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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (4384)	8/12/2002 9:14:05 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Longing for Ike and Harry By SEAN GONSALVES SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Tuesday, August 13, 2002 seattlepi.nwsource.com President Eisenhower warned us of the perils of the military-industrial complex, asking the all-important question: "What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road" to increasing militarism? Before Ike there was Harry Truman, who, despite having used the A-bomb, wasn't without moral consciousness. In their new book, "Prophets Without Honor: A Requiem for Moral Patriotism," William Strabala and Michael Palecek recount how in 1945 Truman toured "the rubble of a devastated Berlin while en route to the Potsdam Conference." Has President Bush toured the rubble of a devastated Afghanistan? To quote a bumper sticker I once saw: "I miss Ike. Hell, I even miss Harry," especially after reading the war philosophy of one of the main Gulf War planners. In a 1996 USAF Air Power magazine article, Col. John Warden wrote: "Strategic war is war to force the enemy state or organization to do what you want it to do ... It is ... the whole system that is our target, not its military forces." The "whole system" is our target? Pardon my naiveté, but I thought attacking non-military targets -- aka targeting civilian infrastructure -- is considered terrorism. Comparing "enemy systems" with five overlapping rings, each marked for varying degrees of destruction, Warden wrote: "The fourth most critical ring is the population. Moral objections aside ... " Say what? Isn't our moral sense precisely what makes us human? How else to explain Truman's trepidation: "I fear the machines (of war) are ahead of morals by some centuries," he wrote. Cut from the same mold as Ike and Truman is former U.S. Marine intelligence officer and UNSCOM chief inspector Scott Ritter. A ballistic missile expert who served on the staff of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, this guy is no bleeding heart peacenik squeamish about war. But as one who has witnessed the horrors of battle, he believes military might ought to be reserved for defending clear national interests. When it comes to Iraq, Ritter told me last week, U.S. military action would be justified if there was evidence linking the Iraqi government to the Sept. 11 attacks, or if there were evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The problem is, no such evidence exists. Now, keep in mind there are few people on the planet who know more about Iraq's military capabilities than Ritter. When UNSCOM realized that Iraqi officials had been lying about their weapons program, Ritter was the expert they called in to find what Saddam was hiding, and where, and then to destroy it. "I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations to both the scope of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the UN weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating them," Ritter explained. From the beginning Ritter and his UNSCOM team refused to believe any official declarations of the Iraqi government. So they meticulously tracked down and destroyed nearly every hidden bomb, missile and weapons factory in Iraq. By the time they were finished Iraq had been stripped of 90 percent to 95 percent of all its weapons of mass destruction. The missing 10 percent, Ritter said, was mostly destroyed in the Gulf War, making 100 percent quantitative compliance with the UN disarmament mandate an impossible benchmark. Talk now of Iraq's refusal to allow inspections is a red herring. "With the exception of mustard agent, all chemical agents produced by Iraq prior to 1990 would have degraded within five years. The same holds true for biological agents, which would have been neutralized through natural processes within three years of manufacture," Ritter said. That's not to mention the fact that chemical weapons emits vented gasses that can be detected by U.S. eavesdropping. The same holds true for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, which emit detectable gamma rays. They've been watching, via satellite and other means, and have seen none of this, Ritter said. So why would the expertise of this "card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for president" be left out of the Senate hearings on whether to attack Iraq? "The hearings were a sham," Ritter said. "The national security of the United States has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically driven political ambitions. The day we send our soldiers off to die for narrow political reasons is the day we fail as an American democracy." Any chance to stop the war? "The Bush administration is dead serious about this," Ritter said. "I'm hoping the media and the American people will wake up to this direct assault on the Constitution and on our moral standards as a nation." Sorry, Col. Warden -- morals matter. I miss Ike. And Harry too.

To: sylvester80 who wrote (4384)	8/13/2002 12:42:39 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Message 17869138

To: sylvester80 who wrote (4384)	8/13/2002 1:47:46 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Iraq Needn't Be a Vietnam With knowledge, we can avoid a quagmire. By ROBERT E. HUNTER Editorial The Los Angeles Times August 12, 2002 latimes.com Thirty-eight years ago this week, two U.S. Navy vessels reported being attacked by North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress promptly passed the Southeast Asia Resolution, giving the president almost unlimited authority to make war. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a surprise; the resolution was not. Many of us working in the White House knew that the draft had already been written, waiting for the right moment to introduce it. It followed several years of national consensus-building. Yet the military consequences of going to war in Southeast Asia were barely considered; the nation was confident it could succeed where France, a second-tier, colonial power, had failed. Today, there is equal confidence of prevailing militarily against Iraq. But this time, the belief is founded: The U.S. defeated Iraq 11 years ago and since then America's military strength has risen dramatically while Iraq's has surely gone down. As in the case of Vietnam in 1964, we have not yet sufficiently sorted out the "why" of attacking Iraq, at least not enough for the American people--or our friends and allies abroad--to understand. Yes, Saddam Hussein has earned his villain's stripes, and Iraq, the region and the world would be better off without him. But deposing him does not guarantee that Iraq, under new leaders, would not continue to seek nuclear weapons--the threat that really matters. Perhaps those who support invading Iraq are right that deterrence would have no value; perhaps even intrusive inspections, imposed on Iraq with a gun at its head, would fail to cleanse it of mass-destruction weapons. But such courses should be explored while they are options, not historians' conjecture. Vietnam raises another issue worthy of debate before we strike: Do we have the will to achieve our long-term goals? It is not clear either that the U.S. has the "staying power" needed to stabilize Iraq and its neighborhood after victory or that we have the knowledge to do it right. The Middle East and Southwest Asia can no longer be treated as separate islands of isolated threats and challenges. Long-term victory is not just about defeating Iraq or wiping up what is left of Al Qaeda. It is also about "nation-building," preventing conflict over Kashmir, fulfilling America's ineluctable destiny to lead Israel and the Palestinians to peace, building policies to inhibit the spread of mass-destruction weapons and to deal with them if they do, drawing Iran out of its isolation, and promoting political, economic and social reform in so many societies over so many years. All these matters are in play as we think about war with Iraq. Knowledge is the linchpin. There was no lack of people who knew Vietnam, its history, culture and people and who warned against hubris and overconfidence. Today, there is no lack of American expertise about the Middle East or Southwest Asia. The challenge is to get that knowledge to the top leaders of government and for them to use it. We can't ignore past British and Russian failures while we try to shape Afghanistan to our liking. We can't simply assert that U.S. invaders will be welcomed as liberators by a grateful Iraqi people, ready to convert rapidly to democracy; that there will be no spreading turmoil in the region; and that northern Kurds will at last work together and abandon ambitions for independence that so trouble neighboring Turkey. We only damage our own interests by continuing the delusion that Iran, so far advanced with internal reforms, really teeters on the edge of a "revolution from below," when we should support those leaders working to lead it toward responsible behavior. Ignorance mired us in Vietnam. Four decades later, we must summon knowledge and assume due humility. We must finally start widespread, sustained, open, serious and uncensored debate on Iraq, free of cant and emotion on all sides; we must be willing to accept permanent commitment to responsibility in the region--and do all this before the march to Baghdad. __________________________________________ Robert E. Hunter, a senior advisor at the Rand Corp., was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998.