Opinion piece in The Guardian

A generation of failed politicians has trapped the west in a tawdry nightmare

In one of his last interviews, the historian Tony Judt lamented his “catastrophic” Anglo-American generation, whose cossetted members included George W Bush and Tony Blair. Having grown up after the defining wars and hatreds of the west’s 20th century, “in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political”, these historically weightless elites believed that “no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences“.

A member of the Bush administration brashly affirmed its arrogance of power in 2004 after what then seemed a successful invasion of Iraq: “When we act,” he boasted, “we create our own reality.” A “pretty crappy generation”, Judt concluded, “when you come to think of it.”

One cannot but think of the reality it made as mayhem in Asia and Africa reaches European and North American cities. But those of us from countries where many Anglo-American institutions were once admirable models have their own melancholy reasons to reflect on their swift decay.

As another annus horribilis lurched to a close, the evidence of moral and intellectual sloth seemed unavoidable. In the Christmas issue of the Spectator, Rod Liddle described Calais as “a jungle of largely Muslim asylum seekers aching to get into Britain – presumably to be hugged” by “the liberals”. In an interview in the same issue, the prime minister confessed that Liddle “does make me laugh“. The chumminess seemed to confirm Amit Chaudhuri’s strong recent “impression”, acquired from BBC documentaries about India, that Britain comprises “male buddies”, whose “capacity for spontaneous insight isn’t that far away from that of Jeremy Clarkson”.

It was still hard not to be puzzled by the casual malevolence of the lead headline in the Times on Boxing Day: “Muslims ‘silent on terror’“. A few days earlier, candidates in the Republican presidential primaries, aspiring leaders of the free world, had offered the following modest proposals: ban Muslims from travel, kill families of terrorists, shoot down Russian planes, close down parts of the internet, carpet-bomb Syria.

Power, it seems, does a lot more than corrupt; it also coarsens and stultifies. Judt’s diagnosis of an unbearable lightness of being also applies to many younger people exalted into positions of influence by the accident of their birth in rich and powerful countries – members of ruling classes who assumed that history ended in 1989 with the fall of communism and their unchallenged supremacy.

It is possible to feel slight relief that at least the current chief operator of America’s war machine was originally formed, intellectually and emotionally, by an experience of the world common to most of humanity: one of powerlessness and marginality. As his approval ratings sank last month, Barack Obama exasperatedly insisted that American leadership “is not just a matter of us bombing somebody“.

[Read on …]

In her foreign policy, Secretary Clinton failed to learn from mistakes in previous administrations. I find her correspondence with life-long pal Sidney Blumenthal revealing and embarrassing: Hillary Clinton was told Angela Merkel is against ‘Obama phenomenon’. In earlier article – Hillary Clinton lobbied by Cherie Blair to meet Qatari royal, emails reveal. Who speaks the truth today with the Obama administration and NATO policy provoking the Russia bear?

Colin Powell Says Georgia Provoked Russian Crisis, Hints McCain’s Response Was Hasty, Reckless

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell offered some “straight-talk” on the Georgia/Russia conflict, and not-so-subtly insinuated that McCain’s rather belligerent response was careless and unnecessarily provocative.

McCain to Georgian President: “Today, We Are All Georgians”

My recent diary – US Policy of Military ‘Re-alignment’ and Obama’s Military Think-tank.

Also from September: Obama’s Quest for Legacy on Foreign Policy and Relationship with Russia.

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