No more Mr Nice Guy
Secretary of State Colin Powell has lost another crucial ally in Washington's ideological-bureaucratic wars. Moderate Republican intellectual Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the State department, is to replace Les Gelb as head of the council on foreign relations on 1st July. Haass, who ran the middle east desk at the national security council (NSC) in the last Bush administration, has made little secret of his dismay that neoconservative zealots are now running US policy in the region. He fears that the appointment of pardoned Irangate felon Elliot Abrams to Haass's old NSC job spells the end of any serious US pressure on Israel to dismantle settlements in the occupied territories-that is, once the Israeli-Palestinian crisis gets back on the Bush agenda. Haass is probably right, given Abrams's purge of the State department and CIA staffers on his team, most of whom made the mistake of taking seriously the "road map" and the Quartet process (of the US, Russia, the UN and EU). He also fears the neocons are too cavalier about the prospect of the rift with the European allies becoming a lasting breach. Haass is happy to be going-but feels a bit guilty at leaving Powell in the lurch.
Abrams's clean sweep
The Abrams new broom has certainly swept clean. Ben Miller, a CIA analyst who had the Iraqi file at the NSC, was ditched almost overnight. He had many doubts about the fitness of Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress to succeed Saddam. Two other officials, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, have also got the push. Leverett, also seconded from the CIA, had worked at the NSC since February 2002 and was appointed senior director for middle east initiatives on 3rd December 2002-the same day that Abrams took up his post. Hillary Mann has been sent back to the State department.
Photo-op for the French
No, even with Franco-American relations at their lowest ebb since Charles de Gaulle evicted US troops from French soil in 1966, the Bush administration is not seriously going to boycott this year's G8 summit. It is scheduled for 1st-3rd June in the French Alps resort of Evian, on the shore of lake Geneva. But one senior NSC aide is asking why should George Bush "take part in a photo-op publicity drive for bottled French water"?
Hamid Karzai is pissed off
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's Washington visit was a disaster. True, President Bush publicly promised lasting support, but at the news conference later none of the questions were about Afghanistan and none were directed at Karzai. The Republicans arranged a dinner and an award with many standing ovations. But the other honoree, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, barely mentioned the Afghans in his lengthy speech, which was about HIV and Saddam Hussein. What sent Karzai into a seething fury was his meeting with the Senate foreign relations committee. The Afghans had understood that Karzai would be meeting the senators informally around a table. When he arrived at the Dirksen Building on Wednesday, the senators were deployed in their usual high places, and Karzai sat facing them "as if I am on trial here." He was still sulking in the evening and only reluctantly attended a reception in his honour for 700 top-drawer guests. He shut himself in a small room, appearing briefly from time to time to shake hands with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, and then dashing back behind closed doors again. To make amends, Karzai was given six more helicopters than he had asked for.
Impeachment-revenge of the left?
Remember impeachment? Here it comes again, on little cat-like feet, creeping into a couple of familiar-sounding drafts that charge George W Bush with various "high crimes and misdemeanors" and are now circulating very discreetly among Congressional Democrats on the black and progressive caucuses. One draft focuses on "threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently proclaiming an intention to change its government by force while preparing to assault Iraq in a war of aggression." Another targets Bush's attacks on constitutional rights in the new Patriot Act legislation. The scheme began with that inveterate liberal peacenik Ramsey Clark, a former attorney-general from the LBJ era; and Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois, has helped with the drafting. So far the drafts are circulating among the usual suspects on the left, and they are saying little. Los Angeles congresswoman Maxine Waters says only that she and friends are "considering a lot of different strategies... by which to create a real voice of opposition to war." Chicago Democrat Danny Davis says he does not expect the idea to get much traction unless full-scale war breaks out without Congress being given a new chance to vote. And Barney Franks, the gay liberal from Massachusetts, warns that the whole idea will do Bush more good than harm. But if the war bogs down into street fighting, then Stalingrad on the Euphrates could trigger a real impeachment movement.
