As seen from Just Above Sunset

Monday, 3 May 2004

Topic: Bush

Leadership: The CEO President (folks are getting nervous)

Last week in the magazine - Volume 2, Number 16 of Sunday, April 25, 2004 - Joseph, our American friend in France, commented -

By the way, now that this thing has turned into the fiasco that most of us said it would, I wonder what your "unnamed friend" is saying these days... Hey, the mistake is understandable. We're a nation that admires CEOs, we wanted a CEO president. Now that the nation and the armed services are being run efficiently, like a proper corporation (just forget how far we're in the red) I hope that we're all happy with the result.

And I commented that Bush said he'd run the country as a CEO would, and Bush does have an MBA of course - but every company he was involved with went under. There are CEO's - then there are CEO's.

Robert Kagan, the neoconservative academic and Bush supporter is also thinking on this.

See 'Lowering Our Sights'
Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, Sunday, May 2, 2004; Page B07

Here's Kagan's take on such leadership.

Bush himself is the great mystery in this mounting debacle. His commitment to stay the course in Iraq seems utterly genuine. Yet he continues to tolerate policymakers, military advisers and a dysfunctional policymaking apparatus that are making the achievement of his goals less and less likely. He does not seem to demand better answers, or any answers, from those who serve him. It's not even clear that he understands how bad the situation in Iraq is or how close he is to losing public support for the war, a support that once lost may be impossible to regain.

Does that sound like a CEO to you?

Kevin Drum, over at the Washington Monthly says it sure does. Kevin must have worked for some pretty bad CEO type folks to say this:

Bush styles himself a "CEO president," but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them -- but then consider the job done anyway because they've "delegated" it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they're unwilling to do the hard work of creating one -- all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard -- but only on subjects in their comfort zone. If they like dealing with people they can't bring themselves to read all those tedious analyst's reports, and if they like numbers they can't bring themselves to spend time chattering with distributors about their latest prospect.

And most important of all, weak CEOs are unwilling to recognize bad news and perform unpleasant tasks to fix it -- tasks like confronting poorly performing subordinates or firing people. Good CEOs suck in their guts and do it anyway.

George Bush is, fundamentally, a mediocre CEO, the kind of insulated leader who's convinced that his instincts are all he needs. Unfortunately, like many failed CEOs before him, he's about to learn that being sure you're right isn't the same thing as actually being right.

So sure: George Bush is genuinely committed to winning in Iraq. He just doesn't know how to do it and doesn't have the skills, experience, or personality to look beyond his own instincts in order to figure it out. America is about to pay a heavy price for that.

So, you don't have the skills, experience, or personality to look beyond your own instincts and you're in a leadership position? What do you do? Delegate... and hope.

Kevin Drum seems to have worked in the same sorts of organizations in which I've worked.

Back in the eighties I worked for a dynamic woman at Hughes Aircraft - the company that later turned into Hughes Electronics, then became part of General Motors, then morphed into DirecTV and last year got sold to Rupert Murdoch. Back then I worked for the Hughes Space and Communications Group, and we had two-thirds of the satellites and satellite payloads in orbit for two decades. This was a class act. The place was indeed full of rocket scientists. Aircraft? No, the Hughes Aircraft name had more to do with history. Heck, the last airplane Hughes made had been nailed together in the mid-forties, the famous Spruce Goose - and it had flown once in 1948 down in Long Beach for all of a half-mile.

Anyway, the reign of my dynamic boss, her time in power, ended badly - and I think it had something to do with her "George Bush" style of managing. She would propose all sorts of grand ideas, and ask how we could implement these ideas. So we'd have long staff meetings over many afternoons trying to figure out how to "make it so" - as the commander of the Starship Enterprise says to his crew.

The problem was those of us on the staff who liked to suggest there were some problems we'd have to solve, that we should have contingency back-out plans and slack in the project schedules for unexpected events, even things as minor as illness keeping key players home for a day or two, or the real possibility a vendor might be late a day or two with something critical we really needed. But we were the problem. She didn't want to hear the negative. She didn't like people who didn't have a positive attitude. She made us remove the slack from the project schedules - and we were told to not tell her, ever, of factors that might slow us down or stop us in any way. She didn't want to hear it. She called this positive leadership - you had to believe anything could be done and not consider any obstacles. The word was we can to this, not we can do this if....

Most everything we did, of course, didn't quite work as planned, or just didn't work at all. Then she'd have a meeting and berate us all for not being sufficiently positive. Our negative attitude had doomed us all. Why couldn't we be more like her? You get the idea.

How did that all end? Oddly enough she was fired for theft of company property, a computer hard drive that she wanted for her Macintosh at home.

When I see how Bush manages our country, I think of her.

___

By the way, Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo read the Kevin Drum item above and adds this:

One of the things I've found difficult about writing about Iraq in recent days is imputing some level of seriousness to the arguments of the president and his retainers who continue to press an optimistic view of what's happening in Iraq. From them, on any given day, you can still hear the argument that, notwithstanding some tough days, things are still getting better in Iraq and the key to success is sticking with it.

At the same time, I talk to, or have conversations related to me with, various foreign policy, intelligence and military experts, all of whom --- across the political spectrum --- seem to believe that things are about as bleak as they can be. On top of this, they seem uniform in the belief -- sometimes based on inference, other times based on direct knowledge -- that the White House is fresh out of ideas about what to do, and basically hasn't any idea how to proceed.

Either the president knows the situation is that bad or he (and perhaps his advisors too) is just too out of touch to have any idea what's happening. Increasingly, I think that the president is just too small-minded and vainglorious a man to come to grips with the situation.

A strong president, a good president, would put his country before his pride and throw himself into saving the situation even if it meant admitting previous mistakes and ditching past policies and advisors. But I don't think this president has the character to do that.

Making a clean sweep, firing some of his most compromised advisors, admitting some past mistakes -- not for effect, but so that those mistakes could be more thoroughly and rapidly overcome -- might well doom the president politically. But I doubt there's any question they'd be in the best interests of the country.

This president seems either disinclined to or unable to do more than preside over a drift into disaster while putting on a game face.

Yeah, well, don't hold your breath, Josh.

Marshall concludes with this:

There's all this talk about what might be the best critique of the president's policies (politically and substantively), what the best alternative policies might be, and so forth. But all of that, I think, misses the point. This president is too compromised by his deceptions, his past lack of accountability and his acquiescence in failed policies, ever to correct the situation. Like C.S. Lewis's metaphor about the road to hell being easy to walk down, but the further walked, harder and harder to turn back upon, this president is just too far gone with misleading the public, covering up and indulging incompetence, and embracing venality ever to make a clean break and start retrieving the situation.

Oh, THAT'S real cheery.

___

Of course, in my local newspaper you get this - a summary of what all these recent books about George Bush show about how he works -

See Books Depict Bush as Instinct-Driven Leader
Political experts say recent works by White House insiders reveal an absence of analysis in the president's decision-making style
Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2004

Key items? Well, there is the CEO business

President Bush styles himself as the first CEO president, applying the rigor and authority of his MBA education to the job of chief executive of the nation.

But that's not the picture that emerges from three recent insider accounts of the workings of the Bush administration, experts in decision-making and presidential management say. On the contrary, they say, the president appears to have a highly personal working style, with little emphasis on systematic analysis of major decisions.

"There seems to be almost an absence of any analytical or deliberative process for mapping the problem or exploring alternatives or estimating consequences," said Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

And Bush appears to give greater weight to his own instincts than to experts or other sources of advice and information. The president has a "bias for action," said Roderick M. Kramer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "I've been struck by [how] Bush's sense of personal identity as a leader shapes his decisions," he said.

Well, many argue a bias for action is a good thing. Remember the words of Marge Simpson - "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." The man has no French in him.

Some paragraphs above I mentioned long meetings. Bush doesn't do those - or memos or any of that sissy stuff. Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University is a bit amazed.

Greenstein said that one striking thing about all three books was what they don't show. There are few examples, for instance, of Bush presiding over meetings in which subordinates presented problems, weighed evidence and aired differing views.

"I think a lot of policy is made on the fly," he said. "It isn't a process in which people assemble and go back and forth in a rigorous way."

Another thing largely missing from the books was any indication that documents or memos weighing policy alternatives are circulated and discussed. Harvard's Allison said one of the few documents the administration did prepare in advance of the Iraq war -- the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction -- was quickly compiled and not very well done.

"The more it's examined, it seems quite sloppy," he said. "At this point, if there had been some good analysis of the issues on paper, we would have seen some evidence of it.

"The contrast with the textbook conception of informed decision making is distressing," he said.

Distressing? Perhaps. But "informed decision making" is probably overvalued. That concept is not as important as resolve and determination. The guy from Stanford's Graduate School of Business explains - Bush is not following what everyone teaches these days in business school, but rather is being what people EXPECT a CEO to be - without the messy details.

Stanford's Kramer said though Bush showed little interest in the kind of number-crunching analysis taught in business school, his style of management does conform to the popular image of chief executives as forceful and "decisive." "There seems to be a lot of value attached to showing resolve and demonstrating resolve," he said.

But Jay Lorsch, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of "Decision Making at the Top," said the decision-making techniques taught at that school -- from which Bush received an MBA -- focus on understanding the nature of decisions, not simplifying them.

"What we teach around here is that you've got to understand the complexity of the territory you're trying to affect," he said. "You don't make a decision until you've surveyed all the possible ramifications. The binary idea that you're either right or wrong is just foolishness."

Foolishness? Bush is not following the Havard Business school methods, or the methods most every CEO actually uses?

Well, let's put it this way: Bush is not really a CEO. He just plays one on TV.

How so? He's got the moves down - Gordon Gecko, the Welch guy who used to run GE, the legendary Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap famous for dismantling Sunbeam and all sorts of other companies - like Donald Trump on his reality show "The Apprentice" - Bush cuts to the chase. He plays the part of the decisive executive, as he understands it.

In the Times a smattering of other business folks weigh in on Bush.

"He doesn't like long meetings. He likes truncated meetings. That means you're not going to have the kinds of sessions ... that are going to bring in lots of different kinds of information."

So? Who needs it?

"The decisiveness part is certainly there. The imperviousness to facts and analysis is also there. So what we have is someone who is going on raw instinct."

So? Facts bog you down.

"Bush appears to rest his confidence in a few people whose judgment corresponds to his gut instincts. He seems to be obsessive about being decisive, but willing to make hard and fast decisions on the basis of ideology more than evidence."

So? He believes in what he is doing. Folks like that about him.

All these people from the top business schools seem to think the president would flunk out of their programs because although he plays at being a fine CEO, he doesn't really get the quite basic concepts of what a CEO actually does.

But he's president, and they are not, and never will be. They can chat with this Times reporter all they want, and complain Bush is giving every CEO in America a bad name. It doesn't matter.

The bottom line - something you think a CEO refers to all the time as he leans across the conference table, sweeps all the paper aside, all the analyses and project plans and contingency documents and all that stuff, scowls at his quivering subordinates and growls, slowly and menacingly, "So, what's the bottom line?" Great drama!

The bottom line here is that the nation prefers the "popular concept" of the decisive leader to the real thing. Image trumps substance every time.

Most folks would vote for Donald Trump for president if he ran for the office. And Trump has considered it. But Trump, to his credit, figured out that although he knows lots about real estate and finance and such things, and knows a lot about fading European models, as he tends to marry those when he can, he doesn't know jack about running the most powerful nation in the world, about international relations and geopolitics, about the history and needs of our allied nations and those who give us trouble, about the ways congress passes laws or doesn't, about the role of the courts and the constitutional questions that keep coming up - all that stuff.

George Bush never did figure out he didn't know much of that stuff, and he doesn't seem to want to learn it now. One would assume he thought that with his father's old friends and advisors as his subordinates all around him that all of those pesky details really didn't matter.

Some of us think they do matter, but like the business school professors, we aren't the president and never will be. Heck, who would want the job?

Posted by Alan at 15:00 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Monday, 3 May 2004 22:33 PDT home

Sunday, 2 May 2004

New issue of JUST ABOVE SUNSET MAGAZINE now online!

No blogging today. Anyway, it was too hot to review events in this sorry world - another day of over a hundred in the shade. A day to hide....

And Sunday is the day I do final assembly and post the week's new issue of this: Just Above Sunset Magazine.

Commentary here will resume tomorrow.

Check it out the new issue of the virtual magazine, the parent publication of the weblog.

This is the "May Day" issue - Volume 2, Number 17

Current Events

War Notes: : How things are going depends on how you look at things, as it is all a matter of having the right attitude...
This is expanded from the "Tinkerbell" items over the last several days here, with commentary from Phillip Raines in Georgia and information on the Hersch revelations that were just published in The New Yorker regarding the Baghdad prison business.

The Dead: A turning point this week? A long road to the final paragraphs that suggest just that...
This is on the ABC "Nightline" broadcast of the roll call of the dead American soldiers in Iraq Friday night - who said what and odd details, and what this all might mean....
This is a new article.

The Zeitgeist: Nathaniel West, cellos and mountain lions... Strange Times as seen from Los Angeles
A tighter version of what originally appeared here....

History Lessons: A minor history lesson from an unlikely source ... Clemenceau jokes around with Woodrow Wilson? Something in praise of Warren G. Harding?
A tighter version of what originally appeared here....

Press Notes: Fox News, Fair and Balanced - Just Not Very Canadian
A Canadian columnist takes on Bill O'Reilly and lives to tell about.
Bill O'Reilly claims France is in ruins, and he helped in this just punishment.
And the other Carlin fellow - Bush want to replace our retiring National Archivist with someone who doesn't like people looking at facts at all.
This is a new article.

Sidebar: Selling ersatz personal responsibility to the masses...
A tighter version of what originally appeared here....

Pythons: The Monty Python survivors (Eric Idle and Terry Jones) speak out ...
Putting the two items Pythons who wrote this week both in one place... in perspective.

Features

Photography: May Day - From our correspondents in Paris and Chicago...
Ric Erickson sends exclusive photos of the May Day parades in Paris, and, for the day, Muguets - that's Lily of the Valley. A tradition. And there's a photo of a deranged cat from Chicago - some odd Paris stuff, and a tree peony shot that's awesome.
This is all new.

Minor Ironies: The Revenge of the French Against America
A tighter version of what originally appeared here with one new detail - that's a 1967 Citro?n, of all things.

Quotes: Two more odd ones... New.

Posted by Alan at 21:37 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Sunday, 2 May 2004 21:44 PDT home

Saturday, 1 May 2004

Topic: The Media

Another Python Speaks

Back on November 9th of last year I reported that according to a story in Reuters - actually reported in a lot of places - my local newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, had ordered its reporters to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as "resistance fighters," saying the term romanticizes them and evokes World War II-era heroism.

The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated the Monday before that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning - and asked them to instead use the terms "insurgents" or "guerrillas." Apparently the editors got queasy: "[Times Managing Editor] Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper," McCoy said. "Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance."

But, of course, McCoy said she considered "resistance fighters" an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II - specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. "Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words."

So the term is quite accurate but - "We are loath to proscribe the use of just about any word, but sometimes certain combinations of words send an unintended signal. You combine these two seemingly innocuous words and suddenly they have this unintended meaning."

The New York Times was following. Allan Siegal, assistant managing editor: "We don't have a policy but when you mentioned the phrase it sounded like romanticizing to me. I don't think it's the kind of cool, neutral language we like to see."

The Washington Post did not follow. David Hoffman, the foreign editor of said his paper had used the phrase "resistance fighters" to describe Iraqi forces and had no objection to the term. "They are resisting an American occupation so it's not inaccurate."

Well times have changed - and one of the old Monty Python troop speaks on this.

See The war of the words
Terry Jones, The Guardian (UK), Friday April 30, 2004

Jones sees the problem as even bigger -

One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else.

In the Second World War we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like.

However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable.

The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else.

Well, we do not want to seem like we're doing this all alone - because even if the Spanish and a few others have bailed out, the Brits are still with us, not to mention the folks from Fiji and Tonga. It's not just us.

But Jones too sees a problem with what we call the Iraqis, besides calling them the Iraqis.

Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.

Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.

It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets?

Ah yes, well, these things happen, and have to be... packaged? Yes, carefully.

And Jones points out that one of the other key things here is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".

Yep, that works. We do that.

And we try out new terms all the time.

Describing the recent attack on Najaf, the New York Times happily hit upon the word "militiamen". This has the advantage of being a bit vague (nobody really knows what a "militiaman" looks like or does), while at the same time sounding like the sort of foreigners any responsible government ought to kill on sight.

No. It's just vague. But whatever, Jones points to even thornier semantic problems in the last few days, and coming up soon in June.

For example, there's the "handover of power" that's due to take place on June 30. Since no actual "power" is going to be handed over, the coalition chaps have had to find a less conclusive phrase. They now talk about the handover of "sovereignty", which is a suitably elastic notion. And besides, handing over a "notion" is a damn sight easier than handing over anything concrete.

Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.

As for the word "ceasefire", it's difficult to know what this signifies anymore. According to reliable witness reports from Falluja, the new American usage makes generous allowance for dropping cluster bombs and flares, and deploying artillery and snipers.

Well, call it "forceful negotiation." And you might click on the link to see what Jones has to say about the words used by the folks in the Oval Office.

Posted by Alan at 15:55 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home

Friday, 30 April 2004

Topic: The Media

A turning point this week? A long road to a final paragraph that suggests just that...

Since it is the press controversy of the week regarding the war, it seems best to review the business with the Sinclair Broadcast Group and ABC News, a division of the Disney Corporation.

Friday, March 30, on his show ABC show "Nightline" - broadcast after the late local news around 11:30 in most markets - the host and producer Ted Koppel read the names of all the soldiers killed to date in Iraq. Sinclair Broadcast Group decided not to air the show on their stations. Sinclair General Counsel Barry Faber said this: "We find it to be contrary to the public interest."

The boycott affects eight ABC-affiliated Sinclair stations.

To be official about this, here are the positions:

STATEMENT OF THE SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

The ABC Television network announced on Tuesday that the Friday, April 30th edition of "Nightline" will consist entirely of Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in action in Iraq. Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.

While the Sinclair Broadcast Group honors the memory of the brave members of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country, we do not believe such political statements should be disguised as news content. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of "Nightline" this Friday on each of our stations which air ABC programming.

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday.

ABC NEWS STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO SINCLAIR

We respectfully disagree with Sinclair's decision to pre-empt "Nightline's" tribute to America's fallen soldiers which will air this Friday, April 30. The Nightline broadcast is an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country. ABC News is dedicated to thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the events shaping our world with neither fear nor favor -- as our audience expects, deserves, and rightly demands. Contrary to the statement issued by Sinclair, which takes issue with our level of coverage of the effects of terrorism on our citizens, ABC News and all of our broadcasts, including "Nightline," have reported hundreds of stories on 9-11. Indeed, on the first anniversary of 9-11, ABC News broadcast the names of the victims of that horrific attack.

In sum, we are particularly proud of the journalism and award winning coverage ABC News has produced since September 11, 2001. ABC News will continue to report on all facets of the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism in a manner consistent with the standards which ABC News has set for decades.

Here are the stations -

WXLV, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point NC
WEAR, Pensacola
KDNL, St. Louis
WSYX, Columbus OH
WLOS, Asheville NC
WCHS, Charleston, Huntington W VA
WGGB, Springfield MA

Is honoring "our war dead" in this way is a political statement aimed at undermining support for the war? Or is Sinclair defending Bush. The Sinclair Group is pretty loyal to the administration, as you can see from their political contributions.

Kevin Drum over at the Washington Monthly reports this:

Washington Monthly editor Ben Wallace-Wells emails to say he discussed Nightline on a radio show in a deeply Republican area of North Carolina recently and got a different reaction:

The host and his sidekick (whose brother was KIA in Vietnam) opposed Koppel on the established conservative line: it's politically opportunistic, it's a cynical ratings-grab, it's unpatriotic to drum up opposition to a war president. But we heard from 6 or 7 callers, all but one conservative (and even the Democrat was a military wife), and to a person they disagreed with the hosts, thought the reading was noble and honorable, a proper way to honor our dead. Some still agreed that the timing was opportunistic, politically motivated, but nevertheless they said they supported the name-reading.

So which is it - a left-wing political stunt to embarrass the president, or a gesture of respect to honor these people?

Drum's conclusion?

... war supporters need to get a grip. In a popular war, battlefield losses serve to redouble public commitment to the fight, and honoring the dead is viewed as a solemn and patriotic gesture. It's only in unpopular wars that combat deaths cause public support to decline.

Present day conservatives seem to unthinkingly assume that any public acknowledgement of Iraqi war deaths is obviously just an underhanded political gesture designed to weaken support for the war. This is partly a result of their paranoid conviction that the sole purpose of the media is to undermine conservative causes, but it's also a tacit admission that this is, fundamentally, a war with very shallow support indeed. If they really believed in the war and in the administration's handling of it, they'd show some backbone and welcome Ted Koppel's gesture of respect tonight. Instead they're acting as if they're ashamed we're over there.

Yeah, well, that's one way of seeing it.

Want to hear from a Republican, conservative war hero? Here's John McCain's letter to Sinclair:

Fri Apr 30 2004 11:29:49 ET

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) issued the following letter today to Mr. David Smith, President and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, in response to the preemption of this evening's Nightline program:

I write to strongly protest your decision to instruct Sinclair's ABC affiliates to preempt this evening's Nightline program. I find deeply offensive Sinclair's objection to Nightline's intention to broadcast the names and photographs of Americans who gave their lives in service to our country in Iraq.

I supported the President's decision to go to war in Iraq, and remain a strong supporter of that decision. But every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war and the extraordinary sacrifices it requires of those brave men and women who volunteer to defend the rest of us; lest we ever forget or grow insensitive to how grave a decision it is for our government to order Americans into combat. It is a solemn responsibility of elected officials to accept responsibility for our decision and its consequences, and, with those who disseminate the news, to ensure that Americans are fully informed of those consequences.

There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.

Okay, now it come down to name-calling. The Sinclair Broadcasting Group says Ted Koppel and the ABC Disney folks are unpatriotic. McCain, war-hero, former prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, and one of the two senators from Arizona, says the Sinclair Broadcasting Group is unpatriotic.

Here's General JC Christian over at Patriot Boy writing to the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, and this is satire of course. -

Dear Mr. Smith,

I'm sure the traitors among us will disagree with Sinclair Broadcasting's decision to spare our nation the trauma of putting names and faces to the young men and women who lost their lives in Iraq. It is better that we hide our dead away and never speak of them. Remembering the fallen only risks shaming Our Leader at a time when he's working very hard to bring us four more years of his wise leadership.

I hope that you'll consider helping another great leader as well. For many years, the names of the dead found on the 1969-1973 sections of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall have served as silent criticism of Richard Milhous Nixon's war policies. Isn't it time they were removed and replaced by scenes depicting the President's greatest moments--events like the secret invasion of Cambodia and Kissinger's announcement of a secret plan to end the war after the '72 election?

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

Yeah well, the week ended with everyone weighing in on this.

Here you'll find background on this Sinclair organization. Some nuggets -

Like many a media empire, Sinclair grew through a combination of acquisitions, clever manipulations of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and considerable lobbying campaigns. Starting out as a single UHF station in Baltimore in 1971, the company started its frenzied expansion in 1991 when it began using "local marketing agreements" as a way to circumvent FCC rules that bar a company from controlling two stations in a single market.

These "LMAs" allow Sinclair to buy one station outright and control another by acquiring not its license but its assets. Today, Sinclair touts itself as "the nation's largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network." You've probably never heard of them because the 62 stations they run - garnering 24 percent of the national TV audience - fly the flags of the networks they broadcast: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and the WB.

TV Barn's Mark Jeffries calls Sinclair the "Clear Channel of local news," a reference to the San Antonio, Texas, media giant that has grown from 40 to more than 1,200 stations today thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which relaxed radio ownership rules. But the parallels extend beyond their growth strategies. Jeffries describes Sinclair as having a "fiercely right-wing approach that makes Fox News Channel look like a model of objectivity," while Clear Channel is best known for sponsoring pro-war "Rallies for America" during the Iraq conflict. And like Clear Channel's CEO L. Lowry Mays - a major Republican donor and onetime business associate of George W. Bush - the Sinclair family, board, and executives ply the GOP with big money. Since 1997, they have donated well over $200,000 to Republican candidates.

The rest of the item goes on to discuss how Sinclair programs news on these sixty-two stations - basically a feed from Baltimore of all items not strictly local that only seems to come from the local station - all carefully managed. To maintain the appearance of local news, the Baltimore on-air staff is coached on correct local pronunciations. Or the weatherman, safely removed from the thunderstorms in, say, Minneapolis, will often engage in scripted banter with the local anchor to maintain the pretense: "Should I bring an umbrella tomorrow, Don?" "You bet, Hal, it looks pretty ugly out there..."

You get the idea.

Over at the conservative site NewsMax you get a more positive view of Sinclair.

Sinclair, The Next Fox, 'Fair and Balanced'
Wes Vernon, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004

WASHINGTON -- One of the nation's newest and fastest-growing TV news networks says it's tired of left-leaning news reporting and wants to offer Americans a fair and balanced perspective, just as Fox News Channel does.

Fox News eschewed politically correct news to become the dominant force on cable news. And now the Sinclair Broadcast Group has been following in Fox's footsteps to do the same for broadcast news in news markets across the nation.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) is the eighth-largest network of television stations, based on revenues, and the nation's largest independent group owner of stations, according to Broadcasting & Cable.

... The broadcast operation reaches nearly 5 million viewers each night, an audience that surpasses even Fox and CNN.

And just like Fox News, Sinclair's News Central is getting some heat from some establishment media outlets for offering a more balanced and less liberal-leaning news report.

Sinclair relishes the criticism.

"Basically, [we're] in the red states," says Sinclair's Vice President for Corporate Affairs Mark Hyman in a NewsMax interview, referring to the markets SBG serves -- mostly in "red" states George Bush won in the 2000 election.

... Hyman says with some glee that Sinclair stations are "not in the Hamptons, not in the regions of the cultural elite who look down on the 'little people.' " Thus, he suggests, Sinclair is fulfilling a demand in flyover country for a fresh perspective on the news.

"I think that is good for us because the folks who live in the red sections of the country are the ones most starved for a balanced newscast," he adds.

... As Hyman puts it [referring to critics], "The left's real beef is who controls the microphone. We're not liberal. We're not providing a slanted view. And that's what really angers them."

Sinclair CEO David Smith echoed that sentiment, telling the Washington Post that his aim is to offer a "fair and balanced" news program, something missing on the major network news programs.

"Our objective is to tell the story in the most truthful and honest way possible," he said, adding, "There will be no spin."

Of course not.

Still, this sort of thing from the city where I grew up is a bit distressing.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

August 17, 1996, Saturday, SOONER EDITION

David D. Smith, president and chief executive officer of Sinclair Broadcast Group, was arrested this week in his hometown of Baltimore and charged with a misdemeanor sex offense. Sinclair owns WPGH, the Fox affiliate in Pittsburgh, and programs most of WPTT.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Smith, 45, was arrested Tuesday night in an undercover sting at a downtown corner frequented by prostitutes.

On Thursday night, Sinclair issued a statement that Smith's arrest was unrelated to company business and ''The company will continue to operate under the direction of its current management.''

Ah, not important.

But you might like juicy detail.

Broadcasting official charged in sex stakeout
Sinclair president, woman arrested in company car

Published on: August 15, 1996
Edition: FINAL
Section: NEWS
Page: 2B
Byline: SUN STAFF Peter Hermann

The president of Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which owns the local Fox television affiliate, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with committing a perverted sex act in a company-owned Mercedes, city police said.

David Deniston Smith, 45, of the 800 block of Hillstead Drive in Timonium, who also is Sinclair's chief executive, was arrested in an undercover sting at Read and St. Paul streets, a downtown corner frequented by prostitutes, Baltimore police said yesterday.

Smith and Mary DiPaulo, 31, were charged with committing unnatural and perverted sex act. Smith was held overnight at the Central Booking and Intake Center and released on personal recognizance at 2 p.m. yesterday. DiPaulo's bail status was not available.

Officials at WBFF-TV (Fox 45) and Sinclair, one of the fastest-growing broadcasting companies in the nation with 28 television and 34 radio stations, would not comment yesterday. The company had $126 million in sales in the first half of this year.

Police said undercover Officer Gary Bowman, on a prostitution detail, was talking to DiPaulo about 9: 15 p.m. in a car at St. Paul and Read streets. She left the undercover car after telling Bowman that ``she had just seen her regular date driving in the area,'' according to court documents.

Police said DiPaulo ran across the street to a 1992 Mercedes, registered to Sinclair, and got in on the passenger side. Police followed the car onto the Jones Falls Expressway, where they said they witnessed the two engage in oral sex while Smith drove north.

Police said they followed the car back to Read and St. Paul streets, where they arrested Smith and DiPaulo, who lives in the 700 block of Washington Blvd.

My, my...

But none of that has much to do with the "Nightline" show and the roll call of the dead.

April 30 may come to be a turning point kind of day. The business of our soldiers, either the real ones or the subcontractors we use, humiliating, mocking and even torturing prisoners we hold near Baghdad exploded in the Arab press today - with all the pictures. ABC does this "litany of the dead" reading. The Mirror in the UK publishes photos of British soldiers treating an Iraqi civilian prisoner rather badly - photos of the guys urinating on him. And they later knocked out all his teeth, broke his jaw, then drove him off in the night and dumped him from the back of a truck - and thus lost track of him. They have no idea if he survived. Those pictures will hit the Arab press tomorrow. And our Marines have decided not to mess with Fallujah - and one of Saddam's generals has been brought out of retirement, rounded up more than a thousand former Iraqi soldiers, and will take care of things for us there. That doesn't look good to the locals - Saddmam's guys with guns are back. And we set it up.

Things are, indeed, going a bit sour as this week ends.

Posted by Alan at 20:33 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Topic: Iraq

A minor history lesson from an unlikely source... Clemenceau jokes around with Woodrow Wilson?

The unlikely source would be Pat Buchanan in this case. In the May 10, 2004 issue of The American Conservative, you will find this - Fallujah: High Tide of Empire? - where Buchanan opens with a story...

At Versailles, 1919, Lloyd George, having seized oil-rich Iraq for the empire, offered Woodrow Wilson mandates over Armenia and Constantinople. "When you cease to be President we will make you Grand Turk," laughed Clemenceau.

As there were "no oil fields there," writes historian Thomas Bailey, "it was assumed that rich Uncle Sam would play the role of Good Samaritan." Though unamused, Wilson accepted the mandates.

Fortunately, Harding won in 1920 and reneged on the deal. Lloyd George and Churchill were left to face the Turks all by their imperial selves. Had we accepted Constantinople, Americans would have ended up fighting Ataturk's armies to hold today's Istanbul.

So, of course, thank goodness for Warren G. Harding. And yes, I never imagined I'd say that.

But why does Pat Buchanan bring up this odd old anecdote? He thinks we've stepped in it this time. We inadvertently bought what Clemenceau was trying to sell us in 1919 - since the attacks of September 11, 2001 the neoconservatives who have transformed our way of dealing with the world - these guys Buchanan says have been "prattling on" about global hegemony and a crusade for democracy since the end of the Cold War and now finally have their day in the sun to put into operation their historically atypical views - have sold President Bush on what Buchanan calls "their imperial scheme: a MacArthur Regency in Baghdad."

Buchanan sees this as a crossroads. He considers the ongoing Fallujah and the Shi'ite uprisings as says they are telling us this:

... if we mean to make Iraq a pro-Western democracy, the price in blood and treasure has gone up. Shall we pay it is the question of the hour. For there are signs Americans today are no more willing to sacrifice for empire than was Harding to send his nation's sons off to police and run provinces carved out of the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, that question has occurred to many, but not precisely put this way. Do we commit a generation, or more, of our people to rule (the word he doesn't use) bits and pieces of the old Ottoman Empire?

The Ottoman Empire? Old business. Does that really apply? Winston Churchill was indeed one of the fellows drawing lines on maps way back when, deconstructing the Ottoman as it were, creating what are now the nation-states of the Middle East. And yes, George Bush loves comparing himself to Winston Churchill, even though in Bush's case a born-again evangelical Winston Churchill, one who certainly doesn't live on cognac and single-malt scotch. Bush is the dry, pious Methodist Winston Churchill. But there is a parallel - the war morphed from being about removing a fellow with real and dangerous weapons of mass destruction (none found), or about hitting a fellow who had something to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001 (no evidence ever found for that) to being about transforming the Middle East. The latest version of what this is about centers on transforming the Middle East by plopping down a secular, free-market private-capital-based representative democracy right in the middle of all the other nations there - to show them that how things have been run over in that part of the world since the beginning of recorded history was, obviously, the wrong way of going about living life in groups. Much like Winston Churchill drawing lines on maps way back when, we're redefining the political world there.

Well, given the history in that part of the world - a history of tribes and tyrants and theocracies, not to mention fervent prophets of this truth or that - this is a hard sell. Obviously force was necessary - invasion, occupation, lots of death from the sky - and subsequent work at winning the hearts and minds of the locals and teaching them the joys of the American way.

Perhaps this is a good idea. Perhaps not. But what sort of government do you want running a country - even if it is a country that was shuffled together by Churchill and others with leaky fountain pens and bad maps - that sits on the second largest oil reserves in the world, and has in the past been run by some pretty nasty guys who were fond of mass murder and the use of chemical and biologic weapons? The status quo wasn't terribly appealing.

Perhaps a preemptive, preventative, prophylactic war sold on premises that were, we now see, quite false, followed by an occupation that is quite a mess, wasn't the best alternative. But there was a kind of urgency to do something. Others had ideas on what the "alternative something" might be. We're didn't want to hear it. So we bought the tar-baby.

But it was more than Iraq. Listen to the current rhetoric from the administration. We want the world, all of it, to be democratic and free in the sense we understand those words. It's our mission. And as Bush often says, it is God's calling - almost as if God reached down to America and said, "Tag! You're it!" It's our job.

Pat Buchanan suggests that in bringing the Bush-neoconservative "world democratic revolution" to Iraq, we suffer today from four deficiencies: men, money, will, and stamina. And he discusses these.

His comments on manpower are distressing:

First, we do not have the troops in country to pacify Iraq. Some 70 percent of our combat units are committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Korea already. If we are going to put more men into Iraq, U.S. military forces must expand.

Those who speak of democratizing Iraq as we did Germany tend to forget: in 1945, we had 12 million men under arms and four million soldiers in Europe. German resistance disappeared in 1945 with the death of Hitler. There was no guerrilla war against us. Today, our army is only 480,000 strong and scattered across 100 countries. And we have 129,000 troops in an Iraq that is as large as California and an escalating war against urban guerrillas.

Not good. If we're going to go about this holy mission, we need many more warm bodies, or is that boots on the ground? Whatever. Anyway, it could get drafty, as in conscription and moving beyond a volunteer (professional) army. Of course there is outsourcing - as with Blackwater Security and Dyncorp - but that's expensive and these hired guns can do embarrassing things and be hard to control.

And yes, a pause here for a disclaimer - the columnist Ann Coulter and the former Bush speechwriter David Frum (who came up with the "Axis of Evil" words for Bush) both have said that we did indeed face years of guerrilla warfare in the late forties in Europe and in the Pacific. They say people like Buchanan simply do not know their history - because thousands of our troops were killed by German and Japanese guerrilla soldiers who didn't like how WWII turned out. This went on for years. These events are in no history books anyone has come across, and there are no accounts of this in any records, but it has been said. So there is this claim. One should note that.

Anyway, Buchanan runs the numbers on the money problems, but enough has been said about out federal deficit and massive trade deficit, and the falling dollar over the last three years.

Then there is what Buchanan calls "the deficit in imperial will." He says the American public has not exactly bought into the idea that we must democratize the Islamic world or we are unsafe in our own country. And the polls are turning - nearly half the nation believes we should start coming home. Maybe if Bush jumped up and down and said we have to see this through in Iraq to prevent gay marriage from becoming legal in Boston and San Francisco - and in Haiti - he'd do better. As it is, Bush is selling. Folks aren't buying.

Then there is the matter of stamina - and this is curious:

Empire requires an unshakeable belief in the superiority of one's own race, religion, and civilization and an iron resolve to fight to impose that faith and civilization upon other peoples.

We are not that kind of people. Never have been. Americans, who preach the equality of all races, creeds, and cultures, are, de facto, poor imperialists. When we attempt an imperial role as in the Philippines or Iraq, we invariably fall into squabbling over whether a republic should be imposing its ideology on another nation. A crusade for democracy is a contradiction in terms.

While it would be nice if Brazil, Bangladesh, and Burundi all embraced democracy, why should we fight them if they don't, and why should our soldiers die to restore democracy should they lose it? Why is that our problem, if they are not threatening us?

... If attacked, Americans fight ferociously. Unwise nations discover that. Threatened, as in the Cold War, we will persevere. But if our vital interests are not threatened, or our honor is not impugned, most of us are for staying out of wars.

That is our history and oldest tradition. It may be ridiculed as selfish old American isolationism, but that is who we are and that is how we came to be the last world power left standing on the bloodstained world stage after the horrific 20th century.

Buchanan is of course, being defensive here as he is so often dismissed as a dim-witted, stubborn isolationist - and, of course often called a racist, anti-Semite right-wing overly religious nut case.

Yeah, but in this one case he could be right. Well, almost four years ago we elected a leader who really does have an unshakeable belief in the superiority of his race, religion, and civilization - and who certainly does have an iron resolve to fight to impose that faith and civilization upon other peoples. He's no Canadian live-and-let-live sort. Shall we tag along for the ride, or not?

Posted by Alan at 18:53 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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