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

To: Ilaine who wrote (46135)	9/22/2002 11:53:13 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi John - I have looked through recent speeches by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, and the phrase "immediate danger" doesn't come up. Hmm, I don't wish to take the time to read those speeches and thus to duplicate your work so here's what I'm responding to. The Bush folk argue that the UN must act quickly and the US Congress must act quickly because the threat permits of no delay. If the threat is not immediate, then delay is permissible, and the timing of the congressional resolution is only about politics. If so, that's definitely a negative. If the threat is not immediate, there is time for the UN to work through its procedures, to agree or not with the Bush folk, and the Bush folk respond. If it is imminent, then the Bush take-it-or-leave it strategy makes a bit of sense. I think, in both cases, it's more political than threat. I've made my case about the congressional business. I think the UN business is a different kind of politics but one that is quickly coming to look like politics because the Bush folk won't come clean on the imminent character of the danger. There is a second level of argument, which is that the danger, while not imminent, is no less real. That's the long term acquisition of wmd, including nukes. The problem the Bush folk have with that argument is that, by dropping the pressing character of the threat, they find themselves in serious debates about outcomes. Have they thought carefully about post-invasion Iraq? Etc. They don't wish to engage in that debate so they press back with the pressing character of the threat. I find Rumsfeld's position that we don't need evidence among the more objectionable arguments offered. Cheney says something like, trust us, we have evidence or we wouldn't be pushing it, but doesn't offer evidence. Rumsfeld says we don't even need evidence. If the debate stays at this level, we are all long term losers. However, we'll see what the Blair dossier has to offer next week. He does know how to bundle argument and evidence together, unlike the most of the Bush folk, apparently.