Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (39132)	8/21/2002 1:58:36 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Coup De Crawford By MAUREEN DOWD Columnist The New York Times Aug. 21, 2002 WASHINGTON - The plotters are meeting down at the Ponderosa today. They waited to huddle in Crawford until the flower child Colin Powell had gone up to the Hamptons, ensconced with the white-wine-swilling toffs scorned by the president. With the diffident general brunching with the Dean & DeLuca set, Cheney, Rummy, Condi and W. can get down to bidness on the ranch, scheming to smoke Saddam. We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority. It's the reverse of the classic movie "Seven Days in May," about gung-ho generals trying to wrest power from an "appeasing" president. In "Thirty-One Days in August," gung-ho presidential advisers try to wrest power away from "appeasing" generals. In the 1964 movie, the generals' code for their military coup was a bet on the Preakness. In the 2002 version, W. signaled his civilian coup by telling an A.P. reporter his vacation reading was "Supreme Command," a new book by Eliot A. Cohen, a conservative who favors ousting Saddam. In his book, Mr. Cohen attacks the Powell Doctrine and argues that civilian leaders should not defer to "the fundamental caution" of whiny generals on grand strategy or use of force. Tired of the inhibitions of the retired generals — Mr. Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Wesley Clark — and unretired generals in the Joint Chiefs; tired of the whisper campaigns in the hallways of the Pentagon and State Department that a rush to war in Iraq will weaken America's war on terror; tired of Republican resistance on the Hill — the hawks flew to Texas to strut their hawkishness. The White House denied that the president was gathering his war council to talk about war, to figure out when and how to employ all the hardware that's been pre-positioned in Saddam's neighborhood. After all, they pointed out, Gen. Tommy Franks isn't coming. And General Powell isn't coming. A spokesman for Mr. Powell said he wasn't going because it was a meeting about the military budget. Never mind that the military budget is money that may level Iraq. Ari Fleischer said the meeting was about military "transformation." Yeah. They're going to transform Baghdad into "Hey, dad, that dude is history." There were a few token uniforms at the coup kaffeeklatsch. But except for Rummy, the Whack-Iraq tribe — including W., Cheney, Condi, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle — have scant backgrounds in the military, as their military critics mutter. The military types in the Pesky Questions tribe fret that it would be smarter to go after the low-hanging fruit in the war on terror first — Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines, Indonesia, Colombia. They worry that the Whack-Iraq'ers are too sanguine that our new weapons or a Special Forces option will prevent Saddam from lobbing his chemical weapons at our men and women in uniform. They fear that Rummy's belief that America can go in light, fast and easy is futuristic nonsense. But the Cheney-Rummy-Condi Axis of Anti-Evil believes in unilateralism so fervently that it is prepared to proceed unilaterally without its own military. If the Pentagon is not prepared to get with the program, they can always parachute Wolfowitz into Baghdad with a license to kill. Cheney & Co. are clearly regrouping to catch the patriotic wave of the 9/11 anniversary, drawing fresh momentum for pre-empting terror in the Middle East. But they're not being smart by being secret. They have the conspiratorial air of embattled sectarians, of a besieged cult, treating skeptics as appeasers and legitimate questions as failures of patriotism. They are in exclusive possession of the truth and the whole world is against them. They have forgotten that planning a war is not justifying a war. The plans must be covert but the justifications must be overt. The hawks offer a potpourri of reasons for war, but they don't have the time or the patience to persuade the American public that it really matters. If the Iraqi danger is as large and clear as they say it is, their explanations should also be large and clear. The problem with the Bush administration is that its bully pulpit is all bully and no pulpit. nytimes.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (39132)	8/21/2002 3:27:42 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Another take on the Kissinger/NYT story. And what is that pesky Powell up to? From NRO Well, this keeps us busy during the "Dog Days of August." August 20, 2002 9:00 a.m. The Powell Perplex What is the Secretary of State up to? The New York Times embarrassed itself on Friday with a story on the allegedly growing antiwar movement among Republicans. "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy" was the headline over a front-pager by Todd Purdum and Patrick Tyler. Among these top Republicans, according to Purdum and Tyler, was former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Since Friday, a small army of conservative pundits has been pointing out that Kissinger has not, in fact, broken with the administration. He supports preemptive defense against Iraq, as is clear from the very Washington Post op-ed that Purdum and Tyler cite as evidence for his opposition. The reporters have a preemptive defense of their own against this inconvenient support, namely a characterization of the op-ed as "long and complex." Right. Appearing to support President Bush while actually opposing him is complex business. How do Purdum and Tyler justify their claim? This is another long and complex story. It starts with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Readers of previous Purdum dispatches will recognize Powell as the pragmatic, non-ideological public servant who is trying to restrain the administration's hawkish faction. Since this faction includes the president, Powell has quite a job on his hands. So he has adopted a new tactic of impressive complexity: "Powell. . . and his advisers have decided that they should focus international discussion on how Iraq would be governed after Mr. Hussein, not only in an effort to assure a democracy but as a way to outflank administration hawks and slow the rush to war." Kissinger wrote in his op-ed that "Iraq policy will be judged by how the aftermath of the military operation is handled politically." Purdum and Tyler rather murkily suggest that this "statement. . . seems to play well with the State Department's strategy." They go on to quote another passage of Kissinger's op-ed: "Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed." By "such an effort," Kissinger means a program to establish a government in Iraq that is both peaceful and viable. Obviously, this is rather less than the "Break with Bush on Iraq Policy" that we were promised. Anyone who has followed this debate knows that so far, it is the hawks and not the doves who have been most keen on reshaping Iraq (and, it is hoped, indirectly reshaping the Middle East) on non-totalitarian lines. Which makes sense, since such reshaping can occur only after regime change, which in turn requires military intervention. Support for postwar engagement in Iraq is quite compatible with hawkishness ? which is how Kissinger can combine both. So the hawks cannot protest at either Powell's "focus" (assuming it is his focus) or Kissinger's "statement." In what sense, then, can Powell's alleged strategy be said to undermine the hawks? There are two ways. First, Powell could be hoping to make the task of reconstructing Iraq sound so hopeless and costly that the administration or the public is dissuaded from going there in the first place. But this strategy seems quite peculiar. People are much more likely to be convinced to oppose military action against Iraq because they think it will fail, cost too many American lives, set off a wider war, or bring us new enemies than they are to back down because victory will present managerial and political problems. Second, Powell could be hoping to make military action conditional on the State Department's having devised political solutions to all of Iraq's problems in advance, which is, of course, impossible. It is hard to see the basis for this hope either. The State Department tried to delay the Afghan campaign last fall in just this fashion, and failed. The Bush administration rejected the idea that a postwar settlement had to take place before the war as self-evidently preposterous, and there is no reason to doubt that it will do so again. If, on the other hand, the administration really is set on taking action to ensure regime change in Iraq, the State Department might well occupy itself with preparing for postwar concerns ? provided that it is also willing to do the diplomacy needed to support the war in the here and now. If that is what is happening, Powell is simply being, not for the first time, a good soldier. In that case, what Tyler and Purdum have reported is, against their intentions, very good news for the hawks. For they have shown that even the most powerful opponents of war with Iraq are advancing the administration's goals........ nationalreview.com