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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TopCat who wrote (357270)	11/7/2007 1:06:28 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571040

history is probably his strong suit. No. He was however motivated to try to gain access to indoctrinate children with his world view.

To: TopCat who wrote (357270)	11/7/2007 1:55:20 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571040

Bush’s ‘Freedom Agenda,’ R.I.P. Posted November 6th, 2007 at 8:30 am To say that the White House’s policy towards Pakistan has left the United States in an awkward position right now would be a dramatic understatement. With Gen. Pervez Musharraf having suspended the constitution and stifling any semblance of freedom, Bush, once again, is left with bad and worse options. As Fred Kaplan explained, these conditions are not just an accident of circumstance. The administration’s policy helped produce this mess. We can’t do much about this now, but we might have been able to do something about it two years ago or six months ago. The fact that we didn’t is a grave indictment of Bush’s foreign policy, both its practices and its principles. For instance, nearly all of the $10 billion in U.S. military aid to Pakistan has gone to its military. Bush could have at least tried to funnel a larger portion of the aid to democratic institutions. This crisis was triggered last March when Musharraf fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court for criticizing his rule. That set off the unprecedented street rallies by the nation’s lawyers. That emboldened the Supreme Court, which started to take its duties seriously. That gave rise to the near-certainty that the court would rule Musharraf’s reign illegal. That tipped Musharraf to suspend the constitution — and, with it, the courts. Since Bush officials stay in touch with Musharraf quite frequently, and since they are known to pay at least lip service to democracy, someone could have at least advised Musharraf to get off this track. No one could have expected him to turn democrat, but he could have taken palliative measures — or cynical ones: for instance, paying off the justices — to ward off a crisis. As Kaplan concluded, “The Bush foreign policy was neither shrewd enough to play self-interested power politics nor truly principled enough to enforce its ideals.” As for the president’s vaunted “freedom agenda” — Bush repeated just a few days ago, “We are standing with those who yearn for liberty” — that’s no longer operative.