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

To: MSI who wrote (5774)	9/5/2002 6:30:12 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Countdown to a Collision Lead Editorial The New York Times September 5, 2002 We were heartened by President Bush's promise yesterday to seek Congressional approval for any American action against Iraq, and that he plans to make his case to the world at a speech at the United Nations next Thursday. Those steps are critical, but only a beginning. Mr. Bush sounded like a man preparing the nation for war. He never said so explicitly, but by declaring that "doing nothing" about Iraq "is not an option," Mr. Bush made clear he was now moving toward a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. The president left unaddressed most of the hard questions about Iraq, including the pivotal issue of why Baghdad supersedes all other foreign threats, why it so urgently requires American intervention and the potential sacrifice of American and Iraqi lives. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have been pounding the war drums without ever spelling out the precise nature of the Iraqi threat or why "regime change" is mandatory now when it was not deemed necessary only a year or two ago — and was ruled out by Mr. Bush's father in 1991. Last week Mr. Cheney ridiculed the idea of sending international arms inspectors back to Iraq, but a few days later Secretary of State Colin Powell said inspectors should return. Mr. Bush seems to realize that he has a lot of work to do if he hopes to present a more coherent policy when he addresses the United Nations. Simply saying that Mr. Hussein is "stiffing the world" — Mr. Bush's photo-op phrase of the day yesterday — won't do. The time for teasing hints about Iraq's arsenal of unconventional weapons has passed. If Washington knows that Mr. Hussein is on the brink of developing nuclear weapons, Mr. Bush should provide evidence. If the president believes Mr. Hussein is in league with Al Qaeda and other terror groups, he must describe the links. Support from the U.N. Security Council for any American attack is essential, and Mr. Bush's speech next week should be a start along that road, not a mere symbolic stab at consultation. Mr. Bush will also invite fierce international opposition if he tries to move directly to military action without first seeing if U.N. inspectors can return to Iraq with a free hand. As Mr. Bush said yesterday, the core concern on Iraq is to ensure that Baghdad complies fully with the disarmament provisions of the Security Council cease-fire resolution that ended the Persian Gulf conflict. War isn't necessarily the only way to achieve that goal, and it certainly isn't the preferred way. On the domestic front, Mr. Bush has now promised to send his top aides to upcoming Congressional hearings about Iraq. That should be the opening of a searching inquiry about Iraq policy, not the starter's gun for an election-year dash to grab credit for supporting the president on a high-profile national security issue. So far, the silence of Democrats in particular has been deafening. Mr. Bush is moving on a fast track, with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain headed for discussions at Camp David this weekend and the president working the phones to consult with other foreign leaders. A decision point seems to be coming soon. As the countdown begins, Mr. Bush must be mindful that the terror attacks a year ago did not give him a license to wage war in Iraq. He will have to earn that. These new steps toward consultation are welcome, but they do not substitute for a comprehensible Iraq policy, much less make the case for war. nytimes.com

To: MSI who wrote (5774)	9/5/2002 7:17:46 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

A lesson from Kabul On Iraq policy, Bush should learn from experience in Afghanistan. By Trudy Rubin Columnist The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Wed, Sep. 04, 2002 One of the many murky mysteries about Bush policy towards Baghdad is what would happen on the day-after-Saddam. Someone will have to take responsibility for rebuilding a broken Iraq. Someone must set up a new government and prevent chaos or ethnic division of the country. If the United States takes the Iraqi despot out by itself - that someone will be Uncle Sam. Is the Bush team ready or willing? This administration has been notoriously hostile from its inception to involvement in "nation-building." It was far more gung-ho about dumping the Taliban than taking the lead in Afghan reconstruction. In fact, the Bush team's irresponsibility in Kabul gives some clues about its likely behavior in Baghdad. Since the fall of Kabul, the administration's prime focus has been on chasing down the remnants of al-Qaeda. Bush officials handed off responsibility for rebuilding Afghanistan to the United Nations, and for policing Kabul to the small International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, along with top U.N. officials, begged U.S. officials to endorse an expansion of ISAF to police cities and roads outside Kabul. Without such an expansion, humanitarian aid workers are getting robbed, or raped, and reconstruction work is slowed. Equally important, without more security Karzai's government can't extend its authority beyond Kabul or collect taxes or customs duties. The power of regional warlords (some receiving U.S. support to chase al-Qaeda) grows at the expense of the center. Without revenue or security, the central government can't function. Should Afghanistan fragment, says James Dobbins, who served until recently as the Bush administration's envoy for Afghanistan, "it could become the host for new threats we can't easily predict." So why did the Bush administration oppose the expansion of ISAF? Because it wanted to focus on hunting al-Qaeda, and because the Pentagon would have had to provide communications and airlift for a bigger peacekeeping force. The Bush team, instead, said it would train an Afghan army. But that will take years and would require the administration to pressure key Afghan warlords (including allies) to get out of the way. The good news is that the Pentagon seems to have recognized its policy is counter-productive. Last week Pentagon officials said expanding ISAF may be necessary to help secure the country and to enable U.S. forces to leave sooner. (U.S. officials also said they would press lagging international aid donors to cough up their pledges to Karzai.) Finding more nations to volunteer troops for peacekeeping may be tough. But senior U.N. officials tell me it can be done - if the Bush administration puts muscle behind the effort, and provides logistical backup. These officials would like the international force to patrol several Afghan cities, and set up rapid reaction units to chase bandits. The best option might be for the Pentagon to take command of the force, even if it doesn't supply the manpower. Whether the administration really shifts gears on ISAF remains to be seen. Nation-building in Iraq, however, would be an undertaking that dwarfs what's needed by Afghans. If the administration attacks Baghdad alone, it probably would be left to do, and fund, the rebuilding alone - without international or U.N. assistance. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq has oil and an educated populace, but the depredations of Saddam Hussein and years of sanctions have left it broken. It has no tradition of democracy or history of stability. The United States will have to deal with Kurds who want their own federal state and a share of Iraq's oil, with Iraqi Shiites who want to wrest power away from an Arab Sunni minority. If the United States invades and throws its weight around, it will be resented as an imperial overlord; if it invades and quits too soon, it may leave behind chaos that undermines the whole region. One thing is sure: If the White House can't meld military strikes and "nation-building" in Afghanistan, it won't be able to do so in Baghdad. So, in effect, Pentagon policy in Kabul is a test case on how the administration is likely to perform in post-Saddam Iraq. "American prestige is at stake," says Dobbins, now a senior official at the Rand Corporation. "The administration must demonstrate it is capable not just of knocking down but of building up." philly.com

To: MSI who wrote (5774)	9/5/2002 8:01:44 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Successes and failures, post-Sept. 11 By Pat M. Holt Commentary > Opinion The Christian Science Monitor from the September 05, 2002 edition WASHINGTON – With the war on terror nearing its first anniversary, this is a good time to take stock: What have we accomplished? What mistakes have we made? What lessons have we learned? What do we do next? On the positive side, we have disrupted, if not destroyed, the Al Qaeda leadership. We have brought about a badly needed regime change in Afghanistan, but at a heavy price. Much of the country lies in ruins from 20 years of war. The cost of rebuilding will run into billions and take years. The Bush administration has often expressed its skepticism about nation-building, but in this case American responsibility is more direct. All of South Central Asia desperately needs a model of democratic stability. Even if we fail, we should at least try to turn Afghanistan into such a model. In a recent interview with the BBC, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that morality requires us to invade Iraq. There is a greater moral obligation to help Afghanistan. A costly mistake in Afghanistan was to allow much of Al Qaeda, perhaps Osama bin Laden himself, to escape to Pakistan. There is no guarantee this could have been prevented, but it would have been less likely if the United States had committed more of its own ground troops to sealing the Afghan-Pakistan border around Tora Bora. Instead, the US relied on bribe-prone Afghans of uncertain loyalty. This mistake arose from an aversion to risking American casualties. The Bush administration has to accept that if it is going to fight a war, American soldiers are going to get killed, regardless of the fancy high-tech weapons in our arsenal. There seems to have been a dispersion of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers not only to Pakistan but also to other surrounding countries, so that there may be more terrorists today than before the war. There are terrorists in Palestinian areas who no doubt sympathize with Al Qaeda without being part of it. The Arab-Israeli and Kashmir disputes have gotten more, not less, violent. It is in Al Qaeda's interest to encourage this. Aggravating either conflict would make things worse for the United States. While we must continue our efforts to identify and contain or eliminate Al Qaeda, we need to think ahead about our long-term policy toward Islam and the world. Our policies should be aimed at bringing Islam into Western society, following the model of Japan after World War II. In order to do this, and especially to improve our position in the world generally, we need friends and allies. It avails us naught to be the only superpower with a military establishment and an economy towering above all others if we are viewed as the neighborhood bully. The Bush administration has been slow to recognize this. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," the president proclaimed in September 2001, sounding like John Foster Dulles during the cold war. This is a black-and-white view of the world, and the world is not like that. The last year has made starkly clear what was never far below the surface, and this is a rift in the administration reminiscent of the rift in the Carter administration between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The president's policy seems to be to let the vice president and the secretary of defense appeal to his core conservative supporters and the secretary of state appeal to moderates and liberals. He has no more urgent task than to assert his mastery of his foreign-policy team so that it speaks with one voice. President Bush has also developed an exaggerated vision of presidential powers. This is typical of presidents. It will eventually lead him into trouble with Congress and the American people. See the example of President Johnson in Vietnam. The issue is not whether the president has authority or power to invade Iraq on his own; the issue is whether it is good politics. The answer is an emphatic no, and the consultation with Congress had better not be pro forma. Leading the parade in enlarging executive power is Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is well on his way to becoming the worst attorney general since A. Mitchell Palmer in the Wilson administration. If it were not for a stubborn federal judiciary, the Constitution would be in tatters in the Justice Department shredding machine. __________________________________________________ • Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. csmonitor.com

To: MSI who wrote (5774)	9/5/2002 11:08:40 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Impeach Shrub? I'm for that. I'm not sure incompetence is fitting grounds for that, but what the hell,let's do it anyway. Maybe for impersonating a president. (Altho, I did think he handled the first few months of 9/11 well.) Yeah, we have to do the administration, 'cuz otherwise it is Pres. Cheney. Ya think maybe Shrub picked him to prevent assassination attempts? Bring back the pres and veep in exile, as Lieberman likes to call himself. Maybe we can impeach the 5 justices who screwed us, too. democRAT I'm afeared that one of these daze, we will be reading headlines like "France/Russia/Japan/whomever calls US rouge nation, part of Axis of Evil. Citing MWD of every sort, demands regime change". We have never really launched a war ( excepting of course, Panama, Grenada, etc), but those were pretty small potatoes. We will be violating everything we have stood for, and the world ain't gonna take too kindly to that. I know lots of folks think we can do what we want, 'cuz no one can challenge us, but... militarily, if they are willing, the rest of the world could take us down in nuclear suicide, and, economically, if they got a collective boycott going, as we do with Cuba... Somebody on one of these boards says when the big dog leads, the rest of the pack has to follow. Uh uh; they can all turn on a mad (alpha)dawg, and pick a better leader.