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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15901)	11/12/2003 2:38:46 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793670

If the day ever comes when we have to choose between PC and religious fundamentalism, America ceases to exist. Two sides of the same coin. That one zinged right over my head. I don't get it. I have been speaking about religious freedom not fundamentalism. PC is merely an attitude or at best an opinion. Religious freedom is an unassailable (so far) right of Americans.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15901)	11/12/2003 3:01:51 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793670

I keep pounding this issue, because I can see how important it has become. The most striking cleavage is the God Gulf, and it should terrify the Democrats. Put simply, liberals are becoming more secular at a time when America is becoming increasingly religious, the consequence of a new Great Awakening. Americans, for example, are significantly more likely now than in 1987 to say they "completely agree" that "prayer is an important part of my daily life" and that "we all will be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for our sins." _____________________________________________ Hold the Vitriol By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF onsidering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton as a "sociopath," blocked judicial appointments, undermined U.S. military operations from Kosovo to Iraq, hounded Vincent Foster and then accused the Clintons of murdering him, it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility. But they're right. Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result — everybody shouting at everybody else — corrodes the body politic and is counterproductive for Democrats themselves. My guess is that if the Democrats stay angry, then they'll offend Southern white guys, with or without pickups and flags, and lose again. A new report from the Pew Research Center says that America is more polarized now than at any time since its polling series began in 1987. Partly that's because it used to be just the Republicans who were intense in their beliefs, while now both sides are frothing. The latest Progressive magazine features the article "Call Me a Bush-Hater," and The New Republic earlier published "The Case for Bush Hatred." I see the fury in my e-mail messages. In a fairly typical comment, one reader suggested that President Bush and his aides are "lying, cynical greedy pirates who deserve no better than a firing squad." At this rate, soon we'll all be so rabid that Ann Coulter will seem normal. REST AT nytimes.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15901)	11/12/2003 5:52:08 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793670

Everytime I read an article on this subject, I think of "Sow the Wind." I hope we have a contingency plan to occupy Eastern Saudi Arabia and protect the Oil Fields if the House of Saud goes down. ______________________________________ The Saudi Revolution Can Riyadh reform before the royal family falls? BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES Wall Street Journal "Is it a revolt?" Louis XVI asked in 1789. "No, sire, it is a revolution," answered one of his courtiers. In Saudi Arabia the ruling family has long been presiding over a denial of reality to match that of the Bourbon monarchy. The bombing this weekend in Riyadh, which killed 17 people and wounded over 100, suggests that the thousands of princes who control the wealth of that country have trouble in store. First, the dead this time are exclusively Arabs and Muslims, mostly Lebanese and Egyptians. Somebody is evidently even more eager to destabilize Saudi Arabia than to kill Americans or Westerners. Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, happened to be in Riyadh, and he indulged in some instant guesswork about who did the bombing and why. "It is quite clear to me that al Qaeda wants to take down the royal family and the government of Saudi Arabia." The Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki al-Faisal, an influential member of the ruling family and for a number of years head of Saudi intelligence, was equally quick to blame al Qaeda, and was almost surely right. Second, American intelligence appears to have received prior warning that some such act of terror was imminent. As a precaution, the U.S. Embassy and consulates had been shut. Britain's Foreign Office issued warnings to the British to stay away from the country. And third, this occurs at a moment when the Arab world is having to come to terms with the U.S. campaign in Iraq, and President Bush's insistence on democracy and freedom for everyone. Everyone, Mr. Bush made clear, includes Saudi Arabia. There, 5,000 or more princes control all power and resources, sharing out ministries and governorships and oil revenues as they see fit. Their idea of democracy is to appoint an advisory council and religious leaders carefully vetted to provide a facade of legitimacy. Immemorial tribal custom and the local Wahhabi brand of Islam are defended and perpetuated to create the impression that this is the natural order of things. The Shiite minority forms about 20% of the population, but on the grounds that they are not Wahhabis they are arrested without trial, tortured and often disappear. Rights and the rule of law are only what the ruling family says they are. The Saudi family of course has a large and privileged security and police apparatus at its service. No blueprint exists in any of the textbooks for successfully modernizing a society like this one. In 1979 a group of Wahhabi extremists seized the mosque in Mecca and tried to spark a revolution. Flown in for the purpose, French special forces shot dead every last one of them. Since then, many Saudis, including some in the royal family, have understood that their society's moral and intellectual confusion is bringing about its downfall. But those who understand the problem have had little practical effect. The ruling princes, either because they are too old, too unimaginative or too selfish, have continued on as before, failing to make reforms which might have saved them. REST AT opinionjournal.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15901)	11/13/2003 7:01:49 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793670

Ronald Brownstein: Washington Outlook For Wary U.S. and Asia, North Korea Is 'Land of Lousy Options' .........Late last month, when a group of Democratic experts in Washington released a manifesto slamming Bush's foreign policy, the tone of uncertainty on North Korea contrasted dramatically with the assured jabs at the president on almost everything else. "Korea is the land of lousy options," acknowledged Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton administration official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That was the other major point of consensus at the gathering last week in Tokyo sponsored by the Japan Society and other Japanese foundations. Even those with strong beliefs about what ought to be done next described their ideas as "the least-worst choice in a range of bad choices," as one put it. No one, not even the Chinese, expressed much confidence that they could predict how North Korea would react either to carrots (like a security guarantee) or sticks (like last week's cancellation of a nuclear power project the U.S. had been funding). In this fog, several options dominated discussion. The choices roughly tracked the debate within the Bush administration itself, though in more exaggerated form. One camp at the conference hoped to convince Kim that the price of possessing nuclear weapons was too high by pressuring his regime. The softer version of this approach called for tougher steps to cut off the money North Korea earns from sales of missiles and drugs and other smuggling. The undiluted version came from conservative writer Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who argued in a paper that "the only way to make sure that North Korea is denuclearized (and its people liberated) is to overthrow the Kim regime." Toward that end, he wanted South Korea and China to end all aid to North Korea and to open their borders to refugees. Most provocatively, he said that if China doesn't make strong efforts to discourage the North Korean nuclear program, Japan should threaten to "go nuclear itself." That last idea seemed more a debating point than a practical notion. Yet Boot's conclusion that only regime change could genuinely stabilize the region — and end the suffering of the North Korean people — received a surprisingly enthusiastic reception from the diplomats and academics around the table. Still, almost all hesitated to endorse such a campaign now. Chinese officials pointedly questioned whether the American Embassy would make visas available to the refugees Boot was encouraging to flood across China's border. Many doubted any amount of peaceful pressure could dislodge Kim from power. And many feared that Kim would lash out militarily against even a nonviolent campaign to squeeze his regime. When cornered, former South Korean foreign minister Gong Ro-Myung said memorably, even a mouse will bite a cat. Other options didn't look much better. Few were confident that a preemptive military strike could eliminate all of North Korea's nuclear program — much less do so without inspiring Kim to lash back horribly at South Korea and Japan. REST AT latimes.com .