USA and UK: The Cultural Divide.

Two weeks ago, I spent a peaceful Sunday at Lord’s cricket ground, an oasis of calm nestling in the leafy inner-London suburb of St. John’s Wood. For nine hours, I sat with friends and family, plus some 28,000 others, watching young men toil with bat and ball. One would expect a crowd of that size would prevent contemplative thinking. But this is the beauty of cricket. Throughout the day, the game is played at different paces and levels of excitement, allowing a spectator to ponder the future and, more importantly, snooze, missing little of the play, eat and drink.

On numerous occasions, I have tried to explain cricket to my American friends. It is a simple game involving bowling a hard ball, smaller than a baseball and hitting that ball. There are some odd terms, for example fielding positions called slips or gulley or short leg. There are stumps and bails, creases, fast bowling and spin bowling, the latter offering a “chinaman” or “googly.” There are eleven men on each side and in Test and first class cricket, there are two innings per side. When the last batsman of a side is out, his side goes in and the other side comes out. And so on.

Semantics alone should not defeat the intelligent. The real problem is that cricket would never become an accepted American sport because of the length of a game, (sometimes five days) and the fact that a draw can be a very good result for one team. Winning is not the all-important thing in a cricket match. What is crucial is the manner in which one wins. Cricket teaches players and spectators alike the right way to leads one’s life. In short, cricket is so much more than a game.

I have been very fortunate to attend American football games, both NFL and College, in Minneapolis, Denver, New York, Windsor and Los Angeles. I have watched baseball coast to coast in New York, Minneapolis and San Diego. And I watch the games on television at home, although NFL games are quite a challenge as many start at 11pm London time. In any event, I believe I am qualified to comment on the differences between American and British sports and to explain why most Americans will never “get” cricket.

To begin with, it is rare for Americans to engage in a sport where “Team America” plays. An exception occurs when baseball and basketball are Olympic sports. Furthermore, crowds attending big games are not usually partisan, with the exception of the likes of the Superbowl. Usually, distances are far too great and prices too expensive for large numbers of away fans to travel. Hence it is rare to find “the British disease,” in American sport. This expression now used for hooliganism and crowd trouble at soccer games. Why the “British disease” when it happens in, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands is confusing.

Next, American sports fans like a result, hence “overtime.” There are no draws in American sports. Also, there’s lots of scoring. I am convinced that Major League Soccer is not popular because there are not sufficient numbers of goals for the American audience. Currently, Team USA are doing well in the World Cup taking place in Brazil but will the enthusiasm for the game continue if/when America is knocked out? I don’t mean to sound condescending but. American sports fans are fed on a diet very different to the English. Results and winning are the sine qua non.

Let’s get back to Lord’s, the home of cricket. First, it is a “ground,” not a stadium. The distinction may seem academic but cricket grounds are open places, generally where the playing area is oval shaped, large and surrounded by low-lying stands. The atmosphere at Lord’s is patrician. The ground belongs to the Marylebone Cricket Club, a private club better known as the MCC, which has 30,000 members. Those attending matches at Lord’s who are not members are treated as paying guests and expected to behave accordingly. The members themselves enjoy the exclusive occupation of the Pavilion where they must be attired in jacket and tie. Only a few years ago were ladies accepted as members.

Yes, Lord’s is a place for elitists, people fixated on the 1950s, old-fashioned, wealthy and exclusive but even for revolutionaries like me, it is a hallowed and special and my year is not complete if I do not spend time there. Indeed, in two weeks’ time, I shall spend another day having the time of my life watching very little happen. Cricket is a game for connoisseurs. Could any American sports fan say the same for his or her sport?

What are you thinking, Mr President?

Iraq

Until a few days ago, I thought Isis was a river in Oxford, as well as the name of the second Oxford University rowing eight. I now know it is a group of jihadists, Islamic fundamentalist thugs who practise their vile form of cruelty and physical harm in the name of religion. The West has been caught out as Isis has taken over cities and towns in Iraq. The Iraqi government has called upon the United States for help. The Obama administration has responded by considering USAF making strategic air strikes on Isis forces and sending three hundred “military advisers” to Iraq. This from a President who opposed the war in Iraq when he was a US senator.

Surely, the President is old enough to remember Vietnam. American involvement started with the Eisenhower administration rescuing French forces at Diem Bien Phu, followed by military creep. Kennedy sent a few thousand advisers to South Vietnam and was considering a military escalation when he was assassinated. The Johnson administration went full out and fought a long and unsuccessful war. Nixon spent years trying to clear up the mess made by his predecessors. For all those years, the Americans believed in the domino effect, refusing to recognise that they had interfered in a civil war.

Iraq is divided not so much by territory but by tribal forces, whose religious beliefs are different. The militant elements of the Sunnis and the Shiites have been at each other’s throats for decades. Saddam Hussein kept these opposing peoples in check by force and by fighting wars with his neighbours. When America and the United Kingdom removed Saddam, they created a vacuum, making no lasting peace. Now, the Sunnis welcome the acts of Isis, who are also Sunnis. What is happening in Iraq is another civil war.

Why should America involve itself in the conflict? Will it be under the auspices of the United Nations? The President is not even seeking the approval of Congress, so what chance is there he will build an alliance through the U N?

What I fail to understand is this. Other Middle East countries must be worried by the actions of Isis and the possibility that other militant forces may emerge. Syria is already engaged in an awful civil war. Egypt has been engaged in a revolution which has not yet resolved itself. Iran remains a powder keg.

Each of these nations has an air force and an army. In addition, America has armed Saudi Arabia forces to the hilt. Why aren’t any of these nations coming forward to help Iraq with strategic air strikes on Isis? Presumably, they don’t care to engage themselves in a localised conflict between Islam and Islam. Why would the President yet again give the followers of Islam more reasons to hate America? Middle East politics confuse all but a few experts, none of whom, by the way, seem to be present in the British Foreign Office, nor in Foggy Bottom.

What good would 300 American advisers do in this situation? They will soon advise the Pentagon that more numbers are needed and before the President knows it, mission creep will become a reality as history repeats itself.

What is happening in Iraq is a local problem and one the Iraqis themselves should solve, with the help of their close neighbours. The West should stay out, unless the United Nations resolves otherwise.

What next for Obama?

In May, I posted a blog about President Obama and his impossible presidency, pointing out the many difficulties that faced the President, both internally and externally. I suggested he had achieved a lot in the face of stiff opposition, arguing that his measured and conservative style suited the times and that America was lucky to have him.

However, in the past two weeks, Mr Obama has launched a series of eye-catching initiatives which are politically based. The November mid-terms loom. First, he went to West Point, the headquarters of future army generals, to announce a new foreign policy initiative, the so-called Obama doctrine! He sought to carve out a third way, a middle ground between George W. Bush’s naked military aggression and the isolationist policy demanded by the war weary public over which he presides. His message was soft power over military prowess. Talk about Daniel in the lion’s den. What a place to choose to proclaim a diplomatic military offensive. The Wall Street Journal compared the Obama agenda to Tom Hanks trying to survive in Cast Away: “whatever’s left of the wreckage will do.”

Second, having failed in 2010 to get a climate change bill through Congress, his administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency, unveiled new environmental rules, imposing cuts on carbon pollution emissions from power plants from 30% to 20%. Democrat hopefuls in pollution-heavy states cannot be happy, not to mention the business lobby, the energy lobby and the Republicans. It is difficult to envisage any success getting this policy into law.

Third, the exchange of Bowe Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees has received criticism from the media and both sides of the aisle in Congress. Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, did not help when she claimed that Bergdahl had served “with honour and distinction.”

Fourth, the President has continued to use executive orders to get his agenda through. This week, in another attempt to stem the economic threat of high student debt and win support for his party before November, he signed an order to limit federal student loan payments for five million people. However, Mr. Obama’s administration has not addressed the rocketing price of tuition, which has grown by more than 250% over the past thirty years at public colleges. Also, those students who did not qualify for federal student loans and hold private student loans from banks are left out in the cold.

What I deduce from these presidential moves is a man seeking to go it alone. He seems to want votes first and policy second. How will this square with the events of the past few days in Iraq? Islamist extremists are hell-bent on taking over the country. Not only the Iraq government but the rest of the world has been taken by surprise. In no time, I expect the free world’s media will demand that action be taken by the international community as another human refugee disaster beckons in the Middle East, alongside that of Syria.

What can the President do? If only he had followed the example of Bush senior and created an international coalition, there would have been available a ready-made response. Now we will probably watch as the United Nations achieves nothing effective. Why was the free world caught by surprise? I’d like to hear the exchanges between the President and the CIA director as the latter explains why no warning was given.

When a totalitarian government collapses, there is a vacuum to be filled. Marshal Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron fist but he kept the warring factions quiescent. After Tito died, the Balkans descended into anarchy. So, for that matter, did the nations ruled by men like Stalin and Saddam Hussein.

I’m not advocating dictatorships in any way. I merely suggest that history predicts what is likely to happen when a dictatorship ends. Assuming there is an abhorrence of militant extremists taking over swathes of a country, free world leaders should recognize the dangers and prepare so that when cities like Mosul become killing zones, an international coalition can take speedy action. If the public of free world countries is told in advance of protective initiatives, designed to support fledgling democracies under military attack, it is likely that such initiatives will receive strong support.

So, Mr. President, may I suggest you get on the phone to your G7 friends and Mr. Putin and start building alliances, rather than going it alone just to make headlines for the mid-terms.

Newtown and Elliott Rodgers

Does anyone remember the name of any of the twenty two children murdered at Newtown, Connecticut in December, 2012? For that matter, can you recall the name of the killer? I would wager a multitude of pounds or dollars that most readers would lose the bet. Likewise, in a year’s time, will you remember the name, Elliott Rodgers, and what he did last Friday night in Santa Barbara, California? He was the student who murdered six people in a shooting drive-by.

Richard Martinez, the father of one of those murdered, gave a grief-stricken statement to The Washington Post. He said:

"Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: ‘Not one more.’ People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough. I don't care about your sympathy. I don't give a s--- that you feel sorry for me. Get to work and do something. I'll tell the president the same thing if he calls me.”

I have every sympathy with Mr. Martinez and the parents of all children who have been assassinated in the hundreds of school and drive-by shootings this century. As for Rodgers and the latest of this long, shameful line of atrocities, according to press reports he was mentally unstable and in therapy. How in heavens name did he get to own a gun? The weapon he used was not stolen or “borrowed” from his parents. Where did he buy it? How did he pass the checks?

Who is accountable? The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, is in the frame. These people ought to be standing before America, hands raised in surrender. It is interest groups like the NRA who believe the right to gun ownership is more important than life itself. How does this square with the pro-life lobby? I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many of the latter are also members of the NRA.

The American public is also responsible. According to Gallup polls conducted both last year and a few weeks ago, a plurality of Americans are satisfied with the status quo on gun laws. Evidently, gun holders want to keep guns at home for their protection or for legitimate leisure purposes, such as hunting. Something’s missing here, such as an awareness of the danger of gun proliferation, of the folly of meeting violence with violence, or of the innocent lives placed at risk because of the desire to own a gun.

Here’s the rub: a change to the gun laws is evidently regarded as a vote loser. Thus Congress looks upon new gun control laws as the third rail of politics. Touch it and you die! Could the laws be changed to make them effective? Maybe something truly radical could be a vote winner. I suggest the following, although many Americans would regard my proposals as pie in the sky:

First, scrap the Second Amendment and replace it with a new Amendment which states that all gun ownership is illegal unless permitted by federal law. This removes all doubt and argument on concealed weapons and the type of permitted weapons, not to mention the right for individual states to legislate on the subject. The “live free or die” mentality needs to be challenged, as do the entrenched lobbies of power who would resist any change to gun law.

Second, Congress passes a new Gun Control Act which permits ownership and use of guns by members of the armed services, the secret service, the police and other such institutions. The Act will also permit professionals, such as veterinary surgeons, to carry appropriate weapons used in the course of their work. Hunters will be permitted to keep hunting rifles, provided they hold a licence and the weapons are held under lock and key. Marksmen will be allowed to own their guns, provided they are held at a gun club.

I suggest the Act requires all unlicensed guns to be given up. There will be a moratorium lasting several weeks during which time gun owners will return their guns to appropriate authorities for destruction. A compensation scheme would be created for people obeying the law, to be balanced by stringent penalties for those who don’t obey.

Without these steps, Mr. Martinez and parents like him will continue to be frustrated by the lily-livered politicians who, by their inaction, continue to support the useless American gun laws. If one of their own, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, can be gunned down in the street without action being taken by legislators, what hope is there?

If you throw a pebble into a pond, not only do you disturb the surface where it lands. Ripples emanate everywhere. So it is with shootings. Not only is the victim’s life destroyed or damaged but those close to the victim have their lives altered for all time. I’m pleased I live where gun ownership is strictly controlled, where pebbles in ponds are not a regular aftermath of an arsenal and where any nutcase can tote a gun.

Karl Rove: A Case Study in Political Anarchy.

There’s an old saying in politics: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.” It means that in seeking office, candidates can paint pictures of their highest aspirations, whereas governing is an entirely different matter. For the political poet practitioners, “going negative” is the last option. The trouble is that so-called political advisers and spin doctors take over the strategy of campaigns and too often and too quickly persuade their candidates that negativity equates to success. Karl Rove is one of these people. For him, negativity is the default position.

On the surface, Rove appears to have an impressive track record. He has been a Republican Party political consultant and policy advisor. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation in August, 2007. He also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. Prior to his White House appointments, he was credited with the 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush. Bush himself credits Rove for the 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns. In his 2004 victory speech, Bush referred to Rove as "the Architect".

I am not impressed by Rove’s record. Rove is a so-so political strategist but he is also a corrupt trickster and a venal and wholly unprincipled man who has no conception of democracy. He once orchestrated a whisper campaign that an Alabama judge who did admirable work with youngsters was a paedophile. His mentality is “win at all costs.”

Rove is no stranger to scandal, disguising the truth and outright lying to get a win. For example, in 2002 and 2003 Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), an internal White House working group charged with developing a strategy to publicize the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States. Rove was the brains of WHIG in educating the American public about the threat posed by Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. Rove's communications task force within WHIG wrote and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing Iraq's purported nuclear threat. Putting it bluntly, Rove and his colleagues told lies to convince the American voters to support the Iraq war. Shades of UK prime-minister Blair and his spin doctor in-chief, Alastair Campbell and “the Dodgy Dossier.”

In August, 2003, retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson claimed that Rove outed the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency employee, exposing Plame and other CIA operatives to great danger. The administration was retaliating against Wilson and his op-ed piece in The New York Times in which he criticized the Bush administration's citation of yellowcake, used to make enriched uranium for nuclear missiles, among the justifications for the War in Iraq. In Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, the President lied about Iraq’s holdings of yellowcake.

Three years later, Richard Armitage, the deputy Secretary of State, was found to have been responsible for the leak outing Plame. An investigation led to felony charges being filed against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice-President’s chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was found guilty by a jury, fined and imprisoned. Rove was exonerated.

However, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary during this period, claims in his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, that the statements he made in 2003 to the media about Rove's lack of involvement in the Valerie Plame affair were untrue, and that he had been encouraged to repeat such untruths. His book has been disputed by members of McClellan's staff.

In 2007, Rove was involved directly in yet another scandal, involving the dismissals of several United States Attorneys for political reasons. Investigations into White House staffers' e-mail communications discovered that Rove had exchanged e-mails using Republican National Committee e-mail servers and personal e-mail account. This was a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Soon after the discovery, Rove was forced to resign. He said, "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family". I would have preferred an admission from Rove that told the truth, i.e. that his fingers were caught in the cookie jar.

What has Karl Rove achieved politically? His election record is flawed. There’s a good case to argue that his candidate stole the presidency in 2000. Four years later, Bush was barely re-elected. For the record, only two incumbents going back to FDR lost their re-election bids, Jimmy Carter and daddy Bush.

Undoubtedly, Rove preferred to work behind the scenes to practice his black political arts. Occasionally he made himself available to the media. In October, 2006, two weeks before the Congressional mid-term elections, he got things badly wrong. In an interview with National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, Rove insisted that his insider polling data showed the Republicans would both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

In the election, the Democrats won both the Senate and the House. Rove hastily backtracked.  Ten out of twenty-eight House seats, he said, were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the Democrat threat. Ironically, Rove argued that, without corruption and complacency, the Democrats would have only gained a dozen seats and Republicans could have kept narrow control of the House.

Soon after the election, the White House Bulletin cited rumors of Rove's impending departure from the White House staff: "'Karl represents the old style and he's got to go if the Democrats are going to believe Bush's talk of getting along.”

Rove’s truly dark period, the one that should have destroyed his reputation for all time, was when he advised President George W. Bush to promote Social Security privatization. Thank heavens – and Congress - it did not happen. At that time, Rove spoke about a “permanent conservative majority” and “world-historic realignment,” even though all he and his president’s failures managed to do was turn the Senate and the House Democratic in 2006 and pave the way for the country’s rejection of John McCain as it embraced Barack Obama.

If there was any doubt about Rove’s disgraceful and unprincipled behaviour, just look at what he did last week. He alleged that Hillary Clinton spent thirty days in hospital after a fall and that “she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury.” Later, Rove speculated that “Clinton endured a serious health episode for which she is going to have to be forthcoming if she runs for president.”

The truth is that Mrs Clinton spent three days in hospital after a fall and there is no evidence whatsoever that she suffered brain damage or any other permanent damage. Age and health are legitimate topics in a run for the White House but not if they are couched as lies.

Political campaigns in America have been dirty and corrupt almost from day one. Just look at Adams v Jefferson in 1800. The slogan, “vote early and vote often” was the mantra in many a campaign over the years. Surely, America should be better and above all this now. People like Karl Rove should not be allowed to spread their poison for political gain. It adds nothing to the debate and makes the political process all the poorer. The trouble is that there are no laws to stop Rove and his ilk from practising their dark arts and neither political party seems neither strong enough nor willing to remove men like Rove from their midst.