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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Syria. Why no intervention by NATO?
It’s all the fault of the former colonial power (for
once not the UK)
Why is Turkey getting involved in all this?
You can understand Russia’s position, but the
Chinese stance?
Before a taking
a look at what’s behind the current mess in Syria, take a quick look at these
links.
Confused by
conflicting advice on salt intake? If you aren’t then maybe you should be.
You’ve all read of
the Muslim Brotherhood, now read about them.
The Alawites rule Syria. Who are they
exactly?
Officially, the
Alawite sect is Shia Muslim, well sort of. Oh dear, getting complicated
already. Shia and Sunni Islam parted ways over who was to succeed Muhammad as
the leading figure in Islam. The Alawites take the Shia view on this, which
naturally makes them unpopular in certain quarters, particularly the
seventy-four percent of the Syrian population who are in fact Sunnis. Now don’t
run away with the idea that this means the Alawites make up some twenty-six
percent of the Syrian population. Estimates vary slightly, but it’s probably
safe to say that thirteen to fifteen percent of the Syrian population is Shia,
most of whom are Alawite. So let’s pull a figure out of thin air, because
everybody else seems to, and state categorically that maybe twelve to fourteen
percent of the Syrian population are Alawite. ‘Maybe’ is being categorical? As
good as you’re going to get here, or anywhere else come to that. Even that font
of knowledge, the CIA World Handbook isn’t too sure about it.
Allow me to put this in some sort of
perspective. Syria is a sort of secular-Muslim country, ruled over by a sect
that constitutes perhaps twelve percent of the population. Ten percent of the
population of Syria are Christians of one sort or another, so perhaps it’s only
an accident that Syria isn’t a Secular- Muslim country ruled by Christians. Now
that would have upset several apple-carts, wouldn’t it. The ultimate victory of
Richard Coeur de Lion, and Salah ad-Din
(Saladin) spinning in his grave.
Before moving
on, let me just say that the Alawites have other differences from the Shia
branch of Islam. They believe that Ali, Mohamed’s son in law was a divine
figure, which puts them totally beyond the pale as far as the Sunni are
concerned and a bit suspect in Shia eyes. They also embrace the Seven Pillars
of Islam. All the rest make do with Five Pillars. Alawites also celebrate some
Christian and Zoroastrian festivals, include Socrates and Plato amongst their
list of prophets and believe in transmigration of souls. Naughty people come
back as dogs or pigs, but righteous people return with ‘more perfect bodies’.
Interesting thought, maybe if I’m good I could come back as Bo Derek and I’d never
have to worry about having a date on Saturday nights again.
So moving on,
how come the Alawites rule Syria? It’s all the fault of the former colonial
power you see. France. This as I said makes a change from it being the fault of
the British. After the First World War, in an attempt at exporting Equalité,
possibly Fraternité but not Liberté, the French authorities decided that the
minorities in Syrian society should be encouraged to enter some form of
Government Service. The Alawites came from a mainly rural background, so they
were deemed suitable canon fodder and rather than having to educate them and
put them in the civil service, the Alawites were encouraged to join the army. Go forward to the
revolution in the seventies when Bashar’s Dad Hafez seized power and most of
the army were Alawite. Today, those who aren’t Alawite are so closely
identified with the Assad regime that they might as well be, they’ll probably
all be swinging from adjacent lampposts in the near future. Or will they?
Why does Russia support the Assad Regime?
Good question.
On the face of it, you’d have to say they were backing a losing horse. They did
of course support Pa Hafez, but the Russians aren’t known for their
sentimentality in foreign policy.
Russian exports
to Syria were worth $1.1 billion in 2010 and its investments in the country
were valued at $19.4 billion in 2009 according to The Moscow Times.
Since the start
of the so-called Arab Spring Russia has been losing client states and old
friends at an alarming rate, but there is more to it than bidding a tearful
farewell to aging dictators. The first question of course is how is Syria
paying for Russian weaponry and whatever else the Russians succeed in flogging
them?
Well here’s a
clue. You see, at the collapse of the Soviet Union, Syria owed the unlamented
communist state some US$13.4 billion. If they thought that they were off the
hook because the Soviet Union no longer existed, the ‘new’ Russian regime soon
disabused them of that foolish notion.
They generously ‘retired’ US$9.8 billion of the Syrian debt, provided
Syria agreed to buy it’s arms from them. Not a difficult decision, everybody
else had the quaint notion that you actually sold arms. Sold as in received
payment in return. The Russians were playing a longer game, as so frequently is
the case.
The French might
have given ‘easy terms’, but as the former colonial power, they were a bit out
of favour and in any case, Syrian relations with the West have always been a
bit problematic. Following Syrian support for the Americans in Gulf-War One, it
would be reasonable to assume that the Americans would have ‘sold’ them arms.
There was a problem of course. Syria was (and is) still ‘officially’ at war with
Israel, so any American arms sales would have been counter to Israeli
interests. I’m sure the idea was floated that if Syria agreed a peace deal with
Israel then the weapons would have been forthcoming. At that time, Israel might
have been amenable to doing a deal over the Golan Heights so perhaps you are
wondering why it never happened. Well, wonder no more. The majority of Syrians
are Sunnis. The majority of the Palestinians are Sunnis. Old man Hafez Assad
was an Alawite who in the nineteen eighties massacred some tens of thousand of
Sunni Syrians. Nah, he wanted arms with no strings attached. He didn’t get that
of course, at least not as it turned out. Additionally, America can turn a bit
sensitive if it’s military hardware is used against civilians. Unless it’s them
using it against terrorists and their associates, in which case it’s OK.
Provided nobody knows much about it.
Tartus. A Syrian
port on the Mediterranean which since the early nineteen seventies has been a
Soviet, now Russian, naval base. Recent talks between Syria and Russia have
centred on expanding Tartus so that it can now take the largest Russian navy
ships. In fact, Assad Junior agreed to Tartus becoming a permanent base for
Russian nuclear-armed ships. Handy if you are a bit miffed at the American ICBM
shield in Europe and want to make a point. The point being that you’ve got a
credible naval presence in the Mediterranean, which might come in useful in all
sorts of scenarios, including one where the Americans redeploy most of their
ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific to counter, or not of course, a growing
Chinese naval presence.
It’s worth
noting that in the seventies, arms exports to Syria accounted for ninety
percent of Soviet military-related exports. Fairly recently, Russia lost out to
the tune of US$4 billion in arms exports to Gaddafi. Currently, existing
contracts with Syria are worth US$1.5 billion, or around ten percent of their
annual exports, so one can understand why Russia is not keen to support any
UN-inspired arms embargo on Syria. Of course, if Assad falls there is no
guarantee that the new regime would continue to buy arms from Russia or allow
them access to Tartus. More on that shortly.
I haven’t
mentioned oil. Syria has some of course, but not all that much, so there is
still a question of how they are paying for all the Russian equipment. A
warm-water seaport has been a Russian dream of several centuries and in Tartus,
on paper at least, they’ve hit the jackpot. I wonder what that’s worth?
Chinese Involvement
There is trade
between China and Syria. China exports US$2.2 billions worth of goods and
chattels to Syria and Syria exports US$5.6 millions worth of something to
China. Yes, you did read that correctly, US$5.6 MILLION, or a bit less than one
percent of the entire trade between the two countries. China is of course
interested in what oil Syria has and is involved in developing new fields and
extending the life of old ones. Why are they doing this? Well China feels the
need to safeguard the supply of oil as much as it can and from wherever it can.
The Chinese economy has to keep expanding at about ten percent per year to keep
up with population growth and to avoid ‘trouble at mill’, as they say in
Yorkshire. The Chinese economy is contracting of course, or at least not
expanding at the required rate so there already is ‘trouble at mill’. Not to
forget that there is still not a lot of love lost between China and Russia, so
if Assad falls China may be well placed to step into the breach when the new
Syrian regime slings the Russians out. It could also be that China just wants
to give America ‘the bird’, and by not supporting UN resolutions aimed at the
Assad regime, they can do this, causing the maximum annoyance with the minimum
of effort. There might also be an element of one repressive regime supporting
another.
Where angels fear to tread?
So why isn’t
America taking a stronger line? Is it merely wanting to get a UN resolution
first and get Russia and China ‘on board’, or is there something else.
Much has been
made of this being an election year in the States and as I pointed out in a
previous article a second Obama term is not a given. Is this a case of wanting
to ‘pussy-foot’ around until after the November election, or is it a case of
keeping your powder dry for a confrontation with Iran. Certainly with economic
conditions looking a bit ‘iffy’ on the home front, Obama might well be tempted
to put on his sincerest face, look straight into the camera and announce that
with a heavy heart America must once again take up arms in the altruistic
pursuit of others freedom. This would boost the American economy and possibly
make everybody feel a bit easier about re-electing him. With World opinion,
with the exception of China and Russia, demanding that ‘something be done’ about
Syria, this might appear to be a popular option on all fronts. So, why hasn’t
it been done? After all, Russia has begun to make noises about relations
between countries surviving a change in leadership, which if you were Assad
might worry you somewhat. It hasn’t been done because it’s of what might come
after the fall of Assad, and I don’t mean the ascendancy of the Muslim
Brotherhood and yet another Islamist Government. America might well think that
Sunni Islamists would have nothing to do with Shia Iran, and they could well be
correct so the fall of Assad could be a poke in the eye for Iran, which might
calm them down a bit. No, the clue comes in what happened when a Kurdish
delegation went to Washington.
The Syrian Kurds
didn’t get the reception they were hoping for. The US State department met
them, but they were told to seek an understanding with the ‘Official Syrian
opposition’. Shades of the French there, eh? We must be inclusive. America
would not support a purely Kurdish opposition to Assad, but they would be
sympathetic to Kurdish aspirations if they threw in their lot with the rest of
the opposition. In other words, America wouldn’t entertain any sort of
autonomous Kurdish region in Syria. Possibly because they have an idea what
Assad’s fallback position might be. Possibly they don’t, that might not be
unusual, but it is becoming if not clearer then at least a little less
obscured.
Assad’s Game
Why does it
appear as though Syrian government forces are trying to cleanse a coastal strip
from the Turkish to the Lebanese border? Cleanse of non-Alawites that is. The
fact that it’s going on not immediately obvious given the general mayhem in
Syria right now, and I’m indebted to a Turkish journalist, Abdullah Bozkurt, who wrote a column in ‘Todays Zaman’,
presenting a Turkish view of the situation. He raises some interesting points,
some of which tie in with my previous comments concerning a Kurdish
State.
You’re just going to have to wait a couple of
days for me to join up a few of the dots. Sorry and all that.
@peterbernfeld
Monday, June 4, 2012
Nato to overthrow Assad of Syria?
An unfinished revolution in Egypt, civil war in Syria and
Iran seeking WMD
Around the Right-Wing, Neo-Con world, the cry arises ‘why
doesn’t somebody do something about the situation in Syria?’ By ‘somebody’,
people have President Obama in mind even if they usually refer to America.
Start by taking a cool look at the latest events in Egypt.
There was a leader-less revolution, a popular uprising against Mubarak. Once
the protests started and the regime began to lose its grip on power, the
previously banned Islamist parties stepped into the developing power vacuum.
Due to their being organised, they won the election for the legislative body.
Now however, as the reality of what they have voted for begins to sink in, the
Egyptians have not voted en mass for an Islamist president. The people who
started the revolution are still not politically organised, and are
disappointed with the choices they have in the run-off presidential elections.
In the meantime former president Mubarak has been sentenced to life
imprisonment for causing the deaths of protestors, but the military commanders
who carried out his orders have been acquitted. The Military of course are
currently running the country so perhaps no surprises there. These verdicts
have predictably brought protests from those who are staunchly anti-Mubarak and
anti-military. There are fresh crowds in Tahir Square. It would be a mistake to
think that they are all there because of the court verdicts. Some will be there
because ‘their’ revolution has been hijacked, and gathering in Tahir Square is
the only form of protest they can make. They are still not organised, nor do
they have a defined leader, whereas the Islamists and the Military are
organised and have leaders.
Presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, the last Prime
Minister under former President Mubarak and widely seen as 'the army's candidate', has accused his Islamist rival,
Mohammed Mursi, of wanting to create a sectarian state. Shafiq has accused
Mursi of intimidating Coptic Christians and of wanting to repress women. Mursi
has pooh-poohed this, saying that if elected he would resign from the Muslim
Brotherhood and that there is no intention to force Egyptian women to take to
the veil. Pull the other one Mohammed, that’s like saying the present Pope, who
before he became Pope and was merely Cardinal Ratzinger the Prefect of the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the historical Inquisition, on becoming Pope resigned from the
Inquisition and no longer supports anything that he was previously charged with
upholding. I’m not quite sure how wanting to introduce Sharia Law squares with
not expecting women to dress ‘modestly’, i.e. wear a veil in public and Mursi
has not as yet explained. There will be some Egyptians who are thinking that
this is not why they overthrew Mubarak. Some of these people will be in Tahiti
Square but most will not. At least they won’t be until those calling for
Mubarak’s retrial and wanting the death penalty have found something else to
occupy them and left, then a new demonstration will most likely start.
In Egypt, America
supported the idea of democracy but was castigated in some quarters for
abandoning long-term ally Mubarak. Bugger democracy, the Neo-Cons wanted at all
costs a non-Islamist government. Didn’t America realise, so the argument went,
what would happen if Mubarak was overthrown? One wonders what these pundits
think America was supposed to have done? By America of course, they mean Obama.
By the Right’s reckoning, somehow or other America should have engineered a
transfer of power from Mubarak to a representative government that would
maintain the status quo vis a vis Israel, have popular support and keep the
Muslim brotherhood in check. A great trick if you can pull it off, but pretty
much impossible in reality. All America could do was to be seen to support
democracy, hold their nose and deal with whatever government was elected,
hoping to influence them after the dust had settled. The Right blames Obama for
throwing an ally to the wolves and thus, amongst other things, showing America
as an unreliable friend. This is a view shared by staunch democrats and now
nervous friends such as Abdullah of Jordan, the House of Saud and probably most
of the other Gulf rulers. Interesting bed-mates, assuming you think the Right is
actually interested in democratic democracy.
What should Obama have done? To try to influence events on
the ground was clearly a non-starter, so should America have done something
behind the scenes? The problem with this train of thought is exactly who do you
exert pressure on and to what end? Obama did put pressure on the Egyptian
Military to ensure that elections took place, to abide by the results and hand
over power once a president was elected and a constitution approved. What more
should he have been done? Nothing, frankly. Anymore would have been seen as
meddling in Egyptian internal politics, which would have been the kiss of death
for any candidates that America supported.
Teddy Roosevelt's advice to ‘speak quietly and carry a big
stick’ is apt here. Once there is a functioning government in Egypt, that will
be the time to try to influence events. Obama certainly has spoken quietly and
in the form of financial aid, he has a big stick. The question is, will he use
it if is in America’s interests that he do so? The Right of course say ‘no’.
Their view of Obama is that he is anti-American, anti-Israel and pro Islam. How
can an American president be anti-American? Simple, he doesn’t put his
country’s interests first, according to his detractors. By that, they mean he
doesn’t put what they view as America’s interests first.
Anti-Israel and pro Islam? The Right will point to the
fact that Obama has encouraged the formation of an Islamist Government in
Egypt, has not criticised the Turkish Government for it’s anti-Israel stance
and it’s meddling in Syrian internal affairs, has encouraged the nascent Syrian
opposition to include Islamist elements and has not acted fast enough over the
Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. They will assert that Obama has
pressured Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians whilst not applying
pressure the other way. All American aid to Israel, in whatever form it takes,
is merely a continuation of what was agreed by previous administrations and
Obama has watered it down where he can. That he has been largely unsuccessful
they say is due to Democrats’ support for Israel which even a Democrat
President cannot ignore.
An unpopular but more charitable and in my view correct
assessment of Obama is that he has tried a different approach to Middle East
diplomacy, but that approach has been
overtaken by events on the ground. The question now is does he realise this and
will he be ideologically capable of changing direction, always assuming that he
is re-elected.
You might recall that Syrian President Bashar Assad is
quite happily massacring his own people, ignoring UN resolutions and clinging
on to power long past the time when most pundits had assumed he would be found
cowering in the sewer pipe of history. How can this be? Why has America, fresh
from the successful installation of a democratic government in Libya, not
bombed the living daylights out of Syrian Government Forces in support of the
Opposition? Why did they not either force a resolution through the UN or ignore
the UN and act earlier?
To answer that is actually quite simple. It’s a two- part
answer, and in part one I’m going to examine some arguments put forward by
politicians and journalists of a right-wing persuasion as examples of typical
muddled thinking. These arguments have appeared in various op-ed pieces around
the World, but without naming names, they regularly feature in the Jerusalem
Post. Israel is right next door, so the situation in Syria is of particular
immediate interest to them.
The argument goes that NATO/America/ UN/the West, take
your pick, missed an opportunity months ago to take decisive military action
against the Assad regime and thus establish some sort of democratic government
that would in some way or other be beholden to whoever had helped them and
might not be Islamist in nature. Think of the tens of thousands already killed
and others who may yet be killed when a civil war breaks out. All this could
have been avoided if America/NATO et al had only acted.
There are two immediate problems here. For many months,
there was civil unrest but no organised opposition, no ‘leaders of the
revolution’, a lot like the situation in Egypt, where their revolution is about
to enter it’s second phase. So exactly who should America support in Syria,
‘the people’? What happens after they bomb Syrian Government Forces? What do
‘the people’ do then? Where does the idea that American intervention would have
ensured a western-orientated or at least western-sympathetic government come
from? What evidence is there to support this notion? None, in a word.
Perhaps I should define ‘the Right’, or at least what I
mean by it. I don’t mean those who are ‘conservative’ in their politics. I do
mean those who believe that the interests of America and her allies are best
served by deploying troops to foreign lands and imposing a political system,
social norms and vaguely Judeo-Christian concepts of justice, law and order on
an unwilling population, largely unfamiliar with what is being imposed on them.
It took the West five hundred years to establish what we today consider as
democracy, it’s not something that you can simply graft onto a new vine and
expect it to flourish in five minutes.
Does any of this mean you shouldn’t defend your own values
and hard-won freedoms? No, of course not, quite the opposite in fact. Having
respect for other peoples’ way of life and religious beliefs doesn’t mean
rolling over and playing dead. Sometimes you’re going to have to fight for what
you believe in. Sometimes you’re going to have to insist that migrants coming
to your country have to accept your laws and your way of life or don’t come.
But sometimes you’re going to have to accept that others’ have different
concepts of justice and freedom. Now I happen to believe that in ‘The West’,
and you could substitute ‘democracies’ if you’re more comfortable with that
word, we’ve pretty much got it right and particularly totalitarian Islamic
countries have got it wrong, but I believe in leading by example, not by
hitting them over the head. At least, not as a first option. If you are
genuinely threatened then you have to respond, but not necessarily by invasion.
In Libya NATO intervened but by and large restricted
themselves to support from the air. The result was that the campaign to
overthrow Gaddafi took longer than it might have done, but the fact that
‘foreign boots’ didn’t overtly touch Libyan soil doesn’t seem to have made much
difference to the political landscape. The country is in a mess, and human
rights abuses continued to take place after the fighting was over. What finally
emerges is yet to be clear, but it shows no sign of being particularly fond of
the West or being more democratic than tribal in nature. At least, for the
moment, Libya remains one country, despite an attempt at regionalisation. Not
perhaps a stunning success, but as yet not a failure. The cynical would say
give it time and it will be. I would say think of the five hundred year
flowering of democracy in Europe, then dramatically shorten that timescale
because of instant communications, mass media and social media. Don’t
over-estimate the impact of facebook and twitter, but equally don’t dismiss
them out of hand as the playthings of a bored, decaying Western culture.
America and her
allies went crashing into Iraq and failed to impose a government particularly
grateful or well disposed towards the West. In fact, it’ll be something of a
miracle if the country holds together as a single entity, and there’s one clue
as to why nothing has been done in Syria. Iraq really can’t be portrayed as an
example of successful military intervention and America, in the quiet of the
night, realises it. If you are going to send in the troops, you have to buy
into the concept of nation building, with all that entails in terms of economic
burden and time. A strong case can be made for nation building in some
circumstances, but there is no ‘half-way house’. It’s all or nothing.
The evidence seems to point to the fact that American/NATO
intervention may staunch short-term bloodshed but doesn’t result in a
government that is well-disposed towards the West, or at least anti-Islamist,
Islamists being the big bogey-men of the Right just at the moment.
So why hasn’t America intervened in Syria? Has the ‘penny
dropped’ that the only way to intervene is by nation building? Probably not,
but there are other reasons why nothing has happened. In the second part, we’ll
take a look at some of those reasons.
@peterbernfeld
Saturday, June 2, 2012
All the Presidents are men
So, you want to be President of America do you?
In the run up to
the American November Presidential elections it’s amusingly distracting to put
actual the policies of the candidates to one side, always provided you can
determine what they actually are, and take a look at some statistics.
Obama is POTUS
(President of the United States) number forty-four. There have been forty-
three Presidents incarnate but forty- four terms of office. Grover Cleveland
managed to get himself elected for two, non-consecutive eight-year terms,
possibly proving that you can in fact fool most of the people most, if not all,
of the time. Since nineteen fifty-one, under the terms of the 22nd
Amendment, a person can only serve two terms as POTUS. Franklin Roosevelt died
early in his fourth term during the Second World War, which was undoubtedly why
the 22nd Amendment was introduced. Edward the Seventh, when Prince
of Wales, famously said of his mother Victoria that it was all very well having
an Eternal Father in heaven but one didn’t need an Eternal Mother on earth.
Possibly America sat up and took note of his comment.
Of the
forty-three Presidents, four died in office of natural causes, four were
assassinated and Nixon famously jumped before he was pushed. Additionally there
were six assassination attempts made against incumbent presidents, Gerald Ford
holding the dubious distinction of having inspired two people try to kill him
on separate occasions, and one attempt was made against Teddy Roosevelt when he
decided to have another shot at being president, having successfully served two
terms. Oops bad taste moment, I meant when he decided to make a further attempt
at the Oval office having already served two terms. This means that POTUS has
an equal 9.3% of either dying of natural causes whilst in office or of being
assassinated. If however we lump together assassination attempts against
incumbent presidents and successful assassinations, we find that the chances of
somebody trying to be the leading actor in their own version of ‘The Day of the
Jackal’ is 23.24%. The assassination technology gets better with time, so the
odds of success have probably increased. Not a comfortable position to be in, I
would have thought. For an incumbent president, that is. If you had almost a
twenty-five percent chance of your being killed in the office, would you not be
tempted to change your office for one with a more tranquil view?
Of perhaps more
interest in this election year is the fact that of the forty-three Presidents,
ten failed to secure their second term. Of the ten, three have failed since the
Second World War. It would appear that getting that coveted second term is not
the shoe-in that casual observers of the show might have imagined. To play with
some statistics, and we all know about statistics don’t we, it would appear
that 23.25% of all presidential candidates failed to be re-elected. That
doesn’t sound so bad, but let’s look at elections post World War Two.
Perhaps voters
became less deferential or perhaps the World became a more volatile place,
that’s open to (another) debate. There have been twelve presidential elections
from nineteen forty-five until two thousand and eight. Twenty-five percent of
candidates were not re-elected. That perhaps isn’t the end of the numbers game
though. If you take the view that a ‘run of bad luck’ started in 1976 when the
ever-unlucky Gerald Ford failed to be re-elected, there have been eight
elections and the percentage chance of failing to be re-elected increases to
37.5%. The other unsuccessful incumbents were Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Bush Senior
(H.W.) in 1992. Obama may well be losing some sleep, and it’s probably nothing
to do with Michelle telling him he’s in, as his re-election campaign posters
announce. This could be unusually subtle play on words for an American
political campaign or it could be unintentional, like Romney’s campaign poster
that spelled America ‘Americia’. I suppose that could have been unusually
subtle as well, in which case the folks down in Langley, Virginia are probably
planning some office remodeling, another round of fake vaccinations and of
course they still have a chance to actually kill Castro before he dies of old
age.
To round off and
up this game of musical numbers, POTUS has a twenty five percent chance of
experiencing an assassination attempt and just at the moment a thirty-seven
percent chance of not being elected for a final term. Why do they bother?
It’s the status,
stupid! It certainly isn’t the power because the American system was designed
so that the holder of the executive office doesn’t in fact have that much. To
be sure, he (so far) is perceived as the most powerful man in the World. After
all, isn’t there somebody who trails him around with the ‘nuclear football’,
you know, where all the nuclear codes are kept? Now I don’t know this for a
fact but I also reckon that at least one of the secret service men has been
briefed to confirm that POTUS is not actually having a ‘brain fart’ if he ever
reached for it and to stop him if he is. Probably by a bullet between the eyes.
So much for absolute power then. I mean if you can’t nuke a country that has
really annoyed you what’s the point of it all? Doing a Bush Junior and invading
somewhere allegedly because a dictator tried to kill your Dad and because your
Vice President’s oil company, allegedly, is finding business a bit slack is all
very well, but for real satisfaction, you need to be able to order up a bright
flash without having to consult anybody. Anyway, if POTUS had any real power
Bush Junior would have ‘retired’ Bill Clinton for beating his dad in an
election. See what I mean, it’s just not worth it.
A smart man
might take the Eisenhower approach to the presidency and improve his golf game.
A really smart man might not bother at all and aim at being a Supreme Court
Judge. I haven’t checked but I don’t think many have been assassinated and it’s
a job for life. Failing to be re-elected does not look good on the old CV and
the after-dinner speaking fees are, I am reliably informed, less for a single-term
president. Nobody wants to hear what you would have done next and positively
nobody likes a moaner.
Of course,
presidents seem to be getting younger, or am I experiencing the same
age-related shift in perception whereby all policemen seem to be on day-release
from school? Assuming that they are getting younger, and in Obama’s case will
be around his mid-fifties when he leaves office, if he is re-elected, what do
you do then?
@peterbernfeld
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