David Cameron’s No Poodle – He’s a New Breed

It was just like old times when British Prime Minister David Cameron came calling at the White House this month. Yes, the “Special Relationship” felt really special again just like back in the days when Tony Blair lined the U.K. up behind the Iraq War – when those French and Germans were having none of it – and made his reputation as “George Bush’s poodle.” For a couple of years in between, that sour old Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and obviously didn’t enjoy the sound of his master’s voice in Washington nearly so much. But now it seems that Barack Obama has his own pet at 10 Downing Street. Of course, Cameron’s Conservative, not Labour, so he’s an entirely different breed than Blair. But the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank seemed a bit off in characterizing Cameron as “serving as Obama’s guard dog.” Perhaps something more along the lines of a Yorkshire Terrier – Obama’s Yorkie.

It’s been a rough stretch for the president’s Afghanistan War policy: the Koran burnings; Afghan government soldiers and police killing NATO soldiers; American soldiers urinating on corpses; one soldier murdering sixteen civilians, Afghan President Karzai calling for the Americans to be confined to major bases. So when Cameron arrived and said of the war, “If you compare where we are today with where we’ve been two, three years ago, the situation is considerably improved,” it did suggest that the prime minister may have told his people not to brief him on the subject these past years. But oblivious support is better than no support at all and the White House loved it.

The prime minister also said “it would be hard to say that the al Qaida network is not effectively dismantled today.” Oh, wait a minute – wrong prime minister. That was Tony Blair talking – on February 6, 2003. But whatever the rationale of this war is supposed to be these days, David Cameron was here to say that he’s for it and that he and the president are “absolutely in lock-step” over the withdrawal process.

The real story here is, or ought to be, two leaders persisting in the pursuit of a ten year old war “increasingly unpopular on both sides of the Atlantic,” as the International Herald Tribune characterized the situation. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted earlier this month found Americans now consider the war “not worth fighting” by a 60-35 percent margin and 55 percent think “most Afghans oppose what the United States is trying to do in Afghanistan,” while only 30 percent believe they support it. Following the deaths of the 16 villagers, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 61 percent of Americans supporting bringing the remaining U.S. troops home immediately, with only 17 percent against.

The war enjoys even less support in the United Kingdom, where an ITV1 News at Ten poll found 46 percent of respondents professing to have no idea why British troops were in Afghanistan, 55 percent thinking the threat of terrorism on British soil was increased by British forces remaining there, 57 percent not believing that the deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan are justified by the cause they are fighting for and 73 percent considering the war “unwinnable.” 55 percent supported immediate withdrawal.

So, no surprise, Obama was thrilled with the Prime Minister’s visit, declaring that “in good times and in bad, [Cameron] is just the kind of partner that you want at your side. I trust him. He says what he does, and he does what he says. And I’ve seen his character.” Precisely the type of qualities you look for in man’s best friend.

To say that the two were joined at the hip during Cameron’s visit would be to employ too slight a metaphor. Joined at the brain is more like it: They went so far as to co-author an op ed for the Washington Post. So when Obama wrote about “imposing tough sanctions on the Iranian regime for failing to meet its international obligations” and warned that otherwise Iran would “face the consequences,” well, that was Cameron too. And when Obama failed to mention the corresponding U.S. obligations to reduce its nuclear arsenal – as U.S. presidents always do, it was also Cameron failing to mention U.K. obligations to reduce its own – as U.K. prime ministers always do.

Cameron separately told his American audience that “we take nothing off the table” when it comes to Iran, just the same as the president had said. So if any American were doubting the sanity of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons to ensure that Iran doesn’t acquire nuclear weapons, now you know that the Brits think just the same – at least the ones in power do. And, oh yeah, Cameron told us he thought Obama’s bombing of Libya was cool, too – and he said that on his own.

As a reward for being such a good political lap dog, Cameron not only got a hot dog and a basketball game from the president, but a state dinner at the White House – only the sixth of the Obama Administration. They even created a new dish in his honor – Bison Wellington, which, according to the menu, is “a perfect pairing of U.S. and U.K. cultures … a classic English dish given an American twist with the use of buffalo tenderloin.” News reports did not specify whether the prime minister ate from a bowl or at the table.

A Call for African Leadership

The 15-nation Southern African Development Community met this past week in Johannesburg, South Africa to discuss two pressing issues: (1.) potential power sharing agreement in Zimbabwe; and (2.) the possibility of sending peacekeeping forces into the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In Zimbabwe, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T) won a plurality in the first round of elections against President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). However, the 84-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled as chief executive of Zimbabwe since one year after the birth of the Zimbabwe nation from the ashes of white-minority ruled Rhodesia in 1980, refused to give up power. In September 2008, a tentative power-sharing deal was reached where Tsvangirai would become Prime Minister and Mugabe would retain the role of President. However, the exact details are being disputed.

The situation in The Congo is much more dire. The current conflict that has its roots in the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis by Hutu militias. After the Hutu militias were kicked out of Rwanda, they dispersed to hinterlands of the eastern Congo province of North Kivu. Unlike Rwanda, which is very small geographically, the Congo is a very large country, and North Kivu (which includes the cities of Bukavu and Goma), on the eastern border with with Rwanda, is very far removed from the capital of the Kinshassa in the west. Both governments are culpable on the current situation, which have privately encouraged Tutsi and Hutu militias, respectively, in North Kivu.

The situation is so out of control that the 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers are basically deemed useless. Not only must the governments of the Congo and Rwanda step up to legitimize the rebels into the political process, but there must be more leadership within Africa, particularly South Africa. It’s time that Africa play a larger role in policing itself. Hopefully ‘interim’ president Kgalema Motlanthe and president-in-waiting Jacob Zuma will succeed where former President Thabo Mbeki failed in providing leadership within Africa. For all its problems, South Africa is a beacon of hope for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and must take more responsibility for the affairs of the continent.

A Lesson From Canada

An Economist.com article entitled The Conservatives by a bigger head notes that a fragmented Canada gave Stephen Harper another term as Conservative Prime Minister when his party won the October 2008 federal election, achieving a bit more strength in a minority government. While the Conservatives increased their share of the popular vote by little more than a percentage point to 37.6%, this will likely only be translated into about 19 more seats.

Harper and the Conservatives did solidify their western base of Alberta oilmen and Saskatchewan farmers, and picked up seats in suburban Ontario and the Maritime provinces. However, Harper failed to increase his party’s ten seats in Quebec. For the most part in Quebec, the separatist Bloc Québécois blocked any Conservative advance, even though independence never surfaced as an issue during the campaign.

However, more than the Conservatives failing to get a majority, the main lesson to come out of the Canadian election is that Liberals were the ones that really lost it. Their share of the popular vote fell to 26%, their lowest since 1867. The Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion, a Quebecker, chose to fight the election on a bold plan for a carbon tax just when voters began to worry about the economy. (It didn’t help that Dion is not a good communicator in English.)

A broader lesson from the Canadian election is that a candidate should not impose a tax on all citizens, particularly on the middle class, when the economy is slowing. This is a lesson the McCain campaign has ignored with its proposed tax on employees for the value of employer-paid health care benefits. This tax has been one of Obama’s most effective campaign attacks and the focus of his prime literature drops over the past few weeks.