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

To: JohnM who wrote (70881)	2/1/2003 9:38:34 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Very puzzled. Us "Right Wingers" learn to be defensive, John. If we tell the world that the Emperor does have clothes on, we tend to get called "Racist," "McCarthyites" or worse.

To: JohnM who wrote (70881)	2/2/2003 4:32:18 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Who Has the Hot Rods? By MAUREEN DOWD Columnist The New York Times February 2, 2003 WASHINGTON — Colin Powell finally has the goods on the evil dictator. He has spy satellite photos of trucks pulling up to buildings in the outlaw regime when inspectors aren't around, lots of bustling activity around those metal rods for the nukes threatening civilization. Mr. Powell has all the evidence he needs to convince the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that we are justified in making a pre-emptive strike on North Korea. Only one hitch: President Bush doesn't want to attack North Korea; he wants to contain North Korea. He doesn't want to contain Iraq, he told reporters on Friday, because "after September the 11th, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water, as far as I'm concerned." Except when it comes to North Korea, where Condoleezza Rice has proposed a tailored containment that can "check Kim Jong Il." The Bush administration has made fuzzy evidence against Saddam Hussein sound scarier than it is, and scary evidence against Kim Jong Il sound fuzzier than it is. All week the Bushies did Cirque du Soleil contortions to show that we need to drop 3,000 precision bombs and missiles on Saddam's fedora right away because he might someday hook up with Al Qaeda and might someday cook up nuclear weapons. Not wanting to deflect attention from savaging Saddam, the administration played ostrich on North Korea until Friday, when the Navy sent Rummy an S.O.S. for more forces to spook the spooky Kim Jong Il. President Bush, during his press conference with Tony Blair, warned that Saddam had "weeks, not months" before facing U.S. wrath, even as Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that it would be "weeks and months" before North Korea could begin churning out nukes faster than the chocolates hurtling down Lucy's conveyor belt. Rattling off the diameters of nuclear parts, Bush aides argued that Mr. ElBaradei was wrong to say that Iraq's aluminum tubes were for making rockets, not nukes. Meanwhile, they claimed that the satellite evidence of Pyongyang's nuclear fuel rod activity was no big deal. Some Bush aides wanted to rush to declassify spy photos of Iraqi trucks but were in no hurry to show photos of those North Korean trucks pulling up to the Yongbyon nuclear complex. Mr. Powell will use intercepted conversations to prove that Iraq is deceiving the U.N. Newsweek reports that the conversations consist of snippets like "Move that" and "Can you believe they missed that?" So Iraq, lying about nascent nukes, cannot stand. But North Korea, brazenly proliferating nukes, can? Mr. Bush has a point: that Saddam might become a merchant of mass destruction to terrorists. North Korea is already one of the biggest dealers in the weapons bazaar, selling Scud parts to Yemen and missile technology to Pakistan and Iran. The one-legged Qaeda man who seems straight out of "The Fugitive" is part of an evidence bag on Iraq that is highly circumstantial. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi may have had something to do with the killing of the American diplomat Laurence Foley, but there is no proof that Mr. Zarqawi is working with the Iraqis. He may have left Baghdad two months before the murder. The president was asked pointedly by a British reporter if there was a tie between Saddam and the 9/11 hijackers. He did not claim one. Mr. Bush shouldn't reach for strained rationales. We're going to war against Saddam because we can. (If we go after Kim Jong Il, he could destroy Seoul.) We're going to war because conservatives will be happy only when they have a John Wayne ending to Desert Storm and make U.S. foreign policy less about realpolitik and more about muscularity and morality. We're going to war because we're a nation with a short attention span; we want to strike back at some enemy, and it is too hard to find Osama. (The Brits now say they and the U.S. knew Al Qaeda was working on a dirty bomb even before 9/11.) No one will miss Saddam. But as the administration inflates Iraq, it should not deflate other threats: North Korea, Al Qaeda, the deficit, the freaked economy and the woeful failure to secure the ports, skies and borders of America from attack. After Mr. Bush defenestrates Saddam and detangles Iraq's tribal chaos, Kim Jong Il and his six-pack of nukes will still be craving the American president's attention. nytimes.com

To: JohnM who wrote (70881)	2/2/2003 4:48:22 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Fighting smarter, not harder By Rob Asghar Editorial The Chicago Tribune Published January 31, 2003 Victory in the debate between American hawks and doves has been won by the hawks. This is bad news because our hawks are a scrawny bunch and our national security will suffer as a result To build a better hawk, let's go back to heyday of the Soviet empire. On a November afternoon in 1979, I and a few dozen other terrified teenagers took shelter in the locker room of our American government school in Islamabad, Pakistan. Classmates wailed as we hid from anti-American attackers who were shattering windows and wrecking the school grounds. We emerged unscathed, but we went home to learn that a large mob had destroyed the sprawling American embassy campus on the other side of town. The U.S. evacuated its citizens from Pakistan a few days later. I later wondered, "Why doesn't this sort of thing ever happen to the Soviets?" The best answer I could come up with then is the best answer I can come up with now: Because the Russians on their best days fought more skillfully than our noisiest hawks do--more ruthlessly, more stealthily, far more likely to scare away another attack. Soviet citizens and diplomats generally traveled the world free of harassment or threat. This is because of a simple reason: the godless communists could put the fear of God in others. They were "Machiavelli in motion," terrifyingly effective in protecting their interests. As an editor for leadership gurus who pontificate widely on the art of management, allow me to offer a speculative excerpt of what the great guru Machiavelli would say to a meeting of senior U.S. military officials: First, fight smarter, not harder. Don't kid yourself. You've got a struggling economy on your hands, you've got homeland security to worry about, and it's hard even to know which allies will be threats to you tomorrow. In other words, you can't invade every nation, you can't pre-empt every threat and you can't convert every rowdy and downtrodden citizenry into a liberal free-market democracy. So here's my solution: Go on about your business, live your lives--and promise massive retaliation whenever you're struck. Remember that concept? It kept both you and the Soviets in check for four decades. Some of your hawks wanted to pre-emptively bomb the USSR before its nuclear capability caught up to yours. But smarter hawks prevailed, and "mutually assured destruction" preserved order. Soberly threaten Saddam Hussein with the incineration of everything within five miles of him if he takes (or helps others take) American lives. He's crazy, but most crazy people are not suicidal. The only way he'll become a suicide bomber is if you back him into a corner. When you were attacked on Sept. 11, you should have bombed Afghanistan on Sept. 12, not waited weeks for opposition to mount. You should have followed the advice of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf--an excellent Machiavellian--who urged you to bomb quickly, then go underground and use your intelligence to round up terror suspects. A sensible leader inflicts damage quickly, all at once, as it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Better still, a quick limited strike would have been cathartic for your citizenry. Pick your battles wisely. Get your people ready for more anarchy to hit home. Retaliate hard, but remember that every other civilization became use to losing some citizenry here and there. Don't let sentiment dictate policy--if you avenged every single insult to your family you'd never get anything else done. And, dear hawks, don't be so deaf to the concerns of those Europeans and Arabs. After all, men must be cajoled or crushed; if you don't plan to crush them, then be respectful of them. Still, you'll find that your fickle European and Arab allies and semi-allies would find it far easier to swallow my approach than yours. _______________________________________________________ Rob Asghar is a freelance writer and editor based in Los Angeles Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune chicagotribune.com