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

To: Rarebird who wrote (27614)	9/14/2003 5:23:47 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Declare victory and get out of Iraq _______________________ By HELEN THOMAS HEARST NEWSPAPERS Friday, September 12, 2003 seattlepi.nwsource.com WASHINGTON -- President Bush should take advice from a Vietnam-era Republican senator: Declare a victory in Iraq and get out. The late Sen. George Aiken, R-Vt., gave that counsel to Presidents Johnson and Nixon when things were going from bad to worse in the Vietnam War, but they ignored him. Both presidents would have looked better in the history books had they listened to the venerable senator. But, alas, neither wanted to be seen as retreating or losing a war. Bush is just beginning to come to terms with the high human and financial cost of fulfilling his obsession -- the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The loss of life among U.S. soldiers and the bleeding of the U.S. economy are beginning to hit home with the public. The result: There is a new defensiveness among Bush and his top advisers. The president also may have to give up the grand design of his neo-conservative hawkish advisers for establishing a new U.S. foothold in the Middle East and ridding it of despotic leaders. He surely has to recognize that his policy of pre-emptive or preventive war has made us a pariah among nations even as his administration implores reluctant allies to chip in troops and financial support. In his stilted address to the nation last Sunday night, Bush said he would ask Congress for approval to spend $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is in addition to the $79 billion already approved for the war. "In Iraq," Bush said, "we are helping a long-suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East." But somehow Bush seemed to have forgotten the primary reasons he gave earlier this year to justify invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and the threat of an imminent, direct attack by Saddam Hussein. An 1,800-member U.S. task force scouring Iraq has yet to find those elusive weapons. Asked on NBC's "Today" show why Bush avoided the topic of weapons in his Sunday night speech, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice responded that the weapons were not much of a concern anymore. "Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, and Saddam Hussein was the problem with weapons of mass destruction," Rice replied. "Removing Saddam Hussein removes the threat of weapons of mass destruction." A week ago Friday, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee that will be handling the multibillion-dollar request, sent a letter to Bush suggesting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz be allowed "to return to the private sector." Obey accused the two top Pentagon officials of making "repeated serious miscalculations that have been extremely costly in lives ... degradation of the military, isolation from allies and unexpected demands on the budget that is crowding our other priorities." He did not recommend pulling out of Iraq but said that U.S. foreign policy had to have new faces. Obey also told the president that he had never seen his Wisconsin district as divided on foreign policy issues since the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, wrote in the Financial Times last Monday that Bush should ask for the resignations of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice. They are "the people who got us into this mess," Walt said. "The architects of this war have been proven wrong on almost every count." Rumsfeld has lost some of his star luster in the postwar period after previously winning salutes for his conduct of the war and the quick victory. Bush now seems to be relying more on Secretary of State Colin Powell to run the show. Bush said Iraq has become "the central front" in the campaign against terrorism. He mentioned the words "terror" or "terrorism" some 20 times in his 18-minute speech. U.S. intelligence agencies have found no link between Iraq, a solidly secular nation, and Osama bin Laden's fanatic al-Qaida. L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, wrote in The Washington Post last Monday that "occupation is unpopular with the occupier and the occupied alike." The Iraqis should be given responsibility for their own security and economic development and political system "as soon as possible," he said. The president has not decided on a timetable to exit Iraq. But with the re-election campaign looming, he has to make some tough decisions soon. The first will be to share more authority in Iraq with the United Nations. He has apparently learned the hard way that even a military superpower has limits. Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2003 Hearst Newspapers.

To: Rarebird who wrote (27614)	9/14/2003 5:28:45 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush makes Iraq the battleground ____________________________ By MARCELA SANCHEZ SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Friday, September 12, 2003 seattlepi.nwsource.com WASHINGTON -- President Bush's declaration last Sunday that Iraq is now the "central front" in the global war on terrorism was the latest twist wringing the lifeblood out of the momentum to erect a new security structure for the Americas. As the closest neighbors to a nation gruesomely attacked, hemispheric leaders seemed convinced two years ago that they could, and would, help confront the new threats. They could tighten security, for instance, at airports, seaports and border crossings. They could pay closer attention to and better control financial transactions. They could play an important part. By shifting the central battleground to Iraq, Bush once and for all changed the focus of the war on terrorism to a country whose ties to the larger terrorism threat have long been questioned. On Sunday, he asked United Nations members to recognize their "responsibility" to help rebuild Iraq. Barely a year earlier, he had tried to rally them to war against a "grave and gathering danger" of weapons of mass destruction in the same land. Some in the region may waste time complaining about the arrogance of telling other nations they have a responsibility to help fix something they took no part in damaging, especially those who went to great lengths to avoid it. But the ultimate significance in Bush's latest twist is that it reveals Washington to be so distracted by an ever-evolving war in Iraq that what the Americas believe to be the greater war on terrorism is put at risk. Ten days after the attacks in 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell led the hemisphere in a collective pledge "to deny terrorists and their networks the ability to operate within our territories." Joining pre-emptive attacks for regime change or quests to build nations and foster democracy in the Middle East may be commendable missions in their own right, but they have little to do with securing "our territories." Most leaders in the region had been able to parlay fear of terror and solidarity with the United States into the initial stages of reform. Less than a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nations of the hemisphere authored a groundbreaking antiterrorism convention that seven countries (the United States not among them) have ratified so far. But with every shift from Washington, most people of the Americas, facing threats more real than Saddam Hussein loyalists or ineffective power grids in an oil-rich land, have come to believe more and more that Washington is confused at best, and oil-thirsty at worst. And so, solidarity with the United States declined, as did popular support for leaders desperately trying to stay in sync with Washington. Perhaps it is time to declare the anti-terrorism momentum in the Americas wrung out and to move on. To be sure, some South American nations are discussing legislation to create new financial intelligence units, and in the Caribbean, there have been exercises to better prepare for possible terrorist hijackings of cruise ships. In his first public speech as the new top U.S. diplomat for the hemisphere, Roger F. Noriega said regional leaders had been "impressive and satisfying" in their response on matters of terrorism. But progress at the operational level is at best slow and threatens to get bogged down in myriad issues that the region considers security related. Last week, diplomats preparing for next month's special security conference for the Americas in Mexico agreed to a "multidimensional" definition of the issue that includes a laundry list of non-traditional threats. When the already once-postponed meeting actually takes place, delegates are expected to declare that extreme poverty, disease and even Mother Nature are as -- if not more -- threatening to countries in the region as terrorism. If that suggests a lack of focus or clarity, Washington should be the last to criticize. It was Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs well before Bush's Sunday night speech, who observed: "By complicating its own choices, the (Bush) administration has ... complicated the choices faced by others." Once upon a time, countries might have chosen to turn the war on terrorism into an opportunity to accelerate needed and crucial reforms, and to cooperate for the benefit of their own democracies. Then Bush started down the path of going it alone. Increasingly, that has left these countries also fending for themselves, unclear of their larger role in the global war on terrorism. Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com