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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (14847)	3/18/2003 12:36:18 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

War in the Ruins of Diplomacy Lead Editorial The New York Times March 18, 2003 America is on its way to war. President Bush has told Saddam Hussein to depart or face attack. For Mr. Hussein, getting rid of weapons of mass destruction is no longer an option. Diplomacy has been dismissed. Arms inspectors, journalists and other civilians have been advised to leave Iraq. The country now stands at a decisive turning point, not just in regard to the Iraq crisis, but in how it means to define its role in the post-cold-war world. President Bush's father and then Bill Clinton worked hard to infuse that role with America's traditions of idealism, internationalism and multilateralism. Under George W. Bush, however, Washington has charted a very different course. Allies have been devalued and military force overvalued. Now that logic is playing out in a war waged without the compulsion of necessity, the endorsement of the United Nations or the company of traditional allies. This page has never wavered in the belief that Mr. Hussein must be disarmed. Our problem is with the wrongheaded way this administration has gone about it. Once the fighting begins, every American will be thinking primarily of the safety of our troops, the success of their mission and the minimization of Iraqi civilian casualties. It will not feel like the right time for complaints about how America got to this point. Today is the right time. This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington's worst in at least a generation. The Bush administration now presides over unprecedented American military might. What it risks squandering is not America's power, but an essential part of its glory. When this administration took office just over two years ago, expectations were different. President Bush was a novice in international affairs, while his father had been a master practitioner. But the new president looked to have assembled an experienced national security team. It included Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, who had helped build the multinational coalition that fought the first Persian Gulf war. Condoleezza Rice had helped manage a peaceful end for Europe's cold war divisions. Donald Rumsfeld brought government and international experience stretching back to the Ford administration. This seasoned team was led by a man who had spoken forcefully as a presidential candidate about the need for the United States to wear its power with humility, to reach out to its allies and not be perceived as a bully. But this did not turn out to be a team of steady veterans. The hubris and mistakes that contributed to America's current isolation began long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. From the administration's first days, it turned away from internationalism and the concerns of its European allies by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdrawing America's signature from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Russia was bluntly told to accept America's withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Washington shortsightedly stepped backed from the worsening spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, ignoring the pleas of Arab, Muslim and European countries. If other nations resist American leadership today, part of the reason lies in this unhappy history. The Atlantic alliance is now more deeply riven than at any time since its creation more than a half-century ago. A promising new era of cooperation with a democratizing Russia has been put at risk. China, whose constructive incorporation into global affairs is crucial to the peace of this century, has been needlessly estranged. Governments across the Muslim world, whose cooperation is so vital to the war against terrorism, are now warily navigating between popular anger and American power. The American-sponsored Security Council resolution that was withdrawn yesterday had firm support from only four of the council's 15 members and was opposed by major European powers like France, Germany and Russia. Even the few leaders who have stuck with the Bush administration, like Tony Blair of Britain and José María Aznar of Spain, have done so in the face of broad domestic opposition, which has left them and their parties politically damaged. There is no ignoring the role of Baghdad's game of cooperation without content in this diplomatic debacle. And France, in its zest for standing up to Washington, succeeded mainly in sending all the wrong signals to Baghdad. But Washington's own destructive contributions were enormous: its shifting goals and rationales, its increasingly arbitrary timetables, its distaste for diplomatic give and take, its public arm-twisting and its failure to convince most of the world of any imminent danger. The result is a war for a legitimate international goal against an execrable tyranny, but one fought almost alone. At a time when America most needs the world to see its actions in the best possible light, they will probably be seen in the worst. This result was neither foreordained nor inevitable. nytimes.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (14847)	3/18/2003 1:32:09 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Kerry to Offer Security Proposals Democratic Hopeful, Criticizing Bush's Response, Has $50 Billion Plan By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 18, 2003 With the United States on the brink of war, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) will outline a series of steps today to increase homeland security, from the hiring of more police and firefighters and reorienting the role of the National Guard to the creation of a volunteer community defense force. The presidential candidate will recommend creation of a new domestic intelligence unit, saying that neither the FBI nor the administration's new agency for integrating and analyzing information about terrorist threats is sufficient to do the job. He will also offer measures to improve the federal public health service to combat bioterrorism. Kerry, who will make his recommendations in a speech today before the International Association of Fire Fighters, argues that President Bush has not done enough to protect the homeland, nor has the administration moved to tap the willingness of many Americans to contribute in some way to homeland defense in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "The federal government has provided too little support, provided too little leadership and provided too little vision for the common defense of our homeland," Kerry says, in a text of his prepared remarks that was made available to The Washington Post. The proposals follow many of the ideas offered earlier by other Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), long a proponent of a domestic intelligence agency, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who recently offered a $16 billion package to strengthen security at home. Kerry's package would cost an estimated $50 billion over five years, according to an aide. Many mayors and governors have complained that the administration and Congress have not provided promised funds to fight terrorism. Kerry calls for providing cities with the funds they have been promised but outlines several additional steps. He recommends restoring funding for the federal government's COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program started under former president Bill Clinton and says the government should budget enough to reach the original goal of putting an additional 100,000 police on the streets. Beyond that, he says, the government should fund a separate, new program to hire and equip as many as 100,000 new firefighters. To supplement those first responders, Kerry calls for doubling the size of the federal AmeriCorps volunteer program and providing those workers with emergency medical and other training to give the corps the additional mission of protecting local communities in the event of terrorism. Beyond that, he envisions a community defense service comprising hundreds of thousands of trained volunteers who would form what he describes as a cross between the civil defense program of World War II and a 21st-century neighborhood watch. Other proposals in the package include accelerated efforts to develop vaccines and antidotes for chemical and biological weapons and to apply advanced technology to provide medical personnel with real-time information on the outbreaks of disease, which he said will make it easier to identify bioterrorism. Kerry also calls for additional efforts to protect ports, bridges and tunnels. "America needs a new strategy for homeland security that asks Americans to do more and takes steps as big as the threats we face," Kerry says. © 2003 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (14847)	3/18/2003 10:42:14 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Iraq's New Chief? Jay Garner could soon be in charge of 23 million Iraqis. By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum FORTUNE Monday, March 17, 2003 fortune.com <<...Jay Garner is about to become the most important businessman you've never heard of. On leave from defense contractor L-3 Communications, he's on track to be the de facto governor of 23 million Iraqis after what looks like an inevitable U.S. invasion. Garner, 64, is an almost perfect fit for the job. As an Army general in 1991, he helped lead Operation Provide Comfort, which delivered food and shelter to Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf war. He became well-known in military circles for espousing the then-unorthodox view that the military should be used as a "merciful instrument in shaping future humanitarian operations."...>> <<...But revitalizing Iraq will depend on two factors beyond Garner's control: the ability of U.S. soldiers to pacify Saddam's troops and the willingness of allies to assist in reconstruction (the tab could reach $20 billion a year, experts say). The military part of the cleanup will be led by Franks's Arabic-speaking deputy, Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid. The rest--feeding the hungry, fixing the infrastructure, and creating a democratic government--will fall to Garner...>>

To: American Spirit who wrote (14847)	3/26/2003 6:00:26 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

A not-so-neighborly feud over the war By Scot Lehigh Columnist The Boston Globe 3/26/2003 MANCHESTER, N.H. - NEW HAMPSHIRE is a key state for the next-door-neighbor presidential hopefuls, which is why Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean are staring long-distance daggers at each other.For months, Kerry had held a decent lead in New Hampshire, where his foreign policy expertise has given him added credibility among Democrats at a time when international affairs are much on the public mind. But in recent weeks, Dean has used that very issue against him. The Granite State's first-in-the-nation presidential primary is essential to both men. A victory here could catapult either into national orbit. But the cost of a loss in a state that is a backyard for both? Devastating. That's why Kerry's team is looking over its shoulder these days at Dean, who, from tax policy to education to health care to Iraq, is striving for the support of staunch liberals. So far, Dean is a longer shot, and more of a two-state -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- candidate than Kerry. But the former governor has used the Iraq issue effectively, staking out an antiwar stance -- no military action absent UN approval or an immediate and undeterrable Iraqi threat to the US -- and accusing Kerry (and other Democratic candidates) of trying to have it both ways. Dean's charge: Although Kerry voted for the October congressional resolution authorizing President Bush to wage war against Iraq if he decided diplomacy had failed, recently the senator has made it sound as though he's antiwar. Is that accurate? Although he has been harshly critical of Bush's diplomacy, Kerry has also been clear that Saddam must be disarmed. Speaking at a Boston fund-raiser on March 12, he recited a litany of Saddam's aggressive acts, telling his supporters that any president had to take the issue of disarming Iraq seriously. And after Bush issued his exile-or-war ultimatum, Kerry offered a statement that, though again criticizing the administration's diplomacy, blamed Saddam for bringing military action upon himself. ''The brave and capable men and women of our armed forces and those who are with us will quickly, I know, remove him once and for all as a threat to his neighbors, to the world, and to his own people, and I support their doing so,'' Kerry said in that statement. Still, on the stump the senator has tended to tiptoe around the subject of Iraq. Speaking to a gathering of Manchester Democrats on Sunday, Kerry said little or nothing that even hinted he had voted for the congressional resolution. Or that, his criticisms of botched diplomacy notwithstanding, he was ultimately supportive of military action. But if Dean charges that Kerry is trying to have things both ways, the Kerry camp just as clearly thinks Dean has exploited the war issue in an unbecoming way. ''I think every other candidate in the field would agree that it is unfortunate that Governor Dean's tone has been so negative, so personal, and so divisive so early in the race,'' says one Kerry adviser. So far, however, there's no doubt the issue has worked for Dean. A new poll shows him pulling even with Kerry in New Hampshire, and Granite State politicos agree that Dean has picked up support. ''Certainly there are people on the left wing of the Democratic Party who support Dean who are certain'' in their opposition to the war, says former governor Jeanne Shaheen, whose husband Bill backs the Massachusetts senator. One could feel the enthusiasm for Dean at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual fund-raising dinner in Manchester on Feb. 27. ''What are we doing supporting unilateral intervention in a country that is not an immediate threat to the United States?'' Dean demanded to loud and sustained applause. But though they've gritted their teeth as the former governor has gained ground, Kerry advisers think their candidate has taken a measured position that, once the war is over, will be viewed as both thoughtful and presidential while Dean's use of the war will come to be seen as overtly political. Speaking to reporters after his speech, Kerry called Dean's accusation that he was trying to have it both ways ''patently and unequivocally'' wrong. Although he seemed about to rebuke Dean further, Kerry held his tongue. ''We'll talk about those things further down the road,'' he said. Look for that not-so-neighborly feud to erupt into a withering debate once the war is over and the Democratic campaign begins in earnest. Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com