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

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/7/2005 11:36:04 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

A Failed Strategy ________________________________________________ by Charley Reese December 7, 2005 I listened to the president's speech last week at the Naval Academy. It was pretty much what he has said all along. He believes that democracy can be implanted at the point of a gun and that, once implanted in Iraq, it will spread to the rest of the Middle East. He's wrong, in my opinion. If we analyze what makes us a free nation, we will see where he is wrong. First and foremost, we have a 200-year tradition of the military bowing to civilian rule. Yes, I know it's in the Constitution, but the Constitution is just words on parchment. If the military men didn't believe it, they could easily take control of the country. They never have. They have never even tried or thought about it seriously. That is to their very great credit. There is no such tradition in Iraq or in any of the Arab countries. A willingness to obey the civilian authorities even though you have the guns and they don't is not something that can be taught in a few weeks of training. Maybe this Iraqi army we are creating will stay in its barracks and maybe it won't. Any old Middle East hand would bet that it won't. Freedom of speech is another characteristic of our culture, which predates the American Revolution. Even we, however, sometimes infringe on free speech, especially in time of war. Again, there is no such tradition in Iraq or in the other Arab countries. Their tradition is that you are free to speak if the ruler says you can speak. Neither of Iraq's temporary governments – the one we appointed or the one the Iraqis elected – has been especially tolerant of Iraqi criticism. Ironically, the greatest example of free speech and a free press in the Middle East is Al-Jazeera television, which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush both seem to hate. They hate it because it reports what they don't want reported, which is, after all, the essence of a free press. To our everlasting shame, we bombed Al-Jazeera's offices in Afghanistan and in Baghdad. The official lie that they were both accidents doesn't hold a teacup of water. The idea that two small offices in different countries but belonging to the same company could be hit from 15,000 feet by accident is improbable as hell. Another irony, if you are into that sort of thing, is that the only democratically elected government in the Muslim part of that region is Iran's, and again, our government is definitely not happy about that. A third characteristic of a free society is that the authorities must respect the rights of individuals. Even with our long tradition, that is a constant battle for us. Witness the charges of police brutality, the occasional cases of prisoner abuse, not to mention what our military has done in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then again, there is no such tradition of respecting the rights of individuals at all in Iraq. Recently, the former prime minister said that abuses of citizens under the present Iraqi government are just about as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein. It requires extraordinary restraint for people in authority not to abuse their authority, especially when they believe they are right and the person abused is wrong. It took several centuries for the ideas of freedom to take root in the United Kingdom and its offspring, which includes us. These are not ideas and traditions that can be forced on people. It's true that everyone longs to be free – free to do as he or she pleases without regard for the rights of anyone else. The president has bought into the neoconservative idea that we can spread democracy in the Middle East and now appears to believe he's God's man doing God's will. That's part of the tragedy of human history – people with good intentions doing bad things. As long as he defines victory as a permanently free and democratic Iraq, then all he will ever know is defeat.

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/7/2005 1:38:28 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Congressman John Murtha is live on CNN right now <eom>.

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/9/2005 2:52:41 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

'Victory In Iraq': A Strategy To Mask Defeat by Richard Reeves Published on Friday, December 9, 2005 by Yahoo News New York -- "Victory has a thousand fathers ..." John F. Kennedy once said, famously. Last week one of his successors, President Bush, used the word about that many times as he tried to explain how we would win one day in Iraq. Alas, that is not going to happen. But Mr. Victory is talking as fast as he can to avoid thinking about JFK's next line: "Defeat is an orphan." Hopefully, Bush, whom I characterized a week ago as running a strong race to be our worst president ever, will look a little better next week after the Iraqi elections we made possible. That would be a good thing for Iraq as it seems to collapse before our eyes. Certainly our ever-changing strategies there are collapsing. In fact, the "Plan for Victory," as the president called his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, is a strategy to mask defeat. Bravado aside, the new strategy, borrowed from failure in Vietnam and 19th-century British colonialism, could be called "Bases and Borders." The president put it this way: "We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate and conduct fewer patrols and convoys." What we will do, as laid out in the 35-page strategy paper that accompanied the Annapolis speech, is to begin redeploying our troops in force-protection areas. They will then venture out on raids now and then -- and try to secure the borders from what Bush called "regional meddling and infiltration." That means trying to block Syria, Iran and Turkey from pursuing their interests on Iraqi soil. Newly trained Iraqi units will be left to try to turn the Iraqi-protected cities into larger versions of what were called "strategic hamlets" in Vietnam. The border strategy is an updating of the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Vietnam, or British forts along barren boundaries between tribes in make-believe countries. Unfortunately for us, the real problems of our adventure are already inside the borders of Iraq. Once more we are in a civil war, this time one we helped trigger by clumsily overthrowing a vicious dictatorship. And all the while, as happened at home in the 1970s and happened in Britain in the late 1800s, we will tear up our own country in the process. I got a sample of that last week, when I compared Bush with poor old James Buchanan, blamed by many as the president who made our own Civil War inevitable. The number of e-mails I received topped 10,000 and counting, the majority of them heavy on two words, one printable, "f...ing" and "moron." (Many of them can be read on richardreeves.com or Yahoo!News Op-Ed.) Not all the reaction was bad, and not all of the bad was bad. There are valid arguments for "staying the course," though I was partial to e-mail 11,409, which said on the subject of Iraq threatening us: "If we had waited for Vietnam to invade us, we'd still be waiting." The basic thrust of the reaction to emphasizing Bush's proud and stubborn ignorance of history was that people like me, who were against this thing from the start and laid out how it would inevitably end, are the reason it has gone badly. Actually the reason adventures like this go badly is that we attacked people who have occupied desert or jungle for thousands of years, and will still be there a thousand years from now -- and we won't. "The neighborhood is inhospitable," Bush told our future Navy and Marine officers. He got that right. It would have been better if he understood that from the beginning rather than listening to the flag-waving pipe dreams of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Pray for a good election next week. Let that be the beginning of Iraqis fighting each other for a new Iraq -- or no Iraq, which is a possibility. Then President Bush can "redeploy." He could take a lesson from his hero, President Reagan, who vowed to stay the course after his reckless words siding with Christians against Muslims in Lebanon in 1983 led to the killing of more than 250 U.S. Marine peacekeepers in a suicide bombing at the Beirut airport. Then Reagan waited a few weeks and announced "redeployment" -- to ships 30 miles offshore. © 2005 The Progressive commondreams.org

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/9/2005 7:27:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Clinton Says Bush Is 'Flat Wrong' on Kyoto news.yahoo.com

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/11/2005 2:56:08 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If America Left Iraq By Nir Rosen / The Atlantic Monthly December 2005 Issue truthout.org

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	12/12/2005 9:16:13 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The Military and Soft Power By Joseph Nye* 12.12.2005 huffingtonpost.com In 2002, when the press reported that the Pentagon had created an Office of Strategic Influence whose mission could include spreading disinformation to our allies as well as enemies, Donald Rumsfeld closed it. But according to a story in yesterday's New York Times, he told reporters that while he had given them a "corpse", he intended to "keep doing every single thing that needed to be done." Now we learn that includes planting paid stories in the Iraq press. Soft power is the ability to get the outcomes you want by attraction rather than coercion. Military force is hard power, but the military also can generate soft power. When it attracts others by doing its job well, when it engages in military to military education and training, when it provides relief after a tsunami or earthquake, the military contributes to America's soft power. When it pays to plant stories in Iraqi newspapers, it has the opposite effect. Credibility is the key to success in an information age. Once a message is seen as propaganda, it loses credibility and so does its source. At the same time that the State Department was training Iraqi journalists on the importance of honesty and objectivity in a free press, the Pentagon was undercutting that larger American message. In war, psychological operations are part of the tactics of battle, but the military should define them very narrowly when it comes to winning the peace. Rumsfeld once told a conference of generals that he did not understand soft power. That has been obvious in his bungled conduct of the Iraq war from insulting potential allies while the State Department sought their help to the treatment of detainees to this latest imbroglio. If President Bush is serious about a new strategy for victory, he should start by changing his defense secretary. ______________________________________________________________ *Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, was Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government from December 1995 through June, 2004. Nye has been on the faculty at Harvard since 1964, during which time he also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. His most recent publications are Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (2004), and an anthology, Power in the Global Information Age (2004). Nye received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	1/6/2006 12:41:24 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Ten Amazing Predictions for 2006 juancole.com

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	2/1/2006 1:43:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The Power of Oil yaleglobal.yale.edu

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	2/15/2006 9:42:55 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bush May Be Crossing the Rubicon From Republic To Dictatorship By Miles Mogulescu* huffingtonpost.com 02.15.2006 Through the justifications it has put forth for warrentless wiretapping, the Bush administration is almost literally crossing the Rubicon, beginning the process of transforming the United States from a republic into to a presidential dictatorship. The warrantless wiretapping is dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional by itself. These are criminal acts by the President, and in and of themselves warrant impeachment and removal from office (whether or not impeachment is politically practical under a Republican Congress.) But the Administration’s feeble rationales justifying this program are even more dangerous. Bush and his surrogates claim that the President has the constitutional right, as part of his inherent powers as Commander-In-Chief during a time of war (an endless war in this case) to do anything he chooses to do if he believes it protects national security. In short, Bush claims the power of a dictator. Where could this power grab lead? President Bush and his surrogates have proclaimed many times that opposition to the Iraq war is dangerous, demoralizes the troops, encourages the enemy, and threatens America’s chances for victory. If Bush believes that opposition to the war threatens national security, why doesn’t he have the right to act against opponents to the Iraq war to protect national security? Apparently government agents have already spied on a small Quaker peace group. Why then shouldn’t Bush have the power to wiretap the phones of Iraq war opponents from Rep. Murtha to Cindy Sheehan? Why shouldn’t he have the right to infiltrate anti-war groups with government informants? Why can’t he place agent provocateurs in anti-war groups to incite violent demonstrations in order to discredit the anti-war movement which is harming national security? Why can’t he burglarize the offices of psychiatrists of leading anti-war figures to find information with which to discredit them? Why can’t he break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee? Wait a second; the government has already done all of these things in the recent past. It was called Watergate and the COINTELPRO Program (which lasted from 1956-71. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” groups and individuals that opposed U.S. government policy. The COINTELPRO program was investigated by a bi-partisan Senate Select Committee whose final report stated that the FBI “conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.” The Senate investigation led, among other things, to the passage of the FISA act which required a warrant from a special court in order for the government to place domestic wiretaps. The Administration’s rationale for warrantless wiretapping could justify the reinstatement of any or all of the illegal activities of the old COINTELPRO Program and the Watergate burglars. Even Nixon’s lawyers never claimed a constitutional power for the President to act unilaterally in war time without regard to the Congress and the Courts (although Nixon once famously said, “If the President does it it’s not illegal.”) Bush provides the rationale to go even further. Since the President has the right to take all actions he thinks necessary to protect national security, why couldn’t he censor newspapers that oppose the Iraq War? Why couldn’t he arrest Iraq war opponents, and hold them without charges and without the right to a trial until he decides that the “War on Terror” is over? Taken to the extreme, why couldn’t he torture Iraq war opponents based on his signing statement to the McCain anti-torture Amendment which states that the President can bypass this law if he believes doing so protects national security? I’m not saying that these things will happen. I’m saying that Bush’s theory of President’s unilateral war time powers could justify such actions and more. The Bush administration’s legal theories are an invitation for denying Americans their basic democratic rights. The American people must be shown the danger. This should not be a Democratic vs. Republican issue nor a liberal vs. conservative issue. It should be an issue for all Americans who care about the survival of our republic. If Bush can’t be stopped now from wiretapping Americans without a warrant, then this could be the beginning of the end of democracy in America as we know it. Hopefully Congress and the courts, with pressure from the American people, will overrule Bush’s assertion of dictatorial power. ______________________________________________ *Miles Mogulescu is an entertainment attorney and former Senior Vice-President at MGM before it was sold to Sony. He has been a lifelong progressive since the age of 12 when his father helped raise substantial sums of money for Dr. Martin Luther King, who was a guest in his home several times. He will never forget the impression which that extraordinary man made on him, which helped lead to a lifelong commitment to social justice. He co-produced and co-directed Union Maids, a film about 3 women union organizers in Chicago in the 1930s and '40s, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. At the time of the Gulf War, he and Danny Goldberg produced a super-star music video with new lyrics to Give Peace a Chance written by Lenny Kravitz and John Lennon's son, Sean. He is working on a book about how Democrats can build a progressive majority and take back political power.

To: JohnM who wrote (177335)	2/20/2006 1:17:10 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The New American Police State by Richard Reeves / Syndicated Columnist Published on Saturday, February 18, 2006 by Yahoo News When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a stateless war against terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the United States that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party and the conservative movement." I agree with that, but I didn't write it. No liberal did. The author is Paul Craig Roberts, one of the creators and champions of "supply-side economics," the great conservative cause of the early 1980s. As a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and then assistant secretary of the treasury under President Reagan, Roberts was a true believer and an effective advocate. His political stance is pretty well summed up in the title of his newest book: "The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice." Roberts is a syndicated columnist now, an honorable profession, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a temple of talented political thinkers devoted to all the Right things, beginning with Reaganism. His essay, "My Epiphany: From Reaganaut to Anti-War Radical," is, as they say these days, sweeping the Internet. Roberts begins by emphasizing that he does not believe he is betraying old friends or old causes, saying that he never considered himself a slave to party or ideology. Apparently not. He has been writing strong stuff: "Americans have forgotten what it takes to remain free. Instead, every ideology, every group is determined to use government to advance its agenda. ... The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and democracy itself. The 'liberal press' has been co-opted. ... Media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming 'controversial.'" He talks of "years of illegal spying" giving the White House the power of "blackmail" over media and political opposition. I might not use the same words, but I do believe that we, the people, are in jeopardy: New spying and eavesdropping technologies and their delighted abuse by intelligence-gathering organizations and their political masters are turning the United States into an emerging police state. "Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors," he adds. "Americans need to understand that many interests are using the 'war on terror' to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the war on terror to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neoconservatives are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule ..." "Debate is dead," Roberts concludes. "One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it." I asked Roberts what has been the reaction since these words were published 10 days ago. "I have had thousands of e-mails, about 99.9 percent favorable, full of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike," he answered. "They say the country is desperate for a straight talker. ... People want to hear more. People want me to run for the Senate or for president." I, for one, would consider voting for him, though I would hope he will finally give up on supply-side theory. © 2006 Yahoo News commondreams.org