Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/24/2004 1:25:16 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The power of positive thinking is the president's shield from reality _________________________________ The hollow world of George Bush By Sidney Blumenthal The Guardian Thursday September 23, 2004 The news is grim, but the president is "optimistic". The intelligence is sobering, but he tosses aside "pessimistic predictions". His opponent says he has "no credibility", but the president replies that it is his rival who is "twisting in the wind". The UN secretary general speaks of the "rule of law", but he talks before a mute general assembly of "a new definition of security". Between the rhetoric and the reality lies the campaign. In Iraq, US commanders have plans for this week and the next, but there is "no overarching strategy", I was told by a reliable source who has just returned after assessing the facts on the ground for US intelligence services. The New York Times reports that an offensive is in the works to capture the insurgent stronghold of Falluja - after the election. In the meantime, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists linked to al-Qaida operate from there at will, as they have for more than a year. The president speaks of new Iraqi security forces, but not even half the US personnel have been assigned to the headquarters of the Multinational Security Transition Command. George Bush's vision of the liberation of Iraq has melted before harsh facts. But reality cannot be allowed to obscure the image. The liberation is "succeeding", he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it. In July, the CIA delivered to the president a new national intelligence estimate that detailed three gloomy scenarios for Iraq's future, ranging up to civil war. Perhaps it was his reading of the estimate that prompted Bush to remark in August that the war on terrorism could not be won, a judgment he swiftly reversed. And at the UN, Bush held a press conference where he rebuffed the latest intelligence. Bush explained that, for him, intelligence is not to inform decision-making, but to be used or rejected to advance an ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an affirmation of the politicisation and corruption of intelligence that rationalised the war. In his stump speech, which he repeats word for word across the country, Bush explains that he invaded Iraq because of "the lesson of September the 11th". WMD goes unmentioned; the only reason Bush offers is Saddam Hussein as an agent of terrorism. "He was a sworn enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to terrorist networks. Do you remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organisation." The period of Leon Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the liner Achille Lauro (by Abu Abbas, in fact) coincided with the US courtship of Saddam, marked by the celebrated visits of then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld. The US collaborated in intelligence exchanges and materially supported Saddam in his war with Iran, authorising the sale of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a diversification of his WMD capability. The reason was not born of idealism, but necessity: the threat of an expansive Iran-controlled Shia fundamentalism to the entire Gulf. The policy of courting Saddam continued until he invaded Kuwait. But realpolitik prevailed when US forces held back from capturing Baghdad for larger, geostrategic reasons. The first Bush grasped that in wars to come, the US would need ad hoc coalitions to share the military burden and financial cost. Taking Baghdad would have violated the UN resolution that gave legitimacy to the first Gulf war, as well as creating a nightmare of "Lebanonisation", as secretary of state James Baker called it. Realism prevailed; Saddam's power was subdued and drastically reduced. It was the greatest accomplishment of the first President Bush. When he honoured the UN resolution, the credibility of the US in the region was enormously enhanced, enabling serious movement on the Middle East peace process. Now this President Bush has undone the foundation of his father's work, which was built upon by President Clinton. Bush's campaign depends on the containment of any contrary perception of reality. He must evade, deny and suppress it. His true opponent is not his Democratic foe - called unpatriotic and the candidate of al-Qaida by the vice-president - but events. Bush's latest vision is his shield against them. He invokes the power of positive thinking, as taught by Emile Coue, guru of autosuggestion in the giddy 1920s, who urged mental improvement through constant repetition: "Every day in every way I am getting better and better." It was during this era of illusion that TS Eliot wrote The Hollow Men: Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow." guardian.co.uk

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/24/2004 10:12:36 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Let's Get Real _________________________ By PAUL KRUGMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST THE NEW YORK TIMES September 24, 2004 Never mind the inevitable claims that John Kerry is soft on terrorism. What he must address is the question of how his policy in Iraq would differ from President Bush's. And his answer should be that unlike Mr. Bush, whose decisions have been dictated at every stage by grandiose visions and wishful thinking, he will get real - focusing on what is really possible in Iraq, and what needs to be done to protect American security. Mr. Bush claims that Mr. Kerry's plan to secure and rebuild Iraq is "exactly what we're currently doing." No, it isn't. It's only what Mr. Bush is currently saying. And we have 18 months of his administration's deeds to contrast with his words. The actual record is one of officials who have refused to admit that their fantasies about how the war would go were wrong, and who have continued to push us ever deeper into the quagmire because of their insistence that everything is going according to plan. There has been a lot of press coverage of the administration's failure to do anything serious about rebuilding Iraq. Less attention has been given to its parallel failure to take the security problem seriously until much of Iraq had already been lost. Long after it was obvious to everyone else that we were engaged in an escalating guerrilla war, Bush appointees clung to the belief that they were fighting a handful of dead-enders and foreign terrorists. As a result, they casually swelled the ranks of our foes - remember, Moktada al-Sadr was never going to be our friend, but he didn't have to be our enemy. They even treated Iraqi security forces with contempt, not bothering to provide them with adequate training or equipment. In an analysis titled "Inexcusable Failure," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies details how the U.S. "failed to treat the Iraqis as partners in the counterinsurgency effort." U.S. officials, he declares, are "guilty of a gross military, administrative and moral failure." That failure continues. All the evidence suggests that Bush officials still think that one more military push - after the U.S. election, of course - will end the insurgency. They're still not taking the task of fighting a sustained guerrilla war seriously. "Three months into its new mission," The New York Times reported, "the military command in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces has fewer than half of its permanent headquarters personnel in place." At the root of this folly is a continuing refusal to face uncomfortable facts. Confronted with a bleak C.I.A. assessment of the Iraq situation - one that matches the judgment of just about every independent expert - Mr. Bush's response is that "they were just guessing." "In many ways," Mr. Cordesman writes, "the administration's senior spokesmen still seem to live in a fantasyland." Fantasyland extended to the Rose Garden yesterday, where Mr. Bush said polls asking Iraqis whether their nation was on the right track were more positive than similar polls asking Americans about their outlook - and he seemed to consider that a good sign. Where is Mr. Bush taking us? As the reality of Iraq gets worse, his explanations of our goals get ever vaguer. "The security of our world," Mr. Bush told the U.N., "is found in the advancing rights of mankind." He doesn't really believe that. After all, he continues to praise Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, even as Mr. Putin strangles democratic institutions. The subtext of Mr. Bush's bombast is that because he can't bring himself to admit a mistake, he refuses to give up on his effort to turn Iraq into a docile client state - an effort that is doomed unless he can figure out a way to come up with a few hundred thousand more troops. We don't have to go there. American policy shouldn't be dictated by Mr. Bush's infallibility complex; our first priority must be our own security. And in Iraq, that means setting realistic goals. On "Meet The Press" back in April, Mr. Kerry wasn't as forthright about Iraq as he has now, at long last, become, but he did return several times to a point that shows that he is on the right track. "What is critical," he said, "is a stable Iraq." Not an Iraq in our image, but a country that isn't a "failed state" that poses a threat to American security. The Bush administration has made such a mess of Iraq that even achieving that goal will be very hard. But unlike Mr. Bush's fantasies, it's still in the realm of the possible. nytimes.com

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/24/2004 10:32:28 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns ___________________ By BOB HERBERT OP-ED COLUMNIST THE NEW YORK TIMES September 24, 2004 George W. Bush was a supporter of the war in Vietnam. For a while. As he explained in his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House": "My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win." How is it that he ultimately came to see the fiasco in Vietnam so clearly but remains so blind to the frighteningly similar realities of his own war in Iraq? Mr. Bush cannot explain our mission in Iraq and has nothing resembling an exit strategy, and his troops - hobbled by shortages of personnel and by potentially fatal American and Iraqi political considerations - are certainly not fighting to win. As the situation in Iraq moves from bad to worse, the president, based on his public comments, seems to be edging further and further from reality. This is disturbing, to say the least. The news from Iraq is filled with reports of kidnappings and beheadings, of people pleading desperately for their lives, of American soldiers being ambushed and killed, of clusters of Iraqis being blown to pieces by suicide bombers, and of the prospects for a credible election in January tumbling toward nil. The war effort has deteriorated so drastically that the administration is planning to take more than $3 billion earmarked for crucial reconstruction projects and shift them to security programs designed to ward off the increasingly deadly insurgency. A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president contained no really good prospects for Iraq. The best-case scenario was a country with only tenuous stability. The worst potential outcome was civil war. The intelligence estimate was prepared in July, and the situation has only worsened since then. Even Republicans are starting to voice their concerns about the unfolding disaster. When asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" whether the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said, "No, I don't think we're winning." He said the U.S. was "in deep trouble in Iraq" and that some "recalibration of policy" would be necessary to turn things around. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday": "The situation has obviously been somewhat deteriorating, to say the least." He said "serious mistakes" have been made and that most of them "can be traced back to not having sufficient numbers of troops there." These are not doves talking. These are supporters of President Bush who support the war in Iraq and believe it can be won. But they're also in touch with reality. President Bush does not share their sense of alarm. He acknowledged that "horrible scenes" are being shown on television and the Internet, but he was unmoved by the gloomy intelligence estimates. According to Mr. Bush: "The C.I.A. laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be O.K., life could be better." Que sera, sera. The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Iraq, he said, is well on its way to being "secure, democratic, federal and free." If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according to Karl Rove, you'll find that words lose even the remotest connection to reality. They become nothing more than tools designed to achieve political ends. So it's not easy to decipher what the president believes about Iraq. This is scary. With Americans, Iraqis and others dying horribly in the long dark night of this American-led war, the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances. Perhaps someone can dislodge the president from Karl's clutches, shake him and tell him that his war is a tremendous tragedy with implications far beyond the election in November. At the moment there is no evidence the president understands anything about the war. He led the nation into it with false pretenses. He never mobilized sufficient numbers of troops. He seemed to believe the war was over in May 2003. And he seems not to know how to proceed now. The tragic lesson of Vietnam is staring the president in the face. But he'll have to become better acquainted with the real world before he can even begin to learn from it. nytimes.com

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/24/2004 12:24:58 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Carl. It seems we are, after all, in agreement on many of the aspects of what Bush has "learned," or more precisely, what the limitations are on his ability to act foolishly. There are a couple of points in your post that I want to address. First, the points I made on the oil thread were, as I recall, intended to address the motivations of the Bush Administration and the reasons why oil exploration and drilling had not reacted to shortages and prices the way most observers would have expected. Interestingly, there were some articles that later disclosed that in the "energy meetings" of Cheney, the oil majors discussed the potential that Iraq's oil fields might be opened up. I'm sure you're aware of the effect that would have on the value of more expensive lifting operations. Second, you write: So where's your post predicting the guerilla war in Iraq? It is not correct to say that I was not aware of the limits on American military power. You may have forgotten that I had the opportunity to see for myself what those limits are, and I can assure you that it's a lesson not readily forgotten. In any event, here are excerpts from two of my historical posts that you evidently overlooked from early April of 2003. I was posting much earlier but, I'm ashamed to admit, I posted on Yahoo: siliconinvestor.com NO ONE that I heard speak in this country had any serious doubts that we'd overcome the conventional forces of the Iraqis with a modest effort. We met and exceeded those expectations. The war that we should fear in the next decade is not the war that's imposed on us by nations. Most nations of the world are not YET prepared to counter or suffer the utter devastation that our weapons of mass destruction could wreak on them in a matter of minutes or hours. As the Iraqis who had the will and the means to fight us have learned, however, the way to fight a high tech, powerful army is to eat it's young when the bear is out of the den. Low tech guerrilla attacks from an enemy that hides among a civilian population can be deadly and can disrupt a stronger foe forever. It's that kind of war that we should fear. It's that kind of enemy that we may face in future months and years in Iraq and here at home when they can reach us here. It's that kind of enemy that we may be creating in greater numbers with our current policies and actions and it's that kind of enemy that you seem unwilling to recognize. You can call them "thugs" if you like, but any time men and women are willing to die for the chance to kill us, we should recognize the power of their beliefs. Now tell me how objective you are and how I've "just seen the greatest military victory in a century" and how most of the Iraqis all see this as the best thing since Mohammed. If that belief and the negative labeling of those that disagree with you allows you to sleep better at night and feel bright and powerful, that's up to you but don't expect to post such views without dissent. As for me, I'll continue to think critically and I won't let my hopes blind me to the views of the other side. I won't get caught up in a wave of patriotism or nationalism or pride of conquest and I won't forget and stop struggling to retain what made this country a great nation and a great civilization admired by almost every man and woman in the world. Message 18818734 The Iraqi's are a strong nationalistic people and they may not appreciate our use of force to "liberate" them. The other factor that we don't discuss is that unlike N. Korea where the people are starving, most Iraqi's have led relatively comfortable economic lives. Sure, there are sects who will welcome us and sections where we will undoubtedly be welcomed with the dancing and flowers we were told awaited us. The Kurds are ecstatic, The Shiites are leaning our way. I don't know about the Sunni and the Baeth are definitely not our friends. Time will tell and a few images on the screen will not. I expect that when this is done we will see substantial celebrations but we should be aware of those that do not share in the rejoicing. Even among those that rejoice, the mood can change quickly if we don't handle things properly. Sure, I'm stuck in the Vietnam era. I'm also stuck in the Russian-Afghanistan era and a few others. That's called history and learning from it. If we install a puppet government that is not supported by the population and then try to prop it up with American military might, and if we use that tool to try to secure control of Iraqi oil, we may have to learn the lessons we learned in Vietnam again and those that the Russians learned in Afghanistan. Or maybe "it's different this time." I'll respond to another of your assertions in a follow up post because it's important enough to stand alone. Ed

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/24/2004 12:52:17 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi again Carl. In my post I wrote that; "The climate for the aggressive use of American military force is bad. But remember that it could change in an instant if we had a Russian school-like terrorist attack here at home." You replied: No. Another terror attack in the US would prove that the war on terror was failing, and that would call into question the whole Iraq debacle. Plenty of experts have been testifying that the Iraq war made regress instead of progress in the WOT and those experts would end up trotted out saying "I told ya so" if there were another attack here. I think you're wrong. I think that when Americans are mad and scared they don't think first, they act first and think later. If our leadership "wants" to find a basis for more aggressive action then they will have the mandate as long as they can give any rationale that satisfies the revenge and safety feelings of the public. After all, remember that "9/11 emotions/Iraq invasion" was not just rubber stamped by the uniformed; many of our "bright" minds went right along. In addition, take a look at what has happened in terms of the Israeli response to Palestinian terror attacks. Long before they started building a wall the Israelis were busy punishing the entire Palestinian population and turning moderates into radicals. I can understand WHY they did that but it doesn't change the fact that it was a counterproductive response. If America saw it's children murdered, torn, and mutilated and if America was given ANY barely credible rationale for striking back at Iran or some other "sponsoring nation," I suspect there would be plenty of support for that action. Because no one has had the nerve or the desire to tell us, "toughen up and live with the fact that there are going to be attacks and there isn't much we can do about them." In fact, you can argue that the attacks of 9/11 that sent America on tilt may well have been just what the "war of ideologies" fanatics on both sides of the conflict wanted. Let's face the fact that there's an element of instinctual rage in all of us when the safety of our families or our tribe are threatened. In the grip of that emotion we don't really care much how much of a threat something is; we don't want to tolerate ANY level of threat and we go out and start clubbing possible suspects. We did it in Iraq, our soldiers do it in battle and it's a big part of who we are as humans. So I don't think we'll start thinking about how our policies failed us in the event of an emotionally charged terrorist event. I think we'll get out the clubs and then later think, "gee, why did we do that." I suspect that the terrorists understand that and that they WANT to force the emotions that create that reaction. I don't think it was an accident that the Chechnya attack on Russia was targeting children because I suspect that the real nuts want to generate overreactions that will force moderates to take sides. Ed

To: Bilow who wrote (146265)	9/29/2004 2:24:05 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

<<...The invocation of "the troops" to smother criticism is beyond contempt. It dehumanizes them, turning them into a political device to advance the campaign and to secure, if possible, another little slice of the electorate. It does not show, as Bush must think, a special solicitude for them but just the opposite...>> _______________________________ More Prudence, Less 'Projection' By Richard Cohen Columnist The Washington Post Tuesday, September 28, 2004 In the faraway past, I was a psych major in college, and it was then that I discovered the useful word "projection." It was, as I recall, the tendency to assign to others the attributes or faults you had within yourself. I have in the intervening years moved on to journalism, but I still know projection when I see it. George Bush projects all over the place. He does so most prominently when he accuses John Kerry of endangering Americans at home and, most important, troops overseas by engaging, as a presidential candidate should, in criticism of the current administration. Recently Bush set the tone for his administration and the more opportunistic members of the GOP by saying that Kerry's criticisms of the war in Iraq "can embolden the enemy." It goes without saying that emboldening the enemy is dangerous to our troops. It is very close to treason. Something similar has been said for some time by Vice President Cheney, who warned three weeks ago that a Kerry victory would make the United States more susceptible to a terrorist attack and then, in the manner of a shyster lawyer who knows he will be overruled, took it back. He misspoke -- and he has since done so repeatedly. Also misspeaking is Sen. Orrin Hatch, who told Fox News that "Democrats are consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there." This, too, would be tantamount to treason on the part of the Democrats -- or maybe it's just stupidity on Hatch's part. Please ponder the matter. All this solicitude for the welfare of the troops is both touching and a bit late in coming. It would have been the better part of prudence not to have gone to war in the first place. Barring that, it would have been prudent to wait until our traditional allies were as convinced as we were that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Even if no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, the United States still might have convinced some other important nations (besides Britain) that Saddam Hussein's repeated violations of U.N. resolutions had to be addressed. Sooner or later the world really does have to put up or shut up. Still more solicitude for the troops might have been shown if the Bush administration had worried over its war plan a bit more. The compulsion to fight the war on the cheap meant too few troops and, once Baghdad was taken, too much chaos. The unforgivably arrogant conviction that Iraqis would embrace U.S. troops as liberators and would somehow break out in song also cost the United States lives. I doubt if any after-action report listed a single cause of death as being attributable to "criticism from home." Karl Rove may want to do something about that. Even now there are not enough troops to do the job, an assertion made not by me but by some smart people at the Pentagon. Too few troops means that the situation in Iraq is more dangerous than it needs to be. That needs to be pointed out, not muffled. After all, lives are truly at stake. The invocation of "the troops" to smother criticism is beyond contempt. It dehumanizes them, turning them into a political device to advance the campaign and to secure, if possible, another little slice of the electorate. It does not show, as Bush must think, a special solicitude for them but just the opposite. They are grist for his reelection. Could it be that Bush's low blows -- and the cheap shots of others -- are uttered in total sincerity? It's possible. Bush has acknowledged almost no mistakes in the way he took the nation to war, pronounced an early victory -- and made a total mess of it. The president is not known for introspection or, for that matter, for much thought, and it could be that he actually thinks that by debating the war, Kerry is trifling with perfection. If that is the case, then he is agog in an Oz of his own. It's more likely -- at least more rational -- that Bush senses that something has gone terribly wrong in Iraq but that if Kerry is silenced, no one will much notice. The president must, in some nagging way like a mild itch, recognize that it is his mistakes -- not Kerry's language -- that have cost American lives. In Bush's case, projection is both understandable and Shakespearean. In the words of Hamlet's guilt-ridden mother, he "doth protest too much." © 2004 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com