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

To: LindyBill who wrote (70831)	2/1/2003 1:56:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Is George W. Bush an Imperialist? theamericancause.org By Patrick J. Buchanan January 29 2003 Though Iraq does not threaten us, has not attacked us, cannot defeat us, and does not want war with us, the United States is about to invade and occupy that country. If we do, it will be the first purely imperial war in our history, a war launched to reshape the domestic politics and foreign policy of another nation to conform to our own. A war to convert Iraq into a vassal state in the Middle East is something the War Party has sought for a decade. Sept. 11 gave it the opening to foist its agenda on an outraged and untutored president. But does George W. Bush share their vision? Has he, too, come to believe in the need for an American empire? Does he see in his mind's eye a U.S.-occupied Iraq – allied with Turkey, Israel and Jordan – ordering Syria's President Bashar Assad to pull his 35,000 troops out of Lebanon, so Sharon can go back in and settle scores with Hezbollah? Does he share the War Party's vision of an Iran surrounded by U.S. air power in Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia being ordered to destroy its missiles and nuclear reactors, or face U.S. attack? Sharon sees it. Anticipating a U.S. occupation of Iraq, he has called on us to smash Iran next. After that, Libya. But, again, the question remains: Has George W. Bush himself become an imperialist? Is the War Party dream of a Middle East and Persian Gulf where the United States is the hegemonic power that dictates to every capital and brooks no dissent now his vision as well? To be blunt, is there a Bush-Sharon Grand Strategy for a Middle East where all resistance to U.S. hegemony is broken and all opposition to Israel's occupation of Arab lands ends? After Iraq, the War Party will demand that Bush confront Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Will he? Or will he do as his father did after Desert Storm? Try to compel Israel to get off Palestinian lands and accede to a just peace with the Palestinian people? President Bush contends that all he demands of Iraq is surrender of its weapons of mass destruction. If that is true, as it was true that all his father demanded was Iraq's eviction from Kuwait, then there is simply an overlap of Bush policy and Israeli policy, and not some grand alliance or agreed-upon strategic agenda. Only after U.S troops enter Baghdad, however, will we learn the answers to these questions. But if Bush is not an imperialist, why are we about to invade Iraq? Bush's case for war: Saddam is a murderous tyrant with a grudge against America who has gassed his own people and has weapons of mass destruction that will be used on us, or his neighbors, or given to terrorists. Let us disarm Iraq while we can, lest we confront a situation in the Gulf identical to what we confront on the Korean peninsula: one of the world's most dangerous dictators wielding the world's most dangerous weapons. The case against war: Iraq had no role in the anthrax attack or 9-11. No terrorist attack of the last decade is traceable to Iraq. Iraq has invited in U.N. inspectors and told us to send CIA agents to accompany them. Not since 1990 has Iraq attacked a neighbor. No matter how evil Saddam may be, he has been contained, and none of his neighbors fear him or want us to invade. Moreover, Saddam has three or four doubles who travel with him in a fleet of Mercedes, and he sleeps in a different bed every night. This is not a martyr – this is a survivor. Why would he attack a superpower when it would mean the certain destruction of him, his sons, his dynasty, his legacy, his monuments and his palaces, leaving him in the history books, not as another Saladin, but as the dumbest Arab of them all? My view: When George Bush began his fulminations about the Axis of Evil, pre-emptive strikes and "regime change," he had not thought it all through, but has now become a prisoner of his own oratory. After all that bellicosity, he simply cannot be the second George Bush to send an army to the Gulf and order it home with Saddam still in power. And with all those troops over there primed for war, would they not mock a commander in chief who declares that Hans Blix will do the job? As of today, it would take greater courage for George Bush not to go to war than to go to war. And so, unless Saddam departs or is ousted by the Ides of March, we are going to war. The War Party, it would appear, wins this round.

To: LindyBill who wrote (70831)	2/1/2003 2:56:05 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

Traub's views are very well know. Note that he doesn't address the segregated public school failure in this country. Par for the course.

To: LindyBill who wrote (70831)	2/4/2003 2:24:56 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Guilt of the Church theatlantic.com [ Somewhat peripherally on affirmative action and lord knows how many other semi-off topic things, you might enjoy this one, Bill. Goldhagen finds those pusillanimous Germans morally superior to the Catholic Church, among other provocative statements. My understanding this article and from other reviews is that Goldhagen proposes fairly deep theological revision for the Catholic Church, which I find somewhat of an amusing contrast to the spirit of JPII, but that's another story. There's moral clarity, and then there's moral clarity, I guess. Couple excerpts: ] Goldhagen maintains a stern tone throughout A Moral Reckoning; he places the Church on trial and simultaneously plays the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury. His emphasis, though, is always on repair, and he is quick to point out successful cases of moral reckoning within and outside the Church. The most unexpected example he puts forward is Germany, the nation whose citizens he blasted in Hitler's Willing Executioners. Modern Germany, in Goldhagen's view, is the perfect role model for the Catholic Church, a powerful institution that has undergone genuine soul searching and purged itself of negative tendencies. "Germans," he writes, "have replaced core doctrines of racism, anti-Semitism, and hatred with the Enlightenment doctrines of universalism, tolerance, and the desire for peace.... Except among fringe elements, Nazism is dead. It will not be resurrected." . . . (interviewer) It does seem, though, that Catholics can write about this subject in a way that might be more palatable to many people. When John Cornwell wrote Hitler's Pope he could say, "I'm a Catholic. I went into this research wanting to exonerate Pope Pius XII, and I was dismayed to find that he was guilty." (Goldhagen) Well, then, I went into this research wanting to facilitate repair. The book is really a very hopeful book. I wrote it because I think repair is possible. And the book is not just about the Church. I wrote in the book and say to people all the time, "Apply the components and principles of moral reckonings that my book develops to other instances. Apply it to the United States and its unfulfilled debt of repair to African-Americans." I went into this project thinking, "I want good to emerge from this." (interviewer) Give us an example of how we could apply your model of moral reckoning here in the U.S. to help make amends for slavery. (Goldhagen) People often talk about the horrors of slavery. But they ignore the hundred-plus years of history between the end of slavery and today, including the whole Jim Crow era. Segregation is not that far in the past, and its crimes were vast. Political institutions and the people supporting them were engaged in a system of violent oppression that went on for a hundred years after slavery. Who talks about it in this way? I'll give you an example. I was lecturing a few years ago at Furman University in South Carolina. The next morning, I was at a breakfast with the honors students. Most of the students were southerners. They were all very interested in what Germans today think of the past, what they've done and not done. I said, "These questions are good ones, but you might look closer to home. How many of you have ever asked your parents what they were thinking and doing during the civil-rights period?" Not a single one of them had. Here were these kids so focused on Germany, which is fine—the Holocaust obviously looms large in the public's imagination. But none of them had ever spoken with their own parents about what their parents' or grandparents' stances were during this period. The first principle in my book is to tell the full truth, not just the macro-sociological truth, but to lay out in detail what people were doing. What was going on in communities? How many people from the South today know what was being done to their African-American neighbors, to the parents and grandparents of their friends? The truth hasn't been told in front of people's faces. In South Carolina, they still have statues of the architects of segregation in front of the statehouse. This is just an appalling situation. Then take my second principle: fight the continuing effects of the harm. What is the ongoing tangible harm done to African-Americans? It's enormous. The economic disparities between whites and blacks have a lot to do with that harm. A lot of things need to be transformed so that no further harm is done. The way whites treat blacks is still far from perfect, but those who govern this country have by and large declared everything finished. We need to start at square one and think about all these issues.