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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (43084)	9/10/2002 4:36:31 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Government by Op-Ed washingtonpost.com In which Michael Kinsley reveals that, despite the abundant local evidence, Colin Powell has managed to outfox Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, and Wolfowitz in the "leak to the bloviating pundits" game. It must be hell to disagree with Colin Powell. Powell and Vice President Cheney apparently disagree about Iraq. Cheney thinks that Saddam Hussein must be toppled and any further diddling is pointless. Powell thinks . . . well, something else. Cheney made his opinion known by articulating and defending it in a speech. Powell's view, if you read the papers literally, has spread by a mysterious process akin to osmosis. The secretary of state is "known to believe" or is pigeonholed by unnamed "associates" or (my favorite) has made his opinion known "quietly." And yet somehow, without an audible peep, Powell has managed to dominate the public debate about whether to make war against Iraq. How does he do it? Maybe, like dogs, State Department reporters can hear frequencies beyond the range available to the normal human ear. Or maybe, just maybe, Powell has made his case using the same basic method as Cheney -- that is, by opening his yap and letting words come out -- only doing so with small audiences of reliably discreet journalists rather than at a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. And so on. What a joke. Poor Kinsley's neocons have allegedly been outplayed at their own game of leakage. As if there aren't enough devoted neocons in the op-ed ranks to drown out any conceivable counteroffensive on that front. The war marketers better get on this case quick.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (43084)	9/10/2002 4:46:25 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Interesting overview of the Left's rather fractured reaction to 9/11 in the Nation. Some on the Left have rethought their positions; others have clung to the old verities: Unlike most Americans, leftists didn't have to ask the question "Why do they hate us?"--and not because of any glee that the chickens had come home to roost. The left press had spent the better part of the past two decades critiquing American policies that have fanned anger and resentment in the Arab and Muslim world. Yet the attacks also placed the left on the defensive. Although bin Laden represents a grisly perversion of anti-imperialism, the atrocities posed a challenge to the sentimental Third Worldism that has been a cornerstone of the radical left since the Vietnam era. "A lot of us came up in the period when the most imperialist actions were coming from the West," says Robin D.G. Kelley, a professor of Africana Studies at New York University. "I think anyone who supports some blind Third World unity has to think again now." The atrocities also exposed an intelligence failure on the left. For years, progressive writers had referred to terrorism in scare quotes, largely because security hawks and Israel lobbyists cynically applied the term to acts of indiscriminate violence by national liberation movements, and never to those by states. And while many feminists were decrying the Taliban long before President Bush discovered what a burqa was, some left-wing scholars had presented a sanitized image of Islamic fundamentalists as authentic populists, even as a potentially democratizing force in the Arab world. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? was the title of one highly praised study. Guess what the answer was. "This war is a real crisis for the left," says Katha Pollitt, "in that finally there is an enemy who has attacked us, as opposed to any enemy that's in our heads, and one that's completely unsympathetic to the goals of the left." The Left and 9/11 Adam Shatz thenation.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (43084)	9/10/2002 5:32:16 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks – indeed, they were among the first to condemn them – but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil. So Hizbullah is now an ally of the US? Boy, that's news to me. And of course they are not really terrorists, or as Fisk always says, "terrorists", because they condemned 9/11. How convenient. Tell it to the Marines. Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East – which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world – fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney – the arch-hawk in the US administration – and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey. Jinsa has a number of prominent people on its advisory board, mostly retired American officers. Naturally, Fisk makes it sound like a conspiracy of International Jewry. Yet in a backhanded way, I agree with Fisk, Bush's plans do fit in with Israel's hopes for the region, which are acceptance, peace, "normalcy", economic development and prosperity. You know, all that New Middle East stuff that Shimon Peres likes to go about. And what, may one ask, are the Arab plans for the region, that Fisk so evidently prefers? Don't destablize us, they say. We are "a powder keg of resentment and anger". We'll blow if you touch us. So the rest of the world should just leave us to stew in our own juice, sinking ever deeper in misery and backwardness, blaming now far-distant colonialism, America and Israel for all that ails us. If Al Qaeda strikes you again, btw, you brought it on yourselves, The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability and widespread violence Excuse me, is this supposed to be a plan? It hardly sounds like a good look-out for either us or them. Could it be that the Arabs doing the warning are the various "kings and dictators" of the region? Fisk said that the war in Afghanistan would lead to massive anti-Americanism (how he sympathized when pro-Taliban Afghans beat him up!) and a rising of the Arab street. Instead, the inhabitants of Kabul danced for joy and the Arab street stayed mum. I look forward to hearing what Fisk has to say when the same scenario is repeated in the streets of Baghdad.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (43084)	9/10/2002 5:54:51 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks – indeed, they were among the first to condemn them – but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil. On October 23, 1983, over two hundred Marines were killed by a Hizbollah bomb in Beirut. Stockman, how can you post such ridiculous stuff? Do you read it before launching it? Amazing that some people believe that Hizbollah is some sort of ally of the US. One of the worst pieces ever linked here.