The humiliating Obama-in-Asia failures mount up

[babylonsister]

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/

The humiliating Obama-in-Asia failures mount up
James Fallows

NYT front-page lead story today:

From the story:

"WASHINGTON -- The United Nations nuclear watchdog demanded Friday that Iran immediately freeze operations at a once secret uranium enrichment plant, a sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China...

"Administration officials held up the statement as a victory for President Obama's diplomatic efforts to coax both Russia and China to increase the pressure on Iran. They said that they had begun working on a sanctions package, which would be brought before the United Nations Security Council if Iran did not meet the year-end deadline imposed by Mr. Obama to make progress on the issue....

"In recent weeks, the Obama administration has been painstakingly wooing Russia and China, the two permanent members of the Security Council most averse to imposing sanctions... Persuading China has, so far, proven more difficult. After meeting with Mr. Obama in Beijing, China's president, Hu Jintao, said nothing about additional pressure on Iran.

"But administration officials said that behind the scenes they had been working hard to get China on board, and expressed hope that those efforts would pay off.... Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said China's support on Iran and its decision to set a climate change goal on Thursday showed that Mr. Obama's trip to Beijing was producing results despite criticism of the visit. "This is the product of engagement," Mr. Emanuel said, adding that it was "a direct result" of the trip."

To the NYT's credit: the online version of today's story contains a link back to an influential earlier "we didn't see anything happen in public, therefore nothing happened" story (by one of the same correspondents) about the "failure" of the trip. It's the link in the third quoted paragraph from the story, starting with the words "Chinese president Hu." So, no joke, this is a relatively classy gesture by the Times and better than we've seen from any of the networks or talk shows or other publications. It would have been very natural and easy to leave that link out. We'll take our progress where we can find it!

And to be clear on one other point: the areas in which the Administration needed to engage the Chinese -- Iran, North Korea, climate issues, currency value and economic "balancing," human rights in general and talks with the Dalai Lama in particular -- are obviously all difficult. China's initial offer on emissions targets is nowhere near "sufficient"; similarly with its RMB-and-economic commitments; the Iran problem is far from solved; and so on. But ten days after the trip's completion, the apparent results are closer to the high end of what the Administration could reasonably have expected than to the across-the-board humiliation and disappointment that "analyses" of the trip generally proclaimed. There is evidence of at least first-stage engagement by China on all the issues that mattered to the United States. First-stage is not completion, but it's something -- and something most of the press, viewing the trip as if it were a campaign swing, missed at the time.

[lapfog_1]

1. Your headline need the obligatory

:sarcasm: tag. Text here just doesn't carry the rich flavor of good sarcasm.

[Xipe Totec]

10. Knowing the OP, I had no trouble realizing the title was sarcastic

Your mileage may vary.

:hi:

[Cha]

18. I hear that and my

mileage is right on.:)

[WCGreen]

2. the press, viewing the trip as if it were a campaign swing, missed at the time.

This is the key line...

The people covering the White House are not use to adult leadership. They are use to yippie kay yea muther fucker coverage where everything is in the moment and nothing happens behind the scenes...

[FrenchieCat]

3. yippie kay yea muther fucker coverage!

:rofl:

You can say that again!

Might as well have MTV cover the President;
they might do a better job!

[Cha]

7. Well put, Green, well put!

They better step up and start acting like responsible reporters or they're going to get left in the dust.

[rosesaylavee]

24. When does the media mature past "yippie kay yea muther fucker"

coverage? Is there any hope we will see actual journalism across the board again? Eternal optimist here.

[Cha]

4. This is brilliant, babylonsister!

A lot of people..not just reporters don't see anything in public so they assume nothing's getting done.

[FrenchieCat]

6. That is how superficial, as a nation, we have become.

The fact that reporters are that way
also showcases how useless they are
at providing us with information we don't know.

They know about unnamed sources well,
but somehow, in terms of doing analysis based on what actually happens,
they are null and void.

It makes it hard to practice democracy when there is no Free press,
just a bought one.

[Cha]

8. Oh, they love their "unnamed sources"

wink wink.

Our press is bought and paid for by the corporatemasters who keep their mediawhores on a very tight leash.

It's too sad what real reporters would think of the US' media now..those former journalists who had integrity and intelligence.

And, some lived to see it like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

[vaberella]

5. K/R. n/t

[ClarkUSA]

9. Pres. Obama is the best diplomat this country has. World leaders want to work with him.

And he gets results behind the scenes, without much fanfare.

:)

[vaberella]

11. DU, by & large, doesn't seem to agree. But I do. n/t

[ClarkUSA]

15. Most Americans do, too. He gets very high marks on foreign policy in all polls.

Also, I think the global community and certainly the diplomatic community would agree with us, too.

That's what counts, right?

:fistbump:

[avalonofmists]

27. Yes, The Repugs agree with Obama related to foreign policies a lot.

[Lord Helmet]

28. Horse shit. The Repubs have opposed him every step of the way.

They will eviscerate him no matter what he does.

It's the http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/asia/11policy.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss">hawks (Hillary Clinton, Gates, and Mullen) in his administration that are advising him to escalate.

[discopants]

12. also, Chinese PM to attend Copenhagen climate conference

Perhaps this was another Obama failure


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/26/wen-jiabao-china-copenhagen-conference

[Cha]

17. Wow, disco..sounds like another one..

:D:fistbump:

[Peace Patriot]

13. Well done, babylonsister! This is the kind of analysis we need to begin to penetrate

the disinformation, and the black holes where information should be, in the corpo/fascist press.

I'm glad to see the NYT break ranks with the shallow "groupthink" of the rest of 'news' media on this matter, although I'm not prepared to use the word "classy" (i.e., their link to their error) for anything that this lying, warmongering, arrogant crap-rag does. CYA is the likely explanation. (And I'm not just talking about Judith Miller. They also withheld info on the Bushwhacks' grandscale domestic spying program for one year, so as "not to influence the 2004 election." And they are currently publishing someone as bad as Judith Miller, this time on Latin America--Simon Romero--one of the many signs and omens that the Pentagon has a war plan for that region. )

There is another aspect to Obama's China trip. The WH has disclosed that two Obama envoys who preceded Obama to China told the Chinese that, if they didn't go along with U.S. on Iran, Israel would bomb Iran. I was kind of amazed that the WH would disclose such a thing--an item that could have caused a huge diplomatic flap (--that we're threatening a military strike on one country (Iran--a Chinese ally, and their no. 2 oil supplier), on behalf of another country (Israel--our ally), and that this threat was effective on Chinese officials, who have agreed at least to criticize their own ally. China could have taken great offense at this disclosure. And I can only presume that the WH was confident that China wouldn't be offended. I tried to dig deeper and came up with some ideas on what this was all about, in the following thread, comment #28 (my comment also has a link to both the Jerusalem Post and Washington Post articles on this disclosure; the OP has just the JP version):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4161595

Thumbnail: I think China is why Rumsfeld was ousted. Rumsfeld/Cheney were going to nuke Iran. China (and maybe Russia as well) threatened to come into it, on Iran's side. Our military brass feared an escalating nuclear war. Rumsfeld/Cheney were going to order them to do it anyway. Daddy Bush intervened, on the side of the brass, to rescue Junior either from armageddon or from a military coup. This was circa 2006, at the end of which Rumsfeld resigned and all talk of the US attacking Iran went away. China does NOT want to see this crew of crazy men return to power in the US. They want to keep Obama, and were willing to suffer a bit of diplomatic embarrassment to bolster Obama in the stupid, warmongering, Bushwhack-worshiping press. Also, I think the meeting was mostly about the Big Powers dibbying up the world's oil resources and profiting from the spread of nuclear technology, and had nothing whatever to do with human rights or climate change. The latter two are just laughable as US "issues." And China's ace--the huge debt the Bushwhacks got us into with China--probably overrode everything else. China needs the US to do well, to keep Bushwhacky bombers out of power, and there were probably discussions of how they could help.

[pscot]

14. Fallows has been after this for a while

Yesterday he posted this: (Updated thought: Seriously, when does an official part of the chattering class -- one of the weekend talkers, someone from the leading newspapers -- look back on these past two weeks in journalism's effort to represent reality and ask how the dominant narrative could have been so wrong, and wrong in a way that was easily noticeable at the time? Just curious. The guiding motto for the inquiry should be the deathless subhead on Tish Durkin's article: "Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."

That can be found by scrolling down at the link in the OP.

[FrenchieCat]

16. Sad when the Chinese Press beats ours at providing information on our President.

That trip wasn't even really covered.

Got a lot of, "we will come back to the President if he says anything of any note".

Fuck you media.
Now you will know why I have stopped watching the triplet cable airheads all together.

[ClarkUSA]

19. Fallows, like Andrew Sullivan, writes a great blog for The Atlantic. He is based in China.

<<That trip wasn't even really covered.

Got a lot of, "we will come back to the President if he says anything of any note".

Fuck you media.
Now you will know why I have stopped watching the triplet cable airheads all together.>>

Drudge sets the tone. The MSM are too lazy to dig deeper than the surface, as usual.
The WH is making them all look bad with this disclosure. I hope the NYT will do better
in the future.

[Jamastiene]

20. It is nice to have a president who doesn't puke on Asian leaders.

Now, THAT was an embarrassment.

[me b zola]

21. K&R

[Tarheel_Dem]

22. K&R. (nt)

[ellie]

23. Thanks for posting this!

I have been reading the James Fallows articles in The Atlantic about Obama's Asia trip and how wrong the press was.

[bvar22]

25. With the exception of the escalation of the WARS in the ME,

...Obama has done a brilliant job of repairing the damage inflicted by the Neo Cons and restoring some dignity and respect to our International image.

He is a great International spokesman and representative for us.
Here, there is certainly a refreshing "Change".

[SpartanDem]

26. The media finds it's foot in it's mouth again

I guess after the last 8 years they have forgotten what real dimplomnacy looks like.