Charlie Black and Zaire

I like this ad a lot:

Marc Ambinder reports that Black told him "as he has told other reporters, that his firm ran every potential foreign client by the State Department and/or the White House in whatever administration was in power and asked whether the scope of the work fit with American foreign policy goals." He also quotes Black as saying he's "not ashamed of anything the firm did."

There's no question that helping the Mobutu regime in Zaire was something the American governments of the time were okay with. But anyone who had anything to do with aiding Mobutu and isn't ashamed of it really needs to get his conscience replaced. I highly recommend Michela Wrong's book, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo. American support for Mobutu was an enterprise that involved a lot of people over a long period of time, so Black's hardly the only one with something to be ashamed of, but he really ought to be ashamed.

Comments

I really don't want to spend the general election talking about African politics. And I certainly hope Moveon doesn't open the discussion. It would be far better to hold this material until the GOP tries to use Obama's alleged Kenya connections.

This is what I'm talking about.

As usual, the right-wing narrative melds half-truths and lies with facts to create a seamless indictment.

Leading conservative blogs and publications charge that Mr. Obama has recklessly aligned himself with opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Followers of Mr. Odinga, a member of the minority Luo tribe, have perpetrated horrific atrocities against members of the Kikuyu tribe, because incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and the nation’s ruling elite are Kikuyu. One of the worst incidents occurred in the village of Eldoret, where dozens of Kikuyu Christians burned to death when they sought shelter in a church that was then set afire by their rampaging pursuers.

These events are set within a broader story line of an alleged Muslim plot to overthrow the Kibaki government, which is friendly to the United States and the West, and replace the secular constitution of Kenya with sharia law, creating a haven for Al Qaeda—which blew up the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi a decade ago and still operates there, according to American diplomats. During the Kenyan election, the Christian evangelical movement in Kenya circulated a “memorandum of understanding” allegedly signed by Mr. Odinga and a group of Muslim clerics that would commit his government to instituting Muslim strictures against pork and alcohol, setting up sharia courts and ending cooperation against terrorism with Western governments.

Denounced as a forgery by Mr. Odinga and the Muslim authorities in Kenya, which it almost certainly is, that document nevertheless still circulates via the Internet and is quoted by American publications. The point is to raise questions about Mr. Obama and his connections with Mr. Odinga, who claims to be his cousin—and to infiltrate those doubts into the mainstream media.

Posted by southpaw | May 17, 2008 5:24 PM

Matt's analysis depends on the idea that the United States behaves like a traditional power interested in maximizing access to resources and preserving and extending to the extent feasible (direct or indirect) control over lesser peoples and regions, with only an opportunistic regard for rights and values. Whereas in fact the United States is a light onto the world, a beacon of freedom and the last best hope. True, the United States is sometimes too good, bungling its philanthropy and, in bitter irony, hurting the very people its so desperately trying to help (a la in Iraq). But the notion implicitly put forward here, that the United States government knowingly committed evil acts for self-interested reasons, is absurd on its face and impossible by definition. Shame on you Matt, shame on you.

This, at any rate, is what I've learned through exposure to the American press.

Posted by Andrew Sullivan enthusiast | May 17, 2008 6:43 PM

What about the New York City Council members who sponsored ceremonies honoring Mugabe? Should they be voted out of office? Of course not, they're Democrats. It's disgusting the way the Yglesiases of the world pretend to care about Africans, when it's all just partisan dirty tricks.

Posted by y81 | May 17, 2008 9:00 PM

I don't think many Americans care about a political strategist's clients. It's the kind of thing liberals think people SHOULD care about, but no one really does.

What people do care about -- for better or worse -- is character stuff about the candidate himself. To that end, I wish Move On (or anyone) would tee up a flip-flop ad about McCain, stick a shiv right in the heart of his "straight talk" persona. Lord knows there's plenty of material.

Posted by Altadena | May 17, 2008 9:15 PM

And what's the payoff here? Say McCain does fire Charlie Black.

Does that help put Texas in play? Does it weaken the GOP's cultural appeal in Appalachia or solidify Obama's support in the suburbs?

What does a win on the Charlie Black issue bring us?

Posted by southpaw | May 17, 2008 9:39 PM

What does a win on the Charlie Black issue bring us?

Make McCain either clean up his campaign - and look weak to the Yellow Elephants - or stick with Black and help paint him as Just Another Republican.

Posted by Doug H. (Fausto no more) | May 17, 2008 10:33 PM

Michela Wrong's other book, about Eritrea, is also excellent reading and taught me a lot about the tragic history of a region where U.S. troops are allegedly still involved, propping up the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia.

Posted by Warren Terra | May 18, 2008 12:37 AM

y81, do you know the difference between some local putzes and the guys who work for the campaign of the Republican Candidate for President of the United States of America?

Here's a clue: Matthew, when discussing the loathsome history of the second is not required to reference the first. It isn't about party identification, it is about visibility. But like all of the bushbots you want to waste time talking about people who don't matter so that people will stop talking about how your candidate is the candidate of lobbyists for vile dictators (and, of course, the candidate of 100 years war).

It is disgusting the way Bush supporters, who cheered on Bush's assault on the Iraqi people and his horrific handling of New Orleans as well as his blithe indifference to the suffering of Africans in Darfur, pretend to care about Africans; it's really just about partisan dirty tricks.

Posted by Circus Freak | May 18, 2008 12:44 AM

You miss the point. To Black, and Republican lobbyists in general, "wrong" is defined as things for which someone will actually put you in jail.

Posted by Tim Connor | May 18, 2008 1:31 AM

"Fun" fact: Zaire was so corrupt and Mobutu stole so much money from his own people that Zaire was where we first got the term "predatory state."

It's kind of weird how McCain's guys don't just have a history lobbying for and consulting dictators, but the weirdest and worst dictators on "our side" during the Cold War. They weren't just consulting a softer dictator like Lee Kuan Yew, but guys like Mobutu. Then there's the guy who was part of the effort to get the former SLORC to change its name to something less totalitarian for international PR purposes. Odd.

Posted by Reality Man | May 18, 2008 2:52 AM

I think the purpose of this ad is a bit different from most. It's not about targetting any particular swing voter group -- it's about trying to push the story into the media and gin up a nasty news cycle for the McCain campaign.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | May 18, 2008 3:35 AM

The important thing is that we saved Congo / Zaire from the ChiComs, who otherwise would have been rolling over Africa and preparing their boat invasion of our mainland.

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 7:26 AM

McCain it turns out is a maverick because his staff is comprised totally of money/influence peddlers as opposed to political/influence peddlers. Now traditionally the political sphere and the money sphere sat next to each other with some overlap. That overlap has progressed steadily over time and now with McCain the overlap has become total.

The money sphere used to come begging to the political one for favors, for which it paid. Now instead the money sphere often is the government, under Bush and only moreso if it's McCain, so no begging is necessary. They just act and create the reality they want.

It does get messy when competing interests simultaneously act at cross purposes. Not to mention the problems it causes when the politician has to stand before the voters once and awhile. It seems however that being independent of the traditional political sphere and its normal give and take is embraced by the MSM as the height of independence, thus the straight talk/maverick label, and it's a winner with them anyway.

I think the media people like the Blacks of the world because they are more upfront about what they do. I mean it's just understood even if they are just as circumspect as politicians about it, but circumspect in a different way, if that makes any sense. Black is thus a straightshooter too. He does it for money and he has a lot of it. Nothing garners more respect than that.

Posted by rapier | May 18, 2008 8:41 AM

El Cid, you say that like it's snark, but the Warbloggers know the Truth. They played Risk, you see, and they remember that from Central Africa it's just a few short steps through South America to both the Western and the Eastern United States.

Posted by Warren Terra | May 18, 2008 8:42 AM

Congo / Zaire is just 2 days' boat ride from Nicaragua, which of course is just a day's drive from Harlingen, Texas.

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 9:47 AM

i would like to endorse Michela Wrong's book and her other one on Eritrea, "I Didn't Do It for You". Just great journalism, and what a topic: Eritrea, the only country to be both part of the coalition of the willing and the terrorist watch-list.

Posted by larrybob | May 18, 2008 9:48 AM

That's all well taken, but the essential problem remains:

How do you project soft power, how do you engage with rogue regimes, without compromising humanist values?

Not that someone like Black would have been bothered by such scruples, but how are we, who do care about these things. going to deal with this problem?

It seems that in the wake of the Iraq debacle US liberals haven't really developed a consistent answer to this question (I'm not claiming that I have one):

One group, I think a lot of the commenters here, seems to favour something akin to isolationism, which is impossible, since the US is so entangled in every part of the world and simply ignoring regimes doesn't make the problems go away.

Others, like Matt, seem to waver between old-school foreign policy realism with all its moral pitfalls and constructive engagement, which sounds great, but leaves the problem of how not to compromise our values in the process unanswered.

Posted by novakant | May 18, 2008 9:55 AM

novakant: One problem is discussing such issues as intellectual outlines in approaches to foreign policy by forcing it into a context in which stupid answers prevail -- i.e., the notion among the various 'schools' of foreign policy among power elites that the range pretty much varies between right wing isolationism and a Kissingerian death squad interventionism called "realism". There have been tons of scholars, human rights workers, activists, etc., who have suggested many ways to work at achieving humanist or moral goals in foreign policy, but because their approaches aren't based first and foremost in satisfying the lunatic power goals of U.S. foreign policy elites, they tend to be ignored.

How many people, for example, read Alex de Waal's blog about Darfur, from the point of view of someone who worked on the ground in aid programs and in peace negotiations for years, versus two or three shallow columnists and pundits who write a weekly screed or two? Ignoring the hard question of who's correct, de Waal offers tons and tons of suggestions as well as desperate pleas for things which could be done right now but which governments simply aren't doing.

If in searching for intellectual answers (as opposed to making political choices about what to press for as a politically engaged citizen) we ignore the ranges which are seen as sensible by the powerful, there's lots which can be done; yet since both "soft power" and radical military interventionism both fail to be infinitely powerful, I think we still have to face the fact that some set of vaguely similar policy options which fly under the banner of some supposedly catchy slogan is an inadequate approach to dealing with the dicey actual world around us, in which there are a tremendous number of things which can be done, yet maybe none of which fulfill the fantasies of those who want maximal goals immediately.

For example, if international energies hadn't been wasted in useless bluster about some sort of macho military intervention in Zimbabwe, and had really, really, really concentrated on working with the governments and the other social power sources in Southern Africa (including the South African trade union COSATU which has consistently been challenging its own government's hands-off nervousness toward Mugabe), something might have been achieved already. We don't know, but it can hardly have achieved less than blustering did, and has the benefit of not risking the utter collapse of Zimbabwean government into bands of military sub-regimes and tens of millions of desperate refugees flooding the neighboring countries.

For the moment, foreign policy elites are addicted to the stupid and harmful policy ranges which satisfy their more important desires, but individual citizens are free to think as rationally and creatively as they wish.

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 10:14 AM

Speaking of intelligent discussions of foreign policy and moral aims, and of Alex de Waal, the BBC's Robin Lustig had a wide-ranging discussion and debate with the UK Foreign Office's David Milliband and with de Waal.

As usual, it holds up the BBC's reputation for really in-depth interviews & questions, and mixes in on-the-scene interviews, from Burma, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

You may listen to the discussion on Radio 4's World Tonight page from May 13 here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/worldtonight/specialreports.shtml

Or simply launch the audio stream here (no podcast that I could find):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/worldtonight/ram/worldtonight_miliband_20080513.ram

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 11:11 AM

seems to favour something akin to isolationism, which is impossible, since the US is so entangled in every part of the world and simply ignoring regimes doesn't make the problems go away.

This is common but very strange reasoning - symptomatic of the screwiness of our imperialist political culture. Why is it the U.S. government's responsibility to make all problems across the world "go away" - so much so that any course of action which doesn't offer this as a possibility is "impossible"?

I'm an internationalist. I believe it's wrong in any context, including that of U.S. policymaking, to value the lives of U.S. citizens more than other people, just because we're part of the same nation. But it does not follow that I support U.S. government intervention abroad. Our rulers have a track record which strongly suggests that any intervention they launch will tend to benefit them and their friends at the expense of both ordinary Americans and, even more, the people on the pointy end of the stick. The U.S. government is a terrible instrument for internationalism - widely hated for good reason and beholden to amoral corporate interests as it is.

Obviously I think this position is rational - I hold to it. But conventional American political discourse doesn't just treat this point of view as wrong, it treats it as essentially unthinkable. We are supposed to identify with our government and our military to the extent that internationalism and imperial intervention are equivalent.

In fact, there are humanitarian problems abroad where, in solidarity, we can do a great deal - most easily, the ones like Iraq where our government's policy is the root of the problem. There are other cases, like Darfur, where it's not clear there's much of anything we can do, besides alleviate a little of the suffering with humanitarian aid. There are none where we have any reason to trust that in the long run the U.S. state will act in the best interests of the people involved.

Posted by Kalkin | May 18, 2008 11:35 AM

By the way, note the ongoing program among foreign policy establishmentarians and their pundit worshipers to define those of us who recommend the rational examination of each particular foreign policy situation and a serious questioning of what can and cannot be done and the likely possible consequences of various choices as "ideologues".

Meanwhile, people who recommend vast military adventures with little (or in the recent Burmese case, zero) actual outlining of policy possibilities and likely consequences, based on incredibly shaky assumptions and screamingly declared ideological motivations as the tough-minded "realists".

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 12:31 PM

Thanks for the link El Cid, de Waal is certainly much more knowledgeable than I am, as far as Darfur is concerned, yet I am not willing to simply accept his staunch refusal to consider military options as gospel, it's simply an assumption among others. Also, his blanket dismissal of the "responsibility to protect" as an "empty slogan" strikes me as rather cynical, maybe it is hard earned world-wise cynicism, but again it's just an assumption and there is certainly a chance and a hope that this concept will become more and more important in the future.

The fact the I did indeed pigeonhole people into certain policy schools is not to be taken as an indication that I myself find these positions useful for solving our current problems, rather I wanted to make the point that a lot of people seem to fall back on or oscillate between outdated foreign policy ideas in the face of the challenge posed by the Bush administration's radical and misguided policy.

I am certainly convinced that non-violent conflict resolution is preferable to military intervention, for both moral and pragmatic reasons, but there is also the danger that our negotiations and humanitarian aid efforts prolong conflicts and consolidate the power of murderous regimes or groups, who are happy to take our money and talk the talk while the suffering and killing goes on and on. And then there is the danger of doing nothing much at all, as in the case of the Second Congo War which despite the 5.4 million deaths was and still is more or less totally ignored by almost everybody. Of course it's always a good thing to try to rationally assess the limits of what can be done, but let's keep in mind that such assessments are educated guesses and that the political will to throw some weight behind a diplomatic or, if that fails, military effort is a factor that might change the whole equation.

very strange reasoning - symptomatic of the screwiness of our imperialist political culture.

See, I'm a bleeding heart euroweenie, so I must have been rather unclear in my post to give you the impression that I was a product of US imperialist culture. I want to see the US acting in concert with other nations through the UN, but am realist enough to acknowledge that large scale international action without or against the US is more or less unfeasible at least for the foreseeable future

Posted by novakant | May 18, 2008 2:15 PM

"...exposure to the American press"

It's what's taught novakant to think that his conundrums are those of the State. "How are we, who do care about these things. going to deal with this problem?" But novakant, you aren't going to deal with the problem, and neither will your opinion journal heroes. As for the State, it's problem, broadly speaking, is how best to preserve and extend power. Looking at the history of American international behaviour--looking at the history of every great power--does it seem to you that the course of state action was the attempt to answer your question: "How do you project soft power, how do you engage with rogue regimes, without compromising humanist values?" Is that the framework by which to best understand the logic of Iraq, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia, the conquest of the Philippenes, greenlighting genocide in East Timor, the Clinton-era military aid to the Turkish suppression of the Kurds? Are the histories of these events the attempts to salvage "humanist values"?

The State is not you novakant. It is not a humane, decent liberal with good faith ideas on curing the world's ills. It is not a seminar--a roundtable with M. Yglesias on the left and C. Krauthammer on the right. It is a network of power relations (Max Weber). It is a complex of institutions whose working logic is that of its own preservation. And the sooner you come to understand that--the sooner you put away the moral narcissism that projects your values onto an entity that is definitionally value-neutral--the better prepared you'll be to actually think realistically (and moralistically) about American foreign policy and the problems of the world. Certainly at the very least you'll be cured of the intellectual malignancies that lead to blinkered thinking ("this is a rogue regime, unlike the United States, which invaded Iraq without pretext"), meglomania ("we need to solve the world's problems") and transparent illogic ("the US is so entangled in every part of the world and simply ignoring regimes doesn't make the problems go away").

Posted by Mark | May 18, 2008 2:19 PM

I am not willing to simply accept his staunch refusal to consider military options as gospel, it's simply an assumption among others. Also, his blanket dismissal of the "responsibility to protect" as an "empty slogan" strikes me as rather cynical, maybe it is hard earned world-wise cynicism...

Although de Waal may be right or wrong on his argument (I think he makes a good case, but that's a separate matter), it is important to note that he has not refused military options in general or in Darfur as a "gospel" in the since of an a priori decision; rather, he makes rational arguments based on the Darfuri case of why all military options yet suggested for the region are a terrible idea.

In the interview he begins by clearly stating that a quick, colonial-style intervention (and although he doesn't explain I assumed he meant imperial in style rather than literally situating it in colonialism) in Rwanda could have averted the genocide.

In other words, he stated a case in which military intervention of a certain type in a certain context within a certain time period could both 'work' (given certain specified goals) and could have been realistically mobilized.

In the Sudan / Darfur case, de Waal argues that those conditions do not exist, and that all recommended military options

Thus in at least his form of argument, he is not being an ideologue, but a true realist. Dispute his actual arguments if it seems fruitful, but he isn't simply waving his hands and refusing to intellectually consider military options in Sudan / Darfur: he has engaged them, and concluded that all such options so far look likely to worsen, rather than improve the situation.

And although his concision in the interview time period don't allow it, I've seen enough of his argument to understand that when he refers to the UN and international bodies and "R2P" ("Responsibility To Protect"), he's speaking about the slogan and the way such arguments are used institutionally.

It's like how people made fun of business speeches which recommend one "think outside the box" -- they weren't mocking the notion of thinking creatively, but the bureaucratic repetition of something which once was or was intended to sound like an argument, but which in the current usage was not.

Posted by El Cid | May 18, 2008 2:41 PM

It's what's taught novakant to think that his conundrums are those of the State.

FYI: I'm a Guardian reader. And your semi-educated, condescending jadedness rather fails to impress.

Posted by novakant | May 18, 2008 2:47 PM

"I'm a Guardian reader."

The effect is the same.

"semi-educated"

I'll cop to that. Certainly I've tried to avoid the education that consists of steady exposure to the Guardian, the NYTimes, the Atlantic, Economist, Newsweek, etc. No question this blog-reading of mine is a vice.

Posted by Mark | May 18, 2008 3:18 PM

"See, I'm a bleeding heart euroweenie, so I must have been rather unclear in my post to give you the impression that I was a product of US imperialist culture."

Oh, I see. British imperialist culture, then - or perhaps more precisely British subimperialist/Atlanticist culture. As Mark writes, same diff.

Posted by Kalkin | May 18, 2008 5:04 PM

El Cid, you're correct in that de Waal isn't a pacifist, nor is he an ideologue and though I didn't mean to attack him as a person, I was overstating my case a bit.

The dilemma for me remains though: the Second Congo War cost around 5 million lives, a military intervention would most likely have been a very difficult and messy affair. In the face of such numbers of victims (and one doesn't even want to extrapolate how many got hurt, maimed and raped), however, I think it would have been worthwhile to take the risk of intervening militarily regardless (not blindly and without a plan, of course).

Similarly, I think that people underestimate the problems a military intervention in Rwanda might have caused, because it fits their narrative. I think it would have been a big risk, but a risk worth taking.

Regarding R2P, as I said, de Waal may well be justified in his cynicism towards the use of the concept by diplomats and bureaucrats, but if one is so easily frustrated by such things, then one might as well give up on the UN altogether, because it relies on empty slogans and promises all the time due to its very nature. Yet, it is quite fascinating to see how some of these concepts and values actually become part of the collective mind over time and thus gain actual political force.

British imperialist culture, then - or perhaps more precisely British subimperialist/Atlanticist culture

Yeah, the Guardian, that bastion of British imperialism, lol - I hate to say such things, but you really need to get out more.

Posted by novakant | May 19, 2008 6:19 AM