I find this fascinating. Why is everyone lionising this man? Didn't he authorize the bombing of Serbia?
Not cool!
One of my dearest friends and her first child and husband were there during the bombing. The first such action since the second world war and aimed at unarmed civillians.
Shame on the memory of Holdbrooke and those who lionize him!
The point is this folks, before we get ourselves into too much of a senseless vitriolic lather:
Serbs will hate him, obviously. Europeans will hate him too. Anyone with an ounce of historical memory will despise him and yet, folks...
Peter Galbraith praises him to the skies.
Obama calls him a man of peace.
The BBC wheels out politician after politician to speak well of him with no hint of any criticism except to say that he was 'forthright'. A euphemism if ever I heard one.
But this is the point.
The interconnecting webs of patronage reveal themselves through the support for Holdbrooke. I am convinced that if we study Holdbrooke's career and views and friends and supporters we will understand a lot more about the way people make moral compromises and form dubious in order to become members of the establishment.
But we are talking about an international Anglo-American coterie of people voicing their support here.
Support for Holdbrooke must be totemic or symbolic in some way, a sign of being onside.
That's why the uncritical support is interesting.
if we study Holdbrooke's career and views and friends and supporters we will understand a lot more about the way people make moral compromises and form dubious intellectual alliances in order to become members of the establishment.
He was effective. He started out as a character in Apocalypse now. Perhaps the geek played by Harrison ford. He's intelligent. A little island of rationalism and effectiveness in a difficult war. He's spotted and brought into strategic decision making. He's involved in the implementation of a hearts and minds policy in the Mekong Delta.
His friends start climbing up the foreign policy ladder too. Right wing Negroponte rises high.
When the Peace Corps was famous throughout Africa and Latin America for being a CIA front, in 1970 Holdbooke joins the Peace Corps and stays in it for 2 years. Probably a field commander.
And what do spies do when they go into public life, they become 'intelligence analysts'? He was magicked into the managing editorship of Foreign Policy magazine. Contributing editor of Newsweek.
Subsequently he becomes the democrats Asian policy wonk. And presumably the link with the CIA and other intelligence organisations.
He becomes a problem solver. He does well. Allowing South Vietnamese immigration to the USA. Building bridges with China, finding raison d'etre for NATO.
managing director of Lehman brothers. in the 1980s. Giving the lie to the idea that companies who seek strategic advantage are not 'political.
Praises Suharto's human rights record, supposed to be pressurising him secretly.
In 1990's he supports the German meddling in Yugoslavian affairs resulting in the eventual break away of Croatia. He wins a medal from the German government for helping it achieve this despicable foreign policy objective and then shatters Yugoslavia even further by supporting the KLA and authorising the bombing of Serbia.
He has broken a deadlock. And broken a country.
As UN ambassador, the next intractable situation he deals with is the US contribution to the UN. He negotiates a reduction. He wins negotiating space for Israel, he helps a deal on AIDS prevention go down.
member of the usual the usual think tanks, dips occasionally into lecturing,
Holdbrooke raises the issue of weapons of mass destruction in 2001 in Iraq and keeps it in the foreground for Bush administration.
Hired by Obama to deal with Iraq Afghanistan.
Anyway, you can glean a lot from Wikipedia, but I think the reason why OUR establishment liked Holdbrooke is because he was relatively more effective and progressive than other influential people in the US administrations. He was the lesser of evils.
If we all wake up and smell the coffee, people like Galbraith would say, then we might realise that he was better than other diplomatic advisors and agents.
Perhaps if Wikileaks released all Holdbrooke's memos we could judge him more fairly.
The poor man had to authorise that bombing. Milosovic was going to XXXXX redacted XXXX if he did not.
Machael Goldfarb calls us apologists for genocide.
Now I have read George Orwell, has he?
We know what Newspeak is. Does he?
We have read about the manufacture of consent. Has He?
We know what a Big Lie is and why it works. Does he.
Anony-mice indeed! Is that as good as the insults get in media world? We are obviously dealing with a true intellectual heavyweight in Michael Goldfarb.
Honestly, Milosovic was a sociopath, but Yugoslavia was not a fiction. Yugoslavia was a real country that was formed in a completely different way. It was more like Greece and France in that the communist partisans had real support and real firepower. Tito was supported by all the people of Croatia ECXEPT for former members of the Ustashi, those who were fascist collaborators during the war.
The truth is you can smash any 'real' country if you have a country like Germany and a superpower doing the smashing. There are always a few opportunistic regionalist groups in any country that want to form their own nation.
Spain could be smashed into tiny bits. Cornwall could be chipped off the old block. India could become a myriad of nations - with the help of an intervening superpower.
The question is this.
Did Milosevices vile government give the US and Germany the right to smash it to bits. And Mr Goldfarb, I personally don't think it did.
And anyone coming from your country should be a little cautious about getting on your high horse about massacres and genocide and murder and by proxy. Mai Lai, anyone? Chile anyone? Congo anyone? The list is endless.
No Mr Goldfarb. The big lie doesn't work anymore.
Nibble, nibble.
Micheal Goldfarb is a News Corporation employee.
Editor of the Weekly Standard. Here described by Wikipedia as
... an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neo-con bible".
Of course a comment like this would never be allowed on a Murdoch website....even if I did pay his shilling.
Sorry Miss Sarajevo, you are wrong there.
Look at his family history, his weird and dangerous wife. He was definitely a sociopath.
Holdbrooke as the Harrison Ford character
Quick back track.
You know people admired Margaret Thatcher for her ability to govern, even on the left. Well they weren't admiring her policies.
Holdbrooke was a quarterback for US foreign policy, a does, an operations man. Most of the time he was an assistant.
Zbigniew Brzezinski might have been the secretary of state but Holdbrooke was the Assistant secretary of state. Zbigniew might have been the 'Architect' of the policy designed to support the Mujehadin and put the Soviet Union under pressure but Holdbrooke then was the constructor. The builder, the doer. He probably built the key alliances.
He built up US relations with Germany after reunification because he was tasked to do it and did it well. Holdbrooke seems to have been a no holds barred operations man a doer, and though he was openly a Democrat he was not idoelogical.
You can just imagine him taking on a task in Cyprus, Vietnam, the UN, Afghanistan and so on and laying out all the elements like a game in front of him and then playing the game.
When he took out three mobile phones inside MI6 it was to show that MI6 might have been talking the talk, but they weren't walking the walk. Their operations side was faulty.
The point is should we blame Holdbrooke for doing what he was tasked to do?
He was effective, he was intelligent, he was a realist and he was an insider and fopr that of course he will be priased and admired.
Just as Thatcher was, even by her oponents. He was a smooth, ruthless operator who with a reputation for getting things done. A lot of people can admire that. Obama did. Clinton did. Carter did. You can't have a foreign policy without these intelligent capable people.
Does he share in the guilt of the FP mistakes made by his government. Yes,
Does that mean he wasn't good at his job. No.
Not cool!
One of my dearest friends and her first child and husband were there during the bombing. The first such action since the second world war and aimed at unarmed civillians.
Shame on the memory of Holdbrooke and those who lionize him!
The point is this folks, before we get ourselves into too much of a senseless vitriolic lather:
Serbs will hate him, obviously. Europeans will hate him too. Anyone with an ounce of historical memory will despise him and yet, folks...
Peter Galbraith praises him to the skies.
Obama calls him a man of peace.
The BBC wheels out politician after politician to speak well of him with no hint of any criticism except to say that he was 'forthright'. A euphemism if ever I heard one.
But this is the point.
The interconnecting webs of patronage reveal themselves through the support for Holdbrooke. I am convinced that if we study Holdbrooke's career and views and friends and supporters we will understand a lot more about the way people make moral compromises and form dubious in order to become members of the establishment.
But we are talking about an international Anglo-American coterie of people voicing their support here.
Support for Holdbrooke must be totemic or symbolic in some way, a sign of being onside.
That's why the uncritical support is interesting.
if we study Holdbrooke's career and views and friends and supporters we will understand a lot more about the way people make moral compromises and form dubious intellectual alliances in order to become members of the establishment.
He was effective. He started out as a character in Apocalypse now. Perhaps the geek played by Harrison ford. He's intelligent. A little island of rationalism and effectiveness in a difficult war. He's spotted and brought into strategic decision making. He's involved in the implementation of a hearts and minds policy in the Mekong Delta.
His friends start climbing up the foreign policy ladder too. Right wing Negroponte rises high.
When the Peace Corps was famous throughout Africa and Latin America for being a CIA front, in 1970 Holdbooke joins the Peace Corps and stays in it for 2 years. Probably a field commander.
And what do spies do when they go into public life, they become 'intelligence analysts'? He was magicked into the managing editorship of Foreign Policy magazine. Contributing editor of Newsweek.
Subsequently he becomes the democrats Asian policy wonk. And presumably the link with the CIA and other intelligence organisations.
He becomes a problem solver. He does well. Allowing South Vietnamese immigration to the USA. Building bridges with China, finding raison d'etre for NATO.
managing director of Lehman brothers. in the 1980s. Giving the lie to the idea that companies who seek strategic advantage are not 'political.
Praises Suharto's human rights record, supposed to be pressurising him secretly.
In 1990's he supports the German meddling in Yugoslavian affairs resulting in the eventual break away of Croatia. He wins a medal from the German government for helping it achieve this despicable foreign policy objective and then shatters Yugoslavia even further by supporting the KLA and authorising the bombing of Serbia.
He has broken a deadlock. And broken a country.
As UN ambassador, the next intractable situation he deals with is the US contribution to the UN. He negotiates a reduction. He wins negotiating space for Israel, he helps a deal on AIDS prevention go down.
member of the usual the usual think tanks, dips occasionally into lecturing,
Holdbrooke raises the issue of weapons of mass destruction in 2001 in Iraq and keeps it in the foreground for Bush administration.
Hired by Obama to deal with Iraq Afghanistan.
Anyway, you can glean a lot from Wikipedia, but I think the reason why OUR establishment liked Holdbrooke is because he was relatively more effective and progressive than other influential people in the US administrations. He was the lesser of evils.
If we all wake up and smell the coffee, people like Galbraith would say, then we might realise that he was better than other diplomatic advisors and agents.
Perhaps if Wikileaks released all Holdbrooke's memos we could judge him more fairly.
The poor man had to authorise that bombing. Milosovic was going to XXXXX redacted XXXX if he did not.
Machael Goldfarb calls us apologists for genocide.
Now I have read George Orwell, has he?
We know what Newspeak is. Does he?
We have read about the manufacture of consent. Has He?
We know what a Big Lie is and why it works. Does he.
Anony-mice indeed! Is that as good as the insults get in media world? We are obviously dealing with a true intellectual heavyweight in Michael Goldfarb.
Honestly, Milosovic was a sociopath, but Yugoslavia was not a fiction. Yugoslavia was a real country that was formed in a completely different way. It was more like Greece and France in that the communist partisans had real support and real firepower. Tito was supported by all the people of Croatia ECXEPT for former members of the Ustashi, those who were fascist collaborators during the war.
The truth is you can smash any 'real' country if you have a country like Germany and a superpower doing the smashing. There are always a few opportunistic regionalist groups in any country that want to form their own nation.
Spain could be smashed into tiny bits. Cornwall could be chipped off the old block. India could become a myriad of nations - with the help of an intervening superpower.
The question is this.
Did Milosevices vile government give the US and Germany the right to smash it to bits. And Mr Goldfarb, I personally don't think it did.
And anyone coming from your country should be a little cautious about getting on your high horse about massacres and genocide and murder and by proxy. Mai Lai, anyone? Chile anyone? Congo anyone? The list is endless.
No Mr Goldfarb. The big lie doesn't work anymore.
Nibble, nibble.
Micheal Goldfarb is a News Corporation employee.
Editor of the Weekly Standard. Here described by Wikipedia as
... an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neo-con bible".
Of course a comment like this would never be allowed on a Murdoch website....even if I did pay his shilling.
Sorry Miss Sarajevo, you are wrong there.
Look at his family history, his weird and dangerous wife. He was definitely a sociopath.
Holdbrooke as the Harrison Ford character
Quick back track.
You know people admired Margaret Thatcher for her ability to govern, even on the left. Well they weren't admiring her policies.
Holdbrooke was a quarterback for US foreign policy, a does, an operations man. Most of the time he was an assistant.
Zbigniew Brzezinski might have been the secretary of state but Holdbrooke was the Assistant secretary of state. Zbigniew might have been the 'Architect' of the policy designed to support the Mujehadin and put the Soviet Union under pressure but Holdbrooke then was the constructor. The builder, the doer. He probably built the key alliances.
He built up US relations with Germany after reunification because he was tasked to do it and did it well. Holdbrooke seems to have been a no holds barred operations man a doer, and though he was openly a Democrat he was not idoelogical.
You can just imagine him taking on a task in Cyprus, Vietnam, the UN, Afghanistan and so on and laying out all the elements like a game in front of him and then playing the game.
When he took out three mobile phones inside MI6 it was to show that MI6 might have been talking the talk, but they weren't walking the walk. Their operations side was faulty.
The point is should we blame Holdbrooke for doing what he was tasked to do?
He was effective, he was intelligent, he was a realist and he was an insider and fopr that of course he will be priased and admired.
Just as Thatcher was, even by her oponents. He was a smooth, ruthless operator who with a reputation for getting things done. A lot of people can admire that. Obama did. Clinton did. Carter did. You can't have a foreign policy without these intelligent capable people.
Does he share in the guilt of the FP mistakes made by his government. Yes,
Does that mean he wasn't good at his job. No.
Comments
Post a Comment