{"id":231,"date":"2003-03-19T23:51:21","date_gmt":"2003-03-19T23:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=231"},"modified":"2003-03-19T23:51:21","modified_gmt":"2003-03-19T23:51:21","slug":"is-you-or-is-you-aint-my-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/03\/19\/is-you-or-is-you-aint-my-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"Is You Or Is You Ain&#8217;t My Baby?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing like a good war to unhinge delicately balanced geo-political relationships. Let&#8217;s look at Turkey for a moment.<br \/>\nFirst, the Turkish government (apparently reacting to the wishes of their own citizens &#8212; damn that democracy!), refused entry to the American war machine. Even a generous investment package (<i>cough, cough<\/i> &#8212; multi-billion dollar bribe) wasn&#8217;t enough to sway the Turks.<br \/>\nIn the aftermath of that giant &#8220;NO!,&#8221; the U.S. and Turkey were talking trash towards each other like cross-town cheerleading squads. At one point, following a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Turkish official commented that his country didn&#8217;t appreciate being threatened by America.<br \/>\nThe Bush administration continues to put the screws on Turkey, hoping for a follow-up vote just in case some Turkish legislators mistakenly hit the wrong button during the first vote.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, <a title=\"Reuters | Latest Financial News \/ Full News Coverage\" href=\"http:\/\/reuters.com\/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?storyID=2393617&#038;type=bondsNews\">the &#8220;market&#8221; is further punishing Turkey<\/a> for it&#8217;s intransigence. You can&#8217;t say no to America these days without some financial repercussions (Russia and France will not be found in the oil fields of post-war Iraq).<br \/>\nAs the U.S. tries to figure out exactly what it will take to convince Turkey to allow U.S. forces on its soil, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/03\/19\/international\/europe\/19TURK.html?pagewanted=print&#038;position=top\">the Kurds in Northern Iraq are looking around nervously<\/a>, wondering if they will get screwed once again.<br \/>\nIn our brave, new world, America will increasingly maintain alliances based on financial rather than legal, democratic or humanitarian values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing like a good war to unhinge delicately balanced geo-political relationships. Let&#8217;s look at Turkey for a moment. First, the Turkish government (apparently reacting to the wishes of their own citizens &#8212; damn that democracy!), refused entry to the American war machine. Even a generous investment package (cough, cough &#8212; multi-billion dollar bribe) wasn&#8217;t enough&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/03\/19\/is-you-or-is-you-aint-my-baby\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is You Or Is You Ain&#8217;t My Baby?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-policy-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-3J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}