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

To: TigerPaw who wrote (7363)	9/25/2002 1:36:43 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Gore's surprising act of leadership against Iraq war By Robert Kuttner Columnist The Boston Globe 9/25/2002 AL GORE, remarkably, has stepped into a leadership vacuum and said several things that most congressional Democrats may well believe but have been too fearful to utter. Gore, speaking Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, warned that unilateral action against Saddam Hussein would ''severely damage'' the more urgent war on terrorism and ''weaken our ability to lead the world.'' Gore declared that the president has turned the broad reservoir of good will for America ''into a deep sense of misgiving and even hostility.'' In a pointed dig at President George W. Bush's go-it-alone cowboy rhetoric, he added, ''If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first.'' Now this is extremely interesting. For starters, it is out of character for the cautious and generally hawkish former vice president. Gore has lately returned to politics, sort of, but until now he has avoided frontally attacking Bush. He has at last chosen to do so, at a moment when the president, swaddled in the flag, is widely seen as beyond criticism. Did Gore do his own polling and discover what many members of Congress suspect based on their mail - that public support for this war is seemingly broad but very shallow? Was he trying to outflank potential rival Senator John Kerry, who has won praise for a thoughtful critique of Bush's policy? Did Gore, who often made abrupt shifts during the 2000 campaign, just impulsively decide to throw a ''Hail Mary'' pass? Or, perhaps, was he seized with an attack of principle? It almost doesn't matter. The party's standard bearer for 2000 - who got more votes than George W. Bush - has now made it safe for Democrats to express serious doubts about this reckless war. Gore, perhaps in spite of himself, has actually exercised that rarest of qualities in contemporary politics - leadership. One can accuse Gore of many things, but being soft on defense is not one of them. He was one of a handful of Senate Democrats to support George Bush senior on the Gulf War in 1991. The fact is, public opinion is still fluid on Iraq. And if other Democrats follow Gore's lead, this could be a turning point. Jim Dyke, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, declared, rather lamely, that to him, Gore sounded more like ''a political hack than a presidential candidate.'' But that just won't wash. Serious questions about the wisdom of Bush's Iraq policy are being raised publicly by most of our allies and privately by many of our generals and even by some Republicans. Bush's Iraq strategy is cynically designed to change the subject - actually two subjects: terrorism and the economy. It immediately takes the spotlight off our less than stellar antiterrorism crusade and our shaky success in Afghanistan, and it makes it almost impossible for Democrats to wage the 2002 midterm election on pocketbook issues. The strategy has deftly whipsawed Democrats. Some, such as the House Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt, and the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, want to get a quick, slightly toned down resolution of support for the president behind them and then go back to talking about the economy (if anyone will listen). That way Bush can't pillory them for being unpatriotic. But others see the nation pursuing a disastrous course. Many Democrats in Congress say privately (and a few publicly) that they've heard nothing in the confidential intelligence briefings to indicate that Saddam Hussein is more of a threat now than in years past. Congressional Democrats got a closed-door briefing from a worried and extremely skeptical Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's hawkish national security adviser. This morning Democrats are scheduled to have a another confidential briefing from one of the party's foreign policy eminences, Richard Holbrooke, who is said to harbor grave doubts. If the Democrats can work up their nerve to schedule some hearings before a resolution of war is gaveled through, they and the American public will hear more. I've never been a great fan of Gore. He kept changing his mind so often in the campaign that he lost a race for the presidency that he should have won. He was oddly AWOL last year when Bush was claiming a mandate for extremist policies that he never earned. Gore is often described as one of the most ambitious, calculating, and poll-driven people in American politics. But even if he did the right thing partly for the wrong reasons, this has to be one of Gore's finest moments. Now let's see if his party follows his brave lead. _______________________________________________________ Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com

To: TigerPaw who wrote (7363)	9/25/2002 3:43:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Online special: Molly Ivins Comments on The New 'National Security Strategy'... By MOLLY IVINS Columnist Creators Syndicate Sept. 23, 2002, 6:25PM AUSTIN -- No. This is not acceptable. This is not the country we want to be. This is not the world we want to make. The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood. I rarely use the word "we" because it's so arrogant for one citizen to presume to speak for all of us -- and besides, Americans famously can't agree on the time of day. But on this one, I know we want to find a way so that killing is the last resort, not the first. We would rather put our time, energy, money and even blood into making peace than making war. "The National Security Strategy of the United States -- 2002" is repellent, unnecessary and, above all, impractical. Americans are famous for pragmatism, and we need a good dose of common sense right now. This Will Not Work. All the experts tell us anti-Americanism thrives on the perception that we are arrogant, that we care nothing for what the rest of the world thinks. Even our innocent mistakes are often blamed on obnoxious triumphalism. The announced plan of this administration for world domination reinforces every paranoid, anti-American prejudice on this earth. This plan is guaranteed to produce more terrorists. Even if this country were to become some insane, 21st century version of Sparta -- armed to teeth, guards on every foot of our borders -- we would still not be safe. Have the Israelis been able to stop terrorism with their tactics? Not only would we not be safe, we would not have a nickel left for schools or health care or roads or parks or zoos or gardens or universities or mass transit or senior centers or the arts or anything resembling civilization. This is nuts. This creepy, un-American document has a pedigree going back to Bush I, when -- surprise! -- Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were at the Department of Defense and both such geniuses that they not only didn't see the collapse of the Soviet Union coming, they didn't believe it after they saw it. In those days, this plan for permanent imperial adventurism was called "Defense Strategy for the 1990s" and was supposed to be a definitive response to the Soviet threat. Then the Soviet threat disappeared, and the same plan re-emerged as a response to the post-Soviet world. It was roundly criticized at the time, its manifest weaknesses attacked by both right and left. Now it is back yet again as the answer to post-Sept. 11. Sort of like the selling of the Bush tax cut -- needed in surplus, needed in deficit, needed for rain and shine -- the plan exists apart from rationale. ` As Frances Fitzgerald points out in the Sept. 26 New York Review of Books, its most curious feature is the combination of triumphalism and almost unmitigated pessimism. Until last Friday, when the thing was re-released in its new incarnation, it contained no positive goals for American foreign policy, not one. Now the plan is tricked out with rhetoric like earrings on a pig about extending freedom, democracy and prosperity to the world. But as The New York Times said, "It sounds more like a pronouncement that the Roman Empire or Napoleon might have produced." In what is indeed a dangerous and uncertain world, we need the cooperation of other nations as never before. Under this doctrine, we claim the right to first-strike use of nuclear weapons and "unannounced pre-emptive strikes." That means surprise attacks. Happy Pearl Harbor Day. We have just proclaimed ourselves Bully of the World. There is a better way. Foreign policy experts polled at the end of the 20th century agreed the great triumph of the past 100 years in foreign policy was the Marshall Plan. We can use our strength to promote our interests through diplomacy, economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (which we dominate anyway) and free trade conditioned to benefit all. None of this will make Al Qaeda love us, but will make it a lot more likely that whoever finds them will hand them over. This reckless, hateful and ineffective approach to the rest of the world has glaring weaknesses. It announces that we intend to go in and take out everybody else's nukes (27 countries have them) whenever we feel like it. Meanwhile, we're doing virtually nothing to stop their spread. Last month, Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative had to pony up $5 million to get poorly secured, weapons-grade uranium out of Belgrade. Privatizing disarmament, why didn't we think of that before? The final absurdity is that the plan is supposed to Stop Change. Does no one in the administration read history? chron.com