One of the mistakes of American foreign policy over the last several decades was to not heavily invest in, build, and fortify serious multilateral security and economic institutions among Asian nations.

America has not really taken APEC seriously and on the security front has long chosen to rely on bilateral arrangements between the U.S. and every nation we care about in Asia rather than trying to sew them together in a broader network. One exception to this has been occasional military exercises involving U.S., Japanese, Australian, and occastionally Korean forces -- but generally, America's strategy has been to secure stability in Asia through a set of robust bilateral arrangements rather than a multilateral structure, as in NATO.

One of the interesting consequences of this strategy is that it puts little pressure on the governments in these regions to mature very far beyond their dependence on U.S. forces. It also allows them to bully each other over long term cultural and historical disputes, knowing that at the end of the day that they can get away with various manipulations of the historical record -- and this goes for Japan, China, and Korea -- because America provides an ultimate buffer between them when it comes to any hot conflict.

China, however, may be leap-frogging America's anachronistic and inefficient set of bilateral deals by rooting the first serious efforts in some time of a China-centric multilateralism in the region. China has called for an annual East Asian Economic Summit and the establishment of and East Asian Community that could very well become the dominant structural fabric of Northeast and Southeast Asia.

Yes, there are other networks and forums -- including the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN plus three, and there have been efforts at economic insitution-building like former Malaysian Prime Minister's East Asian Economic Caucus. And of course, there is APEC that seems to be barely kicking anymore.

But China seems to know that there is a genuine opportunity in instituion-building among a great cross-section of regional stakeholders. Frankly, this kind of diplomacy -- as we once forged together in Europe -- is exactly what Asia has needed for a long time, and in my view, the U.S. should have been at the helm of this process. Unfortunately, we have been tethered down by the constraints of our own bilateral relations, afraid of becoming less significant to our partner countries if alternative arrangements were introduced.

Here is an interesting excerpt from a Washington Post article titled "China's Quiet Rise Casts Wide Shadow" by Edward Cody. It's a long tract, so I won't italicize:

**********
The shift in status, increasingly clear over the past year, has changed the way Chinese officials view their country's international role as well as the way other Asians look to Beijing for cues. In many ways, China has started to act like a traditional big power, tending to its regional interests and pulling smaller neighbors along in its wake.

The new Chinese role has been evident recently in international efforts to deal with North Korea's declared nuclear arsenal. When Kim Jong Il's government declared Feb. 10 that it was suspending participation in Chinese-sponsored six-nation nuclear talks, the question that arose immediately in Asian capitals and beyond was: What will China do about it?

Japan, whose economy surpasses China's by a large margin, in some ways has been the Asian country most uncomfortable with China's rising stature. The oil sources and sea lanes increasingly seen as vital by China and its traders have long been viewed the same way by Japan. In that light, Japan's government has tightened strategic cooperation with the United States, and in December, it issued a 10-year defense program that identified China as a potential threat.

Chinese officials and foreign policy specialists emphasized in interviews that they had no intention of challenging the U.S. role as Asia's main military power, a fact of life here since World War II. U.S. power was on vivid display in East Asia after the Dec. 26 tsunami in southern Asia, with a U.S. carrier group dispatching helicopters to deliver food and medicine to hard-hit Indonesian towns while China's navy was nowhere on the horizon.

But with 1.3 billion people, 3.7 million square miles of territory and a $1.4 trillion economy, China is the rising regional leader in other fields. This view has come into focus particularly over the last year, when U.S. diplomacy has seemed preoccupied with Iraq or anti-terrorism and China increasingly has asserted its pre-eminence.

"There is now this feeling that we have to consult the Chinese," said Abdul Razak Baginda of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center. He added, "We have to accept some degree of Chinese leadership, particularly in light of the lack of leadership elsewhere."

From Outsiders to Insiders

China's leadership has become visible in small but telling ways. Premier Wen Jiabao was clearly the star, for instance, at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit conference in Laos in November. Lower-ranking ASEAN diplomats have begun to turn to Chinese colleagues for guidance during international meetings, according to a senior foreign diplomat with long experience at such Asian gatherings.

"I was struck by how naturally, even at the working level, the other Asians looked to China and how naturally China played that role," the diplomat said, noting that only a few years ago, Chinese diplomats were viewed as outsiders.

The change also comes across in bigger and more formal ways. In particular, China has taken the lead in organizing an East Asian summit conference for next November that, according to Chinese and other observers, will formalize Chinese regional leadership in several aspects.

A senior Chinese diplomat said it had not been decided whether the United States will be invited to attend and, if so, in what capacity. That the question of U.S. participation is even on the table dramatizes the shift in Asia's diplomatic landscape.

As envisioned by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the summit deliberately frames participation on a country-by-country basis, dispersing ASEAN's combined weight and enhancing China's role as first among equals. "It's very subtle, but it could be very important," the senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official said.

The ASEAN countries -- Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- increasingly have begun to deal with China individually rather than as a bloc. As a result, an association that began with U.S. encouragement in 1967 in large measure to fend off Communist Chinese influence has evolved into a forum through which China exercises its regional leadership.

Other examples of Chinese leadership include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security forum comprising China, Russia and four former Soviet republics along China's northwest borders. As a part of this grouping, China's formerly standoffish military recently held anti-terrorism exercises with Kazakhstan and plans exercises next fall with the Russian military.

But China's new face has been most apparent in its dealings with the ASEAN countries, mainly because of the economic equation. At China's initiative, for instance, ASEAN countries and China in December agreed to create a free-trade zone by 2010, which would further integrate neighboring countries into China's orbit. (end)
******

I don't believe that China's diplomatic success should necessarily be feared or should inspire a new round of Project for the New American Century-style letters calling for containment of China.

But it would be a serious mistake to underestimate China in today's global climate, and secondly -- what has been missing in my view from Bush's foreign policy is a serious and coherent strategy that is going to promote principled and stabilizing American engagement with the world.

Engagement means more than fighting wars and occupying small nations. There is a long list of other tools of diplomacy and "global presence" that need serious attention from this administration and the Congress.

And the Millennium Challenge Fund is not the silver bullet.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: I cannot hyperlink many items to this post because of the place I am writing in Hawaii and will try to add them later. SCC)

I like watching tennis and particularly enjoy watching Roger Federer and Andre Agassi play, as long as my tennis-fanatic friend is with me to explain the points and all the bad calls by judges.

But this match in Dubai makes my head spin. It's certainly dramatic to play a game of tennis on a building's top floor heliport in a small Middle East country. But how can this kind of exhibition game do anything but inflame the passions of Middle East "have-nots" against the arrogance and indifference of the "haves" throughout the region?

Isn't this kind of theatre just a bit over the top given the convulsions going on in that part of the world?

Just struck me as intensely out of touch with the "hearts and minds" challenges we have in that region. But maybe I'm missing something.

-- Steve Clemons

Thanks to all of you who signed the Gunner Palace petition requesting that the Motion Picture Association of America revise its "R" rating of the film to "PG-13".

This is a big win for Michael Tucker who shot this documentary and the soldiers whose story he helps tell in their words.

The New America Foundation hosted 400 people to see the film at a recent screening in DC at which the film producer and several of the soldiers attended. E-mail reactions sent to me have been overwhelmingly positive and supportive about Gunner Palace and its themes. See it if you can.

I am sort of stunned that the good guys actually won one. Neat.

-- Steve Clemons

I am just wrapping up an interesting conference in Kauai sponsored by the BMW Foundation which assembled about 50 alumni of the foundation's various young leaders programs over the last decade. We had a bunch of Russians here, Germans, Chinese, Americans, and some individuals from Singapore, Canada, the Netherlands, and India. Fascinating group of people.

One of the dignitaries that spent yesterday morning with us was Stan Shih, founding Chairman & former CEO of Acer, one of the largest computer firms in the world and based in Taiwan. He spoke on the subject of "Building Identity and Trust in Business," and when he concluded, I asked him a question.

I said that in my previous experience as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California in the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, I noted that the most difficult challenge Japanese multinational firms that invested in America had was that they often had repugnant personnel policies when it came to women and minorities and found themselves sued left and right.

I asked whether his firm and other major Asian firms -- particularly those that were rooted in China and Taiwan -- had modified their cultures to take advantage of the strengths in diversity, particularly with regard to women, ethnic minorities, and gay people.

Stan Shih then rambled on for about ten minutes without ever mentioning the word "woman", the word "gay" or the word "minority". He completely avoided the question. . .so a colleague in the conference, Joyce Davis, former Deputy Foreign Editor at Knight-Ridder, asked him again point blank what his views on Acer's corporate culture and women and minorities were.

While acknowledging that his wife (who was in the room) had helped him start Acer, Stan Shih stated that "the problem is not with companies but with Chinese society -- and in Chinese society, the role of women is to take care of the family."

On the one hand, I'm glad Shih didn't gloss-up his views about this subject. And he's probably right, overall, that Chinese firms are going to be fairly hostile environments for women. He didn't get to minorities and didn't elaborate. Time was up.

But like is happening in Japan today, I imagine that the very best female talent in China is going to escape that country as soon as possible.

Stan Shih is not just any ordinary CEO. He is one of Asia's top two or three best known corporate personalities. He is a regular at the Davos World Economic Forum and fits the bill for what Sam Huntington has called 'Davos Man.'

With all of the prosletyzing America is doing recently about democracy and human rights, particularly women's rights, perhaps we should require some diversity training for Asian-based CEOs who want to operate firms in America or partner with U.S. firms operating abroad.

I realize that that this proposal is facetious -- but I have to admit to being somewhat floored by Shih's first non-response and then blunt response to a question about modern management policies.

I certainly don't have any "trust" in that kind of corporate or political culture he described.

-- Steve Clemons

A few weeks ago, I happened to be included at a dinner at the home of the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Singapore Embassy, Susan Sim, who invited a small handful of people together to toast a mutual friend. One of the other guests was a senior Pentagon official who covers East Asia & Pacific Affairs.

I told him that it seemed to me that the distraction of Iraq was harming American interests in several ways. First, America had shown the world its limits -- financially and militarily -- with the Iraq invasion and occupation. The consequences of this are enormous as it erodes the confidence that allies have in our ability to stand with them in times of crisis and incentivizes the world's bad actors to maximize their objectives during a time when the American response will be more bluster than bite.

Secondly, the Iraq conflict has distracted America from many other important foreign policy questions. American leadership seems invisible in global trade policy today. The White House also seems to have informally kicked USTR out of the Cabinet -- with the White House statement that all cabinet level appointments had now been concluded, implying cryptically that USTR and the Environmental Protection Agency were now demoted departments.

As I have written previously, China has been on a major charm offensive in the Asia Pacific region -- while Japanese ministers have been pleading for the last 18 months for the U.S. not to let its level of visibility and engagement in Asia slip any further. Our absence at Asia-Pacific forums of various kinds had created a void which Chinese diplomacy was quickly filling.

Furthermore, I told him the old joke that "America fought the Cold War, but Japan won" -- and said that the next one-liner would be that "America fought the war on terror, but China won."

China looks like the oasis of stability amidst global turmoil, receiving more than $50 billion a year now in foreign direct investment. Just last month, China surpassed the United States as Japan's largest trading partner -- and China too has surpassed Japan as America's largest overseas trading partner (second to Canada).

China's leadership realizes that the war in Iraq has been good for its interests. We have needed China's cooperation on global terror, on nuclear proliferation questions, on putting some pressure on Kim Jong Il and North Korea. China finances America's gluttonous consumption habits and helps keep American inflation down by exporting cheap products and competing with us with its far cheaper labor.

John Negroponte and Porter Goss should be worrying that no matter whether one favors engagement with China (which I do) or containment (more of a Richard Perle line), China may work covertly to keep America as distracted as possible with its Middle East agenda and obligations.

The neocons have never been comfortable with our recent closeness and cooperation with China -- and if one studies the roster of PNAC letters and commentary closely, before 9/11 -- there were actually more written and produced items on the threat China represented than all of those focused on Israel and broader Middle East concerns.

This senior Pentagon official told me to wait a few weeks; he said that a new comprehensive China initiative was on its way.

And it has arrived -- and is fascinating. Japan has for the first time ever publicly declared stability within the Taiwan Straits and on Taiwan itself as within its security interests and declared its intention to support U.S. forces if any conflict were to take place with China over Taiwan.

This is not completely new news. Previous National Security Advisors to the President for East Asia Douglas Paal (who advised President George H.W. Bush) and Sandra Kristoff (who advised President Clinton) made off-the-record comments years ago that our understanding was that Japan "would be with us" in any conflict involving Taiwan.

But going public is a big deal. I have a variety of suspicions on why Japan did make their support of America's Taiwan defense policy overt. Such a declaration makes inter-operability more of a reality, and helps tie U.S. forces to Japanese defense capabitility as much as the other way around.

But America probably compelled Japan's declaration for several other reasons. First, America wanted Japan to loudly declare its allegiance to America -- and its general opposition to China's Taiwan pretensions and broader regional security ambitions. With China looming ever larger -- and now larger than the U.S. -- in the Japan's economy, there are worries that Japan's politics will tilt away from the U.S. and toward China. John Foster Dulles worried about that exact problem after World War II and went to great lengths to not only rebuild Japan's powerhouse economic base after the war but embedded it deeply into the U.S. economy to keep Japan from slipping back into a Chinese orbit and courtship.

Second and perhaps most obvious, America wanted this Japan declaration to warn China not to escalate its growing buildup of forces adjacent to Taiwan.

Third, I think America is trying to punish China for failing to keep North Korea reigned in.

In Europe, President Bush has brought one negative item of contention in what otherwise has been a cosmetic love-fest, and that was his opposition to Europe lifting its arms export ban to China.

Rumsfeld as well has said that America needs to revisit and review the terms of its engagement with China.

On the trade front, organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the AFL/CIO are lining up to get U.S. government support for another assault on China's cheap yuan strategy.

On one hand, I'm glad that Washington seems to be paying attention to other potential problems in the world while it is trying to manage its Iraq quagmire.

But a lot of what is unfolding from the Bush administration on its seemingly new China policy is puffery and seems to be a lot like the gopher game, in which we jump from one issue we hit on the head until we are distracted by another.

China may be just the distraction of the moment -- something to keep the mind fuzzy and out of focus while Members of Congress give the President his full $82 billion request for America's Afghan and Iraq operations.

But China is not the kind of challenge that should be so trivially managed. Its clear that America has initiated a new comprehensive strategy of pressuring China -- and is using our agent in Asia, Japan, to help in that effort.

But the bottom line is that China knows beneath the surface commotion, America has few options to pose a serious challenge to its interests right now. This is something we need to fix.

Those who are blindly calling for America to stay the course in Iraq -- through thick and thin -- and expenditures of some $80-$90 billion a year really need to investigate the costs to America because of our inability to credibly deter bad behavior in any other part of the world.

And what is so frustrating is that those policymakers who ultimately agree with me on the costs as I've described them just blindly jump into line to provide more troops and mountains of additional money to a globally stretched Pentagon that doesn't provide the security deliverables it should be providing now.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: I am traveling and unable to hyperlink items to this post -- will do so at a later time)

I'm at a foreign policy conference in Kauai today that is going to preempt my posting anything until tonight -- but I will be back later today with thoughts on America's revived bravado vs. China.

-- Steve Clemons

With all of the recruiting our military services do among our country's youth -- it is outrageous that the Motion Picture Association of America would try and bar youth from seeing Gunner Palace. This documentary is about as honest and unbiased a documentary on the realities of a soldier's life in Baghdad as I could imagine.

I just signed this electronic petition to MPAA President Dan Glickman that reads:

We the undersigned demand that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) immediately change the voluntary movie rating assigned to the upcoming Iraq War documentary film "Gunner Palace" from "R" (Restricted) to "PG-13".

The appeal will be decided Thursday this week -- so whether you supported this war or not, this collage of soldier's stories -- in their own, unedited words -- deserves to be seen broadly in America.

I hope you will sign the linked petition -- and get your friends, brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, local national guard units and soldiers -- to sign too.

Thanks.

-- Steve Clemons

I posted a comment the day before yesterday on a New America Foundation sponsored screening that I helped host (with my colleague Jenny Buntman) of Gunner Palace.

There were some interesting folks in the audience, including the mother of one of the memorable characters in Michael Tucker's documentary. I think his name was Sargent Beasley, but I may have the name wrong. This was her first time seeing the film -- and meeting her, seeing her reactions to the environment her son lived in day after day in Baghdad, added a dimension of gritty humanity to the evening and viewing.

In the film, Beasley (if I have his name right) said that Americans had no idea what was going on over in Iraq. He said they wouldn't tune in if they could and said that even if people did see Michael Tucker's film, they'd forget it by the time the evening sitcoms were on. We wouldn't remember him, he said.

It's been a few days for me though, and this film keeps churning around in my head. It's important to see and ought to be required viewing for all members of Congress and the administration who are making decisions about our troops.

This note below was sent to me by Brady Van Engelen, one of the soldiers profiled in the Time Magazine person of the year issue in December 2003. He was shot in the head by a sniper a few months later -- and survived. He spent his recovery time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I shared with him that many readers of this blog had made phone card and financial donations to help the soldiers and their families at Walter Reed.

Brady Van Engelen wrote:

Mr. Clemons,

Brady Van Engelen

This war veteran -- a very young man -- has it exactly right (except that he really needs to call me Steve).

We should see what is happening with our tax dollars and we should engage in a principled and serious debate about this war has wrought, good and bad, and whether those who led us in this direction should be praised or criticized and removed from the helm of foreign policy making.

Michael Tucker's film provides a somewhat haunting collage of memorable faces and personalities of young men and women doing what they were ordered to do in Baghdad -- and I have to think that as intensely unique and human each of these soldiers in the 2/3 Field Artillery was on the screen, Tucker could have found these kinds of people throughout the ranks of those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meeting them, particularly John Powers and Brady Van Engelen (and his fiance), just underscores for me why it is so important to hold our political leaders accountable for their successes and failures -- and Captain John Powers said it best the other night when he reported that he and many other soldiers no longer know what our objectives in Iraq are.

-- Steve Clemons

Glen Fukushima has just been announced President of Airbus Japan. This is huge, earth-shaking news for US-Japan trade types.

Glen Fukushima, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the Japan Policy Research Institute which I co-founded with Chalmers Johnson, has been an American trade policy official and businessman committed to prying open Japan's markets to American products and services. He would have been a great U.S. Trade Representative himself or even a brilliant U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

Though, I'm pretty sure Glen started off as a Republican -- working under Carla Hills years ago at USTR, he gravitated left politically, at least until he got to the sensible center, and like many of us pined for a president who took economic issues seriously. Bill Clinton flirted with economic strategy -- and Bob Rubin actually chose a course of manic neoliberalism, which undermined much of what people like Glen and I had been arguing for at the micro-economic level, but still. . .it was strategy.

Glen has headed up AT&T's operations in Japan, as well as Cadence Electronics. He recently was chief at NCR's operation -- before this Airbus opportunity opened up.

My sense is that Airbus must have offered Glen a pretty lucrative set of incentives to join them. (Glen -- next time, the coffee in the Orchid Room is on you; actually, it always has been. He's a great host). Fukushima has been a tireless warrior for American political and economic interests -- but now he's gone to work for the Europeans.

Of course, the line we all parroted was if we opened up markets for American goods and services, it was good for the world. Now, Glen will be able to say that his success for Europe will also mean success for competition writ large -- and for American interests.

A few years ago, I visited the Airbus operation in Toulouse, France and walked through their mock new superjet. The first one off the line sold to Singapore Airlines.

Airbus told me that they knew that Boeing had a nearly impenetrable fortress around Japan, Korea, and Taiwan when it came to airplane sales because of the complicity between American defense policy interests and Boeing sales -- but they planned to go right into the shogun's den, so to speak, and set up an office in Tokyo -- and try and seduce some of those Japanese airlines away from their lock-step obligations to the U.S. and Boeing.

They have selected an extremely capable and well-connected guy to do that. What's more is that the President of Boeing Japan is also on the Board of Directors of the Japan Policy Research Institute and an old friend -- and one of Fukushima's oldest and best friends, Skipp Orr. Dinners with Skipp and Glen are going to be the hot ticket in Tokyo.

I imagine that part of Fukushima's calculus is that there is no international economic strategy out of the White House any longer -- except the absence of strategy. And thus, his self-adopted ethic of fighting for American political and economic leverage in Japan makes no sense when the President and his cabinet hardly give a damn about Japanese markets or market-opening abroad generally any longer.

Very interesting news.....and just to give him appropriate credit, Chris Nelson's Nelson Report had this in its gossip sheet a month ago -- but then retracted it. Fukushima, I think, is a subscriber.

Good job Chris.

-- Steve Clemons

A good friend at a local news bureau just shared with me his office's standard letter for requesting a "hard pass" for access to the White House press corps.

Jeff Gannon/James Guckert could not get this kind of pass -- and instead got a daily pass which had to be secured by faxing a slightly more simple request to the White House -- lower press office -- with full name, date of birth, and social security number. These day passes are apparently easy to secure. However, Gannon/Guckert would have had to have someone approving him on the inside and/or regularly waiving him in with a "request for meeting."

There is even less security screening for those going to such meetings if the White House staffer has indicated to the guards to waive someone in.

Here is the standard request letter:

January 24, 2005

XXXXXX XXXXXXX
Bureau Chief

-- Steve Clemons

SPC Stuart Wilf is a character that I'm going to have a hard time forgetting. He was one of the soldiers profiled in the documentary, Gunner Palace, soon to be released across the country. He's from Colorado Springs -- and might be President someday.

Wilf was a kid -- joined the military out of high school -- and is clearly into video games, hard-grinding electric rock, and having fun times. By the end of the film, he is far more sober about everything -- and he and his fellow gunners are counting the days to get out of the military and making us much of the hell hole they are in as they can -- with their improv rap and the occasional party in Uday Hussein's former palace.

The New America Foundation and The Washington Note hosted a rather well-attended screening of Gunner Palace last night and invited about 400 wonkish friends and journalists to see it. This was my second time.

The first time through I thought what I was seeing was a collage of day-in-the-life vignettes of young kids with guns who were way over their heads in the complex culture of good and bad Iraq. But this time, I tried to watch the film as if I were a strong proponent of the war.

Michael Tucker, the Director, has an interesting product in this film because I'm convinced that while he is giving his viewers insights into the realities of soldiers who are on the front-line patrolling nasty Baghdad neighborhoods, those who see this film will see their biases reinforced. With my head wired to be a pro-Bush, pro-war American, I saw brave soldiers doing what needed to be done for an idealism worth dying for (and some of them did indeed die).

But as someone opposed to this war from the beginning, I saw a clash of cultures and objectives that was never going to be softened and an enormous chasm between troops who were heavy in armour and guns and the Iraqi population heavy in complexity, religion, and opaque social norms. I felt terrible for some of the Iraqis in this film whose homes were destroyed when the soldiers had to break in -- but you could see in their eyes a powerful sense of disdain for the Americans and a confidence that the Iraqis, no matter what their plight, would be there long after the Americans were gone.

There were Iraqis arrested in this film for suspected bomb-making and terror-cell financing and sent off to Abu Ghraib. Michael Tucker documents that no evidence was found in one of these cases -- and yet those arrested, including a self-identified Iraqi journalist, were sent off to Saddam Hussein's former evil prison -- one that America made no less evil.

One really sees the insanity and fragility of our presence in Iraq. The soldiers -- for whom I have enormous respect -- are there on the front line not knowing what their objectives are anymore. My sense is that most of them don't know why we are there anymore, and according to one soldier who appeared in the film and spoke afterword, 8 out of 10 soldiers who can get out of the service are leaving.

To be fair, we had another recently returned soldier in the audience who was a strong advocate for our presence there and thought that the CA-units (civil authority units) on our side were doing great things for the communities in which they worked but that there was little recognition of this.

After the screening, I asked Michael Tucker, the producer and director of the film and the one who embedded himself in the lives and circumstances of these particular soldiers, about the disconnect he felt between Washington policymakers and pundits and the story he was helping to tell on the film. He reported, as he has elsewhere around the country, that he wanted to "keep the politics out of the film and just show things as they were."

Seeing things as they were was enough to convince me that success is going to be extremely difficult to achieve there -- and after thousands of lives lost and after spending nearly $12,000 per Iraqi on this invasion and occupation -- one wonders what success, if achievable, will cost in lives and treasure.

But the two highlights of the evening for me were meeting former Captain Jonathan Powers and former 1st Lietenant Brady van Engelen. Both of these gentlemen were part of the unit that Gunner Palace profiled. Powers appears in the movie -- and I think, though am not sure, that Engelen came on later.

Van Engelen replaced Ben Colgan, who was one of the personalities in the documentary later killed by snipers.

Van Engelen happened to be profiled in the Time Magazine Person of the Year issue in December 2003 -- and was subsequently shot in the head by snipers and survived. His story is here. He was quiet, with his fiance, and we didn't talk all that much,. However, I learned enough from him that he felt it was very important for Americans to see the reality of what our troops are living with in Iraq and what sacrifices they are making -- as we watch in comfort our favorite weekly sitcoms.

Jonathan Powers was amazing though -- and eloquent. While "Wilf" whom I noted above commented that he might just end up as President one day (and he has the charisma to possibly pull off something like that), Powers does have a good sense of politics -- and is exactly the opposite of Director Michael Tucker when it comes to the question of politics and war.

Powers wants politics in it -- and wants the politicians, the pundits, and the thinkers and journalists to be there on the front line so that the political calculus that created the environment at Gunner Palace gets the feed-back of both the good and the bad of what these military men and women are experiencing.

He made the very good point that on the same day that there was a bombing with dozens killed -- that story ended up buried in the paper whereas the front page of USA Today featured how much money Americans were spending dressing up their pets.

Powers was also brazen and said something very important at the end of the evening -- just before we broke up the public part of the event and went to a local bar. He seemed angry about the financial scandals regarding the lost $9 billion. He said we shouldn't be fighting and wasting energy about Social Security reform. We should be dealing with real issues.

The issue he said mattered was that the missing $9 billion wasn't missing at all. He said that he had had a lot to do with financial management issues and the distribution of money in Baghdad -- and CPA and the military knew exactly where that money went and into whose hands. They were shoveling it out to the people American authorities wanted to have it.

I think Captain Powers has some interesting and potentially legally important stories to tell.

I recommend watching the documentary. It's the most real depiction I've yet seen of what this war and occupation really look like.

-- Steve Clemons

I just knew that if I posted my travel plans, interesting items would surface. I just learned that the RAND Corporation, one of the biggest think tanks in the world with more than $175 million in annual revenue, has an operation in Doha, Qatar called the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute.

The Institute defines its roles and objectives as:

The Institute is a home for analysis of subjects key to the economic and social development and the stability of the region-education, health care, effective governance, labor markets and human resource development, demographics and population dynamics, information and communications technology, transportation, water resources, physical and institutional infrastructure, environmental protection, economic policy, and regional security, to name a few. The objective of this analysis is to provide public and private decisionmakers with practical information about the options they face and the consequences of pursuing alternative policies.

I have an open mind about these sorts of operations but would really like to know whether the Institute is offering useful policy counsel to any of the less-rich parts of the Middle East.

Has anyone seen research products or briefs from this Institute?

Interesting. I plan to visit.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: Thanks to LF for this information)

One of the intimidating parts of writing a blog is that if one is lucky, lots of people read it -- and those people are scattered pretty far around. Last time I was in London, my significant other and I struck up a conversation with some folks at a pub who said that the two blogs they read were Talking Points and The Washington Note. I know. . .that pic is really not very good.

In any case, I am hitting the road again. I am participating in a couple of conferences -- but the real reason for these longish travels is to get a working action plan to launch a serious new competitive movement to unseat neoconservatives. That requires time, thinking, list development, and some writing.

I am publishing these destinations and dates in case any of you see any good that I can do while in these regions. But don't worry -- I will be a "virtual presence" in Washington.

February 21 - February 25
Kuaui, Hawaii

February 25 - March 5
Honolulu, Hawaii

March 22 - March 26
London, United Kingdom

March 26 - April 1
Doha, Qatar

I will be obssessed with finding wifi spots -- so tips appreciated.

-- Steve Clemons

(Feb. 28, 2003 WH press conference on C-SPAN)

Eric Boehlert has this piece in Salon that pulls together some super-sleuth reports proving that Jeff Gannon/James Guckert had access to White House press briefings before Talon News was even up and running.

Someone helped this guy.

Boehlert writes:

There's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. Guckert, using his alias "Jeff Gannon," once boasted online about asking then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a question at the Feb. 28, 2003, briefing. The date is significant because in order to receive a White House press pass, Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "published regularly," in itself an extraordinarily low threshold.

That means he wasn't working for any other news outlet in February 2003 when he was spotted by C-Span cameras inside the White House briefing room. And that means Guckert was ushered into the White House press room in February 2003 for a briefing despite the fact he was not a journalist.

Whereas it was once suspected that White House press officials in charge of doling out coveted press passes went easy on Guckert, a Republican partisan working for an amateurish news outlet who would routinely ask softball questions, it now appears those same unnamed White House officials simply ignored all established credential standards -- including detailed security guidelines -- and gave Guckert White House access, even though he had no professional standing whatsoever.

For more than a week White House officials have refused to answer any of Salon's questions regarding the credential process used for Guckert's press passes.

Boehlert's super sleuths are noted here and here. But don't forget who did the hard core sleuthing.

In any case, this is not something for the left to get giddy about. It's an opportunity to begin turning some of the worst anti-fair-press traits of this White House around.

Think strategically. Have someone contact Gannon/Guckert and have him call me, or write. I'm in the book in D.C., or call the New America Foundation at 202-986-2700.

-- Steve Clemons

The other day, I was moved by this Colbert King column that made the link betweeen the W.E.B. Du Bois-led civil rights movement at Niagara Falls 100 years ago and the pursuit of equal rights for gays and lesbians and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Beyond the drama of 29 black intellectuals deciding that they were going to shape history, rather than be steamrolled by it, I was struck by this comment on the racism they experienced from hotels on the U.S. side of the border:

At the dawn of 20th-century America, those black men journeyed to Niagara Falls, N.Y., to prepare a militant statement on race and inequality that was to stand in sharp contrast to the conciliatory and accommodationist stance of Booker T. Washington -- white America's favorite black man at the time. Hotels on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls wouldn't let them register, however. So their demands were drafted in a hotel on the Canadian side of the falls.

In this case, Canadians seem to have helped serve as a conscience for evolving American morality -- and may be doing so again.

This is Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's eloquent and powerful statement yesterday on Canada's Civil Marriage Act.

I recommend the entire statement that I only wish someone like John McCain, Colin Powell, Howard Dean, Mark Warner, Bob Dole, or some other icon or icon-wannabe would make, but I particularly liked this section:

. . .some have counseled the government to extend to gays and lesbians the right to "civil union." This would give same-sex couples many of the rights of a wedded couple, but their relationships would not legally be considered marriage. In other words, they would be equal, but not quite as equal as the rest of Canadians.

Put simply, we must always remember that "separate but equal" is not equal. What's more, those who call for the establishment of civil unions fail to understand that the Government of Canada does not have the constitutional jurisdiction to do so. Only the provinces have that. Only the provinces could define such a regime - and they could define it in 10 different ways, and some jurisdictions might not bother to define it at all. There would be uncertainty. There would be confusion. There would certainly not be equality.

And in today's Kent County News, published in Chestertown, Maryland and a direct descendent of the Chestertown Spy established in 1793 -- John Schratwieser was quoted in response to viewing the HBO documentary film Iron Jawed Angels at the 85th Birthday Celebration of the Kent County League of Women Voters in the historic Prince Theatre, as saying that the film "showed what the power and true purpose of a Constitutional Amendment is."

It's just very clear to me after reading Colbert King, hearing Paul Martin's address, and watching this new film on women's suffrage what leadership is, and what it is not.

-- Steve Clemons

John Aravosis told me last night that the only person who seems to be able to reach Jeff Gannon/James Guckert is Michelangelo Signorile, who previously interviewed Gannon/Gukcert in a two-hour interview.

Gannon/Guckert seems, in part, driven by the spotlight -- and he could really rehabilitate his image and do something good for the politics of this town if he (1) identified the person in the White House who helped him with a couple of years of day passes for press briefings; and (2) identified the person or persons who shared with him classified intelligence regarding Valerie Plame's CIA role.

Gannon/Guckert has a chance, now, to get ahead of this controversy and turn the embarrassment about his side-line hustler business into something that could turn him into a celebrity. I imagine his other options at this point are pretty bleak.

Jeff/Jim, my email is steve@thewashingtonnote.com -- and I'd be happy to have an offline, off-the-record exchange with you about this. There are costs and benefits to any action, and you should think them through.

The story has moved from the Howard Kurtz column to new articles in the New York Times by Frank Rich and the Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal (and probably elsewhere -- but haven't done a full scan yet).

I have to agree with Frank Rich that there is a broad cas