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

To: geode00 who wrote (170195)	8/30/2005 7:10:13 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Jesse Jackson urges Bush to condemn Robertson's call to assassinate Chavez cbc.ca CBC News Last Updated Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:59:25 EDT The U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday urged President Bush to strongly condemn Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Venezuela's president. Jackson said Washington needs to cool down the rhetoric against Venezuela. Jackson met Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the presidential palace in Caracas in a move to ease tensions aggravated last week by right-wing religious broadcaster Robertson's suggestion that Chavez ought to be killed. Chavez said after the session that he was willing to cooperate with the United States in the anti-drug fight, a program he cancelled recently amid claims of U.S. spying. Also, his government provided details on his earlier pledge to sell oil directly to poor U.S. communities. "We never lose hope that we'll regain a good tone with Mr. Bush's government," Chavez said. Jackson told The Associated Press in an interview shortly before the meeting that "we must make it clear that talk of isolating Venezuela, talk of assassinating its leader, this is unacceptable, and it must be denounced roundly by our president and by our secretary of state." Chavez said Sunday night that his government could ask Washington to extradite Robertson to Venezuela for suggesting U.S. agents kill him. "Calling for the assassination of a head of state is a terrorist act," said Chavez, who has regularly accused the U.S. government and its allies of plotting to overthrow him. The U.S. State Department said Monday that Venezuela does not appear to have a sound legal basis for extradition. Robertson called for Chavez's assassination on his TV show "The 700 Club" a week ago, saying the United States should "take him out" because the Venezuelan leader poses a danger to the region. Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a supporter of Bush's re-election bid, later apologized. But Jackson said that isn't enough. "The Pat Robertson statement was the threat that was heard around the world," Jackson said. "It reinforces ancient fears because the U.S. has had a policy of eliminating leaders in this region, in Guatemala, in Chile." Jackson, who planned to tour one of Venezuela's state-backed cooperatives on Tuesday, said his visit had been scheduled about two months ago, long before Robertson's remarks. Chavez, an ex-army officer elected in 1998, says he is leading Venezuela toward socialism and has accused the United States of backing a short-lived coup against him in 2002, along with a series of other efforts to destabilize his government. U.S. officials have strongly denied trying to bring down Chavez, even as they have made clear they are concerned about Chavez's ties with Castro and what his opponents call the Venezuelan leader's authoritarian tendencies. Chavez offered Venezuelan aid to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and he reiterated a recent suggestion that his country would provide oil directly to poor U.S. communities. Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. refineries produce some 660,000 barrels a day of oil products, and that Chavez has offered 10 percent of that -- in heating oil -- to help poor U.S. communities starting this winter. The fuel would be sold directly to the communities, avoiding middle men to bring down costs, Ramirez said.

To: geode00 who wrote (170195)	8/30/2005 9:18:56 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Time for Democratic Flip on Iraq by Kevin Drum commondreams.org Published on Sunday, August 28, 2005 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) Summer polls show that one-third of Americans favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and nearly two-thirds support withdrawal within the next year. In the face of such numbers, the conventional wisdom predicts disaster at the polls for Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections. As conservative insider Grover Norquist put it recently: "If Iraq is in the rearview mirror in the '06 elections, the Republicans will do fine. But if it's still in the windshield, there are problems." Is this good news for Democrats? Maybe, but a growing disconnect between the party's establishment hawks and an increasingly antiwar base could foretell an even bigger crackup on the Democratic than the Republican side. So far, few of the best known faces of the Democratic Party -- Hillary Clinton, say, or Joe Biden, or John Kerry, all of whom supported the war -- have joined those clamoring for an end to the fighting. In fact, the foreign-policy establishment of the Democratic Party is lined up with President Bush in favor of "staying the course." Needless to say, an internecine war between its hawks and doves is the last thing the beleaguered Democratic Party needs. You can be sure that Karl Rove would do his best to hammer such a wedge straight through the heart of the party come election time. So both Democratic factions would be well-advised to do some serious thinking before their disagreements get out of hand. For their part, members of the antiwar left have an easy role: They should continue to push establishment Democrats to support withdrawal from Iraq, but they should also make it clear that no one will be punished for doing so, regardless of their past support for the war. However angry they are, doves can best serve their cause by not demanding tortured explanations and tearful apologies. A change in position should be enough. The hawks have a much harder job. They're the ones who need to publicly change their position, an act that carries the risk of being tarred forever with the dreaded label that killed Kerry's presidential campaign: "flip-flopper." Besides, mainstream Democratic politicians and their advisers genuinely think immediate withdrawal is a bad idea that probably would plunge Iraq into a savage civil war. And then there's this: Democrats with long memories know perfectly well that similar demands for withdrawal during the Vietnam War wrecked the party's reputation on national-security issues for a generation. The American public tended to associate Democratic doubts with the nation's first-ever military defeat, and regardless of whether that conclusion was fair or not, no one is eager to repeat it. What's a mainstream Democrat to do? Have the courage to break ranks and advocate the course that's probably the most sensible anyway: a gradual, phased withdrawal based on specified interim goals and a hard end-date two years from now. After all, in December 2007 we will have been in Iraq for nearly five years, and the plain reality is that by then we'll either leave because we've won or we'll leave because it's clear that we can't. So why not say so? There are many reasons such a public stance makes sense. First, a firm deadline would concentrate the minds of Iraqi politicians and force them to take the training of their own security forces more seriously. This is the most critical part of any drawdown plan because, as Rand Corp. counterinsurgency expert Nora Bensahel wrote recently: "The presence of outside forces often adds fuel to the fire of the insurgents' cause. Only local residents possess the knowledge and determination needed to prevail." Second, there's good reason to think the insurgency is at least partly motivated by a belief that Washington plans to occupy Iraq forever. As Thamir Adhami, a spokesman for Iraq's ministry of foreign affairs, told The New Republic's Spencer Ackerman last year, the United States needs to set a date for withdrawal in order to help pull the fangs of the insurgency. "I tend to believe that [you need] to give them at least a light at the end of the tunnel," he said. Third, military recruitment is in serious trouble, and it's unlikely that we can maintain our current troop levels in Iraq much past 2006 anyway. Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey put it colorfully during testimony before the Senate two months ago: "This thing, the wheels are coming off it." A planned withdrawal allows commanders on the ground to make realistic troop plans now instead of being forced into them later. None of this means abandoning Iraq to the fates. As the U.S. experience in Germany and Japan -- and, more recently, Kosovo and Afghanistan -- proves, postwar aid can promote stability and democracy in the aftermath of conflicts, which means we have every reason to be generous in providing reconstruction assistance of all kinds to the Iraqis after we leave. For any Democrat who has been on the record for the last two years as supporting the war in Iraq, advocating withdrawal will take guts. But being the first liberal hawk to seriously propose such a solution would also carry some rewards: The antiwar left would finally have someone to rally around, and the Bush administration would finally have some serious competition. Who will be the first to do it? _______________________________ Kevin Drum writes for The Washington Monthly.