Posted on 06/14/2004 6:20:15 AM PDT by veronica
IT is hard to believe it has been only one week since the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that liberated France from the Nazis. A lot has changed in a mere seven days.
Let’s start with the international scene. George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder took their act from Normandy to Sea Island, Georgia, where they were joined by other members of the G8 and assorted interested parties. There Chirac proved once again that a chasm exists between his words and his deeds.
Last Sunday in the Norman coastal town of Arromanches, the French president told some 6,000 D-Day veterans and assorted guests: “France will never forget what it owes America.”
A few days later he opposed America’s requests for deeper involvement of Nato in the pacification of Iraq, saying such a move would not be opportune. He fought to water down Bush’s programme to foster the growth of democratic institutions in the Middle East, stating that he opposed such “missionary work”.
And he responded with a vigorous “non” to Bush’s plea that Iraq’s creditors join America in forgiving the vast majority of the debts incurred by Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime. Within the G8 nations, Japan is owed $4.1 billion, Russia $3.5 billion, France $3 billion, Germany $2.4 billion and the United States $2.2 billion.
And just to make certain that none of the anti-American voters at home gets any idea that he has moved too close to the Americans, Chirac decided to pass up President Ronald Reagan’s funeral to keep an unspecified “previous commitment” in Europe.
Gerhard Schröder is in a more difficult position than the French friend with whom he has formed an alliance of steel. He is riding a tiger: he has whipped up anti-American sentiment and ridden the wave of anti-Americanism to electoral triumph. But he now wants to open markets and investment opportunities in the countries that have recently joined the EU, and to cosy up to the delegates they will be sending to the various EU institutions.
Unfortunately for him, eight of these countries remember that it was American steadfastness in the cold war, and Reagan’s decision to replace containment with victory as his policy goal, that got them out from under the Russian boot.
So these countries, and the German business community, are telling Schröder to tone down his anti-American rhetoric — which he cannot do without antagonising the voters he has persuaded to hate America in general and Bush in particular.
To add to Franco-German discomfort, the UN Security Council unanimously approved the new Iraqi government, led by Ghazi al-Yawar, who was educated in America. And when, after a two-day stop in Ireland for an EU-US summit, the heads of state move to Istanbul for the Nato summit, Chirac is likely to find his resistance to Nato involvement in Iraq’s reconstruction ignored by an organisation desperate to prove that it is relevant to the 21st century.
All in all, it seems that in a single week the reputations of George Bush and Tony Blair have moved from the valley of despair to the bright uplands reserved for those who get it right in the tough world of geopolitics.
All this geopolitical toing-and-froing overshadowed some important developments on the economic front. With Japan now firmly on the path to growth, Europe is the world’s principal laggard. John Snow, US Treasury secretary, called on the EU to rely less on export-led growth, which adds to America’s trade deficit, and to take steps to accelerate domestic demand.
But the Europeans are engaged in a blame game. Schröder and Chirac blame the European Central Bank for keeping interest rates too high, while the ECB blames France and Germany for violating the fiscal rules of the Growth and Stability Pact, and for refusing to reform their labour and product markets.
The funny thing is that both the ECB and its critics are probably right. The one-size-fits-all interest rate set by the ECB is too high to maximise growth in France and Germany, and the two countries’ refusal to make economic reforms is holding back their economies.
The most optimistic forecast at present is that the European economy will grow at an annual rate of about 1.5% this year, about one-third that of the United States.
Not all the news from these meetings is gloomy. The heads of state did manage to pronounce themselves in favour of a resumption of trade-opening talks, and to promise to reduce trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and barriers to access.
Whether those pledges can survive the pressures of the American presidential campaign is not certain. Bush is showing commendable courage by defending free trade as a creator rather than a destroyer of jobs, and ridiculing calls to end outsourcing.
He has also had the Commerce Department cut anti-dumping duties on Chinese television sets to levels that will have minimal impact on China’s television-set manufacturers.
All this is a misfortune for John Kerry. His campaign rests on a three-legged stool. The first leg is that Bush is a job destroyer; but the economy has created almost 1m jobs in the past three months, and is probably adding more than 10,000 every day.
The second leg is that Bush has antagonised America’s allies and is isolated. The 15-0 Security Council vote to recognise the Bush-backed Iraqi government saws that leg off.
The final leg is that the Bush tax cuts have been a disaster. But Reagan’s death has reminded everyone that the late president’s tax cuts helped to end the recession he inherited from Jimmy Carter, just as Bush’s cuts kept the Clinton recession short and mild.
It has not been a good week for the president’s foes, here and abroad.
Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser and director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute
Well assembled and delivered, Flip.
Yes, the media is back to their regular tactics this week after the Reagan funeral. CBS radio news spent the 1st 2 minutes of their 8am broadcast talking about all the bad things going on in Iraq and the prison scandal. The MSM has been bad, but this year is the worst. Witness recent example article about how the bombing at the beginning of the Iraq war didn't get many of the intended high value targets. Of course the fact that now we DO have about 90% of them makes no difference. I can understand that maybe this article is worthy of publication. But on the front page or many new papers? It is going to be an up hill battle against the MSM.
It's like I said in a post on another topic.....Liberals out number conservatives in the media by a ratio of 5-1. That's not very good odds. The sad thing is America only hears half a story or at best the story they want to tell.
I disagree. He still has four strong legs--CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. These are the only legs he has had all along. But they are worth millions in free advertising every week between now and November.
Screw the Iraqi debt. They should declare it odious immediately and flip the bird to each and every one of Saddam's moneylenders.
BTTT
Didn't Saddam have some money on his when he was captured? Divvy it up with those creditor nations. After all, the debt is with Saddam, not with the Iraqi people.
This is from the UK Times???
I have to look outside and see if pigs are flying.
Yeah that was despicable.
AND .. IT'S UP TO THE BUSH TEAM TO GET OFF THEIR DUFF AND GO ON THE OFFENSIVE .. INSTEAD OF STAYING ON THE DEFENSIVE SO MUCH OF THE TIME.
I did see a couple of great commercials here in CA over the weekend.
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