Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: jcky who wrote (57443)	11/16/2002 7:48:50 PM
From: Neeka	Respond to of 281500

This amounts to supplying your enemy with ammunition, generally recognized as a tactical error. And I think that is the bottom line. Although IMO Bill Moyers is way too radical, he none the less has some interesting information available at his PBS forum NOW. M Gun land pbs.org

To: jcky who wrote (57443)	11/16/2002 10:53:23 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Shibley Telhami (and others) on Iraq faculty.maxwell.syr.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought you all might be interested in this article involving Dr. Shibley Telhami, University Lecturer on November 5th. Thursday, September 26, 2002 'Realist' Foreign-Policy Scholars Denounce Push to Attack Iraq By DAVID GLENN A military attack on Iraq would be a profound and costly mistake, declare 33 scholars of international relations in a statement that is to appear as an advertisement in The New York Times. The statement argues that the Iraqi regime can be contained through traditional mechanisms of deterrence, and charges that "war with Iraq will jeopardize the campaign against Al Qaeda by diverting resources and attention from that campaign and by increasing anti-Americanism around the globe." The statement's principal authors -- John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland at College Park, and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University -- are prominent figures in the "realist" school of foreign-policy studies. Realists embrace what they say is a hardheaded analysis of power, and they tend to be skeptical of the optimistic claims made by liberal advocates of international law. "There's this conception out there that because realists believe that force must be used, and that war is sometimes inevitable, that therefore we support every war. That's completely erroneous," said Mr. Telhami in an interview. The statement argues that: There is no evidence that the Iraqi regime is in league with Al Qaeda. The Iraqi regime would not dare use nuclear weapons, because it fears retaliation from the United States or Israel. A war in Iraq could be very costly in terms of U.S. casualties and regional instability. Postwar Iraq would be extremely difficult to occupy and govern. "John [Mearsheimer] and Steve [Walt] polled people in the mainstream of international relations, and found almost unanimous opposition to an attack on Iraq," said Mr. Telhami. "That's when we decided to prepare a statement." The New York Times advertisement, which cost more than $30,000, was paid for by the signatories and by other individual contributors. "What we tried to do here," said Mr. Mearsheimer in an interview, "was to restrict the list to scholars who focus on international-security affairs, and to scholars who believe that power matters in international politics -- that it's sometimes necessary for the United States to go to war to defend its national interests. This is not a group that could be identified as left-wing or dovish." Indeed, one of the signers, Randall L. Schweller, an associate professor of political science at Ohio State University, emphasized in an interview that he is a Republican. "I don't like the idea that this [advertisement] might be used against Bush," he said. "I'd like to be able to support the president on this. But I think we have our hands full with Al Qaeda, and I think there will be terrible ramifications from an Iraq war no matter how well things go" for the military. The statement is likely to face fierce criticism from more-hawkish scholars of international relations. When shown a copy of the text, Robert J. Lieber, a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University, said that the statement's authors "are very bright guys who have had a lot to say about world affairs, but I disagree with them strenuously about this particular question." "There's an assumption here about containment and deterrence which I think is fundamentally flawed," said Mr. Lieber. "The kind of deterrence that operated during the cold war between Moscow and Washington cannot safely be assumed to operate in the case of Saddam. We know that Saddam has acted in ways that are rash and self-destructive, and that are not neatly subsumed under rational deterrence-theory types of calculations. He has attacked four of his neighbors. He has forgone roughly $150-billion in oil revenue [because of United Nations sanctions] simply in order to maintain his weapons program. In 1990, after the Kuwait invasion and the U.S. assembled a coalition, if Saddam were the sort of rational, calculating figure that the authors [of the statement] assume, he would have withdrawn his forces from Kuwait and left us holding the bag." Mr. Telhami, however, declared that it is "nonsense" to argue that the Iraqi regime is immune to deterrence. "It's a ruthless regime, but it isn't suicidal," he said. "During the gulf war, we knew Iraq had chemical weapons, and our intelligence estimated that they could have killed as many as 10,000 U.S. soldiers with them. Why didn't they use them? Because they knew that it would be the end of Baghdad." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------