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

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	1/9/2004 8:49:45 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Credible Threat tnr.com <<...Clark's multilateralism is pragmatic, not fetishistic. His foreign policy puts self-interest first while allowing for humanitarian interventions, emphasizes diplomacy and international institutions while reserving the right for unilateral action, and endorses the value of nonproliferation treaties while acknowledging their weaknesses. His take on the use of force is pitch-perfect: "We always have the right of self-defense, including inherently the right to strike pre-emptively," he writes. "But force must be used only as a last resort--and then multilaterally if possible." In these respects, Clark again stands out not so much for the uniqueness of his philosophy as for the fact that he has actually put it to use. While many of the Democratic presidential candidates might agree with the tenor of Clark's broad policy guidelines, it's not clear that they would be willing to back up the soft side of U.S. power with its harder edge. With Clark, on the other hand, there is little doubt. It was Clark, after all, who during the Bosnian war demanded--to the point of hectoring a furious superior officer--that bombing continue until Milosevic withdrew from Sarajevo. And it was Clark, together with a handful of Clinton officials, who pushed for military intervention in Kosovo when the Pentagon brass and many nato leaders preferred to do nothing. Clark, unlike his rivals, has actually led wars, not just voted for them...>>

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	1/10/2004 7:57:21 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Report Rebuts U.S.' Prewar WMD Claims lewrockwell.com

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	3/22/2004 1:49:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

DOES FREE SPEECH ENDANGER OUR TROOPS? story.news.yahoo.com

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	5/26/2005 5:56:14 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

SPIKE HELMETS FOR THE YOUTHS OF AMERICA hanskoning.net By Hans Koning It is difficult to realize that thirty years have gone by since Saigon was liberated and the Vietnam war was over. Half a lifetime! At some point, in the middle of the warless period, it seemed that we were beginning to discover that the war and its two million casualties had been a criminal mistake, and not because we had not won but because the start of the war had been based on a fraudulent premise (the alleged torpedo attack by a North Vietnamese warship). That, and the domino theory, provided the flammable mix for our invasion of Vietnam. We learned that we had been on the historically wrong road. We never apologized but we hesitantly admitted that the antiwar people could have been right. Now we are right back on that "wrong road." The fraud this time is the Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax. The domino theory is now called "the axis of evil." Once again we are afraid of maybe "unnecessarily" losing a war. Once again we are invited to Support Our Boys as if they had gone to Iraq on their own initiative. The democratic presidential candidate thought he had to "explain" that he had protested the Vietnam war. The unparalleled spectacle of veterans throwing their medals back at the politicians, an act that came near to redeem our dishonor, was eviscerated by being used as a weapon against Kerry who added to our dishonor by thinking that it needed explanation, and who failed to grab the moment for a final apology to the Vietnamese for their million casualties and to the fifty thousand American families who lost a son or a brother. I am not a pacifist. I escaped from occupied Holland in 1942 to become one of the youngest sergeants in the British Army. But that was the last just war. "You think you can choose your war" LBJ said. Well, we hear a lot about choice these days, it is almost a synonym for democracy. It is nice we are able to choose our telephone company but it is of greater value if we can choose whether to accept or not accept the call to go destroy the lives of the inhabitants of a far country. The government won't allow us this choice. World War II was fought to defend humanity, no less, against the Germanic tribe that in those days had lost its soul. Such absolute terms do not apply now. But pretending they do creates a mood of fear in which we lose our certainties - they hope - and will be led down the wrong road, the garden path. This maneuver didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work in Iraq but many will die in the meantime. In the nineteenth century young men in Russia and Prussia fled to America to escape the draft, to escape the glorification of militarism which poisoned the life in the countries of middle Europe. Death was a daily familiar there. The youths of those countries were put in field grey and spike helmets. Frederick, the king of Prussia, is on record as having shouted at his soldiers when they hesitated in an attack, "Advance, you dogs! Do you want to live forever?" Americans felt a righteous contempt for this brand of militarism as a left-over from the middle ages. Now we begin to honor it. Dying and killing in Iraq is heroic. Young Americans fled, and will flee in a warlike future from rather than to America. We are forced by our government to become a warlike nation like the horde of Attila the Hun, like the France of Napoleon who lost half a million soldiers in his invasion of Russia and left them in the snow while he rode back to Paris in a heated carriage. He, like Bush in his National Guard days, certainly did want to live forever.

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	5/27/2005 3:20:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Assault On the Media ________________________ By E. J. Dionne Jr. Columnist The Washington Post Friday, May 27, 2005 washingtonpost.com So it turns out that the FBI has documents showing that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained about the mistreatment of the Koran and that many said they were severely beaten. The documents specifically include an allegation from a prisoner that guards had "flushed a Koran in the toilet." And yesterday, Pentagon officials said investigators have identified five incidents of "mishandling" the Koran by military guards and investigators. It was the first time Pentagon officials had acknowledged mistreatment of the Muslim holy book, though they insisted that the episodes were minor and occurred in the Guantanamo facility's early days. What, then, is one to make of the Bush administration's furious assault against Newsweek magazine for bringing allegations about the abuse of the Koran to popular attention? Let's be clear: Newsweek originally reported that an internal military investigation had "confirmed" infractions alleged in "internal FBI e-mails." The documents made public Wednesday include only an allegation from a prisoner about the flushing of the Koran, and the Pentagon insisted that the same prisoner, reinterviewed on May 14, couldn't corroborate his earlier claim. But it's also clear, to be charitable, that not all was well in Guantanamo. That's why the administration and its apologists -- more about that word in a moment -- went bonkers over the Newsweek story. The war on Newsweek shifted attention away from how the Guantanamo prisoners have been treated, how that treatment has affected the battle against terrorism and what American policies should be. Newsweek-bashing also furthered a long-term and so far successful campaign by the administration and the conservative movement to dismiss all negative reports about their side as the product of some entity they call "the liberal media." At this point, it is customary to offer a disclaimer to the effect that my column runs in The Post, is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group and that The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek. I resisted writing about this subject precisely because I do not want anyone to confuse my own views with Newsweek's or The Post's. I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media. Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise. Of course journalists make mistakes, sometimes stupid ones. Dan Rather should not have used those wacky documents in reporting on President Bush's Air National Guard service. Newsweek has been admirably self-critical about what it sees as its own mistakes on the Guantanamo story. Anonymous sources are overused. Why quote a nameless conservative saying a particular columnist is "an idiot liberal" when many loyal right-wingers could be found to say the same thing even more colorfully on the record? If the current controversies lead to better journalism, three cheers. But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush's skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek's. Back when the press was investigating Bill Clinton, conservatives were eager to believe every negative report about the incumbent. Some even pushed totally false claims, including the loony allegation that Clinton aide Vince Foster was somehow murdered by Clinton's apparatchiks when, in fact, Foster committed suicide. Every journalist who went after Clinton was "courageous." Anyone who opposed his impeachment or questioned even false allegations was "an apologist." We now know that the conservatives' admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001. When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist -- and to keep reporting.

To: JohnM who wrote (122895)	5/27/2005 3:52:03 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

A Reagan Republican Calls For Bush Impeachment lewrockwell.com May 17, 2005 A Reputation in Tatters By Paul Craig Roberts* George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States. America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable. As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush’s far more serious lies. Bush’s lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America’s reputation, caused 1 billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars and counting. America’s reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush’s Afghan puppet, “President” Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his U.S. overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed U.S. troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, and available here), leaked to the Sunday Times (which printed it on May 1, 2005), reports that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . . The (United Kingdom) attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult.” This memo is the mother of all smoking guns. Why isn’t Bush in the dock? Has American democracy failed at home? COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. _______ *Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.