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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (11479)	2/10/2006 3:08:50 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 541731

Ken Pollack's latest on Iraq from The Atlantic: Thanks. Very interesting piece. I'm afraid, however, my reading leads to much more pessimism than are Pollack's underlying assumptions. It's too bad these arguments weren't the basis for policy from the outset of the occupation.

To: carranza2 who wrote (11479)	2/10/2006 6:28:21 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541731

President Bush stated last summer that “the principal task of our military is to find and defeat the terrorists, and that is why we are on the offense.” While this is an accurate description of the American military approach, it is, unfortunately, wrong in terms of what is needed. The right formulation would be that “the principal task of our military is to protect the Iraqi people, and that is why we are mainly on the defense.” Instead, the approach we are employing in Iraq—concentrating our forces in Iraq’s western provinces where the insurgents are thickest and support for reconstruction weakest—means committing the cardinal military sin of reinforcing failure. I can't agree with Pollack on this part. If you don't go after the enemy in their base, the base becomes stronger and bigger. Offense can be a very good defense. You can't defend everything the insurgents might want to attack. You could defend the green zone or some hill somewhere and there would be no way the insurgents could take it, but we aren't just trying to forstall being overwhelmed by the insurgents but actually trying to defeat them. Going after the enemies strong points isn't reinforcing failure. Failure to do so lets the enemy exert more pressure on the rest of the country. Where the insurgents are weakest, security can increasingly be kept by Iraqi forces. We have the firepower, but not the manpower to patrol the whole country, and a greatly increased tempo of American patrols across the most secure areas probably isn't required and may lead to more resentment and collateral damage. (The Iraqi soldiers lower level of training might lead them to cause even more collateral damage but their better understanding of the local situation would counter that and while death and destruction from the Iraqi government will be resented it will probably not be as resented as the same level of destruction caused by Americans) 7. Bring in the international community. There might be a benefit from doing this in certain areas, but I'm not sure how willing and able other nations or international organizations are to make a big difference. Tim

To: carranza2 who wrote (11479)	2/10/2006 11:07:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541731

Changing Winds on Surveillance _________________________________________________________ By E.J. Dionne Jr. Columnist The Washington Post Friday 10 February 2006 This week the Bush administration was finally forced out of its own pre-Sept. 11 worldview - and, yes, you read that right. It happened because some brave Republicans stared the president down and said: Stop. Of course, it is the administration that is always accusing its opponents of pre-Sept. 11 thinking. But for the past five years, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove have been willing to put the national unity required to fight terrorism in second place behind their goals of aggrandizing presidential power and winning elections. Can you get more pre-Sept. 11 than that? Instead of seeking broad agreement on the measures required for our nation's safety, they preferred to pick fights designed to make the Democrats look soft and to claim the president could do pretty much anything he wanted. That's why the White House made sure that Rove trumpeted the surveillance issue before the Republican National Committee last month. A president who cared more about national security than politics wouldn't send out his top political lieutenant to make sure everyone knew that the GOP planned to use a matter of such grave importance to bash Democrats. And it's why Cheney, when asked this week by Jim Lehrer if Bush was willing to work with Congress on the issue, barely entertained the question. "We believe, Jim, that we have all the legal authority we need," Cheney replied immediately. Congress could make any suggestions it wanted, but - I add the italics to underscore the point - the White House would ignore whatever it chose to ignore. "We'd have to make a decision as an administration whether or not we think it would help and would enhance our capabilities." Translation - Cheney to Congress: Buzz off. But this time some important members of the president's own party - led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter - decided that enough is enough. As stewards of Congress's constitutional authority, they could not stand by while the president claimed the power to decide for himself what the law said and whether he needed to follow it without any concern for what those meddlesome members of Congress or judges might say. And it's wonderful to see what a few brave politicians can achieve. Yesterday, the administration agreed to brief the Senate intelligence committee on the program after having offered a similar briefing to the comparable House committee the day before. It was a small crack in the wall, and Specter and his allies will have to remain vigilant. Still, until this week, the White House had flatly refused to offer such briefings. The winds are changing. What's heartening is how broad the Republican dissent from the administration has been - a sign that many Republicans have calculated that they'll be better off in this fall's elections if they do their jobs, even if this means challenging Bush and Cheney. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who faces a tough reelection battle and has shown streaks of independence in the past, demanded the briefings for reasons straight out of a good civics textbook. "The checks and balances in our system of government are very important," she said, noting that our "constitutional structure has kept us safe and free and the strongest country in the world for a very long time." Yes, let's wave a flag for this Air Force veteran. Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), who also is up for reelection, said that "this country would be stronger and the president would be stronger" if Bush accepted the idea that Congress might actually have a role in lawmaking on the surveillance issue. And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the administration was making a "very dangerous" argument in claiming that it got the authority to wiretap without supervision when Congress passed its use-of-force resolution against terrorism. Graham said he never envisioned that he was giving Bush - or "any other president" - "carte blanche" on surveillance. Focus for a moment on Graham's reference to "any other president." It's instructive to imagine what Republicans in Congress (let alone Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly) would say if a President Hillary Rodham Clinton were to claim the far-reaching authority Bush and Cheney say they have. Is there any doubt that the entire Republican Party would - to cite a recent comment by Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman - "have a lot of anger" and denounce Clinton for arrogance, overreaching and power lust? "The president should have all the tools he needs to fight terrorism," Specter said, "but we also want to maintain our civil liberties." Now there is a perfect expression of patriotic, post-Sept. 11 thinking. ------- truthout.org