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

To: GPS Info who wrote (184612)	4/5/2006 11:58:40 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 281500

GPS, I don't find "Powell guilty of not standing up to Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney," I find him guilty of not using the credibility of his office to publicly oppose the rush to war when he believed it was wrong for America. And, ultimately, I found him guilty of becoming an advocate when he added his voice to the case for war in his speech to the UN. If you've followed this story you'll know there's a huge amount of information to buttress this view of the facts, including the speeches and interviews given by Powell's right hand man. According to him, Powell fought a good fight internally and won some concessions but he was finally overcome by the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz crowd. In the process of fighting that battle Powell understood quite clearly that the case for war was being hugely hyped in terms of the threat that Iraq posed and the wmd capability of Saddam Hussein. And, of course, you understood that our soldier's lives were on the line. But that is the one reason that should have been sufficient to motivate Powell to go public and say that the case for war was being hyped, that the diplomacy initiative was a sham and that the Congress and the American public should step back and take another look. And yes, our Democratic representatives and senators are hugely responsible for not having the courage to ask the tough questions and make the tough choices. The Clintons and Kerrys of the senate were politicians when we needed leaders. "So if the military officers follow Bush’s orders, they then have no courage or leadership?! ... As a military officer, Powell would have raised his objection, but the end of the day he would have saluted and carry out his lawful orders." But that's the point, isn't it? The role of the military is to obey the lawful orders of the civilian leadership, the role of Administration Cabinet members is to exercise civilian leadership. Powell was not performing in the capacity of a military officer, he was America's Secty of State. When Powell recognized the futility of infighting the neocon cabal he should have resigned and voiced his opinions, thereby adding his voice to what should have been a great national debate. He didn't and America is embroiled in a counter productive war that's costing the lives of thousands of our soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars of our scarce resources. Finally, regarding the sayings you introduced as "Colin Powell's rules," my point is that those are not "rules." They're more like the kind of happy talk sayings that you'd expect to see at Amway conventions or gatherings of car salesmen. Your rebuttal post makes that clear since you have to use your imagination to find instances where the "rules" make sense. My critique, conversely, was not intended to establish "rules" but rather to point out instances where the "Powell rules" made no sense. The reason I find the "Powell rules" dangerously offensive is because in the context of our current efforts in Iraq they represent a philosophy that would justify taking risks and making mistakes. When it comes to war the "happy, happy, we can make it happen" folks are too dangerous to leave in charge. I prefer the "bad things can happen so let's not do this unless we're damn sure it's going to work" folks. If, for some reason, you think you'd rather have the "perpetual optimism is a force multiplier" folks decide whether your kids go to war, that's your choice. And yes, I'm no Ghandi or Martin Luther King. I believe in the judicious use of force, I've used force myself and I would do so again if I thought it was necessary. That doesn't mean I'd use unnecessary, aggressive, deadly force to address a problem where the use of that force was clearly going to be counter productive. That separates me from the Bush crowd. "My take on your reply is that you resent the current administration and everyone who currently serves or has served under the Bush presidency." You're close. I don't know who most of those people are but if you give me a list of names like Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Rumsfeld, I'm no fan. They might be nice people personally (not Cheney) but they've made terrible choices that we're paying for and will continue to pay for over the next generation. That's a damn shame. Ed

To: GPS Info who wrote (184612)	4/6/2006 12:50:28 AM
From: GPS Info	Respond to of 281500

I’ll take your comments somewhat out of order: The reason I find the "Powell rules" dangerously offensive is because in the context of our current efforts in Iraq they represent a philosophy that would justify taking risks and making mistakes. Yes, I’ve come to see this as the foundation for your comments. If I were to view the ‘rules’ through a lens of cynicism, and also to create a direct correlation to the U.S. foreign policy, I could use my imagination to show how these ‘rules’ work against clear, cold logic, and how these rules, per se, led us all into the quagmire of Iraq. I wouldn’t agree, but I could see that narrative arc. My original intent was that these ‘rules’ might find some small applicability to the posters on this board. I find some dignity in the struggle towards civility in public forums, so I’ll always be optimistic in that regard (Rule #13, followed by #10). To be clear: I meant that I won’t be disheartened by failure here. <g> I find him guilty of not using the credibility of his office to publicly oppose the rush to war when he believed it was wrong for America. And, ultimately, I found him guilty of becoming an advocate when he added his voice to the case for war in his speech to the UN. Exactly how would he have ‘used the credibility of his office?’ It would help me greatly if you could supply an example of how this was done before. If US history is too narrow a resource, I’ll happily extend the field to world history. (I would like to exclude the recent British cabinet minister, if possible, because she wasn’t the FM.) Has there ever been a Secretary of State, or Foreign Minister that has done this with the ferocity of a ‘warrior’ – as you suggested in an earlier post: if he'd been more of a warrior and less of a soldier. I suppose he could have been, but I find this extremely unlikely. Not to be too flippant, but he could’ve pulled out is six shooter and blasted all the guys that you don’t like, and we may have avoided is war (even more unlikely). In our imaginations, we can believe that one man would have stopped this war, and at least allowed us to debate the pros and cons. I foolishly thought that that is what we were tying to do right up to the start of the invasion. The ‘debate’ about Iraq and Sadam’s intentions has been raging since Sadam invaded Kuwait. I’m going to repeat what I said in an earlier post to add context: The only fault I once had was with his UN report, but he’s owned up to what he, himself, considered to be an error. You find Powell complicit in this war. OK. <counter productive war that's costing the lives of thousands of our soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars of our scarce resources.> Yea, I don’t like spending money on counter-productive wars either. I’d prefer to have a $1 trillion space station and a colony on the moon that I could visit once every couple of years. That’d be cool. If I had my way, I’d end wars and spend all the savings on space exploration. We had a war with Serbia and Milosevic that didn’t involve any casualties. We also had continuing air war with Sadam to protect Kurdish areas. Were these good wars or bad? Did we waste billions of our scarce resources in those cases? The bill wasn’t as high as we have now, but the cost was definitely in the billions. If we had abandoned the Kurds (again) or the Shias in southern Iraq (again) or the Kosovo Albanians, what do we make of our place in the world? (Yes, we abandoned the Somalis.) If, for some reason, you think you'd rather have the "perpetual optimism is a force multiplier" folks decide whether your kids go to war, that's your choice. This seems like petulance, but I’ll take it seriously. No, it’s not my choice; that would be my kids’ choice. ‘Kids’ have gone to wars after Vietnam because they volunteered to serve in the military. And, if they hadn’t joined, they wouldn’t have died in war. I would advise my ‘kids’ to understand that by joining the armed services, they may be asked to fight in a war to which they may be opposed. They don’t have to follow unlawful orders like torturing prisoners, but they are expected to honor a contract. They can suffer the consequences not cooperating, and accept a court-martial dismissal. In this case, they’re out – maybe a little brig time, but they’re out for good and get to live out their lives. Whenever life becomes more important than duty and honor, there is a way out. This is the contract with the military. [The rules] are more like the kind of happy talk sayings…you have to use your imagination to find instances where the "rules" make sense. I beg to differ: I used the same skills to interpret the ‘rules’ as I do to solve math and physics problems. I start using common sense and the math that resides coherently in my mind and work upwards. I never thought of myself as ‘imaginative’ because I have little choice but to use mathematical logic and basic reasoning to solve my work-related problems. When I fail, it’s quite apparent. My critique…was...to point out instances where the "Powell rules" made no sense. I feel your imagination (mixed with cynicism) outshines mine by a wide margin. Back to the top: The reason I find the "Powell rules" dangerously offensive is because in the context of our current efforts in Iraq they represent a philosophy that would justify taking risks and making mistakes. The rules really only represent what you make them out to be. I would need to struggle for years to deem them “dangerously offensive.” You may have reasoning skills that I can only guess at. To make my next comment, I need to assume you didn’t quite express what you actually stated. ‘A philosophy that would justify taking risks and making mistakes’ would be defined as ‘life’ to me. I openly confess this puzzles me. I constantly make cost/benefit analyses to determine the risks and the cost of mistakes. Please tell me how you get through your life by not engaging in an activity or project that involves risks or precludes mistakes. I’m missing an important piece to your argument(s), but I’ll read more of your posts to find it. Correction: In my earlier post, I wrote ‘anti-coagulants’ but I meant ‘coagulants.’ I wish you well