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Go Home The ABC's of O's Asian Diplomacy: An "F"

THE SPINE NOVEMBER 16, 2010

The ABC's of O's Asian Diplomacy: An "F"

BY MARTIN PERETZ

Aside from offending the folk who get their views from "All Things Considered" and other hothouses of progressive conformity,  Judith Miller is a journalist's journalist, a reporter's reporter. Here is her devastating review of the president's trip to Asia.  

Fareed Zakaria strikes an altogether different note in yesterday's Washington Post. But he would, wouldn't he? Another TNR staffer gone wobbly.

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Judith Miller said, "President Obama was said to have been exasperated by his inability to extract a single meaningful gesture towards Israel in his meeting with Saudi’s King Abdullah." Give Obama some credit for that. What's an American president to do in the face of Muslim arrogance and obstinacy?

- amidut

November 16, 2010 at 7:55am

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Peretz, maybe you should just run the Peretz algorithm on Obama articles: if Obama did it, it must be bad. I'm just wondering what you'll do if the president with the most legislatively successful first two years in office in decades manages to pull off a peace agreement. Will your proverbial head explode? Reading you is beginning to feel like reading Limbaugh.

- sokol8

November 16, 2010 at 8:58am

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Peretz, maybe you should just run the Peretz algorithm on Obama articles: if Obama did it, it must be bad. I'm just wondering what you'll do if the president with the most legislatively successful first two years in office in decades manages to pull off a peace agreement. Will your proverbial head explode? Reading you is beginning to feel like reading Limbaugh.

- sokol8

November 16, 2010 at 8:58am

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"What's an American president to do in the face of Muslim arrogance and obstinacy?" What I'd like to know is why Obama does not criticize the Saudis' rejectionism in the same easy and natural way he criticizes Israel over building in Jerusalem? It seems to me the American president stands in awe to the Saudi king and the Muslim nation. But of course it is always easier to stand with the many against the few, especially when the few happen to be Jewish. Jews should be used to being villified and not mind it. Isn't it done for their own good? I wonder, I really wonder, how the Saudi king talks about Obama when no Western ears are listening and if the Saudi intransigence is not at least in part due to innate racism. According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "They called Haweya (her sister) and I Abid, which means, 'Slaves'. Being called a slave - the racial prejudice this term conveyed - was a big part of what I hated in Saudi Arabia". (wiki) "Our next move was to Saudi Arabia, where the Arab ethnicity with which I identified so strongly was suddenly cast into doubt: now it was my turn to be the "slave". My belief that I was an Arab, racially superior to non-Arab Africans, became laughable in the heartland of Arabia - a place where "Arabness" was not only determined by skin colour but by whether you could uninterruptedly trace your lineage back to the founding father of your clan. In fact, ancestry is so important in Saudi Arabia that courts have the power to annul a marriage if gaps are later discovered in a person's lineage, opening up the possibility of blood line pollution." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/05/apalershadeofblack) Wouldn't it be terribly ironic if the effectiveness of Obama's Muslim background, which he flaunts around whenever he visits Muslim countries, is much undermined by the colour of his skin and his African father? We heard how Condoleeza Rice was referred to in the Arab press.

- noga1

November 16, 2010 at 9:44am

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Q - "What's an American president to do in the face of Muslim arrogance and obstinacy?" A - Reassess his hard-core ideological assumptions about the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict in general, and Arab-Palestinian conflict in particular. Hint: It ain't a territorial dispute. Hershel Ginsburg Jerusalem / Efrata

- ginzy

November 16, 2010 at 9:45am

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Noga, how politically incorrect of you!! 50 lashes with a wet noodle for writing in a fashion that illustrates the law of nature that political correctness is inversely proportional to factual correctness. hg

- ginzy

November 16, 2010 at 9:48am

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Well, Ginzy, I'm really trying to understand what is going on with this president. Unlike the man in the joke who keeps looking for his keys under the streetlight and not where he actually had lost them, among the buses in the darkened part of the street, I am trying to look for answers where visibility is difficult.

- noga1

November 16, 2010 at 10:34am

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Quite understandable.... If you want some insight into understanding Obama's psyche I suggest you read this. hg

- ginzy

November 16, 2010 at 11:21am

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"Fareed Zakaria strikes an altogether different note in yesterday's Washington Post. But he would, wouldn't he? Another TNR staffer gone wobbly." So, let me get this straight: you expect those affiliated with the magazine to think a certain way. Not too long ago, TNR was whining that Joe Lieberman was subjected to an ideological purity test.

- TJ814

November 16, 2010 at 11:53am

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Nice psychological portrait of Obama, Ginzy. I think we're now seeing the depression and flailing that comes after the inflation has lost its lift. I remain puzzled that no one seems to be screaming about Obama's ignorance and delusion in holding up Indonesia as a model of religious tolerance. Here's an Israeli blogger's knockout piece: http://www.crossingtheyarden.com/2010/11/jew-free-indonesia/#more-822

- willjames77

November 16, 2010 at 12:10pm

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Let me get this right. Judith Miller, who threw every last shred of her credibility and professional judgment as a journalist into the Potomac in the attempt to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was sitting on stockpiles of nuclear weaponry and that military intervention was the only way to go, is now exercising her critical faculties around 10 years too late, writing about Obama's trip to Asia. Is that about it?

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 1:24pm

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"So, let me get this straight:" TJ814 Yes, and the first test is that you not begin your post with tedious cliches. ironyroad "Let me get this right." Miller has more credibility than people who use these tired phrases. In any case, she at least paid for her mistakes, unlike journalists like who wrote "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tenenhaus who was prooven spectaculalry wrong but still lords it over the NY Times Sunday Book Review.

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 1:55pm

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"So, let me get this straight:" TJ814 Yes, and the first test is that you not begin your post with tedious cliches. ironyroad "Let me get this right." Miller has more credibility than people who use these tired phrases. In any case, she at least paid for her mistakes, unlike journalists like who wrote "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tenenhaus who was prooven spectaculalry wrong but still lords it over the NY Times Sunday Book Review. How many other of their writers have been proven wrong and still hold on to their jobs?

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 1:57pm

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This is not a matter of being proven wrong -- anyone can be wrong, especially where there are different perspectives possible -- but of jettisoning basic professional standards for a political goal. Tanenhous is not guilty of that particular offense, whatever you think of his book.

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 2:13pm

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ironyroad "This is not a matter of being proven wrong -- anyone can be wrong, especially where there are different perspectives possible -- but of jettisoning basic professional standards for a political goal. Tanenhous is not guilty of that particular offense, whatever you think of his book." It is exaclty about being proven wrong. Tenenhaus wrote a book that spoke of facts and not opinions. He thought that because Obama won the conservative movement was dead. At least Miller made mistakes about issues that were also believed by many people in the intelligence agencies around the world. There is no reason why she should be held to a higher standard than say the chief of intelligence of Great Britain.

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 2:32pm

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Irony, you sound like you have been reading the London Review of Books for too long.

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 2:33pm

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Well it's better than reading Walt...

- Sophia

November 16, 2010 at 3:03pm

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I haven't read it in years (15 or so). But I would simply say that, for me, to cite Judith Miller writing on foreign policy is roughly equivalent to seeing a dog baying at the moon and calling it astronomy.

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 3:14pm

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"But I would simply say that, for me, to cite Judith Miller writing on foreign policy is roughly equivalent to seeing a dog baying at the moon and calling it astronomy." This particular kind of argument is called ad hominem. You are not dealing with the substance of her article, you are instead trying to impeach her credibility as author by referring to something about which she was wrong, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Miller was all for the war in Iraq, as were many others. I still maintain that she was not wrong about that. You may disagree with her conception of the Iraq problem and her conclusions but that doesn't make her understanding a mythical one. It means that you disagree with her geopolitical theories, not that they were false or based on moonshine.

- noga1

November 16, 2010 at 4:09pm

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Newsmax.com? You could put John F. Burns on Newsmax.com and it wouldn't noticeably increase their credibility.

- Lymon1

November 16, 2010 at 4:13pm

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Sophia "Well it's better than reading Walt..." Walt first published in the LRB his odious screed: This article by "just journalism says it all: "London Review of Books: Ten years of anti-Israel prejudice" "UK’s London Review of Books uses public money to malign Israel, while sympathising with designated terrorist groups." "The report, entitled, ‘London Review of Books: Ten years of anti-Israel prejudice’ is a comprehensive review of the 92 articles commissioned to external writers on the subject of Israel-Palestine between 1 June 2000 and 31 May 2010. The findings show an unremitting hostility to the Jewish state, embodied by the views of editor Mary-Kay Wilmers who has described herself as “unambiguously hostile to Israel”." http://justjournalism.com/special-reports/london-review-of-books-ten-years-of-anti-israel-prejudice/

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 4:39pm

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ironyroad "I haven't read it in years (15 or so). But I would simply say that, for me, to cite Judith Miller writing on foreign policy is roughly equivalent to seeing a dog baying at the moon and calling it astronomy." When and where did she write about astronomy?

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 4:41pm

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This is from wikipedia, not a friendly source: ""On May 17, 2006, NavySEALs.com and MediaChannel.org published an exclusive interview with Miller[citation needed] in which she detailed how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaeda and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaeda attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States. Ultimately, however, Miller never wrote that story. Two months later, on September 11, Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, another Pulitzer Prize winner, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do"." btw: she did win a pulitzer prize.

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 4:47pm

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Sounds like some of us are still reluctant to throw away the old "No Blood for Oil" placards. If it was oil we were after in Iraq, it certainly was a great mistake. Venezuela is closer, and it would have been so much easier to take out Chavez.

- willjames77

November 16, 2010 at 4:48pm

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“Obama's Asia Tour Fails to Achieve Goals” By: Judith Miller “Here, in brief, is the record to date. “India: Although a final India decision is still over a year away, Obama failed to close the deal on the sale of advanced fighters — a key element in advancing U.S. access to India's defense establishment and slowing Russia's grip on the notoriously corrupt sector. Indonesia: The president’s celebrated effort to update his Cairo speech on U.S. relations with the Islamic world failed to dazzle. The American press barely covered it and the Indonesian press sharply criticized both the speech and its orator. Fleeing volcanic ash, the president left early. Japan: Obama failed to resolve the Futenma basing issue which has driven U.S.-Japan defense relations into gridlock. An anti-U.S. vote is expected later this month in the Okinawa municipal elections. The most bitter disappointment, however, was Obama’s failure to conclude the widely anticipated Free Trade Agreement with South Korea. Philip Levy, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writing in Foreign Policy, called it nothing short of a “disaster.” As veterans of such tortured talks with the Koreans can attest, the Koreans are famously difficult negotiators. The White House never should have touted the agreement if it were not in the bag. But it did just that.”” What did she say that’s inaccurate?

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 5:05pm

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JD: "When and where did she write about astronomy?" ??????? Noga, you're right that it's ad hominem (or ad feminem), but I'm left with the picture not of someone whose geopolitical theories I disagree with -- there are many such, and I also respect many of them -- but rather of someone who chose to use her journalistic credentials and those of her paper to poison the public debate with information from government sources that she either (a) knew to be baseless or purely speculative or (b) at the very least didn't subject to a reporter's normal scrutiny. I don't think it's accurate to say that I merely have a theoretical disagreement. I accuse her of not having acted as a responsible journalist should have, and as she was being paid to do.

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 5:36pm

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Ginzy - You'll have to forgive this Europeacenik. What exactly is the I/P conflict, if it isn't a territoral dispute?

- IggyPop

November 16, 2010 at 6:11pm

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Did Judith Miller compare the trip to George H. W. Bush where he vomited in the flower pots in Japan? Did she compare it to Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton's trip to collect cash for conversation? Not really sure if we have ever had a President go to Asia and come back flushed with success since Nixon.

- CRS9TNR

November 16, 2010 at 6:34pm

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CRS9, that's true. However for this trip I am curious about the degree to which diplomatic communication seems to have opened the way for incompletes, as it were. Normally speaking, unless there are some real unforeseen difficulties, agreement is signalled clearly so that leaders don't step on the banana when they get together, or alternately failure to agree is signalled and spokespeople avoid making announcements, the trip can be altered or cancelled, or whatever. Ian Bremmer from some Asia studies think tank, who was on Charlie Rose last night, was pretty good in his analysis, making it clear that the biggest difficulty the administration faces is that the U.S. doesn't have a lot of leverage these days. Financially/economically we spend the 2000s demolishing our industrial base and handing our financial sovereignty over to China. We can't make stuff just happen, and there are serious players now who don't agree with our basic world view -- and they weren't serious players 10/20 years ago. In a sense, Miller's take is superficially correct, but the problem that she's blind to is that the downsides have very little to do with Obama himself and a President McCain would be facing the same landscape. However, as Bremmer said, the sudden shift toward a kind of aggressive swagger on China's part has made several countries -- Indonesia being one -- feel more urgently that they might like to have us around for a longer time. To that extent, there may be more medium-to-longer term value from this trip than anyone sees right now.

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 6:49pm

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"In a sense, Miller's take is superficially correct, but the problem that she's blind to is that the downsides have very little to do with Obama..." She was writing as a journalist not an analyst.

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 8:22pm

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You think? In that case, it looks like she discovered that skill almost a decade too late.

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 9:08pm

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She does have a Pulitzer. Et tu viaironia?

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 9:13pm

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"What exactly is the I/P conflict, if it isn't a territoral dispute?" For Israel it is a territorial dispute. For Muslims and Palestinians it is about negating the idea that Jews have a history in Jerusalem, Israel or the Middle East. So it doesn't matter how Israelis regard this conflict. What matters is that Palestinians have rendered it unsolvable because they do not accept that Jews have any territorial claims to Israel.

- noga1

November 16, 2010 at 9:14pm

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This is from her own website: "In 2002, Judith Miller was part of a small team that won a Pulitzer Prize for "explanatory journalism" for her January, 2001 series on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That same year, she won an Emmy for her work on a Nova/New York Times documentary based on articles for her book, "Germs." She was also part of the Times team that won the prestigious DuPont award that year for a series of programs on terrorism for PBS's "Frontline.""

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 9:17pm

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CRS9TNR, who the heck is this troll?

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 9:19pm

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Here is more for Irony: http://wapedia.mobi/en/Judith_Miller_(journalist)

- jdyer

November 16, 2010 at 9:22pm

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I don't have a Pulitzer, JD. I'm not going to hide the fact. But I'm assuming that that does not mean I'm barred from criticizing someone who went on to jettison exactly the professional ethics and standards that got her the awards she earned. I don't understand why this seems to be bugging you so much. Do you think the newspaper of record did their job in the run-up to the Iraq invasion? Isn't it at least an arguable case that they allowed themselves to be manipulated by the administration, especially when it came to WMD claims and assertions of a connection to 9/11? Haven't they indeed admitted as much, although it took years?

- ironyroad

November 16, 2010 at 10:40pm

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Ironyroad - Yes I agree, we are moving in the wrong direction right now and it's hard for any American President to influence other countries. Offshoring manufacturing and bankrupting the nation have weakened our influence abroad. I think President Obama added to his misery by flip-flopping American Diplomacy. Every previous President was solidly behind Israel and had a deep mistrust of Russia. President Obama's 'New' strategies were poorly thought out and created confusion among our allies. JDyer - Irony is one of the leftie hold overs here. Not as well read or deep as you, but thoughtful in a quirky kind of way.

- CRS9TNR

November 17, 2010 at 6:59am

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"JDyer - Irony is one of the leftie hold overs here. Not as well read or deep as you, but thoughtful in a quirky kind of way." ironyroad and I are always at loggerheads over politics but I feel moved to protest this surprisingly gratuitous condescension. Ironyroad is at the very least as well read, deep and thoughtful as anybody here. In the deployment of humor, wit and friendliness to make his points he is unparalleled. But you would have to be able to value such qualities in order to recognize them when you see them. [Please don't squirm, ironyroad! It's not really you I'm defending but my own judgment:) ]

- noga1

November 17, 2010 at 8:28am

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"But I'm assuming that that does not mean I'm barred from criticizing someone who went on to jettison exactly the professional ethics and standards that got her the awards she earned." Criticism is very easy and cheap that's why it's so popular. It's tiday's last refuge of the scoundrel.

- jdyer

November 17, 2010 at 9:00am

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I prefer honest attacks to criticism.

- jdyer

November 17, 2010 at 9:01am

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JD, if criticism is today's last refuge of the scoundrel then practically any paper or electronic publication such as TNR should shut its gates. Both the original journalism and the discussion boards involve at their very core a critical (not a carping) perspective on current affairs, economics, films, literature, etc. CRS9, I'm not entirely sure what a "holdover" means as you use it, but I'm certain that a demand for minimal journalistic standards for reporters on our major national newspaper has nothing whatsoever to do with being a "leftie." Noga, it's ok, I know!

- ironyroad

November 17, 2010 at 12:52pm

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Despite having consistently supported and rooted for Obama since he decided to run for Prez (wasn't it February 2007 when he formally announced his candidacy? All I remember is excited as I was, I groaned knowing 20-some months of campaigning had only just begun), I've had a dry eye trained to observe his personal and political character development as candidate and then elected President, in particular his narcissistic self-regard, and cool and frequently haughty paternalistic attitude toward those he commands (or thinks he commands). It turns out, unfortunately, he hasn't yet caught on to his critical blindspots. Having something of a narcissistic character structure myself, with some hard earned insight about how it has undermined my sincere desire to learn and grow from experience and repeated mistakes. It's particularly hard for narcissistic personalities to see let alone acknowledge the wide gap between their perceived effectuality from actual. It is a highly important task for narcissists to learn to separate themselves from their sense of exaggerated self-importance, because they have such a underutilized ability to be self-objective and recognize and acknowledge their very real limitations. People who are innately highly intelligent and capable, yet have a dominant narcissistic personality, are at high risk for failure to anticipate unforeseen events and developments while being at the same time slow to respond and adapt. Sometimes, as in Obama's case recently, critical setbacks are not recognized as salubrious, but merely superficially assessed and passed over or ignored altogether. Obama's narcissistic tendencies are much stronger and more stubbornly defended than I would have thought by this point. I wonder if he was even aware when he used "shellacking" to describe the outcome of the election. His voice tone was very angry and self-flagellating as he pronounced the word, and I think he may have been quite shocked at himself when he said it. If I'm right, it was probably an involuntary admission bursting through, unexpectedly revealing an awareness that the fault was entirely his own. He admitted just that in a post-election interview. I sure hope he takes it to heart. Externally he is off balance, awkward, embarrassed. If he's lucky he'll get the connection. If he isn't, he's in for a lot more trouble that he won't deal with effectively. I hope he's lucky. I'd very much like him to succeed.

- Tgossard

November 17, 2010 at 3:27pm

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Lymon1 "Newsmax.com? You could put John F. Burns on Newsmax.com and it wouldn't noticeably increase their credibility." Really. Kind of sad that anyone with a Pulitzer is posting for Newsmax. I had to be in Manhattan yesterday, and drove down Park Avenue to a hospital near City Hall. Always love that drive and the mostly spectacular architecture. Anyway, since I needed to walk off the mild anesthetic afterwards, I visited 45-51 Park Place. Such gracefully scaled buildings. One lonely NYPD guarding the barricades. No one else around.

- K2K

November 17, 2010 at 9:10pm

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