Saturday, December 30, 2006

Ford's Foreign Policy

That I have not mentioned the passing of Gerald Ford until is more a mark of intellectual laziness than anything else. Ford's time in the White House may not seem that sexy to some, myself included, but it is impossible to ignore how much he was forced to confront in his three years running the show. It should also be noted that during this period Henry Kissinger was at the apex of his run, serving for most of the time as both Secretary of State and as the head of the National Security Council.

CFR recalls a number of things that happend but fails to point out others. Yes there was the end of the Vietnam War, the Mayaguez incident the OPEC embargo, the trip to China and the Helsinki Accords but there was also the fall of Cambodia, the Panama Canal negotiations, the invasion of East Timor and helping end white rule in Rhodesia. It is impossible however for me not to mention two of Ford's more spectacular foreign policy gaffes. First there was his absurd statement during his debate with Jimmy Carter that called into question Soviet domination of Eastern Europe - this allowed Peanut Boy to come across like hawk. Then there was the absolutely shameful snub of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn during his trip to the US. The book to read on all this is stuff is the obviously biased but brilliantly penned Years of Renewal by Henry Kissinger. Sure it is over 1100 pages but it really is good.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

LA Quick Hits:

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Castro & Cancer, Deportation Evo Style, Colombia/Ecuador (Again), FARC Strikes, Stuff on Chile, President Priest and More

Monday, December 25, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Pinochet Speaks (Writes), Evo Problems, Fidel's Physician, Calderon's Guts and More

Friday, December 22, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Para Leader to Talk, Raul Will Talk Less, But Wants Others to Talk More, Alvaro and Correa Won't Talk at All and Much More

Thursday, December 21, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Correa and Hugo, Evo, Evo, Evo, No Coke Tax. Re-Election for Me but Not for Thee and Much More

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Colombian Testimony, The Stupidest Congressperson, More Marti and Coca and So Much More

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Hugo's Cabinet Shuffle

As mentioned in today's Quick Hits Javier Corrales had something to say about Hugo's propensity for cabinet shuffles (sub. required) in the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of Foreign Policy:
Allow the Bureaucracy to Decay, Almost: Some autocracies, such as Burma’s, seek to become legitimate by establishing order; others, like the Chinese Communist Party, by delivering economic prosperity. Both types of autocracies need a top-notch bureaucracy. A competitive autocrat like Chávez doesn’t require such competence. He can allow the bureaucracy to decline—with one exception: the offices that count votes.

Perhaps the best evidence that Chávez is fostering bureaucratic chaos is cabinet turnover. It is impossible to have coherent policies when ministers don’t stay long enough to decorate their offices. On average, Chávez shuffles more than half of his cabinet every year. And yet, alongside this bureaucratic turmoil, he is constructing a mighty electoral machine. The best minds and the brightest técnicos run the elections. One of Chávez’s most influential electoral whizzes is the quiet minister of finance, Nelson Merentes, who spends more time worrying about elections than fiscal solvency. Merentes’s job description is straightforward: extract the highest possible number of seats from mediocre electoral results. This task requires a deep understanding of the intricacies of electoral systems, effective manipulation of electoral districting, mobilization of new voters, detailed knowledge about the political proclivities of different districts, and, of course, a dash of chicanery. A good head for numbers is a prerequisite for the job. Merentes, no surprise, is a trained mathematician.

The results are apparent. Renewing a passport in Venezuela can take several months, but more than 2.7 million new voters have been registered in less than two years (almost 3,700 new voters per day), according to a recent report in El Universal, a pro-opposition Caracas daily. For the recall referendum, the government added names to the registry list up to 30 days prior to the vote, making it impossible to check for irregularities. More than 530,000 foreigners were expeditiously naturalized and registered in fewer than 20 months, and more than 3.3 million transferred to new voting districts.

LA Quick Hits: Uribe's Problem, Rafting Still, Drug War, Evo War, You Can See Marti, Hugo the Socialist and More

Monday, December 18, 2006

Where Evo Blew It

The Blog from Bolivia is not my cup of tea, I agree with practically nothing written there. That being said there was an interesting note on how Evo has faltered as of late on the 2/3 question:
First, it about the fear among many Bolivians (particularly the middle class) that Morales is becoming the Evo they didn’t want to elect.

“I voted for him because I voted for ‘the change,” says a neighbor of mine, who has since become a fierce critic of Morales. His nationalism on the economy – negotiating better deals with foreign oil companies, resisting unfair “free trade” agreements, etc. – is still popular. But the fear Morales evokes is not about a strong state role in economics, it is the fear (warranted or not) that Morales aims to take that strong state into other aspects of people’s lives. And here Morales has not been very politically smart.

When letters from the education ministry went out informing private and public schools that they would need to start teaching in Quechua and Aymara, and that the government wanted to rollback Catholic religious education in the schools (this is a very Catholic country), it evoked alarmed comments among reasonable people such as this, “See Evo wants us to be just like Cuba. He wants to kick out the church.” That’s when the opposition finally found some political traction. That is when people first started taking their anti-Evo fears into the streets.

The rallying cry for a 2/3 votes on everything in the Constituent Assembly (again, there is no dispute on a 2/3 vote requirement for the final document) is an extension of that same political wind. People aren’t turning out in mass in the streets here over a number, but because many see the MAS demand for simple majority vote (on procedural issues and separate articles) as a power grab, as Evo and MAS being able to push their way forward “without talking to anyone.”

Here MAS was even less politically adept than on education reform. As a friend of mine described it the other day (a person with very strong ties to Bolivian social movements on the left) – “Why did they pick this fight over 2/3? It is stupid. They could have compromised early, having all the committee votes decided by a simple majority and letting all the votes of the full Assembly be decided by 2/3. They aren’t even talking about what the new Constitution should actually include and now the right is unified all across the country.”

Morales also doesn’t exactly calm those opponents down when he attacks them by declaring, as he did a few weeks ago in Santa Cruz, that hunger strikers there are fasting because they are fat.

Fukuyama on Mexico

Sure it's old, but I just found it. Here is Fukuyama's take on AMLO and Mexico:

Mexico City is now dominated by a huge double-deck highway system that Lopez Obrador built when he was mayor. It is a system that benefits the rich primarily who own cars and have reason to want to get quickly from the far end of the city to the airport. But in a huge metropolitan area that lacks basic public services like clean water in many neighborhoods, it seems like an absurd waste of public resources. This is from someone who claims to speak for Mexico’s poor: what Lopez Obrador figured out is how to impress the poor with monumental public works projects, while doing little to help them in the long run.

On the other hand, the last two free-market liberal presidents Zedillo and Fox have presided over one of the most impressive experiments in social policy in Latin America aimed at helping the poor. The Progresa program of conditional cash transfers provided a cash stipend to poor families on the condition that they send their children to school. The program was designed by an economist, who built into it a way of empirically testing its effects by creating control groups that could be used to benchmark its impact. There are a host of econometric studies now documenting how Progresa raised school attendance rates dramatically (though its final impact on long-term educational outcomes is still uncertain). Early success led to the program being extended broadly across Mexico under Fox as the Oportunidades program, where it now reaches into urban neighborhoods. Someone at the conference told me that there is evidence that as much as ten percent of the vote for the Calderon’s conservative party the PAN in last July’s election was due to the popularity of Oportunidades.

Progresa’s success has led to it being copied in other parts of Latin America, like the Red de Proteccion Social program in Nicaragua, the Programa de Asignaciones Familiares in Honduras and the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. The Bolsa Familia was started under pro-market president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and was expanded by his leftist successor Lula. It now reaches some 15 million poor Brazilians, and appears to have had an actual impact in lowering that country’s Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality, Brazil’s being one of the highest in the world).

Darfur

Eddie at Live From the FDNF has a long thoughtful post on the need for action in Darfur. Here's a piece:

Whenever the US has failed to respond to ethnic cleansing of the sort ongoing in Dar Fur, a nasty series of consequences has always returned to haunt us. The absence of leadership and imagination in Bosnia paved the inroads Iran and other enemies of America made in the region connecting with organized crime elements and embittered refugees, nearly destroyed the NATO alliance, unhinged the UN's peacekeeping efforts (it has not yet recovered and likely never will) and almost managed to kick off a widespread conflict in the Balkans involving Turkey, Greece and Russia.

The US policy to ignore the Rwandan genocide while actively preventing other nations from acting (aside from France who unsuccessfully intervened to help their Hutu Power allies save face) tipped Central Africa into a cataclysm it has yet to truly recover from; the first African "World War" which took the lives of 4 million people and emboldened current and future enemies (Zimbabwe, Sudan, Angola) of America to employ aggression, systematic rape and mass murder without fear of any punishment in a critical scramble for resources, influence and power the US does not yet even begin to understand because it lacks on even a basic scale an appreciation for Africa's perils and promise.

LA Quick Hits: Fidel's Fine, Oscar the Ogre, Hugo's Failure, PAN & PRD Together! & Much More

Saturday, December 16, 2006

The Webb Presidential Bandwagon

The American Conservative says that it's too early for a Webb for President bandwagon, but I know someone who signed up for it in 2004. At the time Webb had made a splash with Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. In town that fall was Tom Wolfe promoting I am Charlotte Simmons. After needling the overwhelmingly leftist audience he was asked who he thought could be a good president (the election had been the week before) and he said James Webb. This seemed to disappoint everyone including the questioner who felt that he had been cheated of an opportunity to argue with Wolfe. I may not care for Webb but as is usually the case Wolfe was ahead of the curve.

Pinochet Makes a Genius out of St. Jeane

I'm a little late on this so I'm piggy-backing on a Coming Anarchy post. I've already noted my frustration over the Pinochet/Castro comparison or lack thereof. What it has been interesting to see is both the WaPost and WSJ refute LAT's knee-jerk dismissal of Jeane Kirkpatrick's thesis in "Dictatorships and Double Standards." Over at CA Curzon quoted WaPost, here's a piece:
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
WSJ came to a similar conclusion:
Pinochet proved the truth of Jeane Kirkpatrick's Cold War distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, with the former far more likely to evolve into freer places. That the international left still gives Castro higher marks is something for democrats everywhere to ponder. The popular notion that the U.S. sanctioned the coup or condoned Pinochet's torture also hasn't held up under historical scrutiny.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Pinochet Dumped, Splintered Sandanistas, Ecuador is Still Ticked, Raul Wants to Talk, Mexican Mayhem and Much More

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

LA Quick Hits: Pinochet (Again), Getting Tense - Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Columbia, Border Crossing 21st Cent. Style and Much More

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Cubiche in Me

I normally don't let him out but with the weekly Castro is dead rumors hitting the streets I figured I'd crank up the Celia Cruz, get the Bacardi ready and smoke a fine cigar - since Fidel can't. By the way this is why I love Vaclav Havel:
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel called on people to boycott tourist trips to Cuba in a video recording presented at a conference held by Lech Walesa, former Polish president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in Warsaw today.

"I cannot go to Cuba to relax on the beach and keep my eyes shut, while dozens of political prisoners are behind bars there," said Havel, who spent a total of five years in Czech communist prisons as a regime opponent.

In Warsaw, Havel also recalled a story from his dissident years when he was taken to the dentist´s in handcuffs, but other patients in the surgery pretended they did not care.

"We cannot pretend that nothing wrong happens in Cuba. A lot of evil occurs there," Havel added.

The AFP news agency also reported that Havel has had himself voluntarily shot in prison´s clothes among other prisoners one of whom was eating banana as an allusion to the fact that bananas were exported from Cuba to communist countries, including then Czechoslovakia, in the past.

LA Quick Hits: Gen. Pinochet is Still Dead, Morales has Problems, Calderon is Attacking His, Naked Niurka and More

Monday, December 11, 2006

Sweig on "Fidel's Victory"

Foreign Affairs offers a sneak peak of the Jan/Feb issue by posting Julia Sweig's piece on post-Fidel Cuba. She lashes out at the current state of Cuba policy and says a couple of things which are bound to ruffle hardline feathers in Miami:

But if consigning Cuba to domestic politics has been the path of least resistance so far, it will begin to have real costs as the post-Fidel transition continues -- for Cuba and the United States alike. Fidel's death, especially if it comes in the run-up to a presidential election, could bring instability precisely because of the perception in the United States that Cuba will be vulnerable to meddling from abroad. Some exiles may try to draw the United States into direct conflict with Havana, whether by egging on potential Cuban refugees to take to the Florida Straits or by appealing to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to attempt to strangle the post-Fidel government.

Washington must finally wake up to the reality of how and why the Castro regime has proved so durable -- and recognize that, as a result of its willful ignorance, it has few tools with which to effectively influence Cuba after Fidel is gone. With U.S. credibility in Latin America and the rest of the world at an all-time low, it is time to put to rest a policy that Fidel's handover of power has already so clearly exposed as a complete failure.

Here is where she really begins to annoy me:

Cuba is far from a multiparty democracy, but it is a functioning country with highly opinionated citizens where locally elected officials (albeit all from one party) worry about issues such as garbage collection, public transportation, employment, education, health care, and safety. Although plagued by worsening corruption, Cuban institutions are staffed by an educated civil service, battle-tested military officers, a capable diplomatic corps, and a skilled work force. Cuban citizens are highly literate, cosmopolitan, endlessly entrepreneurial, and by global standards quite healthy.

Critics of the Castro regime cringe at such depictions and have worked hard to focus Washington and the world's attention on human rights abuses, political prisoners, and economic and political deprivations. Although those concerns are legitimate, they do not make up for an unwillingness to understand the sources of Fidel's legitimacy -- or the features of the status quo that will sustain Raul and the collective leadership now in place. On a trip to Cuba in November, I spoke with a host of senior officials, foreign diplomats, intellectuals, and regime critics to get a sense of how those on the ground see the island's future. (I have traveled to Cuba nearly 30 times since 1984 and met with everyone from Fidel himself to human rights activists and political prisoners.) People at all levels of the Cuban government and the Communist Party were enormously confident of the regime's ability to survive Fidel's passing. In and out of government circles, critics and supporters alike -- including in the state-run press -- readily acknowledge major problems with productivity and the delivery of goods and services. But the regime's still-viable entitlement programs and a widespread sense that Raul is the right man to confront corruption and bring accountable governance give the current leadership more legitimacy than it could possibly derive from repression alone (the usual explanation foreigners give for the regime's staying power).

The regime's continued defiance of the United States also helps. In Cuba's national narrative, outside powers -- whether Spain in the nineteenth century or the United States in the twentieth -- have preyed on Cuba's internal division to dominate Cuban politics. Revolutionary ideology emphasizes this history of thwarted independence and imperialist meddling, from the Spanish-American War to the Bay of Pigs, to sustain a national consensus. Unity at home, the message goes, is the best defense against the only external power Cuba still regards as a threat -- the United States.

To give Cubans a stake in this tradeoff between an open society and sovereign nationhood, the revolution built social, educational, and health programs that remain the envy of the developing world. Public education became accessible to the entire population, allowing older generations of illiterate peasants to watch their children and grandchildren become doctors and scientists; by 1979, Cuba's literacy rates had risen above 90 percent. Life expectancy went from under 60 years at the time of the revolution to almost 80 today (virtually identical to life expectancy in the United States). Although infectious disease levels have been historically lower in Cuba than in many parts of Latin America, the revolutionary government's public vaccination programs completely eliminated polio, diphtheria, tetanus, meningitis, and measles. In these ways, the Cuban state truly has served the poor underclass rather than catering to the domestic elite and its American allies.

What's wrong with being a critic of the Castro regime? By the way what makes me cringe is not the "facts" she's parading but rather the fact that she shills for the bearded one. On top of that she's been to Cuba 30 times - who the hell gets let into Cuba 30 friggin times unless they are licking someone's boots? As for knocking Castro he's killed more than Pinochet, refused plebiscite like Pinochet, has exiled a whole lot more than Pinochet and is leaving his country in much worse shape than Pinochet. Sounds to me like I have something to criticize. Sweig's Granma-esque reciting of stats as always neglects to note Cuba's standing in LA in terms of literacy and health - it ranked near the top. Let's move on shall we?

One encouraging development is that the Cuban American community is no longer of one mind with respect to Cuba's future and its role in it. For decades, a vocal minority of hard-line exiles -- some of whom have directly or indirectly advocated violence or terrorism to overthrow Fidel -- have had a lock on Washington's Cuba policy. But Cuban Americans who came to the United States as young children are less passionate and single-minded as voters than their parents and grandparents, and the almost 300,000 migrants who have arrived since 1994 are generally most concerned with paying bills and supporting their families on the island. Now, the majority of Cuban Americans, although still anti-Castro, recognize that the embargo has failed and want to sustain family and humanitarian ties without completely eliminating sanctions. Overall, many want reconciliation rather than revenge.

Reconcile my ass! I want the embargo to be lifted just to be done with it. It is overrated on both sides on the affect that it has on Cuba and it's economy. It is a distraction that does no one any good. Oh and one last thing it was not a failure. It isolated Cuba during the Cold War, it served its purpose. It's just that the Cold War is over. Let us return to the Silly Sweig:

Even with the economy growing and new public-sector investment in transportation, energy, education, health care, and housing, Cubans today are deeply frustrated by the rigors of just making ends meet. They are eager for more democratic participation and economic opportunity. But they also recognize that Cuba's social, economic, and political models will change only gradually, and that such reform will be orchestrated by those whom Fidel has long been grooming to replace him. Washington, too, must accept that there is no alternative to those already running post-Fidel Cuba.

From the perspective of Fidel's chosen successors, the transition comes in a particularly favorable international context. Despite Washington's assiduous efforts, Cuba is far from isolated: it has diplomatic relations with more than 160 countries, students from nearly 100 studying in its schools, and its doctors stationed in 69. The resurgence of Latin America's left, along with the recent rise in anti-American sentiment around the globe, makes Cuba's defiance of the United States even more compelling and less anomalous than it was just after the Cold War. The Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, based on a shared critique of U.S. power, imperialism, and "savage capitalism," has particular symbolic power. Although this alliance is hardly permanent, and American observers often make too much of Venezuela's influence as a power broker, it does deliver Cuba some $2 billion in subsidized oil a year and provide an export market for Cuba's surfeit of doctors and technical advisers. (By providing the backbone for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's social programs and assistance in building functional organizations, Havana exercises more influence in Venezuela than Caracas does in Cuba.) Havana, without ceding any authority to Chavez, will optimize this relationship as long as it remains beneficial.

Nor is Venezuela the only country that will resist U.S. efforts to dominate post-Fidel Cuba and purge the country of Fidel's revolutionary legacy. Latin Americans, still deeply nationalistic, have long viewed Fidel as a force for social justice and a necessary check on U.S. influence. As attendance at his funeral will demonstrate, he remains an icon. Latin Americans of diverse ideological stripes, most of them deeply committed to democracy in their own countries, want to see a soft landing in Cuba -- not the violence and chaos that they believe U.S. policy will bring. Given their own failures in the 1990s to translate engagement with Cuba into democratization, and the United States' current credibility problems on this score, it is unlikely that U.S. allies in Latin America or Europe will help Washington use some sort of international initiative to advance its desires for radical change in Cuba.

When Fidel dies, various actors in the United States and the international community will rush to issue and, if they get their way, enforce a series of demands: hold a referendum and multiparty elections, immediately release all political prisoners, return nationalized property and compensate former owners, rewrite the constitution, allow a free press, privatize state companies -- in short, become a country Cuba has never been, even before the revolution. Many of those goals would be desirable if you were inventing a country from scratch. Few of them are now realistic.

Uh....not so fast my friend. Here Sweig mixes some (not much) truth with with a whole lotta fiction. There were in fact multi-party elections, just not too many in a row. Political prisoners were held at different times but not in the numbers held now, there was private property, there is no need to rewrite the constitution - Fidel promised to institute the Constitution of 1940 - he's 47 years overdue. True the constitution is worthless - a typical LA laundry list of progressive (bankrupting) resolutions unlikely to be ever fulfilled, but Cubans always thought it was brilliant. There was actually an element of a free press - even in the early days of the Revolution. As for private companies there was always gov't intervention because this is LA after all. Why I keep reading I don't know:

By continuing the current course and making threats about what kind of change is and is not acceptable after Fidel, Washington will only slow the pace of liberalization and political reform in Cuba and guarantee many more years of hostility between the two countries. By proposing bilateral crisis management and confidence-building measures, ending economic sanctions, stepping out of the way of Cuban Americans and other Americans who wish to travel freely to Cuba, and giving Cuba the space to chart its own course after Fidel, Washington would help end the siege mentality that has long pervaded the Cuban body politic and, with the applause of U.S. allies, perhaps help accelerate reform. Cubans on and off the island have always battled over its fate -- and attempted to draw American might into their conflicts, directly or indirectly. Lest the next 50 years bring more of the same, the wisest course for Washington is to get out of the way, removing itself from Cuba's domestic politics altogether.

Fidel's successors are already at work. Behind Raul are a number of other figures with the capacity and the authority to take the reins and continue the transition, even after Raul is gone. Fortunately for them, Fidel has taught them well: they are working to consolidate the new government, deliver on bread-and-butter issues, devise a model of reform with Cuban characteristics, sustain Cuba's position in Latin America and internationally, and manage the predictable policies of the United States. That these achievements will endure past Fidel's death is one final victory for the ultimate Latin American survivor.

I can't argue too much but I have one question - Cuba has been in the toilet for a really, really long time. Why should they keep putting up with unresponsive leaders? Why should they stay quiet when Fidel is gone? Ok that was two questions but seriously Fidel is the one that holds it all together. Are Cubans really so happy that they are willing to put up with the snail's pace of reform? If tomorrow the US says no more Cubiches the burden on the Cuban gov't increases. Havana counts on migration to toss out malcontents and to keep their system afloat with remittances. Cut off the pipeline of immigrants and things could get ugly. With no hope of being Miamibound Cubans will have to encounter the disaster before them and do something about it.

Chavez: Commie or Caudillo

William Ratliff writing for The National Interest online goes for the latter. He then offers a prescription to thwart Chavez although he seems less than convinced that it will work:

The best way to reduce the appeal of Chavismo is to expand trade and other ties in the region and broaden our interests beyond our current narrow security concerns of terrorism, drugs and immigration. And patently obviously we must greatly reduce our dependence on the oil that gives all this clout to thuggish regimes all over the world.

In the end, however, Latin America will continue to generate Castros and Chavezes, no matter what we do, until its people demand and get real change. Some “old leftists” and “centrists” are trying today, with limited success. But ever more Latins are again looking for miracles from messiahs, for quick fixes from Chavez-type caudillos. Nothing will really transform Latin America, however, except good leaders with broad popular support implementing sound, pragmatic political, economic and educational programs over the long term. And that, alas, is not yet happening in much of the hemisphere.

Remembering Jeane Kirkpatrick

Friends and admirers are lining up to write about the importance of Jeane Kirkpatrick. At the Weekly Standard Norman Podhoretz notes her ambivalence to the Bush Doctrine:
Nor did the outbreak on 9/11 of what I persist in calling World War IV tempt her back into battle. She had serious reservations about the pru dence of the Bush Doctrine, which she evidently saw neither as an analogue of the Truman Doctrine nor as a revival of the Reaganite spirit in foreign pol icy. Even so, she was clearly reluctant to join in the clamor against it, which for all practical purposes meant relegating herself to the sidelines.
The Council on Foreign Relations, which named a chair in her honor, issued a press release. Newt, Bill Bennett, Michael Novak and others reflect on what Jeane Kirkpatrick meant to them and the nation. NRO helpfully posts an old WFB piece on "St. Jeane of the UN." Michael Novak also posted an entirely different and touching tribute at First Things:
Aristotle wrote that the criterion of good moral action is not a principle or a law so much as “the man of practical wisdom”—that is, the person in your environment who habitually makes the wisest and bravest decisions of anyone else you know. Aristotle mentions, in his context, Pericles. In my circle, I always wanted to ask Jeane Kirkpatrick for advice and counsel. I wanted to watch what she did. I guess nowadays they call persons of this type “role models.” But that term doesn’t quite get the whole idea. It misses the interiority of the thing, the inner life, the fount of the wisdom one is seeking. Not a role player but a person who has lived through a lot, learned from it, and has a burning desire to get things right, circumstance by circumstance. That was Jeane.
Before closing he touched on her stint in the UN:

Jeane was the architect of the emphasis on democracy and human rights that turned the later years of the 1980s into one of the most dynamic and star-bursting periods ever for the birth of new democracies. What she added to the Carter rhetoric was a firmer sense of the necessary habits, dispositions, actions, and institutions that turn human rights from “parchment barriers” on paper into real social forces. She tried to put substance and action into the high-flown empty statements of UN resolutions. When nations said one thing, then did another, Jeane carefully called them to account, privately or publicly as seemed to her wisest. She demanded straight-shooting. Countries that begged the United States for aid and relief, military help or emergency airlifts—and then stood rhetorically with the enemies of the United States on the floor of the UN—were informed that greater integrity was expected from them.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was an enormous force for honesty, liberty, candor, straightforwardness, and sheer moral bravery. She was a valiant woman and a gallant soul. She was a thoughtful and gentle colleague; a very warm, generous, and open friend; and a great, brave American heroine.

She will add much to the arguments and intellectual excitements that rage, I imagine, at the celestial banquets to which we are all called. It will be fun to engage with her again.

Hitchens on Pinochet

Once it comes to Human Rights abuses you can count on Christopher Hitchens to be consistent. In a not too surprising takedown Hitchens compares Pinochet to both Franco and Saddam. He brushes quickly by the market reforms and skips the fact that Pinochet willingly albeit reluctantly relinquished power. In terms of facts I have a problem with Allende being described as "dying bravely at his post." Going out the "Cuban way" is not what I consider brave. How fitting that he used Fidel's AK to finish himself off. Here's Hitch:
It is greatly to the credit of the Chileans that they have managed to restore and revive democratic institutions without any resort to violence, and that due process was scrupulously applied to Pinochet and to all his underlings. But there is a price to be paid for the slowness and care of these proceedings. We still do not know all that we might about the murder of U.S. citizen Charles Horman, for instance. And many Chilean families do not know where their "disappeared" loved ones are buried or how they died. (Perhaps sometimes it is better not to know the last bit.) Not once, in the prolonged process of investigation and clarification, did Pinochet offer to provide any information or to express any conscience or remorse. Like Slobodan Milosevic (who also cheated justice by dying) and Saddam Hussein, he was arrogant and blustering to the very last. Chile and the world are well rid of him, but we can thank his long and brutish rear-guard action for helping us to establish at least some of the emerging benchmarks of universal jurisdiction for tyrants.

LA Quick Hits: Pinochet Dies and Not Much More

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Evo Paradise: The South American Summit

The South American Summit wrapped up so let's see what went on: