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PoliGazette Launches

Over the past few months I have been working with Michael van der Galien to launch a new moderate conservative (or moderate liberal, depending on how you look at it) blog and news site. Well, today it has seen the light: PoliGazette is here!

Make sure to read the welcome post here.

Remembrance Day, Veterans Day

Earlier this morning I was humbled to stand next on stage to Norm Kirby, a Canadian veteran who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. At the end of the war when he marched into The Netherlands he was at age 19, a platoon commander. Shortly before he spoke I got to deliver my speech, focused on freedom and why we should keep remembering. I give it to you here in its entirety:

Today I will take my children to the Remembrance Day ceremonies, just like my father used to take me to the remembrance ceremonies in The Netherlands where I grew up as a child. The memories of those are vivid: a sober ceremony, some music, a speech by the mayor, veterans and survivors placing some wreaths in front of the statue on the square and a silence of two minutes followed by the national anthem. But as opposed to Canadians, our day of remembrance is May 4, the day marking the eve of liberation day; the day Canadian troops liberated the North and West of The Netherlands sixty-two years ago. But there is another more major difference between these two days of remembrance: most of the victims we commemorated weren't military, but civilian.

I remember one time, I must have been about ten years old that I was standing next to an older man who was there together with a younger man who I had seen before in our hometown. The younger man was probably somewhere in his thirties with very dark, black hair and, as it seemed to, somewhat mentally challenged. The older man started talking to me and I could not really follow what he was saying as I was trying hard to pay attention to the unfolding ceremony. So, all I did was smile to the man, nodding yes, and in effect politely ignoring him. As time went on it became evident that he was talking about the mentally handicapped younger man standing next to us. He probably had come to the conclusion I wasn't paying any real attention so in order to grab it he all of a sudden cut right to the heart of his monologue and pointed to the younger man. He then said something to me I will never forget: "they made him watch the execution of his parents". Somewhat embarrassed, I turned to the man and immersed myself in the life story of one of the few Dutch Jews who had managed to survive the Second World War.

And so it was in many Dutch households, where stories of suffering and survival were kept alive by a generation that had lived through five years of war and suppression. My own family also provided its wartime narrative. There was the story about my grandfather who ended up in Buchenwald after he and a few enthusiastic would-be resistance fighters had naively compiled list of all the members of the team. That typical Dutch effort to get organized ended terribly when the list with names inadvertently fell into German hands. Or how my own father during the last few months of the war was forced to hide in a closet, while the streets were swarmed with Wehrmacht rounding up young men to work in Germany's rapidly collapsing war industry. They were all stories that formed an integral part of the identity of our family, oral history in its purest form, delivered on to the next generation at the dinner table and at family parties. And in the days leading up to and after the May 4 commemorations they were usually recycled, often spiced up with long forgotten details.

So, after these Remembrance Day services had ended my father and I would casually stroll back to our house, leaving behind a square filled with floral tributes to the fallen. He would tell me that none of the unborn would ever realize what freedom really meant. In my childlike enthusiasm I firmly rejected this notion, but subconsciously I knew he was absolutely right. Not until you have experienced what it is to see entire families disappear from your street or to sit on a darkened attic for days on end to avoid capture, deportation and death, can one come to realize the true value of freedom. My generation learned to take that freedom for granted, use it, abuse it or at times even spit on it.

As the generation of my parents passes on, the ones born in the first few decades after the war will be the last generation to have had some sort of direct link to the world war that ended in 1945. Both in Canada and Europe that generation is somehow tasked with preserving the memory of what it means to lose freedom as best as it can. That is why today I will take my children to Remembrance Day. So that they understand directly why Canadians landed on Juno Beach and why people from both sides of the Atlantic connected through mutual, if very different, experiences of totalitarianism. And yes, they will hear me talk about what happened to their grandfather, their great-grandfather and that poor little black haired man who now most likely will have reached middle age, still tortured by the brutality that he was made to face as a child.

There is of course more than just the spoken word, as today we gather around the more physical legacy presented by war monuments. One of the most impressive can be found in Amsterdam where former Dutch resistance fighter and poet H.M. van Randwijk's succinct words immortalized the essence of losing freedom and the importance of remembering:

A people that bows to tyrants
Will lose more than life and belongings

Then, the lights will go out

The Bush 'Regime'

One of the baffling things about this White House's routine is how it violates one of the most basic business premises which I would summarize as "where leaders go, others follow". However if George W. Bush goes to bed at 10 PM sharp, there aren't many of his staff members following as most are expected to burn the midnight oil, which they unquestionably do. That is a marked difference from the round-the-clock chaotic Clinton years and one wonders how this apparent distance between the CEO and his team does not seem to affect team loyalty.

Early-to-bed, punctuality, simplicity, no alcohol, relentless physical exercise, that sums up what we would call the Bush regime. It is one of the key points from Robert Draper's Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. Draper's book is an early assessment of this president and it follows its subject from the early days in Texas to the present day troubles of balancing domestic pressures with fighting a war in Iraq. The casual style gives the book the feel as if it is an extended Vanity Fair entry with lots of remarkable anecdotes without answering any real questions the reader might have. Although there are attempts, 'Dead Certain' hardly addresses the deeper motivations of its subject so what we end up is a trove of material making it a book of reference for a real biography that will be written once Dubya has retired at his Crawford ranch.

Still it is a very worthwhile read. From a historical perspective there are two chapters that stand out. One describes the pre-nomination battle in the state of South Carolina where John McCain's name and reputation were dragged through the mud by Bush's highly motivated ground troops. Although it does hardly give an insight about the extent of the candidate's involvement in these brutal tactics, it gives a few useful pointers as to how you can turn around the momentum during a primary campaign. The same level of analysis is devoted to Katrina, the aftermath of which is routinely described as if it was one of Bush's own making which it evidently was not. But it does provide an interesting case study of present-day disaster management and how the White House sought to manipulate public sentiment.

Throughout Draper's book - which is invariably described as being unbiased - the reader is left with a fairly favorable picture of Bush as a well-meaning, focused if somewhat unprepared leader who is not nearly as conservative as his opponents make him out to be. Draper is creating not any real distance between himself and Bush, but more importantly between Bush and less pleasant events that some believe have the president's imprint on it. Draper leaves the reader feeling that Bush is a well meaning actor, often caught in unfortunate administrative turf wars. Admittedly, I did not like Bush when he launched his campaign in 1999, liked him after 9/11, began to dislike him starting in 2004, but Draper has somehow managed to me taking a liking to the guy again.

The somewhat lame conclusion that Bush's virtues are pretty much the same as his vices feels like Draper was in a hurry to get his book to the printer. The material could have yielded a far more thought provoking end. One for instance is that the deferential treatment Bush receives from his team to a point where vital information is not being shared with the boss is possibly one that has created serious dysfunction and some disastrous policy results. The fact that the chief leaves the office at night well before the rest of the team may not appear to be a big deal, but it highlights the fraught dynamics of the Bush White House. If you like presidential history, endless anecdotes, magazine style narrative and an invitation to draw your own conclusions, Draper's book should be yours.

Happy Halloween

Last Week on The Gazette

There was a lot of comment on my post which dealt with the overreaction by police at both Phoenix and Vancouver airports which resulted in two unfortunate deaths. Excerpt:

It occurs to me that our society's appetite for security and control has given birth to a rapidly growing industry - consisting of both public and private institutions - that is increasingly incompetent in dealing with alleged breaches of security. Giant lapses in security occur without any effective response, while innocent passengers run the risk of being violently subdued in situations where other tools of conflict resolution would undoubtedly have done the trick.

Read the whole thing, and the various comments, here.

And yes, China is firmly back on the agenda. The red carpet treatment that the Dalai Lama got at the White House last week deserves applause.

The End of the Affair

The embarrassing finale of the Hirsi Ali saga played itself out in Dutch parliament yesterday. My thoughts are summarized in my latest column here.

Soldier of Orange (1917 - 2007)

Whenever I am asked about Dutch movies I say without hesitation that the best one ever made was Soldier of Orange (1977). It was at the time the most expensive movie production ever made in Holland and it launched the international careers of both Rutger Hauer and Paul Verhoeven. With this movie Verhoeven - who went on to achieve Hollywood fame with 'Basic Instinct' - brought his unique brand of realism to a larger and international audience. It meant that 'Soldier' was enriched with quite a bit of sex and a few torture scenes that stand the test of time and are as haunting today as they were thirty years ago. But above all it was the script that was able to condense the experiences of the Dutch under Nazi rule into a compelling film built around a hero who waged his own struggle against the brutal German oppressor.

The movie was based on the book written by the man who came to be known as the 'Soldier of Orange', Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema who died in his home on Hawaii earlier this week at the age of 90. The story follows the adventures of a group of rather privileged Dutch college students whose careless life at Leiden University is disrupted by the Nazi invasion of May 1940. The group falls apart during the war, a few side with the enemy, one Jewish member perishes, and some end up in the resistance, notably Hazelhoff Roelfzema. The movie follows his daring crossing of enemy lines across the North Sea to reach the British shores and a subsequent return with Royal Navy assistance to the occupied beaches of the Dutch mainland. In actual life the Dutch hero made about fourteen such crossings which sought to maintain vital links with Dutch resistance forces in the occupied country. After this he entered the RAF as a pilot carrying out some seventy bombing missions over Germany. Towards the end of the war he became the adjudant to Queen Wilhelmina, a role which earned him his nickname as 'Orange' is not only the Dutch national color, it is the royal family's surname.

Yet, his life after the war proved to be equally interesting. Of course his efforts and hero status had rendered him totally unfit to return to regular Dutch life and a short spell as a diplomat ended rather abruptly after having spoken his mind about the future of the Dutch East Indies. His passion for this part of the world led him to carry out a few missions on behalf of the Republic of the Moluccas, a rather large part of eastern Indonesia that was counting on independence following the Dutch departure in 1949. That quest was stifled by the international community - notably the US - who had a vested interest in the post-war world to keep Indonesia a unified entity and a bulwark against communism. Of course, his mission failed and Hazelhoff Roelfzema started a new life as an immigrant in the US, holding a variety of jobs, working among other things for NBC and Radio Free Europe.

In his biography Hazelhoff Roelfzema makes it clear that he essentially was an adventurer and loved nothing more than writing. It was his second wife who encouraged him to put his Soldier of Orange memories to paper and it became a major bestseller in 1971. It gave Hazelhoff instant celebrity in The Netherlands and as a 'war hero' the small nation got something its own narrative of the Second World War deeply lacked. Hazelhoff himself - by that time retired on Hawaii - never considered himself as such and made it clear that many others had done the same: that what was required under extremely difficult circumstances. He had just been lucky enough to stumble into the limelight.

Despite his American passport and passion for the Big Island, he always remained a Dutchman at heart, visiting his homeland regularly, while at the same time realizing that he could not ever live there again. His life is a remarkable one and the movie remains an absolute must see.

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"

It has become incredibly popular for today's conservative politicians to invoke Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and in some cases to seek the actual blessing from the now octogenarian Iron Lady. Earlier this week in Vancouver, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to bring the 1980s back to life in order to sell his recently released book, Memoirs.

It is the sort of sentimental journey that gets a conservative crowd into a feisty mood and when Canadians start applauding the Reagan-name, you know there is something interesting going on. Yet, Mulroney's reach back into history is above all a clear effort to cement his legacy as his record remains mixed at best. Canada's conservative party deconstructed after Mulroney's less than gracious exit from office and the Liberals under Chretien reaped the benefits much in the way Clinton did after Reagan/Bush and Blair after Thatcher/Major. That is what Mulroney is emphasizing. And indeed to his eternal credit, his warm relationship with both Reagan and Bush and his astute awareness of free trade as an engine for Canadian growth resulted in a series of bilateral agreements that continue to fuel both the Canadian and US economies.

I am not sure if I have the time to dig through the 1100 pages, but for political junkies it is laden with remarkable anecdotes. Here is a nice one. Mulroney's cordial relationship with Reagan did not always go down well among Canada's left-leaning elites, known for pathological levels of anti-Americanism. After a dinner at a summit in the mid-80s, Reagan and Mulroney, both descendants of Irish immigrants went on stage to sing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", from page 369:

Canadians in general loved the Irish duet, but the CBC replayed the clip constantly with commentary that it was symbolic of a humiliating "toadyism" and a sub-ordination of Canada's interests. "I must say, these people really have a serious inferiority complex", said Margaret Thatcher after she saw a replay of such commentary during a visit to Toronto. "I certainly hope they don't go off their medication."

NOTE: This post appeared originally on The Gazette under the title Canada's Conservative Icon. Mulroney continued his book tour in Calgary where he expanded on the Reagan theme by comparing current Canadian PM Harper to the Gipper. Not sure if that comparison works all that well, nor am I convinced that it will help Harper in getting more traction in the center of Canada's political landscape. But if Harper compensates his lack of folksy ease by following Reagan's instincts and implementing his ideas on freedom and the limited role of government, things should be looking up for Canada.

More Doubt Required

As much as I believe in poise, certainty and focus there is as Robert Wright so eloquently puts it in his latest diavlog, no better friend to have than doubt. He's absolutely right and I recommend his regular diavlogs (this week with Joel Achenbach instead of Mickey Kaus) as mandatory material, it is some of the best blogospheric content currently available.

This Week on The Gazette

As most of you are aware by now, I post my political thoughts on The Gazette, some weeks more than others. This week I touched on The Bush Speech, Public Funds for Religious Schools and Jane Wyman's death.

Luciano Pavarotti

One of opera's greatest performers passed away following a long struggle with cancer. There are many ways to remember him today, but this rendition by a younger Pavarotti of one of my favorite arias is surely a fitting one.

And the stars were shining
and the earth smelled sweet
the garden gate scraped,
and a step brushed the sand
She came in, fragrant
and fell into my arms

Oh! sweetest of kisses, oh! languorous caresses,
while I trembled as I loosed her lovely features
concealed by her mantle!
My dream of love has vanished for ever,
The moment has passed, and I die in despair!
And I never have loved life so much!

(E lucevan le stelle, From Puccini's Tosca)

The Power of Alcohol

As we 're inundated with quotes from Robert Draper's revealing book on Bush, I kind of enjoyed this one, on drinking:

Discussing his past battles with alcohol, he says he would never be able to make decision on war if he was still drinking.
"Exercise helps. And I think prayer helps," he says. "I wouldn't be President if I kept drinking. You can get sloppy, can't make decisions. It clouds your reason, absolutely."

Wasn't the War on Terror modeled after the struggle against Nazism? And didn't Sir Winston Churchill make a resounding re-entry in the daily lexicon after the events of 9/11? What would the world have looked like if Sir Winston had applied the same rigor to his alcohol consumption as GWB? Here's a clue:

His drinking habits were admirably fetishistic - preferably Pol Roger, served at precisely the right temperature (he was delighted when the gift of a refrigerator from Beaverbrook in 1926 obviated the need to dilute it with ice) and interspersed with much brandy and port.
The papers of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's lend-lease administrator, contain several good examples of the war leader's zealous interest in his own consumption. For instance, Hopkins describes finding Churchill in January 1943 'in bed in his customary pink robe, and having, of all things, a bottle of wine for breakfast'. Viscount Alanbrooke made the same observation, and Eden's diary mentions Churchill taking a 'stiff whiskey and soda, at 8.45 a.m'.

A Foreign Office official described a dinner with Churchill as ,a varied and noble procession of wines with which I could not keep pace - champagne, port, brandy, Cointreau: Winston drank a good deal of all, and ended with two glasses of whisky and soda.'

Cheers.

UPDATE: A lively discussion about this post is taking place in the comments section at The Gazette where it was posted originally.

Dutch Numbers

Michael van der Galien posted some interesting Dutch poll numbers earlier today. They represent exactly what I have argued a little while ago in my essay called 'Dutch Confusion'. The traditional parties have lost their appeal and new outfits on both the left and right are increasingly able to pick up disgruntled and directionless floating voters. Beware the next election.

Co-Authoring ...

I have signed on as a contributing author on The Van Der Galien Gazette where I will post some of my thoughts from time to time. My first piece, Diana and the Culture of Death, is up. Enjoy.

A Normblog Milestone

Profile number 200 is up, this time a very special guest. My favorite question and answer:

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind?

There was a time when I thought that, if not all, then at least most, human wickedness was produced by circumstance. I no longer think that. I believe there are bad impulses within the nature of human beings, though that's not to say that circumstances aren't important in either encouraging or restraining these. One of the things that changed my mind was studying the literature of the Holocaust. But as important an influence was observing the smaller-scale episodes of selfishness, dishonesty, mean-spiritedness, unkindness, and all the rest of it amongst people with comfortable enough lives and no obvious external reasons for behaving badly.

You can find all profiles here, mine is here.

A Visit Home, A Look at its Politics

Judging from the many e-mails that I still get - despite the very low output on this site - there is still a lot of interest in Dutch affairs. The topic has disappeared from the headlines although there are some notable exceptions; take a look at this fairly spectacular item for instance.

In any case, I have just returned from the annual break back in the lowlands - photo here - and it seems that political sentiments have calmed down a bit, although deep uncertainty and confusion lurk beyond the surface. So, by summarizing the past five years in a long piece below, I have tried to reach some sort of interim conclusion from which we can look ahead. The core of the argument is that the confusion has created a 'volatile political market' where mainstream parties are ceding territory and new outfits on both the left and right are able to get traction, adding to the uncertainty.

Dutch Confusion

Five years of political turmoil and ongoing uncertainty

Last February a new Dutch coalition government under Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende was inaugurated. It was the fourth time in less than five years that the uncharismatic Christian-Democrat party leader made his way to the royal palace to present a diverse team of ministers tasked with charting politically unstable waters.

In presenting 'Balkenende IV', he was forced to work with a mandate handed to him by an electorate that has suffered through a period of unease and disruption. And as rapturous and challenging the changes have been for the Dutch themselves, foreign media have equally stumbled to label the developments in that stable, liberal and prosperous haven of tranquility ever since three political icons disappeared from the scene in a highly unusual way. Pim Fortuyn, the gay professor turned conservative politician was fatally shot by an animal rights activist, outspoken moviemaker Theo van Gogh was killed by a gun and knife wielding jihadist and Somali immigrant and conservative-liberal parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali was more or less forced to pack up and set sail for a better and presumably safer life at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The Fortuyn Insurgency
The usual introduction in the foreign press commenting on these events was the often obligatory rehash of Amsterdam's red light district and the Dutch tolerant attitudes to drugs, crime, euthanasia and immigration followed by a brief explanation that the nation had been rudely awoken from its self-induced slumber and in response to the political violence taken a decided move to the right. Indeed, Pim Fortuyn's platform of immigration-skepticism and further rollbacks in the public sector while urging that the business world should recapture the spirit of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age was on its face a right-of-center wishlist. But the gay professor was in all respects a child of the 1960s: left-leaning with deep socially liberal instincts. His call to reinvigorate free markets, return to law-and-order and dust off an outdated concept like nationalism in essence was nothing less than a serious attempt to salvage and protect the fruits of freedom and prosperity that the Dutch had come to take for granted ever since that post-war decade of economic growth and liberalization. Much of his agenda came from direct personal experience: not only was he frustrated at the way in which politically correct left wing intellectuals and unions had taken over universities, Fortuyn himself was shocked to experience how immigrant Muslim youths would harass the patrons of gay bars in his hometown of Rotterdam.

Yet beyond economics, immigration and gay issues, Fortuyn primarily rebelled against the vested and at times arrogant and complacent political order which had - from left to right - shunned him as a potential politician, or as he himself saw it, as a Prime-Minister-in-waiting. The insurgency he unleashed therefore had as much appeal on the right - an increasingly concerned middle class, disgruntled entrepreneurs - as it had on the left - lower income families in immigrant neighborhoods, those who felt disenfranchised - and he was thus able to draw a cross-section of Dutch society into his increasingly popular movement.

A mere eight days after his violent death and the subsequent election, it was Balkenende who had to turn to the ragtag of freshly elected Fortuynist parliamentarians to ensure that his right-of-center coalition consisting of Christian-Democrats, the perennial centrist Dutch party, and the free-market liberal party (the VVD) could chart a new direction for the Dutch. The project lasted months only and the painful absence of the man who would "manage by speech" saw to it that the Fortuynists were surgically removed from the new governing team. The price for that however was another election in early 2003 which gave Balkenende a new opportunity to form a coalition government.

Yet, the electorate handed him a less than clear mandate and after the usual ritual dance with Labour which had regained its pre-Fortuyn strengths, Balkenende turned again to the VVD. In doing so he was forced to rely on the support of the small left-liberal Democrats '66, a party most often associated with intellectual tendencies, constitutional renewal and the sympathy it enjoys in royal circles. It made governing from the right a much trickier proposition and Balkenende's second cabinet would be tested to the extreme in staying afloat.

Theo van Gogh's Murder
While successfully navigating the fiscal minefield, even managing a military adventure in southern Iraq's Al-Muthanna province as well as ensuring a Dutch military contribution to Afghanistan, in November 2004 the coalition was asked to undergo its most severe test. The murder of Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street unleashed exactly what many had feared after the Fortuyn killing: the outburst of the simmering tensions between the native Dutch and immigrant Muslims of Moroccan and Turkish descent. What didn't help was that the Balkenende team was hardly unified in dealing with the sudden crisis. While the Vice-Premier and VVD-leader Gerrit Zalm declared that jihad had come to the Dutch streets, cooler heads sought to quell the unrest by offering the hand of reconciliation to the Muslim community. Amid a few torched mosques it was seen by some as a sensible move to have Queen Beatrix visit an immigrant youth center, however others were deeply perplexed by the one sidedness of that gesture and many to this day still lament the royal absence at Van Gogh's funeral. It was telling that the leader of the progressive and republican Green Left called for the Queen 'to unify' the nation, something that she in the end - no doubt acting on Balkenende's advice - declined to do.

Inexperience and doubt prevailed in the government's attempts to bring stability back after Van Gogh's killing. Nowhere was that more evident than in handling the situation of the VVD parliamentarian whose name was on the blood drenched note pinned on Van Gogh's chest. Within moments after the killing a heavily armed security detail moved Ayaan Hirsi Ali to a secure location, but as we can now read in her recently released biography, Balkenende's Interior and Justice Ministers were quite inept at finding the best location. Hirsi Ali was moved from military bases to apartments to hotels, a journey that also included two trips to the Northeastern US and an odd excursion into Germany. Some have wondered if the strange ways in which Hirsi Ali was secured, combined with barring her from internet and cell phone access was not really designed to neutralize her politically and ensure that an already unstable situation would not accelerate into chaos. Hirsi Ali it should be noted is known for many virtues, but diplomatic and politically sensitive commentary is not one of them and if Balkenende wanted to accomplish anything in the aftermath of the murder it was calm.

So if the Balkenende team was somewhat damaged in the immediate aftermath of the Van Gogh murder, it had now become necessary for them to channel the anti-immigration sentiments into an acceptable and above all coherent set of policies that would follow a hard-line approach without alienating a now embattled Muslim populace. That task found a more than willing taker in Immigration and Integration Minister "Iron" Rita Verdonk, like Hirsi Ali member of the socially liberal but otherwise conservative VVD, and as would become clear over time someone who considered herself as the natural political heir to Fortuyn's populist legacy. From her insistence to shake hands with an imam who refused her cordial gesture to the draconian measures used to expel illegal immigrants, Verdonk became a highly recognized feature in Dutch and in international media.

Popular though it all was; the deportation of Taida Pasic, a Kosovar girl who was forced to pack her bags only months shy of her high school final exams revealed the first rifts in the anti-immigrant sentiments. The moderate and more centrist parts of the Dutch right started to balk at policies that basically ignored an amnesty for all illegal immigrants that even Fortuyn had proposed prior to his death. It appeared that the raw emotions over the Van Gogh and Fortuyn killings had started to subside and that the battered politically correct camp saw an opening to re-establish its credentials.

Hirsi Ali's Dismissal
In the spring of 2006 the fragile political situation - more than once had the Democrats '66 threatened to pull their political support for the coalition - entered an unprecedented maelstrom. All it took was a TV-documentary that explored the factual correctness of some of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's statements about her past, and in particular the claims she had used to get refugee status in The Netherlands in the early nineties. "Saint Ayaan" was dubbed a political hit job and if indeed it had been the intention of the makers to affect Hirsi Ali's career and as a result the precarious balance of power under Balkenende, then they got what they ordered, in spades.

The core issue, whether Hirsi Ali's youthful lies would invalidate her citizenship, fell right on the doorstep of Rita Verdonk who happened to be the frontrunner in a leadership in her own - and Hirsi Ali's - VVD party. She was actively campaigning on her ability to be neither left nor right, but as the Dutch say "straight through sea". In other words Iron Rita had to be seen to deliver on her record and remain firm in even the most difficult circumstances and she wasted no time - even Balkenende was mysteriously left in the dark - to send a letter to Hirsi Ali essentially stripping her of her citizenship. It was all the latter needed to accelerate - a judge had already forced her out of her apartment as a result of neighbors suing the flat's owner over excessive security measures - her plans to resign from parliament, leave The Netherlands and take up residency in the United States. Verdonk had not only delivered on her record, she had eliminated someone who was a tad too controversial and a little too un-Dutch for a party that she wanted to lead in the next general election.

Of course, an enraged Balkenende had no option but to force Verdonk to work out a reasonable compromise through which Hirsi Ali could retain her citizenship. If not, his tenuous hold on power would suffer considerably as public sentiment had now decisively turned against what was perceived to be the heartless way in which his government ran the immigration file. It was evident that both Balkenende and Verdonk had been damaged politically. The right's dream of having their own Iron Lady was shattered and the VVD picked a moderate as its leader while Balkenende's second coalition government fell after the Democrats'66 argued that the Hirsi Ali affair had made it impossible to lend continued support to this increasingly unpopular coalition.

So, an unfazed Balkenende cobbled together an interim coalition government - his third - that would take care of business until the November elections in 2006. Despite the many calls that the Dutch had moved to the right, consecutive polls throughout Balkenende's four years in power years revealed a strong preference to turn back to the left flank and moderate some of the more drastic policies that had emanated from The Hague since that fateful year in which Fortuyn was killed. One issue that had also made life for Balkenende politically difficult was the highly publicized defeat of the draft European Constitution at the hands of an angry electorate. Was this electoral verdict a result of anti-establishment, populist sentiments? Or was right-wing isolationism coming to the surface? Or possibly, was it fear of a new and changing world that could equally be found on the left side of the Dutch political scene?

The Left Regroups, The Right Fizzles
The progressive corner in Dutch politics is a crowded field. The largest party is the centrist Labour Party which under the young and telegenic former Royal Dutch/Shell executive Wouter Bos thought to capture a sort of Blairite sentiment, though maybe a bit too long after the fact. Not the easiest of tasks as two fringe movements were offering viable alternatives for those wanting to turn left but who were uncomfortable with the steady rightward and realistic shift that Labour appeared to represent. The Green Left party under an increasingly popular Femke Halsema - she who had called for the Queen to intervene after Van Gogh was murdered - had positioned itself as the credible option for the environmentally and socially conscientious Dutch voters while the Marxist roots of the Socialist Party under Jan Marijnissen appeared to be plugging into the populist sentiments. Marijnissen, one of the most ardent campaigners against the EU constitution, knew all too well that discontent was evenly distributed among voters on the left and right and carefully stayed away from toxic issues such as immigration. As a result he was able to capture that segment of the population that was intimidated by globalization and broad social change. He was in effect fishing in Fortuyn's pond.

Still, the accepted wisdom was that in the aftermath of Van Gogh and Fortuyn there was "space on the right". And as the traditional right, the VVD, was slowly collapsing under the fraternal struggle between hardline Verdonk and moderate frontman Mark Rutte, smaller parties appeared on the VVD's right flank. Anti-immigration populist Geert Wilders had staked his platform almost entirely on seeking to curb anything that reeked of Islam, while the remnants of Fortuyn's party tried to offer an anti-immigration and law and order message combined with a friendly appeal to the increasingly graying Dutch electorate. The only viable star on the right was Fortuyn's former deputy and business associate, Marco Pastors. With his 'One Netherlands' party he was expected to offer an attractive mix of socially liberal policies, fiscal moderation and a tough stance on immigration and foreign policy. To Pastors' credit, he had actually delivered on this sort of platform as an executive city councilor in the nation's most multicultural city, Rotterdam.

Yet, when the general election campaign got underway in late 2006, it became clear soon that voters weren't all that interested to occupy that vacant slot on the right. The idea that banking on an anti-immigration platform would deliver some sort of Van Gogh dividend was deeply mistaken. While Wilders and his Party of Freedom did remarkably well, the VVD deconstructed, the Fortuyn remnants disappeared and Pastors' move to inherit his old master's mantle failed in its entirety. On the left the struggle was equally remarkable as Labour - initially favored to become the largest party - appeared to be plagued by many left wing voters opting for Marijnissen's Socialists while its more centrist supporters had decided that a move to Balkenende might be a far safer bet. The reason for that was simple: Labour's Bos had bravely hinted at old age pension reforms as well as a re-examination of the mortgage rate deductibility, two issues that the Dutch would need to address in due course. Of course they are precisely the ones that would alienate the house-owning and pension-expecting middle classes. However commendable the stance to reform these overly generous entitlements; it was lethal stuff at the ballot box. Balkenende had benefited from Bos's honesty by doing what he did best: keeping quiet by focusing on far less explosive issues.

So the traditional right and left suffered in the November election, and the choice to opt for a more radical approach on either side was won decisively by the Socialist Party. Despite his very mixed record as a leader and a campaign where real issues were managed out of existence, Balkenende's party came out on top, but more as a winner by default than as a positive choice. The real shifts occurred on the right which splintered and was sure to be locked out of power. On the other side the Socialists had not only embarrassed Labour, in size they had managed to surpass the VVD as the third largest party. 'Space on the right' had proven to be a truly elusive concept and as analysts pointed out the Dutch electorate contained a huge chunk of floating voters whose defining characteristic was being dissatisfied with the status quo and who preferred to shop around for instant gratification. Many Fortuyn-voters had now thrown their weight behind the hard left which had cleverly managed to grasp this populist sentiment.

The outcome had thrown another curveball to Balkenende who after exploratory talks was tasked with forming his fourth coalition, but his first to be built with support from the left. And a bizarre mixture from the left at that. After Marijnissen's Socialists walked away from the table and the Green Left decided to sit it out in opposition, a defeated Labour and the small and socially conservative but fiscally more centrist and compassionate Christian Party will now line up behind 'Balkenende IV'.

Dutch Confusion
The Dutch did not move to the right, nor did they re-embrace the good old grand schemes of the pioneers of the liberal welfare state. Fortuyn sensed the discontent and the need for change but none of the larger parties was intellectually equipped to grasp his inheritance and convert the feelings of fear and change into a cohesive and electorally compelling set of ideas. More than that, the Dutch crisis situation produced a mixture of political expediency and inexperience leading to a fractured parliament without any party having a sufficiently large mandate to govern or dominate a coalition arrangement.

Instead, some splinter groups of the right and left have done some good business, but it would be inaccurate to grant either stream the benefit of success or more importantly, characterizing either as symbolic of a new Dutch direction. The only thing that has happened to the Dutch over the past five years is a rude awakening to deep social and economic changes. The political mileage out of that is neither right, nor left; it has heralded an era of deep confusion and with it, political uncertainty for quite some time to come.

Articles Updated

I have now added the six articles I have written to date for Pajamas Media in the articles section. The plan of course is to have a home for future pieces here too.

Barry Lando's Take on Iraq

One of the drawbacks of the political blogosphere is that there is very little dialogue between the left and right sides, or the anti-war and pro-war camps. And if it ever happens, it isn't all that pleasant to read. Yet, the time has come to get an exchange of ideas going and I was prompted to do so after reading Barry Lando's Web of Deceit and noticing that it was mostly discussed on the left side of the blogosphere. That in my mind is somewhat absurd as Lando has written an instructive book - buy it here - on how Iraq's destiny has been manipulated over the years by western powers in not exactly the most clever ways. If your background on Iraqi history is light, Lando's book is a good primer, regardless of whether you agree with the author or not.

Lando was educated at Harvard and Columbia, was a correspondent for Time-Life and spent 25 years as an investigative producer with 60 Minutes and has authored many articles about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Last year he launched his own blog which is focused on Iraq and Middle Eastern affairs. He currently lives in Paris. I decided to put a few thoughts forward to him and he has kindly taken the time to address them.

Barry, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. You've written a very instructive book about western influence in Iraq over the past 100 years and you start out by arguing that in addition to Saddam major western players should have been standing next to him for enabling the chaos and endless bloodshed. Is this an emotional call or do you really believe that the mandate for the Iraq tribunal should have been expanded?

I realize that, unfortunately, the way the international criminal justice is currently set up, there is no court that realistically could have delivered justice for the crimes of Saddam.

If the purpose of the Iraqi Tribunal was truly to punish those responsible for the crimes against humanity committed during the reign of Saddam --as the Tribunal officially claims-- that goal can never be achieved by limiting those who can be tried to Iraqi citizens and residents as the regulations of the Tribunal have done. Many observers realized there was no way that the question of guilt for Saddam's crimes could not be fully explored by a Tribunal based in Iraq, a Tribunal that also would have no participation by international jurists. The U.S. and its Iraqi allies, however, refused to consider such options.

Certainly the mandate should have been expanded. The fact that it was not, and that the Tribunal was so limited in the issues it covered, simply demonstrate what a farce the whole process has been. It has only in a very limited way contributed to an understanding of what happened during Saddam's reign as 90% of the story remains untold.

Another approach might have been to have a Truth Commission --as South Africa and Argentina did-- to examine their dark history, apportion guilt where appropriate, though exact no punishment. More of an emotional release for the countries involved, a way of putting the past behind them. At one point such a commission might have worked in Iraq, but no longer I think.

A few months ago, Dutch courts convicted Frans van Anraat a Dutch businessman to 17 years in prison for supplying chemical materials to Saddam's Iraq. What do you make of that?

That was one court in one country and was a very welcome decision. Unfortunately, however, the great majority of the other businessmen and world leaders complicit in Saddam's crimes have never been and will never be judged.

Barry, I am still struggling with the argument that the invasion of Iraq was 'illegal', a word that entered the lexicon in 2003 and it mistakenly argues that every act of war requires a UN stamp of approval. Can you elaborate on this?

There are a host of American and international experts who have pronounced the 2003 invasion illegal--as did the Secretary General of the United Nations himself. It violated the basic rules of the U.N. charter which requires countries to exhaust all peaceful means of maintaining global security before resorting to military action themselves. It permits use of force only in self defense only in response to an imminent attack.

For some specific opinions see Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) and the Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF).

The two groups, the U.S. affiliates of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), supported an open letter signed by 31 Canadian international law professors that called a U.S. attack against Iraq "a fundamental breach of international law (that) would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War."

If the U.S. believed it already had the authorization--why did it attempt to get a resolution from the Security Council? Indeed, it was only after they realized they were not going to get Council approval that the U.S. and its allies decided to drop the attempt and act on their own. U.N. inspectors were still in Iraq and reporting that they had yet to discover the imminent threat the U.S. apparently feared. They asked for a few more weeks to continue their work. The U.S. would hear nothing of it. It is now clear to just everyone that the Bush administration knew at the time that their claims of imminent danger were false.

What is most outrageous is the Bush administration continues to lie about the lead up to the invasion and their justification for going into Iraq. Though the fact is that Saddam allowed UN inspectors in to search his country for WMD, the Bush White House has been attempting - with the cooperation of a lazy press - to rewrite history. For instance, on July 14, 2003, as the U.S.-led WMD search was coming up empty and only four months after Bush pushed the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq, he began asserting that Hussein had never let the inspectors in. Bush told reporters:

"We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."

Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie in varied forms over the next four years as part of his public litany for defending the invasion. At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.

"As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein's] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life."

In the frequent repetition of this claim, Bush never acknowledges the fact that Hussein did comply with Resolution 1441 by declaring accurately that he had disposed of his WMD stockpiles and by permitting U.N. inspectors to examine any site of their choosing.

More on pre-emption. In your book you don't spend any time on it, but do you think Israel was justified in destroying the Osirak reactors in 1981?

Israel was able to do it and get away with it. But if Israel was justified in taking out Osirak in 1981, India and Pakistan would be even more justified in destroying each others military reactors. Egypt and Syria would also have the right to destroy Dimona. The U.S. would take out North Korea's and Iran's. For that matter, Russia could attack America's and vice versa. Why not?

I personally never liked Tony Blair, too much a master of spin. But on Iraq he surprised me with his deep conviction and political risk taking. Would you agree and if so, why do you think he went that far?

Probably from his desire to maintain Britain's supposedly special role as some kind of intermediary between the U.S. and Europe. It was a disastrous decision for himself, for Britain -its men are still dying in Iraq - and certainly for Iraq. If Blair had refused to go along, I wonder if Bush would still have gone in? As it turned out, there is no indication Blair was able to influence Bush's policies, other than to try to get U.N. approval for the invasion in the first place which of course they never did.

Is it not fair to say that Blair intuitively felt he was right and that in the post 9/11 world a moral take would play an increasing part in shaping foreign policy?

I don't really see any "moral take" shaping British foreign policy after 9/11. Indeed, Blair seemed quite willing to close his eyes to the barbarities of U.S. policy, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, to secret CIA renditions. Apart from also joining Bush in lying about the reasons for invading Iraq in the first place.

I would have chosen different words, but your reasoning about why the US went into Iraq is 2003 is clear and I agree (page 215). Yet especially for the first Gulf War you are less clear and offer the reader a hybrid of political and economic reasons. Will it ever be possible for the war critics to let go of the "it's all about the oil" argument?

There were a mix of motives, but bottom line--I think was oil. Can you see the U.S. invading Botswana, or Myanmar?

George Bush Senior's feckless policies were one of the main factors leading to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. One of the reasons for those policies was Bush's desire to have entree to Iraq and its huge oil wealth. The Brits and Americans have made that focus clear since the end of World War I. Once Saddam had invaded Kuwait, the reason George Bush Senior suddenly turned on a dime and mobilized troops to toss him out was the fear that Saddam would take not only Kuwait's petroleum resources, but conceivably the Saudi's as well. Another interesting question is to what degree taking the nation to war, as Bush did, was a way of taking attention away from his disastrous domestic economic situation - remember "read my lips".

In the book you lament 'realpolitik', the practice of teaming up with tyrants and getting rid of them whenever they become liabilities. The neo-con moment gave us another approach: create democratic friends in hostile neighborhoods. Is Iraq evidence that such a strategy has failed, or do you see room for a foreign and defense policy underpinned by moral principles?

What democratic friends have the neo cons ever created? The U.S. has lately backed away from the whole concept--i.e. Mubarak arresting his foes in Egypt; The U.S. and Israel attempting to annihilate Hamas in Gaza after the latter won democratic elections; the Saudi's also refusing to extend real democratic representation.. No one's pushing for that any more.

George Bush had congressional approval for the 2003 war and a pretty tangible approval from the UN to move forward. Can it ever be claimed that he is guilty of war crimes?

What tangible approval did he have from the UN to move forward? Apart from the invasion, there are a number of other possible charges that could be brought against Bush and some of his other leaders, beginning with condoning torture and killing of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo to the use of deadly force against civilian targets across Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, upwards of 300,000 Iraqis may have perished since the U.S. led invasion. This is not to mention other impeachable crimes in the U.S. itself, involving illegal eaves dropping, attacking what used to be the basic principles of the U.S. system of justice, lying to the Congress, and so on and on.

The link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. I don't think there is evidence that it existed, Bush - judging from your book merely suggested that the possibility be investigated - yet America wanted to believe it, desperately. Why? Because Islamic fundamentalists as a concept are too hard to grasp and it is easier to pick an obvious bad guy? If that is so than is it not fair to say that America looked for an easy post 9/11 cleansing which war opponents now use to smear Bush?

There is no way to justify the claim that the Bush administration is somehow being unfairly smeared re the Saddam-Al Qaeda issue. I never said in my book that Bush 'merely suggested that the possibility' of a link with al-Qaeda and Saddam be investigated. To the contrary, I pointed out quite specifically that Bush and others in his administration repeatedly and falsely claimed that the link was real. As I wrote in Chapter 9, p.222:

"On September 26, the President warned another group of Congressmen that "Saddam Hussein is a terrible guy who's teaming up with al Qaeda. He tortures his own people and hates Israel"

And again: "On September 25th, 2002, for instance, President Bush gave a speech conflating the two. "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam," the President declared. "The danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world." Donald Rumsfeld claimed "bulletproof" evidence of a connection and insisted his charges were "accurate and not debatable." Despite the fact that no evidence was ever uncovered to tie to Saddam to al-Qaeda, Cheney to this day insists they were linked and he seems to get away with it.

Again, let me return to Saddam trial. It was a farce, I agree. That said your argument to let the allies stand trial for past misdeeds is a bit disingenuous. By that logic we should posthumously charge Winston Churchill with war crimes for carpet bombing Dresden.

The Trial of Saddam Hussein was Victor's Justice. So were the Nuremburg Tribunals after World War II, as I point out in my book. Not to say the Nazis weren't guilty. It's just we should never forget that the allies as well committed war crimes. Again, the problem with the way the trial of Saddam Hussein has been run - and reported in the media -is that it allows the West to forget its own tawdry role in Saddam's crimes.

What's your view on the way forward in Iraq?

There are many experts who feel that, rather than helping the situation, current U.S. policy is only exacerbating the situation. The ethnic cleansing continues apace throughout the country. I think the Iraq Study Group had the right approach. The U.S. has to start withdrawing. That is the only way Iraqi leaders are going to be forced to start dealing with each other. Neighboring countries have also to be brought in much more seriously than they have been approached to date. Current policy is simply a disaster. Whatever happens, however, the killing is going to go on until a de facto ethnic partition of Iraq has been established.

What no one is talking about though - or very little about -is the fact that the US has constructed four huge superbases in Iraq. Bush and company had planned to set up major bases there from the start-and have no plans to leave them now. That is going to be the major issue.

The Bush Administration has been hopeless in communicating the case for war in Iraq. A more direct approach outlining the need for would have yielded maybe less support but a sounder basis for sustaining a costly and deadly effort. Your thoughts.

My thoughts are that a U.S. military invasion of Iraq was a disastrous idea from the word go. Why invade Iraq when al Qaeda and terrorism was the threat?

How accurate is the information we are getting from Iraq? There are some great bloggers out in the field - Michael Yon, Bill Roggio - and there are the major media reporting from the Green Zone. Does this give us what we need, and if not, how can we improve on it?

The information about what's doing in Iraq is extremely difficult to come by, simply because the security situation is so perilous. Reporters in the Green Zone are the first to admit it, though perhaps not publicly. Between the bloggers you mention and various well informed experts - such as Juan Cole - there certainly seems to be enough information out there for people who want to do the searching to form an opinion. Problem is that most Americans are not willing to do that. The mainstream media still tends to be uninformed and unwilling to take on the administration, in cases where officials are still out and out lying. The U.S. still seems more fascinated by the latest doings of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears than in the endless tragedy of Iraq.

Yes, I would agree with that. Barry, you live in France, any miracles to be expected from Mr. Sarkozy?

Hopefully. France has to change and reform. Sarkozy - so far - shows the desire and energy to do it. Problem is there are some entrenched, fairly powerful and privileged minorities - such as the transport unions - who don't want that to happen. The next few months are certainly going to be interesting around here.

There is also a video documentary from Barry's hand, entitled Saddam Hussein: The Trial You'll Never See.

Peaktalk 2.0 is here

So, there we are, as promised a fully redesigned and revamped site. Again what you see is the result of the excellent work of Stacy at Sekimori who is able to translate some of my conceptual notes into a pretty compelling website. At least that is what I think. In particular I am pleased to have one of my own photos to represent 'the peak', it is the spectacular panorama from the aptly named Keys View in Joshua Tree National Park, looking west into Southern California's Coachella Valley.

There were many reasons to refresh the site, the most important one being that I was more than a bit tired of the old format, but also of the traditional approach to the blog. So the changes will not be just in the way it looks, but in the way it reads too. The days of regular daily updates are gone forever, although if the news so requires I may return to that.

Now, I will focus on what I like to do best and that is infrequent but longer posts. That was the part I always enjoyed doing most and which in turn often got the most feedback from readers and other sites. So, more column-style posts, and film or book reviews. Or better still: interviews. And rather than talk to the converted in order to preach to the converted, hopefully some real dialogue. The kick off for that will be on Monday when I will interview someone who has written a highly critical book on western involvement in Iraq.

Welcome back, Peaktalk is open for business again.