Barton Gellman and Amy Wilentz
Softening Hillary
By Amy Wilentz
Posted Thursday, May 18, 2000, at 6:51 PM ET Bart:
I feel bad for Hillary.
First of all, she's being perfect, and no one in 12-step America likes a goody-two-shoes. Those percentages over 50 who are against her are just white males, and no surprise, and not so huge a chunk as to be insurmountable. I believe that all the woman needs is a little chink in the Hillarian armor (say, Bill has another affair, not too hard to imagine) and she'll be elected lickety split. A disease would work, too, but I can't wish that on anyone, even if it would mean victory.
But it would be nuts (oops) for Rudy to quit, because with all of his foibles and his illness, he's just a far more attractive candidate now. Even I like him better, though given how little I liked him before, that's not saying much. I wonder how the Louima and Diallo and Dorismond families are feeling about Giuliani now. Not too generous, I'd imagine.
Is it true, as the Wall Street Journal reports, that Jesse Jackson is going to Sierra Leone to mediate in something called the peace process? (I remember Jesse coming to Haiti on Aristide's plane when the United States put Aristide back in office, and how Jesse jockeyed for photo ops with the returning democrat. Who will he try to be photographed with in S.L., I wonder?) The WSJ, which of course naturally hates Jackson much more than I naturally like him, points out that--as part of a brokered truce between the government and the rebs--the Rev. helped secure Sankoh's release the last time the rebel leader was taken. Vain truce, it turns out. What can Jackson do now? Maybe he can be the one to talk to the men holding the hostages, but with a record like that, I'm not sure he'll be seen as having much legitimacy on either side. Anyway, if I were Sankoh, I'd beware of Jackson now. Jesse doesn't like to be burned even once.
What will Jackson's future be in the United States? He's the Dennis Ross of Africa, and if you thought being the Dennis Ross of Holylandia was a drag (Dennis must think so), imagine the vaster frustrations in the huge continent of troubles. My God.
Let me leave you with this: Kevin Roberts, the chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency, says the following (according to the Wall Steet Journal):
There's a new way of communicating, and the challenge is how to bring emotion and engagement--how to bring love--to a personal and sometimes antisocial medium. For me, the Internet is like electricity. I don't care where it came from, or how it got there, I just want to figure out how to emotionally connect with it.
(Roberts is a former rugby player from New Zealand ... does that explain his odd feelings about electricity?)
Oh, Bart, I hope, hope, that this week, you and I have somehow brought a little bit of loooooooooove to the medium.
Amy
Softening Hillary
By Amy Wilentz
Posted Thursday, May 18, 2000, at 6:51 PM ETA former Pentagon, Middle East, and diplomatic correspondent, Barton Gellman is special projects reporter for the Washington Post. Amy Wilentz is the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. She writes frequently about the Middle East and is finishing a novel about Jerusalem.
Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
I'm baffled by Ms Wilentz' account [Tuesday's entry] of the mag editors preferring a current corporation-vanquishing woman (who lived to collect major bucks and sue again another day) to one who died a generation ago. Karen Silkwood's days of cleavage and miniskirts are behind her, all right, so W (the mag) can't use her martyrdom to advance mercantile causes any more. Pity.
--Aristophanes
(To reply, click
here.)
Mercenaries have been around since organized warfare [Tuesday]: the Swiss were world-famous mercenaries for several hundred years. The problems with mercenaries are equally old. They tend to have divided or weak loyalties. The Swiss would famously go on strike on the night before crucial battles and demand more money. They also harm their employers by making military adventures too easy. The French dabbled in interventions frequently, using their (excellent) Foreign Legion in places where public opinion would never have allowed the sons of France to be put at risk. But when the adventure would sometimes escalate, the only choices were to send the regular army in (very unpopular) or back out in disgrace and defeat (also unpopular). Mercenaries today make it easier for a government to become entangled in a military action that is not supported by a majority of its citizens, and in which it has no vital national interests. That is exactly the kind of action you want to avoid, not make easier.
--TomFool
(To reply, click
here.)
From Wednesday's entry:
He seems a nice enough guy, but he shouldn't be in a line of work that forces him to make speeches (and us to listen to them).
Preach it, sister! The best reason to vote for Bush and against Gore is that W's mangling of the language is far less offensive (amusing, even) than Gore's artificial, wooden, boring, condescending, endless speechifying. How anyone with the slightest ear for language--even in Tennessee, not exactly the world HQ for good prose--could ever have voted for this guy, even once, is a continual source of amazement.
--Fred
(To reply, click
here.)
As to the roads and other infrastructure being built in northern Israel that Amy Wilentz calls a bribe [Thursday's entry], it might also be seen as a peace dividend. Instead of paying for an army occupying Lebanon, Israelis can see more peaceful and useful returns on their taxes. As for the potential for Katyusha rockets falling on these new roads, the potential for that will probably depend on how the peace talks go. The rockets have never been that serious a threat, at least not in comparison to the overwhelming retaliation that Israeli warplanes visit on Lebanese villages, infrastructure and occasionally major cities like Beirut. If Israel is magnanimous in securing the peace, by allowing the return of Palestinian refugees and aiding in the disarming of the South Lebanese Army (their proxy force) and in rebuilding Lebanon, then the prospects for peace are good. The issues that created the war in Lebanon would have gone a long way towards being reversed. But that is a big if. What is currently being discussed as a peace dividend or "bribe" is much less far-reaching.
--Babette Grunow
(To reply, click
here.)
In response to Bart's comments about the Lion phase of the British Operation [Thursday], it should be pointed out that the British have avoided the problem the Americans got themselves into (the locals deciding that the foreign devils are not supermen). They have sent not just well-seasoned troops (which the 19-year-olds of any military are not) but without doubt, the best-trained military force in the entire world--the Gurkhas--to secure the area. The Gurkhas were last seen in Kosovo, where they were the spearhead of the NATO forces that drove the Serbs to the border and kept the Russians in the airport. This provides the British with a two-fold advantage: First they are able to stay as long as they want without getting in trouble (as their troops are quite capable of taking care of themselves). Second they have the advantage of using 'colonial' troops (an old British trick) which protects them politically, as the people back home aren't seeing 'their boys' being brought home in body bags, if everything goes to heck. Pretty swift?--Well, the British have been doing this Empire/Hegemony thing a bit longer than you Americans and they are a bit more realistic about overseas adventures.
--Menoitios
(To reply, click
here.)
To Menoitios: One wonders how many international problems would have been avoided without the Empire/Hegemony thing of the British and the French and the Belgians and the Dutch and the Germans and the...
--Tarquin
(To reply, click
here.)
[Also discussed in The Fray this week: diamond dealers, Somalia, and the word 'lede'--some threads come with extra value input from Gellman and Wilentz. Start
here.]
(5/22)
What did you think of this article?
Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum
SPONSORED CONTENT
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
The Hilarious Results of Slate's "Write Like Sarah Palin" Contest
Does Your iPhone Really Need a Titanium Case?
Vice Presidents Say the Darnedest Things
The Golden Scissors Awards Are the Oscars of Black Hair
Slate's Complete Coverage of the Tiger Woods Scandal
The Awesome Spectacle of Glenn Beck's Live Performance of The Christmas Sweater
Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
I'm baffled by Ms Wilentz' account [Tuesday's entry] of the mag editors preferring a current corporation-vanquishing woman (who lived to collect major bucks and sue again another day) to one who died a generation ago. Karen Silkwood's days of cleavage and miniskirts are behind her, all right, so W (the mag) can't use her martyrdom to advance mercantile causes any more. Pity.
--Aristophanes
(To reply, click here.)
Mercenaries have been around since organized warfare [Tuesday]: the Swiss were world-famous mercenaries for several hundred years. The problems with mercenaries are equally old. They tend to have divided or weak loyalties. The Swiss would famously go on strike on the night before crucial battles and demand more money. They also harm their employers by making military adventures too easy. The French dabbled in interventions frequently, using their (excellent) Foreign Legion in places where public opinion would never have allowed the sons of France to be put at risk. But when the adventure would sometimes escalate, the only choices were to send the regular army in (very unpopular) or back out in disgrace and defeat (also unpopular). Mercenaries today make it easier for a government to become entangled in a military action that is not supported by a majority of its citizens, and in which it has no vital national interests. That is exactly the kind of action you want to avoid, not make easier.
--TomFool
(To reply, click here.)
From Wednesday's entry:
Preach it, sister! The best reason to vote for Bush and against Gore is that W's mangling of the language is far less offensive (amusing, even) than Gore's artificial, wooden, boring, condescending, endless speechifying. How anyone with the slightest ear for language--even in Tennessee, not exactly the world HQ for good prose--could ever have voted for this guy, even once, is a continual source of amazement.
--Fred
(To reply, click here.)
As to the roads and other infrastructure being built in northern Israel that Amy Wilentz calls a bribe [Thursday's entry], it might also be seen as a peace dividend. Instead of paying for an army occupying Lebanon, Israelis can see more peaceful and useful returns on their taxes. As for the potential for Katyusha rockets falling on these new roads, the potential for that will probably depend on how the peace talks go. The rockets have never been that serious a threat, at least not in comparison to the overwhelming retaliation that Israeli warplanes visit on Lebanese villages, infrastructure and occasionally major cities like Beirut. If Israel is magnanimous in securing the peace, by allowing the return of Palestinian refugees and aiding in the disarming of the South Lebanese Army (their proxy force) and in rebuilding Lebanon, then the prospects for peace are good. The issues that created the war in Lebanon would have gone a long way towards being reversed. But that is a big if. What is currently being discussed as a peace dividend or "bribe" is much less far-reaching.
--Babette Grunow
(To reply, click here.)
In response to Bart's comments about the Lion phase of the British Operation [Thursday], it should be pointed out that the British have avoided the problem the Americans got themselves into (the locals deciding that the foreign devils are not supermen). They have sent not just well-seasoned troops (which the 19-year-olds of any military are not) but without doubt, the best-trained military force in the entire world--the Gurkhas--to secure the area. The Gurkhas were last seen in Kosovo, where they were the spearhead of the NATO forces that drove the Serbs to the border and kept the Russians in the airport. This provides the British with a two-fold advantage: First they are able to stay as long as they want without getting in trouble (as their troops are quite capable of taking care of themselves). Second they have the advantage of using 'colonial' troops (an old British trick) which protects them politically, as the people back home aren't seeing 'their boys' being brought home in body bags, if everything goes to heck. Pretty swift?--Well, the British have been doing this Empire/Hegemony thing a bit longer than you Americans and they are a bit more realistic about overseas adventures.
--Menoitios
(To reply, click here.)
To Menoitios: One wonders how many international problems would have been avoided without the Empire/Hegemony thing of the British and the French and the Belgians and the Dutch and the Germans and the...
--Tarquin
(To reply, click here.)
[Also discussed in The Fray this week: diamond dealers, Somalia, and the word 'lede'--some threads come with extra value input from Gellman and Wilentz. Start here.]
(5/22)