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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (30705)	5/25/2002 7:00:38 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

Different clothes and more ignorant, is all. Less ignorant in general, but so much stuff to absorb and understand. So what do we do? Different than what we are doing? Game it out for us. Putting pressure on countries which sponsor terrorism while we gear up for massive confrontation seems wise to me.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (30705)	5/25/2002 8:24:43 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 281500

Al Qaeda is the military arm of a totalitarian movement aiming to take over the countries stretching from the west coast of Africa right into the western Pacific and which wants to change the life of Ameica and Europe and if it can't do that, kill the inhabitants. There are out of this vast population enough replacements for the few thousand al Qaeda that the US can kill or capture. The approach has to be more fundamental than killing or capturing the operatives because the movement's goals are more fundamental than just murdering a few thousand New Yorkers yes and no, IMHO. I'd draw a distinction among three separate tasks: 1. warding off the danger of further direct attacks from al Qaeda itself; 2. making sure radical Islamist groups don't capture political power in important countries; and 3. getting broad swathes of the population in Islamic countries to side with us rather than the radicals. Each of these is important, but they are different tasks, and the priority order is as listed. Disrupting al Qaeda requires a variety of coordinated military, intelligence, diplomatic, and financial operations, usually undertaken with the help of other governments. Heading off further Islamist revolutions requires somehow strengthening and improving the performance of the existing states in the Islamic world. And winning the hearts and minds of the broader population requires helping the Islamic world adjust to modernity and partake of its benefits as well as its problems. Task one is tough but clear and eminently doable. Tasks two and three are even tougher, and we know less about how to accomplish them. One place I'd start, however, would be by opening up US markets to key third world exports--agricultural products, textiles, clothing, etc. That would not only buy us some goodwill and create some incentives for good behavior abroad, but also help change the social structure and situation in some of these countries over the long run. In short, the folks in NC, SC, and elsewhere who are insisting on high protectionist tarriffs are harming American national security, and should be directly and regularly vilified as such. tb@callingaspadeaspade.com

To: frankw1900 who wrote (30705)	5/25/2002 11:26:43 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Powell: US "Disappointed" By Pakistan Missile Tests Saturday May 25, 9:24 am Eastern Time St. PETERSBURG -(Dow Jones)- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saturday that he is as concerned by the rising tensions between India and Pakistan now as he was last December when many U.S. officials feared the two nuclear armed South Asian states were on the brink of war. Furthermore, Powell said that any time two massive armies are eyeball-to- eyeball during a period of high tensions, a conflict can easily break out through an accident or a misunderstanding. Powell made it clear the U.S. believes that Pakistan bears the responsibility for taking concrete steps to reduce the tensions. He added that the United States expects Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to enforce his previous pledges to halt cross border incursions into Kashmir by Muslim militants. "He (Musharraf) has assured us he is taking action, but we do not believe that action is yet complete or has totally satisfied the statement he made earlier that all activity would stop," Powell said. "We would encourage him to do this in such a way, give orders in such a way that there would be no mistaking his intention," Powell said. The bottomline, Powell said, is that the Pakistan military must crackdown on the flow of militants into Kashmir. Powell also criticized Pakistan 's decision to test a missile Saturday morning and indicated he didn't believe Pakistan 's statement that it was nothing more than a routine missile test unrelated to the tensions with India . "It was not a particularly useful thing to do right now even though I don't think it causes us to get any closer to a conflict," Powell said. "We were disappointed the Pakistanis took this time to perform routine tests because if they were routine, they could have performed them at some other time, " he added. Tensions spiked sharply higher between India and Pakistan after Muslim militants attacked an army base earlier in the month and killed 34 people, mostly women and children of Indian army officers. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has warned Indian troops to prepare for a "decisive battle" and Musharraf has said Pakistan doesn't want war but is ready to defend itself.