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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KonKilo who wrote (8800)	9/21/2003 4:11:02 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793756

"They are not serious about national security," is going to be the argument, SC. TIME MAGAZINE The GOP's Political Patriotism As Democrats attack the President, Republicans fight back By JOHN DICKERSON Last week, the Democratic presidential candidates competed to see who could egg the president more effectively. Now they’re back to smearing each other. That should please the Bush team. But it might not, judging from how enthusiastically Republicans competed to take offense at the attacks coming from the opposition. "It's completely out of bounds," said one top Bush adviser last week after the Democratic debate in which Senator John Kerry compared Bush to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. "Totally political," said another of Dick Gephardt, who among other things labeled Bush a "miserable failure” and launched a website by that name. The umbrage campaign had been kicked off by Republican party chairman Ed Gillespie on Meet the Press. "The kind of words we're hearing now from the Democratic candidates go beyond political debate," he said, citing Al Sharpton and others who had compared Bush to Saddam Hussein and his administration to the Taliban. "This is political hate speech." Sure, Democrats are testing the old Cold War rule that politics should stop at the water's edge, but Republicans are doing more than charging the Left is gauche. The GOP campaign is itself political. Party members are making such a public fuss in the hopes of de-legitimizing all Democratic criticism of Bush’s handling of the war on terror. On the Hill, Republican leaders dismissed questions about the president's $87 billion request for Iraq rebuilding as merely "political." Secretary Rumsfeld went even further, suggesting that criticism of the president's war stewardship was giving comfort to the enemy. Painting the opposition as rank opportunists not only waters down the particular attack, but also serves to make a larger point: Democrats don't treat national security issues with enough maturity to leave out the politics. "They are not serious about national security," says one top administration official of the criticisms. In an election that many Bush advisers believe will turn on which candidate makes Americans feel safer, the GOP hopes to cement the idea that the world is too dangerous to be left to a Democratic president. The strategy worries Democrats who believe Bush successfully deployed a similar strategy in 2002 to pick up seats in the House and Senate. Vows have been made to fight back this time. "The one-two shot from the GOP playbook," says Kerry's campaign Manager Jim Jordan. "First, impugn the patriotism of the critic, then dismiss even the most thoughtful and merited criticism as partisan. They've had success with it for a couple of years, but Bush's crumbling approval numbers prove the public's not buying it anymore." time.com

To: KonKilo who wrote (8800)	9/21/2003 7:31:54 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793756

Instapundit brought this up. -------------------------------- HMM. I THINK THAT TODAY'S DOONESBURY STRIP doonesbury.com is probably evidence that outsourcing is likely to be a campaign issue in 2004 TECH CENTRAL STATION It's no secret that more and more technology jobs are being outsourced to Third World countries where salaries, and other costs, are lower. And, as Hiawatha Bray reports in The Boston Globe, it's starting to generate some pushback: For years many engineers, computer programmers, and other high-tech workers have complained that US companies have used special visas, called H-1B and L-1 visas, to import workers from India and other countries. These workers allegedly supplant native-born Americans, increasing unemployment among highly educated US workers. But since the technology slump of the past three years, companies have reduced their use of H-1B and L-1 visas. Instead, many firms have set up operations in other countries to handle everything from telephone call centers to computer programming tasks. Countries like India offer thousands of well-educated workers at wages far lower than those offered in the United States. Unemployed software engineer Steven Paris, 47, says that work visas and outsourcing are why he's been out of a job since October, despite bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science. ''I think we need to curb the H-1B and L-1 program,'' Paris said, ''and I think we're going to have to look at tariffs and some kind of protectionism'' to limit outsourcing. Paris agreed that foreign competition was healthy for the economy, but said that the outsourcing trend has gone too far. With all sympathy to Mr. Paris, people usually conclude that foreign competition has "gone too far" when it threatens their job. (And if we could import foreign politicians to compete with domestic ones, you'd see tariffs and protectionism that would make Napoleon's Continental System look like free trade.) Nonetheless, this sort of competition can certainly cause dislocations, both political and economic. (For more, here's a report that outsourcing to India increased by 25% last year, and a somewhat sunnier view of the situation from the Hindustan Times.) But it also causes moral dislocations, and in various parts of the political spectrum. Bray's story reports on an "alliance of liberal activist groups and labor unions" that is opposing the outsourcing of jobs. And while it's easy to see why labor unions might oppose this sort of thing, it's hard for me to see it as a liberal issue, really. After all, aren't liberals supposed to be for the redistribution of wealth from the better-off to the less-well-off? These jobs don't disappear, after all: they go overseas, to people who probably need them more. Isn't that a good thing? Or, at least, to me it's not obviously worse than, say, taxing corporations in a way that causes them to cut jobs, and then using the money to pay for foreign aid. In fact, it's probably better, overall, since it builds up a corps of educated professionals in other countries, instead of fostering the sort of dependency (and corruption) that usually results from foreign aid. It's true that corporations do this in order to maintain profits -- but they usually are pressed to do that by downward pressure on prices, brought about by competition, which means that they're not earning a windfall out of the deal, and the savings are passed on to consumers, another group that liberals are supposed to like. So it's odd that opposition to outsourcing would attract interest from "liberal" groups, though it clearly has. On the other hand, conservatives are supposed to like free markets, and some of them are upset by this sort of thing, too. Phyllis Schlafly doesn't like it. And Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot have been calling for more protectionism for over a decade now, though they might argue that they are more interested in nationalism than fairness in the abstract, something that liberals (at least outside the labor community) find it harder to argue. Could this outsourcing produce a major political backlash? Sure, it could. Will it? That's less clear. Right now the issue is owned by relative extremes on the left and right, making it unlikely to produce much movement one way or the other. It's possible that a Democratic candidate -- Dick Gephardt, perhaps? -- might raise this issue, and might make some inroads among Information Technology workers, who have traditionally leaned libertarian/Republican. But big enough inroads to turn the election? Probably not. Things might become more unpredictable if a third-party candidate raises the issue in a big way. Ralph Nader might do so, or some as-yet-unheralded candidate might come out of the right to steal votes from George Bush. That doesn't seem likely now -- but then again, in 1991, neither did a Clinton Presidency, which was made possible in no small part by protectionist third-party candidate Ross Perot. Copyright © 2003 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

To: KonKilo who wrote (8800)	9/22/2003 6:09:19 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793756

An Open Letter to the Party of Wilson and Roosevelt By Michael J. Totten Published 09/22/2003 TECH CENTRAL STATION A lot of liberals and moderates are vexed with a troubling question: In the age of terrorism, is it still safe to support the Democratic Party? The fact that Howard Dean, darling of the anti-war activists, is the front-runner in the Democratic primary race isn't helping. According to surveys taken before and during the Iraq war, 50 percent of Democrats supported regime-change in Iraq. And polls consistently show that up to three times as many Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats with national security. Before the Democrats should expect to win an election, they need to engage in some damage control. First, bring back the alienated moderates and the hawks. Only then can they get support from the non-partisan center. Though I'm a life-long Democrat and would like to remain one, I'm wary. I can't speak for every moderate and liberal hawk in the country, but I'd like to give a little advice to my wayward and weakened party. Develop a War Strategy Howard Dean insists he is more serious than President Bush on national security, despite his opposition to the war in Iraq. Unlike Bush, he wants to take on Saudi Arabia. Our oil money goes to the Saudis, where it is recycled and some of it is recycled to Hamas and two fundamentalist schools which teach small children to hate Americans, Christians and Jews... This president will not confront the Saudis. This is a start, but it's not good enough. Maybe it's too much to expect Dean to reverse his stance on Iraq. But if he wants to be taken seriously as a strategist, he needs to be honest about what the Iraq war means. Ousting Saddam Hussein makes his sought-after confrontation with Saudi Arabia possible. On September 11, 2001, the United States and House of Saud woke up in an unhappy marriage. The U.S. and most of the world was dependent upon Saudi oil. And Saudi Arabia needed American troops to prevent Iraq from invading. Yet Al Qaeda is primarily made up of Saudis -- 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. The Taliban were a client regime of the Saudis. Al Qaeda galvanized its supporters by railing against our "infidel" troops on Saudi "holy" soil. We needed to leave, but were trapped. We couldn't appease Osama bin Laden without proving that terror can work. And we still needed to protect Saudi oil from seizure by Saddam Hussein. Though they sat at the heart of the terror axis, we needed the Saudis and they needed us. Regime-change in Iraq sprung the trap. We are moving troops to Iraq and Qatar on our terms, not on Osama bin Laden's, and not in a moment of weakness. The sanctions have been lifted; Iraqi oil can replace Saudi oil on the world market. We don't need Saudi oil, we don't need to protect them, and we don't need to coddle them. We can now file papers for divorce. But we may not want to do that just yet. Howard Dean, and for that matter any other like-minded Democrat, will need to explain what he wants to do about Saudi Arabia. Making public anti-Saudi noises won't accomplish much of anything. More important, the last thing the US should do is let the House of Saud go the way of the Shah of Iran. The ruling family is a horror. But there is no more viable local alternative. There are a few Saudi democrats, but there are many more jihadists. The monarchy is despised on the street not because it's an authoritarian theocracy, which it is, but because it is far too "Western" and too "liberal." The overthrow of the House of Saud might mean an Al Qaeda regime. Mend, Don't End, the Bush Doctrine There is no wisdom in rigidly following a single strategic blueprint from the beginning of the war all the way through to the end. The Democrats are the opposition; it is their duty and their right to criticize the president and offer some plans of their own. Republicans need to listen. They cannot fight this war by themselves. But critics need to be careful and not oppose everything. Howard Dean made a promise. "On my first day in office, I will tear up the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war." That would not be wise. Preemptive war has a respectable place in military history, and an absolutely crucial place in recent history. In 1967 Egypt, Syria, and Jordan moved their troops to the borders and promised to annihilate the state of Israel. Israel would not exist if it had not preemptively struck. And if Israel had not unilaterally destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons on the day he invaded Kuwait. Reasonable people can disagree about the prudence of regime-change in Iraq. But no president should say in advance he would not act similarly in different and more dangerous circumstances. Dean may as well announce that under his administration the Iranian mullahs can finish their nuclear weapons program. That's exactly what they think his strategy means. Demonstrate the Will to Fight The Terror War is different from the Cold War. It's hotter. Terrorists are undeterrable. In asymmetric warfare, balance of power is impossible. Saudi Arabia is to terrorism what Russia once was to Communism. It is the nerve-center of jihad, the worldwide capital of the expansionist totalitarian Wahhabi strand of Islam. In the Cold War we were lucky. We never got drawn into Moscow. But if the House of Saud falls, or if it aligns itself more explicitly with jihadists, we may have no choice but to forcibly change the regime and the political culture of its hostile population at gunpoint. Think about what that would mean. An invasion and occupation of Mecca, Medina, and Riyadh would not be liberation. This time the Arab street really could erupt with a terrifying ferocity. It would make the Iraq occupation look like the weekend war in Grenada. The birthplace of Islam would become the site of a pitched battle between casualty-spooked Americans and iron-willed fanatics. It is a war we could lose, a harrowing quagmire we may have to shoot our way through because we may not be given a choice. It would test America's mettle and nerve more than any single conflict since the Vietnam War. It is a worst-case scenario, but I need to know: Do the Democrats have the belly for that? Be the Party of Roosevelt Though the Democratic base may be reflexively anti-war when Republicans control the White House, the Democratic Party is not an anti-war party. The four most pivotal wars of the 20th Century were led by Democrats; World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the war in Vietnam. Bill Clinton deployed US troops more times than any other president since the Vietnam War. And this was during the so-called peace between the Cold War and the Terror War. Up to 90 percent of Americans, including the overwhelming majority of Democrats, supported the 2001 campaign to oust the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. The Democratic Party has a pacifist McGovern wing. But the party of Clinton can still be the party of Roosevelt. Be the Party of Wilson In 1917 Democratic president Woodrow Wilson declared war against Germany to make the world "safe for democracy." At the end of the day, this is why America fights. No foreign enemy since the dawn of the 20th Century has threatened the United States with a ground invasion. Not Adolf Hitler, not Emperor Hirohito, not Josef Stalin, not Kim Il Sung, not Manuel Noriega, not Slobodan Milosovic, not Mullah Omar, and not Saddam Hussein. Some of them attacked us, and some of them did not. Yet every one was a ruthless dictator. We held back or defeated them all. An old left-wing slogan says Fascism Means War. Slap it on a bumper sticker. Now is not the time to retire it. Our enemies in the Terror War are totalitarian religious fanatics, everything liberals and the left despise. They killed and enslaved millions on the other side of the world. Then they attacked our country. They are not, as Franz Fanon put it, the wretched of the earth. They are the murderers and oppressors of the wretched of the earth. Third World liberation is an old cause of the left. Marxists hijacked that dream and shackled it in a labor camp. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Terror War is our chance to make it right. The Democrats must support without apologies the spread of liberalism and democracy to all. Be the champions of freedom for every human being. Address the root cause of terror by striking at its source; tyranny over the body and mind of man. The Terror War will outlast the Bush administration, and America's enemies know it. Surely they look eagerly forward to President Bush's retirement. Let us not make them smile on that day. Michael J. Totten writes from Portland, Oregon. Visit his web log at michaeltotten.com. Copyright © 2003 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com