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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (19923)	12/30/2007 2:04:28 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224667

The Chinese Re-Connection National Security: Bill Clinton was the best president the People's Republic of China ever had. His wife may be even better. Beijing, hungry for more technology transfers, is betting on it. It's no coincidence that Sen. Hillary Clinton's autobiography, "Living History," is the most popular foreign political memoir in Chinese history. The state-owned publisher of the Chinese translation of her book has printed hundreds of thousands of copies (after censoring passing references to dissident Harry Wu) and stocked them in bookstore windows from Beijing to Shanghai. It's also no coincidence that Chinese bagmen are lining up immigrants in Chinatowns from New York to San Francisco to donate cash to Hillary's campaign. Many have never voted. Some aren't citizens and couldn't vote if they wanted to. Most are dishwashers, waiters and garment workers who don't even have the means to give the thousands they're giving. And an alarming number say they've been pressured by shady Chinese "businessmen" to help fill Hillary's campaign war chest. Command fundraisers are breaking out all over the Chinese community. It's plain that Sen. Clinton is China's candidate. It's time to ask why that is. What is the attraction? What does Beijing want? What has she promised? Is Hillary, as some suspect, a Manchurian candidate loyal to foreign and unseen donors rather than American voters? Can she be trusted with U.S. security? With polls showing Clinton bounding ahead of the Democratic field, while nosing out even top GOP hopefuls for the White House, voters must take these questions seriously. We plan to drill down on them in a series of editorials. It's instructive to revisit the special relationship the Chinese had with the last Clinton administration, especially in view of how the former president plans to act as an "international emissary" for his wife. Bill Clinton called it a "strategic partnership." He argued that cozying up to — or as he called it, "engaging" — the communist Chinese was in America's best interest. But while Clinton was engaging them, an engagement that included inviting them into our defense labs and dismantling export controls, Beijing: • Managed to steal secrets to every nuclear warhead deployed in the U.S. arsenal. • Deployed for the first time an entire force of CSS-4 ICBMs that target the continental U.S., from L.A. to New York and everything in between. • Declared the U.S. enemy No. 1 in its military writings. • Bought Russian destroyers armed with missiles designed to kill U.S. carriers. • Built up its missile batteries across the Taiwan Strait. • Infiltrated the CIA and FBI with spies. The Chinese espionage that occurred on Clinton's watch was unprecedented, and analysts still don't know how deep Chinese moles penetrated our security complex. The FBI warned President Clinton that the People's Republic of China was running a massive intelligence operation against the U.S. government, which included a plan to influence the 1996 election. Clinton looked the other way. In fact, there's evidence he facilitated it by throttling the prosecution of Chinese spy cases and covering up probes into Chinese funny money that poured into his campaign. As soon as Clinton took office, he implemented a policy of "denuclearization." That included ending nuclear testing, kicking open the defense labs to Chinese and other foreign scientists, and declassifying hundreds of documents related to our nuclear program. Clinton also deregulated export of sensitive dual-use technology such as supercomputers and rocket guidance systems. And Beijing gleefully took advantage of the dovish changes, sharpening the reliability of the missiles it has aimed at the U.S. and Taiwan. Clinton's open-door "engagement policy" amounted to rank appeasement of a communist state with hegemonic military ambitions. Will Hillary carry on the tradition? Will she, too, hold a high-tech fire sale for the Chinese? One thing is for sure, Beijing and its bagmen are betting on it — big time.

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (19923)	12/30/2007 2:24:50 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224667

Dem Contests Seem To Have Own 'Rhythm' By E.J. DIONNE JR. \| Posted Friday, December 28, 2007 4:30 PM PT DES MOINES, Iowa — The assassination of Benazir Bhutto came as a brutal reminder of the gravity of the decision Iowa's voters will be rendering in their caucuses next Thursday night. Its impact may be felt most powerfully by Democrats who have been thinking less about issues than about the style and quality of leadership they are seeking from their next president. All of a sudden, the politicians' endless loop of television advertisements took on a new and somber significance. During ABC's "Good Morning America" coverage of Bhutto's murder, up popped a Hillary Clinton ad where the message over grave music is that the moment "demands a leader with a steady hand who will weather the storms." No kidding. A short while later, there is a Joe Biden commercial that looks as if it had been produced precisely for this moment. "We don't have to imagine the crises the next president will face," intones a very serious voice. Indeed not. Clinton, of course, is hoping that the chaos in Pakistan will fortify her relentless arguments about the importance of experience. Biden's refusal to back away from his insistence that this should be a foreign policy election seems shrewder now than it did last week. Indeed, Biden has been warning not for months but for years that the U.S. faces its gravest challenge in Pakistan. Edwards' Storm The television pictures from Pakistan ratified that Biden was no Chicken Little. He noted on Thursday that he had "twice urged President Musharraf to provide better security for Ms. Bhutto and other political leaders." Biden was suddenly relevant — to television bookers for sure, but also, perhaps, to voters. David Axelrod, one of Barack Obama's senior advisers, acknowledged that the events in Pakistan could well shake the campaign. But he insisted that they validated Obama's original judgment that the war in Iraq was the wrong battle at the wrong moment. Obama, he said, would be happy to reopen the debate on "judgment" in foreign policy. Still, Iowa's Democrats work to their own rhythms. Foreign policy differences — indeed, almost all issue differences — have had very little to do with the battle here. Instead, said Axelrod, the rhythm of this campaign has been defined by "three different approaches" to the presidency laid out by Clinton, John Edwards and his own candidate. Clinton's argument, he said, is that "she's been around the block," a not quite charitable way of characterizing Clinton's claims that her experience readies her for the coming battles for change that all Democrats devoutly wish to wage. "The Edwards campaign is 'Storm the Bastille,' " said Axelrod, a colorful description of the former senator's fierce attacks on drug companies, oil companies and all others who would stand in the way of reform. This is appealing to the many Democrats who are in a fighting mood. But Obama is running as the candidate who can transcend the old fights. In offering his own closing argument at a Masonic hall here Thursday, he poked fun at Clinton's recent embrace of change as her own magic word. No, said Obama, change "has been our message when we were down, and our message when we were up. And it must be catching on because . . . everyone is talking about change." Add, Don't Divide Clearly but obliquely referring to Edwards, Obama preached that anger won't cut it, either. "There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," Obama said. "We can change the electoral math that's been all about division and make it about addition." Thus has a wide Democratic consensus defined the choice here as among three different change agents: one tough and experienced, another forceful and angry, the third sunny and inspirational. Biden stands outside their fight, listening to his own drummer. Democrats have been in this place before. Writing to his friend Newton Minnow about the 1960 nomination battle among John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson, the veteran New Deal lawyer James Rowe wondered what all the commotion was about. "As long as the available mechanism is the Democratic Party, and the troops to command are Democrats, I do not think there would be much difference between the three men," Rowe wrote. "This is the reality and all the sound and fury of 'liberalism' and 'moderation' which all of your gentlemen indulge in are mere chimera." But in Iowa this late December, the differences among today's three leading Democrats seem real enough, and all the more so now that the world has brutally forced its way into Iowans' already agonized deliberations.