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

To: LindyBill who wrote (49697)	10/6/2002 9:18:16 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

BUSH: A REAGAN DOLL WITH BOBBING HEAD By Richard Reeves Syndicated Columnist October 4, 2002 WASHINGTON -- My mail, like that of many members of Congress, has turned heavily against President Bush and his marching as to war in Iraq. That, I suppose, is to be expected because war fever is rising so quickly, epecially here in the war capital, that the idea that the man in the White House really means it is only now sinking in, in the calmer precincts of the United States. Mostly I get questions, and the most common one is how can this be happening without the rest of us having any say? My answers to those letters focus on the rise in presidential war-making powers that has resulted from the end of the draft and advances in the technology of battle. We have a volunteer military now, which means a professional military, and we have the capacity to inflict great damage from great distances with very little risk to our well-trained and well-equipped forces. This would not be happening if we still had a draft and the president had to go to the parents of America and ask for their children. Our kind of mass destruction takes only the few and the brave, with reserve forces used for non-combat transportation and supply services. So who's to complain about an attack? Not the Congress, which is even more influenced by flag-waving than the general public. Members of the House and Senate see themselves most at risk -- politically, not literally -- in this kind of warfare, so they gravitate to the safety of voting with the president, because he has more information. Right? Maybe he does. But he is not sharing it with the legislative branch, and that is just fine with most legislators. They can use ignorance as their escape hatch if things go badly. So what is on the president's mind? A question from Don Limbaugh in Portland, Ore., caught my attention: "Where does the Bush administration square up in terms of 'dangerousness'?" Is he Reagan dangerous? Is he McCarthyism dangerous? Is he Hitler dangerous?" My answer would be Reagan. This George Bush strikes me as a miniature Ronald Reagan, a head-bobbing doll in the back window, working from the Gipper's old playbook. On domestic politics, his timing and moves on the tax cut last year were almost exactly the same as Reagan's in 1981. On foreign policy, which Bush seems to think is military policy, Reagan knew a great deal more than Bush does, and the 40th president (and the American people of the early 1980s) knew a great deal more about the real nature and threat of totalitarian communism than any of us understand of the perils of this day. I have spent a lot of time, intellectually, with Ronald Reagan for the past year and more in researching a book on his presidency. I disagreed, then and now, with much of what he believed and did, but he understood America, and he knew most of what he needed to know and understand about its enemies. Reagan loyalists, many of them now serving Bush, exaggerate his role and achievements in the ending of the Cold War and the collapse of communism, but Ronald Reagan did have a personal sense of history. I doubt that Reagan, if he were still well, would make grand claims about winning wars and changing history. I think he would say now what he thought then, sometimes in a simplistic way: that the American system was infinitely stronger than the Soviet system, and that the decline of communism was only a matter of timing. What the "Great Communicator" communicated so effectively was a condensed, homogenized and popular sense of where Americans had been and where he wanted to take them next. More than I thought at the time, Reagan was a patient man who did know what he was trying to do. He had a sense of American strength and the opposition's weaknesses. He knew that if America prevailed, it would be by example, not by conquest and occupation. Besides, Reagan was a lucky guy. I don't see any sense of history in George Bush, so I can just hope he has some of the Gipper's luck. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRECTION: In a recent column I incorrectly said that Sen. Tom Daschle was not a veteran. In fact, he served three years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. I regret the error. COPYRIGHT 2002 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Originally Published on October-04-2002 uexpress.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (49697)	10/6/2002 4:01:19 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

What an apt word, Bill...."Hollow"....and that is the problem with so many of the Senate, IMO....Many only stand for something depending on what is the political situation at the moment. It is no wonder the American people seem ambivalent....their political so called leaders, are marshmallow fluff.

To: LindyBill who wrote (49697)	10/7/2002 12:11:58 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 281500

The question then will be if he will have his way with the UN. The argument that he is using, saying that we will move without the UN if they refuse him, is a very strong one. Much stronger than I realized it would be six months ago. I am beginning to believe he will get a usable Resolution from them. I think you're right. The issue looks to now be merely "one resolution or two?" Derek

To: LindyBill who wrote (49697)	10/7/2002 3:19:35 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; Re: "One of the Beltway types, I think it was Brooks, said that Daschle was "Hollow" on Iraq. He had no real fixed position, except to oppose Bush if he could." This is true, but it is also standard politics. Whenever the other guy gets his jewels in a jam, the opposition takes credit for not having done it. They always say that they would have done it differently, even if they were in full support when the leader asked for advice. Nixon used the same strategy against Johnson / Humphrey in 1968, as the Vietnam war was starting to unravel. Nixon's complaint was that Johnson had not pursued peace enough, and that he simultaneously had not ramped the war up fast enough. But Ho Chi Minh was only willing to talk peace in the event of a halt in the bombing. -- Carl