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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (2696)	2/7/2002 7:37:51 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Bush makes two mistakes Thursday, February 7, 2002 By TED VAN DYK SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST "It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder." -- traditional French characterization of a high-level gaffe Presidents, like athletes sitting on a big lead, overreach and make dumb mistakes when their popularity ratings run high. President Bush, as others before him, did it twice last week with blunders he needs to set right. The first was his last-minute addition to his otherwise effective State of the Union address labeling Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil ... threatening the peace of the world." Later in the speech he said that if other nations did not want to act against terrorism, the United States would without them. My guess is that Bush simply thought he was firing a figurative shot across the bows of the three regimes and, with his go-it-alone statement, wanted to emphasize U.S. determination. But in doing it he abandoned the carefully calibrated approach he had taken toward the war on terrorism to date. He renewed pre-Sept. 11 fears of allies that the president was a Texas hip shooter who might pick a fight at the wrong place and time and then suck them into it. The Axis Three should be differentiated. And none of the three should be written off as a lost cause to the civilized world. What they share in common is their attempt to acquire, develop or disseminate weapons of mass destruction we and others already possess. They also share a recent history of attempting to subvert their immediate neighbors and of quashing political, religious and ethnic dissent within their own borders. All three have sponsored or harbored terrorists. Iran, however, has both inside and outside its government important forces pushing for economic and political liberalization. Iran cooperated in a limited way with the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, although, reverting to form, it since has meddled in the western part of that country bordering Iran. Most important: In any future attempt to isolate or weaken Iraq, a hole-card option for the United States would be to normalize relations with Iran and thus shift the power balance in the region dramatically against Saddam Hussein. Iraq continues to ban international inspection of its sinister weapons-development programs. Yet it otherwise appears reasonably contained, has a weak economy and has a badly degraded military barely capable of defending the homeland core. It must be dealt with in time but certainly not by the United States alone and not in such a way as to make the secular Saddam seem a hero to radical Islam. North Korea remains a crazy, isolated place. But South Korea, with our support, has been taking a step-by-step path toward opening the north and eventual reunification. North Korea's neighbors, including China, have, with the United States, been keeping that country on a short leash to assure that it will not launch some irrational military action in the region. The other blunder was Bush's opposition to the General Accounting Office's request for records of Vice President Cheney's energy task force deliberations in which discredited Enron CEO Kenneth Lay had an apparent role. Having directed and served on such task forces, I can attest that if done by the book they involve formal meetings and background research over many weeks in which relevant Cabinet departments and independent agencies systematically examine a given policy issue, the options available to address it and the tradeoffs among the options. Consultation with affected private and public-sector groups is part of the process. When task-force recommendations are brought to a president he accepts them, modifies them or sometimes just dumps them in a dead file. My guess here is that the vice president does not fear disclosure of special Enron or other energy-company access. More likely, he does not want it known that his task force was a quickie, ad hoc exercise that rubber-stamped standard Petroleum Club proposals decided beforehand. They went in one side of the task-force bologna machine and came rapidly out the other neatly labeled and packaged but still the same bologna. Examination might show it was a task force that was barely there. Few in the media and in the general public have any idea how a policy task force is supposed to work. But they can see quite easily when someone is ducking and trying to hide something -- as Bush and Cheney are doing -- and presume the worst. The Bush-Cheney argument that they are defending the future right of presidents and vice presidents to have confidential discussions is phony. The constitutional issue of executive privilege has not been invoked. The task force was not discussing war plans. Bush energy policy proposals have been stalled on Capitol Hill under a cloud because of suspicion about their origins. The president's reputation for straight dealing could go downhill too if the stonewalling continues. Bush has retreated partially but not yet credibly from his evil axis statement. Now he needs to turn over the energy policy papers. Otherwise, as his predecessors did, he'll learn that you can't play careless with a big lead. seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: Mephisto who wrote (2696)	2/10/2002 1:20:02 AM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15516

Patten lays into Bush's America Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech Jonathan Freedland in Brussels Saturday February 9, 2002 The Guardian Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy - accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world. As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it goes into "unilateralist overdrive". "Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it," he says in today's interview. Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of unilateralism". Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as "an axis of evil". "I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful". EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor of terror. Mr Patten insists that the European policy of "constructive engagement" with Iranian moderates and North Korea is much more likely to bring results than a US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance". The commissioner's remarks represent the most public statement yet of what has become a growing sense of alarm in Europe's capitals at the increasingly belligerent tone adopted by Washington. One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that doesn't get vetoed by the United States." Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Bush. But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking - especially the hints that America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press their case with Tony Blair. In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than in tackling terror's root causes. "When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said. That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted "heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes, especially since the dramatic success of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan. That has fed a new US mood of "intense triumphalism", according to EU officials, with secretary of state Colin Powell regarded as "a lone voice of reason". Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering condemnation of the phrase. Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran and Pyongyang. "There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off," he says. But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own." He calls on Europe's 15 member states to put aside their traditional wariness of angering the US and to speak up, forging an international stance of their own on issues ranging from the Middle East to global warming. guardian.co.uk