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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38146)	8/16/2002 3:52:41 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

This is a tribute to the Time's biased reporting. Can't leave well enough alone, can you?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38146)	8/16/2002 4:39:55 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Bush risks isolating US, cautions Kissinger timesonline.co.uk [ perhaps the view from Murdochville will be more to your taste, Nadine. I'm not holding my breath, though. ] HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, urged President Bush to use extreme care in drafting war plans against Iraq or risk isolating America in the eyes of the world. With his intervention yesterday, Dr Kissinger joined a growing band of prominent American military and foreign policy experts appealing to the President to show caution in his desire to oust President Saddam Hussein. But at the same time Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is considering controversial plans to send American special forces on to foreign soil to seize or kill al-Qaeda terrorists even without the host country’s permission. Dr Kissinger, the elder statesman of American foreign policy, said that Saddam’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons did provide a basis for a preemptive strike against Iraq. But he said that the ground-breaking status of such an attack, which breached international codes about using force only in self-defence, required meticulous planning to counter the scepticism of allies and the hostility of foes. Mr Bush should contemplate military intervention only if he were ready to see through a much longer diplomatic offensive, preparing the ground for war and ensuring a stable settlement afterwards, Dr Kissinger said. “Because of the precedent-setting nature of this war, its outcome will determine the way US actions will be viewed far more than the way we entered it,” he said. But that should not deter Mr Bush. The President’s aim should be to use intervention in Iraq to recast the accepted workings of the international system for a post-September 11 world, he said. The biggest danger, though, lay in allowing other countries to use America’s intervention to justify their own acts of pre-emptive hostility, he said. “It is not in the American national interest to establish pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation.” Potentially the most “fateful reaction”, he said, would be if India used the example of US military action in Iraq to attack Pakistan. Dr Kissinger, National Security Adviser to President Nixon and Secretary of State to both Presidents Nixon and Ford, echoed other sceptics when he used an article in The Washington Post to call on Mr Bush to clarify his thinking. “The time has come to define a comprehensive policy for America and for the rest of the world,” he said. Dr Kissinger’s is the latest and most heavyweight voice to urge caution on Mr Bush as he contemplates how to bring about his Adminstration’s policy of “regime change” in Baghdad. Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the wisdom of attacking Saddam when it was likely to prompt him into using weapons of mass destruction. “He’d have nothing to lose,” he said. The senator argued for more diplomatic pressure to bring about a return of weapons inspectors. However, after a week in which senior Republicans asked searching questions about White House plans, other congressional Republicans began to speak up at the weekend for the President. Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Mr Bush was “in the process” of making his case against Saddam. Senator Thompson said that a new agreement on weapons inspectors would merely give Saddam time to develop a nuclear capability. “Do we sit back and hope that we can negotiate our way out of that situation with Saddam? I don’t think so.” Baghdad appeared to close the door on the resumption of arms inspections yesterday when the Iraqi Information Minister said that the inspectors had completed their work four years ago. Saeed al-Sahhaf told the Qatar-based satellite television station al-Jazeera that the US was trying to use them as a pretext for attacks. Mr Rumsfeld’s plans, which would require the approval of Mr Bush, would run close to breaching the presidential order prohibiting assassinations. They would also blur an area traditionally dealt with by the CIA. Mr Rumsfeld, frustrated with the lack of progress in the hunt for al-Qaeda, has recently asked the Special Operations Command to consider how its highly trained counter-terrorism forces could be used against al-Qaeda elsewhere in the world.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38146)	8/16/2002 4:45:55 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

War comes closer washtimes.com [ on the other hand, if you want "objective" reporting on the War Now! front, where better to go than the Washington Times to find out what Kissinger really meant? Well, I guess there's always Debka . ] I have the feeling that the future is imminent. The pace, volume and variety of war rumors and comments increase weekly. Here in Washington, in pro-war circles there is a nasty story going about that Colin Powell is trying to veto the president's war plans with the threat of resignation (and some sort of implicit racial backlash that would ensue). Meanwhile, in some anti-war conversations there is a barely veiled, and slanderous, suggestion that Jewish war-advocates in high government office are trying to bamboozle our president into starting a war with Iraq for Israel's sake. For whatever reason, the rash of Pentagon leaks or disinformation releases (or both) that filled the papers in July seem to have subsided. Does that mean the president has reached his conclusion and laid down the law? On the Republican side, traditionally strong supporters of the president, men of honor (if not necessarily wisdom on this matter) such as Jack Kemp, Dick Armey and Brent Scowcroft feel obliged to state publicly their opposition to the war. One can only presume that they sense they ought to get their convictions on the record before hostilities start in a few months. On Monday of this week, Henry Kissinger, the high mandarin of the American foreign-policy establishment, published in The Washington Post his begrudging, but nevertheless dispositive, endorsement of the president's pre-emptive war strategy. The timing, substance and authorship of this extraordinary document hardly can be overstated. Mr. Kissinger's entire career as statesman and scholar has centered on the inviolability of the nation-state (and as a result, his opposition to pre-emptive war). In this article, he kicks over his world-historic career principle, and endorses — just for Iraq — pre-emption. He expressly embraces this challenge to an international order that has existed for 354 years — since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, and that he has made his life pursuit. Such a man does not make such a concession, but for the extremity in which he believes we find ourselves today. He also rejects, en passant, solving the Middle East crisis before Iraq. He insists on a congressional debate and vote, and on a time-limited demand for "a stringent inspection system" from Saddam Hussein. He justifies such a war only if we are prepared to sustain it and the aftermath of nation-building, "however long it is needed." In perhaps his most incisive assertion, he justifies "bringing matters to a head with Iraq" for what he calls a "generally unstated reason" — "While long-range American strategy must try to overcome legitimate causes of [Islamic] resentments, immediate policy must demonstrate that a terrorist challenge . . . produces catastrophic consequences for the perpetrators, as well as their supporters, tacit or explicit." In other words, we must break the will and pride of all those in the Islamic world who would dare terrorize us and the international system. It is noteworthy that the Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Co. (Stratfor.com) published on the same day a report that concluded "the Bush administration is not abandoning its strategy [of war with Iraq] because it sees a successful campaign against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a prime way to shatter the psychological advantage within the Islamist movement and demonstrates U.S. power." The usually well-sourced Stratfor explains that from the 1973 oil embargo, through the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, Saddam's 1991 survival, the U.S. defeat in Somalia to September 11, the centuries-old Islamic sense of impotence has been reversed. In explaining the Bush war aims, they elaborate, Mr. Bush intends to defeat the Islamist sense of their inevitable triumph — to defeat their psychology of manifest destiny. I take it as possibly not coincidental that both Mr. Kissinger and the well-connected, Texas-based Stratfor state on the same day this "unstated" Bush war aim. If it is true, I commend the president for his strategic wisdom and his moral courage in facing the heart of the threat to our nation. When I wrote at the lead of this column that I sensed the future is imminent, I did not mean a future as we have daily and benignly experienced it each morning these many decades. The imminent future the signs suggest we are facing is a violent and perhaps prolonged struggle to defeat the will of an aroused and myriad people. As Winston Churchill warned shortly before World War II, we are moving into a time of "measureless peril." Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. His column appears on Wednesdays. E-mail: tonyblankley@erols.com.