Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: piasa; fdsa2
***The former US diplomats complained that President Bush's approach is losing the US "credibility, prestige and friends". ***

What would we do without diplomats. I think they should be renamed doormats. These Leftists "expert" groups that keep coming out with anti-American bs are nicely identifying themselves.

Kerry's World: Father Knows Best [Excerpt] But, for all the neatness this narrative provides, it overlooks an entire chapter in Kerry's intellectual history: his childhood. In fact, Kerry's foreign policy worldview, characterized by a steadfast belief in international institutions and a suspicion of U.S. hard power, had fallen into place long before he ever enlisted. As Kerry's biographer, the historian Douglas Brinkley, told me, "So much of his foreign policy worldview comes straight from Richard Kerry."

.........[Earlier in article] "Americans," he [John Kerry's father, Richard] writes, "are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white." They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls "ethnocentric accommodation -- everyone ought to be like us." As a result, America has committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" and fallen prey to "the siren's song of promoting human rights," falsely assuming that our values and institutions are a good fit in the Third World. And, just as Americans exaggerate their own goodness, they exaggerate their enemies' badness. The Soviet Union wasn't nearly as imperialistic as American politicians warned, Kerry argues. "Seeing the Soviet Union as the aggressor in every instance, and the U.S. as only reacting defensively, relieves an American observer from the need to see any parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world, and the Soviet use of military power outside the Soviet Union," he writes. He further claims that "Third world Marxist movements were autonomous national movements" -- outside Moscow's orbit. The book culminates in a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral superiority. [End Excerpt]

35 posted on 05/04/2004 1:42:50 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies ]


To: Cincinatus' Wife
Others include (in the letter) John Brady Kiesling, one of at least three US diplomats who resigned last year in protest against the war on Iraq, and Greg Thielmann, until recently a senior State Department intelligence analyst who has accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq's weapons programmes and alleged ties with terrorist groups.

I wonder why Killgore & Curtiss don't want to release their information on contributions to politicians from their lobbyist clients?

38 posted on 05/04/2004 1:59:48 AM PDT by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies ]

To: Cincinatus' Wife
It's good to dig deeper and take action. But not to worry. The only diplomats most Americans have any respect for are Colon Powell and Jean Kirkpatrick. I and other conservatives have tremendous respect for Ambassador Keyes. But for the most part, most Americans only respect tough diplomats who value the lives of Christians and Israelis, the kind that George Will would call "neocons". Those who elevate Islamic lives over Christian and/or Israeli lives, such as Madam "All"bright, most Americans are suspicious of.
47 posted on 05/04/2004 2:31:10 AM PDT by Arthur Wildfire! March (Backhoe's Gorelick links: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117579/posts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies ]

To: Cincinatus' Wife
these "former diplomats" are about as useful to public discourse as most "Nobel Prize winner"s.
85 posted on 05/04/2004 5:45:36 AM PDT by AFPhys ((.Praying for President Bush, our troops, their families, and all my American neighbors..))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson