Hyperbolic Posturing
By Geoff Metcalf (08/05/07)
"It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember." --Eugene McCarthy
Hyperbole is defined as ‘exaggeration for effect’. It is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It is (too) often used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, and is not meant to be taken literally…but often is.
The U.S. State Department has their collective bureaucratic panties in a wad over recent presidential wannabes campaign rhetoric.
The naïve, myopic rantings of candidates is significantly muddying already dark diplomatic waters. Sensitive diplomatic work is twisting in the wind of campaign posturing.
I am no fan of the mandarins at Foggy Bottom. Historically, the State Department’s institutional culture has routinely run counter productive (and counter intuitive) to our national interest. Diplomats serve a purpose (I guess) but need to be subordinate to national policy and national security. Too often in U.S. history this has not been the case.
However, personifying the axiom that ‘even a broken clock is right twice a day’, State is eschewing diplomacy for candor in asking White House hopefuls to ‘shut up’ about stuff beyond their ken. Campaign pebbles dropped in international waters send out rings of disturbance on an already unstable surface.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Tom Tancredo have all been figuratively rapped on the knuckles by career foreign service officialdom for intemperate, dumb things that have recently been said.
Diplomacy is a process not an event. The subtext, suggestion, intimidation, and strategic positioning elements are all important and fragile. We survived the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust largely because neither conflicting superpower was prepared to spark mutual mass destruction. Alexander Haig once said, “The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.”
Frankly, the foolish talk of Obama, Hillary and Tancredo individually and collectively have merit as part of a broader strategic overview. What the candidates fail to apparently comprehend is they are playing chess…not checkers.
• Obama talks of dialogue with dictators and bad guys and invading Pakistan. Two real bad ideas.
* Bad guys seek credibility that talking to the leader of the free world gives them.
* Invading an unstable nuclear power that has seen multiple assassination attempts at our most powerful ally is epically stupid.
* Categorically stating you would never use the one tool the whole world is scared spitless you ‘might’ use castrates any future big stick threats.
• Hillary refusing to rule out the use of nukes is less egregious than her rival’s mutterings, but also is a strategic ‘whoops’ that should be neither confirmed OR denied.
• Tom Tancredo’s suggestion we bomb Muslim holy sites is another cool strategic tool that is neutered by articulating it. AND it sparks monumental consequences that are way counter intuitive.
The State department apparently did a vaudeville spit take when Tancredo threatened to nuke Mecca and Medina. Note that Tom’s comments to about 30 people at an Iowa town hall rattled the gilded cages of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice AND SecDef Robert Gates who were in the MidEast struggling to smooth feathers.
There are (and always will be) consequences to what is said and unsaid. Destroying Mecca and Medina could/would result in a reciprocal destruction of biblical proportion. Probably not such a good idea to play dominos with nukes…
Pakistan’s Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afgan is opening debate on criticism of Pakistan from several quarters in the U.S., including remarks by Senators Obama and Clinton and Tancredo. He said “It is a matter of grave concern that U.S. presidential candidates are using unethical and immoral tactics against Islam and Pakistan to win their election.”
.
Obama said he was willing to sit down with wack-job leaders like North Korea's Kim Jong-il and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad…oh yeah, he also said he would send U.S. troops into Pakistan after Osama bin Laden and other extremists. However, he ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan (despite advise and counsel about bringing a knife to a gunfight). Foggy Bottom diplomats fear that Tancredo's remarks, coupled with those of Obama and Clinton, will be seen as a broader trend of animosity by U.S. politicians to Muslims, especially in Pakistan.
There ARE real consequences that result from intemperate words. Back in 1979, mere rumors that Israel was going to bomb Mecca and Medina led to the storming of a U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. The publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European publications a couple of years ago sparked a violent excrement storm.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.” --Groucho Marx
(Printer friendly version) Email: Geoff Metcalf
