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

To: gamesmistress who wrote (35974)	3/21/2004 10:39:01 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793715

From Powerline: "Why are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?" Senator John Kerry complaining about President Bush's foreign policy? No, Kerry complaining about a reference in Bill Clinton's second inaugural address to the United States as "the indispensable nation," as reported in this Washington Post piece (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11541-2004Mar20.html) about Kerry's foreign policy. Post reporter Glenn Kessler states the matter as euphemistically as possible in the article's title "Engagement Is a Constant in Kerry's Foreign Policy." But when that engagement is with "the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the communists in Vietnam and the mullahs who run Iran," it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the underlying constant is something else -- agnosticism or worse about the merits of our society and the value of freedom. What Clinton meant in the rhetoric that so offended Kerry was, I imagine, that the United States is indispensable to the cause of freedom in the world. But if one does not value freedom, then it becomes arrogant and obnoxious to suggest that we are indispensable, just as it becomes sensible to engage the Sandinistas, the Vietnamese government, and Iranian mullahs. Engage, by the way, means nothing more than accommodate. There is no evidence that Kerry ever advocated the admittedly futile act of attempting to influence the way these governments treat their people -- that would have been arrogant.

To: gamesmistress who wrote (35974)	3/21/2004 10:45:39 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793715

Yeah, I read that interview the other day. The French would have obviously preferred that Al Qaeda had the good sense to stay underground and quiet until they were able to launch a nuclear terrorist attack and not just a wimpy destruction of the WTC. It's not impossible that they could have succeeded if they'd been patient enough, given what we know about that Pakistani scientist and his dealings. Anyway, de Villepin is a complete ass, not worth getting one's blood pressure up over.

To: gamesmistress who wrote (35974)	3/22/2004 4:08:22 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793715

"Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before," de Villepin said. Regardless of Iraq's known ties to terrorism, I guess the French Foreign Minister doesn't think that those hundreds of thousands of poor souls in the mass graves, or those who were raped & tortured were terrorized in the slightest. Funny how the liberal left can so blithely rewrite history & useful idiots in the media don't even bother to provide any balance or objectivity.