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

To: JohnM who wrote (39610)	8/23/2002 6:17:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Guest commentary: Hey, we could lose in Iraq By GREGG DOBBS Scripps Howard News Service Thursday, August 22, 2002 naplesnews.com Can you believe it? We might soon launch an all-out war, and all with a minimum of national debate. Supersonic fighters taking off, missile launchers turning their turrets, soldiers shipping out. And preparing the battlefield with massive quantities of weapons and water, ammo and anesthetics, food and fuel . . . and body bags. Plenty, if we're smart. Unlike the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein chose to live to see another day, this time, outgunned or not, he can be expected to go for broke. Yet when House Republican leader Dick Armey said two weeks ago that he thought we were rushing foolishly toward costly confrontation, the story came and went. When GOP luminaries like Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger, then Lawrence Eagleburger and Dick Lugar raised concerns last week, it was buried in the back pages. And our leading Democrats? Inexplicable silence. I fear that a column headlined Iraqidelic, Baaaaaby. would attract more eyes than something stark like, We could lose this war. You see, we could. The administration talks like victory is a no-brainer. How short sighted! Compared to the defenses we'll face in Iraq (and the reluctance of many allies to join the crusade), the war in Afghanistan was a cake walk, and we can't even declare victory there yet! Osama bin Laden still seems to be on the loose, and by all accounts the country itself is turning back to the ungovernable mess that has always made it vulnerable to conquerors and, more recently, terrorists. What would victory look like in Iraq anyway? Killing or capturing Saddam Hussein? Sure, that's the primary purpose of the exercise, but if we couldn't find a foreign figure like bin Laden in the wasteland of Afghanistan, it'll just be harder to detect Saddam in the tunnels and bunkers of a land he has designed for his own protection. What's more, I was told when I covered Iraq 20 years ago that Saddam Hussein never sleeps two nights in a row in the same place. Slippery people slip away. Meantime, we'd have to try to occupy Iraq's cities. Picture our forces patrolling the streets in chemical weapons suits. And picture our tank crews, once removed from the safety of the desert, incinerated by enemies springing from Baghdad balconies and dropping Molotov cocktails down their tubes. I saw that happen to the Shah's troops during the revolution in Tehran. It's not pretty. Intelligence? Defense Secretary Rumsfeld himself said earlier this month that even in Afghanistan, the bad guys have learned to "burrow underground" and thwart our surveillance. My God, if that's what they can do in Afghanistan, just think of the obstacles in Iraq! Our own people cannot possibly blend in, and from what I've seen of locally recruited American agents elsewhere, they will be pushing their agenda, not ours. Hardly a formula for success when miscalculations can be fatal. Then, consider this: If we invade, we are counting on the conciliatory cooperation of a handful of exiled Iraqi opposition groups. But these are mainly people who were once part of Hussein's bloodthirsty regime themselves, so even in the event that we catch or kill Saddam, they can be expected to return to their own tried-and-true ways if it enhances their chances of succeeding Saddam. Of course we have another goal in Iraq too: finding and confiscating Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. But can we? Fat chance. He has had 1,001 Arabian nights to hide them in 1,001 Arabian places. And while we're searching, what might Saddam do to deter us? Attack the Zionist Jews in Israel? Attack the dissident citizens of his own country? Drive millions of Arabs to higher levels of anti-Americanism? Trigger a bigger war between the Arab world and Israel... and us? Now back to those body bags. Just before the Gulf War, I flew on Air Force Two with Vice President Quayle to Europe. Perhaps fatigued by jet lag, he told me that we had shipped 10,000 bags to the war zone. Of course Pentagon planners hoped we wouldn't need most of them, but it was possible and they knew it. Who holds onto that memory today? Evidently no one with the power to remind us. Iraqidelic, Baaaaaby! _______________________________________________ Greg Dobbs was an Emmy Award-winning correspondent for ABC News, and now hosts a talk show in Denver. His e-mail is: dobbsnews@yahoo.com.

To: JohnM who wrote (39610)	8/24/2002 9:17:19 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I have just finished reading, "The Road to Nowhere" By Tony Judt, in the "New York Review of Books", and the subsequent exchange of letters resulting from that Feature Article. , (What are they doing with "Features" in a Book Review?). I now understand your fascination with Judt. Those of you here who have not read it will find it at nybooks.com, and I highly recommend that you read it, as I am sure you would, John. Here is an excerpt from Judt's article ....The problem for the rest of the world is that since 1967 Israel has changed in ways that render its traditional self-description absurd. It is now a regional colonial power, by some accounts the world's fourth-largest military establishment. Israel is a state, with all the trappings and capacities of a state. By comparison the Palestinians are weak indeed. While the failings of the Palestinian leadership have been abysmal and the crimes of Palestinian terrorists extremely bloody, the fact is that Israel has the military and political initiative. Responsibility for moving beyond the present impasse thus falls primarily (though as we shall see not exclusively) on Israel...... I now see where your "Colonialism" argument is coming from. The beauty, to Judt, of using it, is that it ties in with the "Post Colonialism" approach of the left, here and in Europe, and allows them to "beat" Israel over the head with all of the rhetoric they have built up against "Colonialism." By using this approach, They set the Israelis up as a bad guys, and the Palestinians as the good guys who are at the mercy of the evil colonialists, and the Palestinians therefore deserve to win out because they are the "Victims." Great way to win your argument. Get that "Straw Man" set up! The "Review" printed a few letters in reply to Judt's Feature Article. Inquiring minds will find them at: nybooks.com along with Judt's reply. Again, I strongly recommend that everyone here at least "Browse" these exchanges. Here is an excerpt from one of the replies. .....It would be hard to believe the insanities of Judt's latest article if one were not already familiar with them. It's just another rehash of the endless anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda of the European left (and some of the American left). Instead of offering your readers such analyses as this, would it not be simpler just to use the press releases helpfully supplied by the PLO propaganda office? We hear again that Israel is a "colonial" power (a particularly mindless perversion of well-known historical facts). Sharon is responsible for the "impasse" in the "peace process," for the terrorist campaigns, for the murder of moderate Palestinians by the PLO, and even (for God's sake) for creating anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab world......

To: JohnM who wrote (39610)	8/25/2002 9:31:58 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Treadmills of His Mind By MAUREEN DOWD Columnist The New York Times August 25, 2002 WASHINGTON — I don't know enough about what the president is up to on Iraq. But I know too much about what the president is up to on a run. "It's interesting that my times have become faster right after the war began," Mr. Bush tells Runner's World in an exclusive interview. "They were pretty fast all along, but since the war began I've been running with a little more intensity. It helps me to clear my mind." So the bad news is: we haven't caught Osama. The good news is: W.'s times have improved. "Usually I run six days a week," the magazine's leggy cover boy expounds. "When I don't run, I use an elliptical trainer, lift weights and stretch. But when I run, I run hard. On Sundays, if I'm at Camp David, I'll go for a hard morning run — these days about 20:30 to 20:45 for three miles on a tough course. . . . I try to go for longer runs, but it's tough around here at the White House on the outdoor track. . . . It's sad that I can't run longer. It's one of the saddest things about the presidency." Another one of the saddest things about this presidency is that it has no voice. The greatest president of the last century could not even walk, but he recognized that he had to talk — that if the people did not understand the reasons for his actions, they could not become his partners in history. About the grave crises facing us today, there is a deafening silence at the top. Mr. Bush's policies on the economy, the Middle East, North Korea and Iraq are obscure and even opaque, but his policy on physical fitness policy is crystal clear: "I expect the White House staff to be on time and sharp and to exercise." (Ask not what your abs can do for you. . . .) When it comes to running the country — as opposed to running 5-K's — Mr. Bush owes his reticence to a mixture of insecurity and hauteur. Dick Cheney owes his reticence only to hauteur. The president won't speak clearly, and the vice president won't speak to anybody whose check to the Republican National Committee hasn't cleared. Of course, they might not want to speak too clearly since many of their true positions on corporate America (go easy), the environment (pillage) and health care (help drug companies) don't comport with what many Americans say they want. This summer, while the administration has been scaring jittery Americans about Saddam's chemical, biological and nuclear wantonness, the president has given few interviews. He has granted one-on-ones only on topics like running and brush-clearing, designed to burnish his image as a Reaganesque frontiersman. Usually, such lifestyle features are meant to humanize a tough leader. But with W., we hear more about the soft stuff than the hard stuff. He's all slaw, no ribs. In Crawford, Scott Lindlaw, an Associated Press reporter, was permitted to watch Mr. Bush wield a chain saw on cedars — "Oh, baby!" the president cried — and jog at dawn. "Bush does not like chitchat when he jogs," Mr. Lindlaw wrote. "Spotting a herd of cattle, he says simply, `Bovine.' Minutes pass before he says another word." At the risk of sounding feline, I must say that "bovine" leaves me supine and is not fit for "Nightline," much less "Frontline." In California on Friday, the president delivered the Delphic news that his policy on Iraq would become clear "as time goes on." And, oh, yes, Saddam is a threat. That is so vague, even Saddam would agree with it. The president disingenuously accuses the press of churning up trouble about Iraq. It was the Bushies themselves who churned up trouble about Iraq here and abroad — revving things up too soon, before they knew exactly what they wanted to do (and before Gen. Karl Rove starts the 2004 campaign). Slapping on war paint before they had a war plan. Bush senior did coalition building. Junior does anti-coalition building, knitting together a coalition of allies that are opposed to his ideas. We don't know what sort of war matériel the Pentagon is shipping to the Persian Gulf, but we do know the president ships his treadmill everywhere he goes. "Even when I travel, there's always a treadmill in my room," he says. "I have a treadmill on Air Force One. On long trips — for example, when I went to Europe recently — I ran for 90 minutes on the flight over there. When I came back from China, I ran on the flight." Who says the president isn't focused on his foreign trips? nytimes.com