Bush's Warsaw War Pact
February 26, 2003
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The diplomatic motorcade pulled up to the White House yesterday with great fanfare. The two Marine guards at the door of the colonnaded West Wing saluted smartly. TV cameras pressed close to get pictures of the vital American ally alighting from the black sedan for his one-on-one with President Bush.
It was a summit of the two great strategic partners, America and Bulgaria.
Bulgaria?
As the world's only remaining superpower was conferring honor upon one of its only remaining friends, America smashed through the global looking glass.
To get Saddam, the Bush administration has dizzily turned the world upside down and inside out.
Our new best friends are the very people we used to protect our old best friends from. During the cold war, we safeguarded Old Europe from the Evil Empire. Now we have embraced the former Soviet Bloc satellites to protect us from the Security Council machinations of our former paramours France and Germany. NATO was created to protect Western Europe from the Communist hordes - namely the Bulgarians, who tried to outdo the bizarro Albanians as the most Stalinist regime in Eastern Europe and were renowned for the "thick necks" who did wet work for the K.G.B.
The U.S. is now in the process of wooing the "minnows" - as some in the Pentagon disparagingly call the small countries that could deliver the votes for a Security Council resolution on going to war with Iraq.
It's the battle of the pipsqueak powers: we dragoon Bulgaria to offset France dragooning Cameroon.
The Bulgarians used to be the lowest of the low here. In 1998, just before the visit of the Bulgarian president, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel met with President Clinton. The visit was so icy that a Clinton aide joked to reporters about Mr. Netanyahu: "We're treating him like the president of Bulgaria. Actually, I think Clinton will go jogging with the president of Bulgaria, so that's not fair."
Now Secretary Don Evans flies off to Bulgaria to discuss trade, and Rummy hints we may move U.S. troops from Germany to Bulgaria.
In diplomatic circles, our new allies from Eastern Europe are dryly referred to as "Bush's Warsaw Pact." As one Soviet expert put it, "Bulgaria used to be Russia's lapdog. Now it's America's lapdog."
The Bulgarians were such sycophants to Russia that in the 60's they proposed becoming the 16th republic of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Bush will not be the only one having trouble with the Bulgarian prime minister's name. We all will. In some press reports it's spelled Simeon Saxcoburggotski, and in others Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The tall, balding, bearded prime minister was formerly King Simeon II, a deposed child czar. He is a distant relative of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, but not Count Dracula. That's our other new best friend, Romania.
Is this a good trade, the French for the Bulgarians?
Sketchy facts about Bulgaria rattle around: It has a town called Plovdiv; it wants to become big in the skiing industry; its secret service stabbed an exiled dissident writer in London with a poison-tipped umbrella - a ricin-tipped umbrella, in fact; its weight-lifting team was expelled from the Olympics in a drug scandal in 2000; it sent agents to kill the pope.
During the cold war Bulgaria was valued by Moscow for the canned tomatoes it sent in winter, and by France for sending attar of roses, distilled rose oil that was the binding agent for French perfume.
Three famous Bulgarians: Carl Djerassi, who invented birth control pills; Christo, the original wrap artist; Boris Christof, the opera singer. In "Casablanca" there was the Bulgarian girl who offered herself to Claude Rains to get plane tickets.
Avis Bohlen, a former second-in-command at the American Embassy in France and an ambassador to Sofia in the late 1990's, calls Bulgaria "a very gutsy little country" that has worked hard to improve.
Ms. Bohlen is dubious about the Bush administration's volatile snits at old allies. "You can't build a foreign policy on pique," she says. She says Bulgaria will be a good ally: "They're really brilliant at math and science, and they have famous wine."
So, we don't need French wine after all.
- - - -
Якото обаче тепърва следва - отговор на една БЪЛГАРКА! пратен в редакцията на вестника:
February 26, 2003
The New York Times
Editorial Board
Re: In response to offensive article about Bulgaria
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a Bulgarian who has been living in the United States for over nine
years (following nineteen years spent in Bulgaria under its Communist
and democratic regimes).
This morning I woke up in my Brooklyn apartment unaware that, as soon as the February 25th issue of The New York Times hit the newsstands, I became a member of several "lowest of the low" human categories, all of them minted by Ms. Maureen Dowd with a blatant ignorance and a clumsy linguistic pirouetting unprecedented in The Times' journalistic tradition.
First -- as a Bulgarian, I became a citizen of a "pipsqueak" country, a "minnow". Given the negative percentage of factual truth about Bulgaria in Ms. Dowd's article (and it is quite stunning how a journalist, and a Pulitzer prize-winner at that, can manage to arrive at a negative percentage on the pages of a publication presumed to aim for 100% slander-free content), I am disinclined to believe that my country is referred to as a "minnow" around the Pentagon -- not so much for Bulgaria's own sake, but for the sake of the United States which (do we need to remind anyone?) is comprised of States both big and small, States of more or less political and economic power, and, most importantly, States with different majority position as to the current Iraq situation. I am myself not a proponent of the war, but I am shaken that so much biased hatred and such unsubstantiated slander can be thrown against anyone - a person, a nation, or an entire country - as was thrown at Bulgaria today simply because a prominent journalist in a leading newspaper happened to disagree with a politician's choice.
Second -- as of this morning, I am suddenly not only a homo sapiens but a member of the canine species: as a Bulgarian, I am "America's lapdog". I would be curious to know from Ms. Dowd whether she meant that the American president would run with the president of Bulgaria in the latter's biological capacity as a "minnow", or as a "dog" (if as a "dog", then either of the two presidents had better come equipped with the proper leash!).
Third -- I was diagnosed as a "sycophant" whose country offered to be assimilated as the 16th Republic but was turned down by the Soviets. Had Ms. Dowd made a basic attempt (in fact as basic as a mouse click) to familiarize herself with something she intended to write about, she would have found out that Bulgaria not only never made offers to cease to become a country (to the Russians or to anyone else), but in fact, to the extent the rest of the world juggled it around as a war trophy, it always fought for (and won) its political, demographic, ethnic and religious independence. A member of my own family risked his life in Constantinople to pronounce the independence of the Bulgarian church and the Bulgarian People from the sultan of Turkey at a time when Bulgaria had been (not for the first nor for the last time) forced to be assimilated into another country (the Ottoman Empire) in a post-war give-away.
Fourth -- by having been born in the Balkans, I woke up this morning as an alleged vampire: a relative to Count Dracula. I would like to remind Ms. Dowd that the citizens of the Balkan countries have no more of a blood connection with a fictional character of a literary work than an American citizen could have with Moby Dick: none.
Fifth -- I am now a citizen of a country which, in its fourteen centuries of history, produced only three famous people. It is beyond the scope of this letter to recount the achievements of my fellow countrymen and -women (although I guarantee they would count not in the double digits, and perhaps not in the triple digits either). I would limit myself only to noting, in response to Ms. Dowd's seeming preference for opera, that Bulgaria has a tradition of giving to the rest of the world superb opera singers, many of them, of which Boris Christof (the one known to Ms. Dowd) is only a single example. I happen to have in front of me at the moment a 1978 filmed version of Verdi's "Il Trovatore", in which Karajan conducts, in the main roles, Placido Domingo and Rajna Kabaivanska (the latter a Bulgarian singer whose name does not need introduction to anyone who knows anything about opera).
Sixth -- I am, according to Ms. Dowd, a citizen of a country of assassins. I am attaching here a link to a CNN article which summarizes the facts about the trial and acquittal of the three Bulgarians who were wrongly accused of assisting in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul III. I hope that this article will, once and for all, end the chauvinistic slander and ill-hearted ignorance: not only were the Bulgarians wrongly accused, but the Pope himself, on his recent visit to my country, "absolved Bulgaria of any link to the assassination attempt on him in 1981".
(http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe....pope/?related)
Seventh -- I am accused of being a citizen of a country of drug users. Even though three of the athletes did test positive for diuretic ("a substance commonly used by weightlifters to lose weight to meet category limits"), the rest of the team was cleared of the alleged accusations and was allowed to compete (the "expulsion" to which Ms. Dowd refers was held to have been against the rules of the International Weightlifting Federation in the first place).
(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/oly...9/25/276269093
334_afp/)
I will not discuss Ms. Dowd's allegation that during the cold war Bulgaria's only value was in its canned tomatoes -- this is simply ludicrous. Indeed, I am truly relieved that she did not continue her imaginary list of "sketchy facts" that "rattle around" about Bulgaria, and limited herself only to including one last, eighth, category for me, as a Bulgarian, to be molded into: that of women who prostitute themselves. I have not watched "Casablanca" for a long time (but own it and will watch it again tonight). If there is indeed a "Bulgarian girl who offered herself... to get plane tickets", this only evokes pity for the screenwriter (who must have thought it a cute touch), and for those who quote it, for lack of better justification, in order to publicly belittle and offend a country and its citizens. I invite Ms. Dowd to go running with me (if the president himself would run with a Bulgarian, maybe she, too, would not find it all that degrading after all) and to find out more about Bulgarian girls. I am by far not the most accomplished citizen of my country, but I came to the United States to attend Princeton University on a full scholarship (using a plane ticket for which my parents paid with their entire lives' savings!), graduated from Harvard Law School (again on a scholarship) and am currently working as an attorney for one of this country's most prestigious law firms - and I would like Ms. Dowd, as well as the readers of The Times to know that I have done all this without offering myself to anyone, without compromising my dignity, and without -- until this morning -- being classified as "the lowest of the low", a "pipsqueak", a "minnow", a "lapdog", a "sycophant", or a prostitute just because I was born in Bulgaria.
I may disagree with the political choices of my country's government, but I am proud of being a Bulgarian, I am also proud of my personal achievements which would have been impossible without the rich cultural and historical background that my country gave me. I am also proud of what other Bulgarians have achieved -- whether by staying back home (where life is anything but simply "canning tomatoes") or by moving to a country like the United States and working incredibly hard to create a home and a name for themselves. It is a shame that in a country like this one, in a publication such as this one, and by a recognized journalist such as this one, I have now seen everything that stands behind who I am trashed so publicly and without any reason, proof or justification.
I invite The Times to offer to all Bulgarians, to Bulgaria itself, as well as to the American and international readership, an official apology for Ms. Dowd's article. I also invite it to require from its authors in the future a minimum level of professionalism, knowledge and human responsibility.
My sincere regards,
...
cc: Bulgarian Consulates in New York and Washington, DC;
various friends
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