laden’s whereabouts that signaled the beginning of the end for bin Laden. According to press reports, the president ordered the attack last Friday and the Pakistani government was not informed or involved. See the article on the New York Times website on the detective work that led to bin Laden’s death.

President Obama: Osama bin Laden has been killed

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Osama bin Laden is dead, President Barack Obama announced in a special television address to the nation from the White House just before midnight tonight, nearly ten years after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.

“Justice has been done,” Obama said in his speech.

Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and the man behind the attacks in New York and Washington which claimed nearly 3000 lives, died after U.S. Special Forces found him and his family in a house deep in Pakistan, in the town of Abbottabad near the capital Islamabad, and after a brief fire exchange shot him to death. His body is now in U.S. possession. No U.S. soldier was injured in the attack.

Obama said that U.S. intelligence sources received a lead on bin Laden’s whereabouts in August last year and special troops have been closing in on him ever since. According to press reports tonight, the president ordered the attack last Friday.

Obama also said that this is not the end of the fight against terrorism. He said we must continue to be on our guard, stressing that this is not a war against Islam, but a war against al Qaeda which has killed many Muslims.

The news was greeted with great joy, satisfaction, and relief not only in the White House but across America. Outside the White House here in Washington a crowd gathered around midnight, waving American flags and singing the national anthem.

Bin Laden’s death ends a chapter in the war against terrorism,a war that led to the U.S. attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and then to the invasion of Iraq. It now remains to be seen what repercussions bin Laden’s death could have on the overall fight against terrorism. The state of alert has been raised around the country and on military bases and U.S. embassies around the world.

Obama’s revenge

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The mood was one of sweet revenge when President Obama gave his speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner last night — a traditional evening when Washington’s leading journalists and politicians and, in recent years, lots of stars from Hollywood, all get together, and when the President tries to be funny.

And Obama was funny, very funny. And a bit edgy…

He joked with himself and his birth certificate released this week, he was joking, with the Republicans and particularly with the potential Republican presidential candidates, many of whom were present at the dinner.

Like Donald Trump, who, Obama suggested, now could devote himself to really important things like – “did we really land on the moon?” Like Michele Bachmann. How can she run for president — I have heard that she was born in Canada?  Yes, Michele, that’s how it starts…

Watch yourselves!

Everyone is not fond of this kind of evening, which has almost become like a Washington Oscars gala, with pre-parties and after-parties, and television interviews on the red carpet, and star comedians, like Seth Meyers from “Saturday Night Live,” as a keynote speaker.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who is not funny, thinks the whole thing has gone too far in an article in today’s paper entitled “Journalists Gone Wild”.  Journalists should not rub shoulders in this extravagant way with people they are assigned to cover. Just look at my own newspaper, he writes, which had invited Donald Trump as guest at the Post’s table despite earlier in the week sharply criticizing Trump for his role in the issue of the President and his birth certificate.

“Awkward,” writes Milbank, and abstained from the party.