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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (23651)	1/9/2004 5:23:08 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793624

Maybe even one of the candidates will - but no one has yet. I think it's fruitless to expect it from one of the candidates. I commented on that already here: Message 19664608. If it comes, it will have to come from a pundit or a think tank or university or some such.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (23651)	1/9/2004 10:32:02 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

Another "take" on Friedman's column. From a source I am getting to like, "Belmont Club." The Final Lap Thomas Friedman begins a five part series with a plea for the West to help Islam overcome its own hate. He reasons from the premise that Islamic hatred toward the West is so intractable that it will literally stop at nothing. With the Islamist militant groups, we face people who hate us more than they love life. When you have large numbers of people ready to commit suicide, and ready to do it by making themselves into human bombs, using the most normal instruments of daily life ? an airplane, a car, a garage door opener, a cellphone, fertilizer, a tennis shoe ? you create a weapon that is undeterrable, undetectable and inexhaustible. This poses a much more serious threat than the Soviet Red Army because these human bombs attack the most essential element of an open society: trust. To such as these, nothing is sacred. Not churches, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes nor medical evacuation helicopters. We are, Friedman says, in the midst of World War 3, which unlike other wars has no conceivable end. An acquaintance of his ventured that "the cold war ended the way it did because at some bedrock level we and the Soviets 'agreed on what is shameful'"-- but what to do, Friedman asks, about an enemy without shame? His conclusion: What we can do is partner with the forces of moderation within these societies to help them fight the war of ideas. Because ultimately this is a struggle within the Arab-Muslim world, and we have to help our allies there, just as we did in World Wars I and II. There lingers about the piece an atmosphere of concession to the inevitability of the War on Terror. Gone is the strident, self-flagellatory why-are-we-to-blame screed that immediately followed September 11, the reflexive continuance of 1960s attitudes taking its final, doddering steps into the 21st century, the Leftist chicken still treading its way forward without a head, dead but not yet buried. At last even the Left is coming to the conclusion that Woodstock, like vaudeville, will never come again; that there is a problem in the Islamic world, to use a monumental understatement, and that the solution proposed by President Bush is inherently correct: not to nuke them, but to free them. But absent from Friedman's article (let us see what the four remaining parts bring) is a realization of how close-run President Bush's effort is. He forgets that the natural conclusion from the premise of intractable Islamic hatred is that the West may be forced not so much to befriend its tormentors so much as destroy them utterly. Friedman's own article is proof of how steadily, yet imperceptibly, the tides have risen in the course of the war itself. What would have been unprintable in any major American newspaper in November, 2001 -- immediately after the attack on New York city -- now seems so hopelessly weak that one cannot but wonder how close the crisis point is. And it is Islam, not the West, that is skirting the edge of the abyss. Unlike the reluctant Friedman, many Islamists, caught up in their invincible ignorance and the fantasy engendered by controlled media, will never know how paper-thin is the wall that stands between them and the roaring waves they have conjured until it bursts in on their poor world, upon unfortunate children in their evil playhouse. Now has the last race between the requirements of humanity and urgings of necessity begun. Let every man do his utmost. belmontclub.blogspot.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (23651)	1/10/2004 12:23:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

Here comes the first of the two books that will hurt Bush. The sooner they are out, the better for him. Eleven months to go. January 10, 2004 Former Official Describes Bush as Disengaged By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Paul O'Neill, who was pushed out of the administration as treasury secretary because it was felt he was not a team player, says President Bush was so disengaged during Cabinet meetings that he was like a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people." Mr. O'Neill, who has kept silent about the circumstances surrounding his ouster from the Cabinet 13 months ago, is now ready to give his side of the story with a book that paints Mr. Bush as a disengaged president who did not encourage debate. To promote the book, which will be available on Tuesday, Mr. O'Neill is to be on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" on Sunday. In an excerpt from the book released by CBS, Mr. O'Neill said that a lack of real dialogue characterized the Cabinet meetings he attended during the first two years of the administration. Mr. O'Neill was also quoted in the book as saying that the administration's decision-making process was so flawed that often top officials had no real sense of what the president wanted them to do, forcing them to act on "little more than hunches about what the president might think." Mr. O'Neill said in the CBS interview that the atmosphere was similar during his one-on-one meetings with Mr. Bush. Speaking of his first meeting with the president, Mr. O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage him on." He added, "I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue." Mr. O'Neill is described as the principal source for the new book, "The Price of Loyalty" (Simon & Schuster). It was written by Ron Suskind, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Asked about Mr. O'Neill's comment about a disengaged president, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters on Friday: "I think it's well known the way the president approaches governing and setting priorities. The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company