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

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 8:20:38 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bush's fear of fear itself By Ellen Goodman Columnist The Boston Globe 10/10/2002 THE NEWS CRAWLED across the bottom of the screen as a surreal footnote to the president's speech on Iraq. President offers federal help for victims of sniper shooting... Oliver North is 59... Audiences hunger for Hannibal as ''Red Dragon'' tops box office. Sometime between the news of soccer players unionizing and the Nobel Prize for medicine, the president made his case against a ''homicidal dictator.'' He warned the country that without action against Iraq, the United States would ''resign itself to fear.'' ''That is not the America I know,'' Bush said, lowering his voice, ''That is not the America I serve.'' And then he added: ''We refuse to live in fear.'' Were you surprised that he identified fear as the motive? This was not the first time in the last weeks that the president cited fear as the justification for preemptive war against Iraq. By now it seems that he has framed this rush to conflict, this forced political march, as a war to end all fear. When Americans asked, ''why now?'' the president answered, ''There's a reason. We have experienced the horror of Sept. 11.'' He cited the Al Qaeda terrorism of September 2001 as the reason for Iraqi war, October 2002. Indeed, that day expanded the horizons of our terrorized imagination. But when I listen to the rationale of fear, I wonder two things. Does this president believe that we can simply refuse to live in fear? Doesn't this commander-in-chief even suspect that war is equally - or perhaps more - fearful? The president and I are not far apart in age. Our grandparents lived through the disastrous war to end all wars. Our fathers served in World War II under Franklin Roosevelt, the man who listed the freedom from fear as one of four freedoms. We were freed, gratefully, from the fear of Nazism. But even that Good War, as it was dubbed, ended in a punctuation mark the shape of a mushroom cloud that hovered over our lives. Were Bush's childhood nightmares so different from the rest of his generation? How many times during the Cold War - the Cuban missile crisis, the Reagan ''evil empire'' era - did the minute hand on the nuclear clock move closer to midnight? How many frightening scenarios played out ''On the Beach'' and ''The Day After''? On Monday, the president tried to make the case that Saddam Hussein is ''unique.'' He skipped over Osama bin Laden and Iran and North Korea and all the other points in an evolving axis of evil. Do many of us believe that a war against Iraq would end all fear? Or that we can ''refuse to live in fear?'' I don't discount Saddam as a dangerous man. We saw it in Kuwait. We saw it in the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that were - by the way - disarmed by earlier teams of UN inspectors. We know it from his attempts to build nuclear weapons. We are rightly wary of his intent and watchful of his timing. We are right to urge a sluggish UN to return to a feisty role as inspector. But why doesn't the president also talk about the other fear - of war? This administration makes the worst-case scenario for Saddam as an imminent danger - one that demands immediate action even if we go it alone. But it makes the best-case scenario for war - forecasting a victory, a regime change, democracy all around. In fact, the president who speculates freely about what Saddam would do if he were unchallenged says little about what this ''homicidal dictator'' would do if he were cornered. The administration worries about innocent American civilians. But is it entirely impermissible to wonder about Iraq's innocent civilians? And while there is breathless talk of ''regime change,'' can we wonder about that next regime? In the midst of the talk of ''fear and war,'' I have also been listening to people grappling with ''justice and war.'' The ''just war'' conversation is not an ivory tower seminar among religious and academic folks who have never seen the barrel of a gun. It's a struggle to identify international moral standards. When is war right and when is it wrong? These standards have practical effects in the world. What troubles many who think about ''just war'' is the idea of a preemptive strike without convincing proof of an imminent threat. Last week, William Galston, a political theorist, asked rhetorically, ''How can we announce a new doctrine of preemption as the centerpiece of our foreign policy while insisting that it applies to us alone?'' What happens when fear becomes a guiding - or misguiding - principle of war for every country? That's the fear we can refuse to live with. Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 8:45:06 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Tek - I have taken a couple of long looks at the Pollack book, and it is impressive. Well written, tight reasoning, sound argument. I think he has a bright future ahead of him.

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 8:49:37 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Am not yet halfway through. Lots of interesting facts in the book. Read this interesting bit last night: "in 1990, Iraq built a workable nuclear weapon. All it lacked was the fissile material. Iraq has natural uranium deposits, so it does not need to import uranium (although acquiring already enriched uranium would be a huge bonus). It also has the technology and the know-how to build a system capable of enriching that uranium to weapons grade. ... the U.S. intelligence community has estimated that it would take Iraq five to ten years from the start of a crash program to make one or more devices. If such a crash program started in 1999, Iraq might be able to develop such weapons by 2004." Much, much more there. Think we better not let his regime last till '04.

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 11:38:08 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

Pollack is up to #9 on Amazon; interesting. Curious if the folks who have looked at it have been impressed by it, and whether it's changed anybody's opinions (either way)... Geeez, not only an editor but an agent. ;-)

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 11:55:38 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Pollack is up to #9 on Amazon; interesting. Curious if the folks who have looked at it have been impressed by it, and whether it's changed anybody's opinions (either way)... You know I'm impressed. And agree with the argument that the Bush folk would best be served by making Pollock's book the poster for its campaign to save the world for democracy (excellent argument by Zakaria about the Wilsonian character of the Bush arguments, even the neocon arguments, in the New Yorker). As you will see, I've worked on these some since Tuesday. I'm beginning, though not finished, to see what frames of discussion I can bring to it. Those won't be factual grounds; I don't have and am unlikely to find those. At the moment, I'm thinking of the following framing issues. 1. One of the reasons the US now devotes so much money to military matters is the enormous shift in the political culture away from improving the lives of its citizens through serious health insurance, improving schools, improving policing resources, carrying its citizens through serious economic downturns of which we have yet to see any, at least since the early 70s, etc. So the framing argument which says we have such enormous military resources, while true, leaves the costs out. What are the tradeoffs? When the bill finally comes due on that, since much of the population still expects such but has been carried by a booming economy, what happens down the road? And, most important, all this is really about, at its most fundamental level, just what kind of country are we? Are we, as Hendrik Hertzberg argued in this week's New Yorker, on our way to becoming the cops of an international police state--I should hope not; or are we a model of how to maintain a humane social order? Which says something like "we'll help out of the rest if you need it." 2. The importance of oil resources. Much of the importance of the Iraqi intervention, if not all of it, is conditioned on the critical importance of cheap oil for the global economy. What is that likely to be like in 10 years? Will that still be true? Could we wait that long? Much to think about here. 3. Skidelsky's argument that the US simply does not have the will to stay around for Wolfowitz' dream of a secular democratic state in Iraq (assuming that statement from him was not pure political cynicism), does that completely undercut the argument to invade? 4. Assuming one can unlock the Bush preemptive doctrine from arguments to invade Iraq--the last speech argument that you make, that Iraq is unique, not an illustration of the pins in the bowling alley that need to be knocked down, does that make it more or less pressing. Back to the "can we wait" argument. Finally, I should add, as you know, but perhaps others do not, that the Pollock book is, far and away, the best information on the Iraqi options I've seen (which doesn't say a great deal, since I haven't seen a great deal, but is to say I recommend it, as they say, highly.) Moreover, I think it not only contains essential information one needs to think about Iraq, but, even more important, contains a methodological model for thinking about critical foreign policy issues. One could do worse than emulate that model.

To: tekboy who wrote (50740)	10/10/2002 11:18:11 PM
From: Jim DuBois	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

TB - I am about 2/3 of the way through it, and I would say that it is shifting my opinion. Picked it up after JohnM mentioned it a week or so ago, and have been slogging through it when I have time. I tend toward the liberal side, and was a long way from convinced that this war was a grand idea. I still question whether it is a grand idea, I see a number of pitfalls, both stated and implied in Pollack, and have serious doubts that those in power will do what is necessary if they succeed in deposing Saddam. However, I am coming over to Pollack's view that 'removal' is the least bad option, and the only practical one left. If W had made this sort of argument first, instead of announcing a war, and then searching for a reason, many more folks might be on his side. Back to lurking, and thanks for your posts. Most interesting. JD