Posted on 10/13/2006 8:07:46 AM PDT by silentknight
Foreign policy aims and foreign policy results are usually two different things. And our State Department is in major need of housecleaning.
I can't make the leap, though, to your conclusion that we are the weakest nation on the planet.
The opposite is true, although our foreign policy often seems to be ashamed of that fact.
Ummm, so what? Bush couldn't clean the agency out until Negroponte was appointed? How much time do you think it should take to clean out a national security apparatus that interferes with an election? I would say about as long as it takes to march a bunch of FBI interrogators to Langley.
Don't have any doubts, by the way, that a Dem admin wouldn't do exactly that in a heartbeat if the situation were reversed.
Regarding the NK nuke tests: we pay $20 billion a year for what? Incompetents who can't do basic political analysis?
Get a clue yourself.
That one took me a moment to get!
Lol!
I wasn't defending the length of time it should take to clean house. I was defending the Negroponte appointment in 2005 "as a start", which you apparently missed because you responded to me about "2004".
BTW, do something about the "um" impediment, okay?
Me:You don't have a clue.
You again:Regarding the NK nuke tests: we pay $20 billion a year for what? Incompetents who can't do basic political analysis? Get a clue yourself.
You fail to back your assertion.
"I can't make the leap, though, to your conclusion that we are the weakest nation on the planet......The opposite is true, although our foreign policy often seems to be ashamed of that fact."
When our foreign policy is used as though we "are the weakest nation on the planet", then the ability of our strenght to help affect our foreign policy goals is no better than the actual weakest nation on earth.
Under Condi, our "diplomacy" carries no sticks, projects no sense of the power we actually have, to either friend or foe and thus our diplomacy is mere talk, mere process, like the French, where just because we are talking we get to pretend some goal is being met. It is as if we actually are powerless and the results are no better than if we actually were.
There are things that China, Iran and our allies can all be told, in terms of the risk to good relations with us and continuation of the world status quo that their appeasement of current dangerous conditions that their actions could invoke, in terms of our response.
Instead, we appease the foreign policy goals of every foe and ally on the pretense that we are getting their cooperation, when the results of our diplomacy continue to show that they got the most the could have hoped for and we got the least.
When you emasculate, through "diplomacy" the real power you have, it creates practical results that in affect deny you have any real power; and nations that are your foes are encouraged, given every expectation that they should be and cannot understand when a Reagan comes along to finally correct course.
The self-imposed fiction on our power is more dangerous than flexing it to begin with; and we have nothing to feel guilty about our goals when we do.
Beijing Olympics 2008 boycott by Americans and Japanese and
Chinese goods boycott
That would be nice - just like in 1980. But I doubt it would happen.
"From 1995 to 1997, Ambassador Burns was Spokesman of the Department of State and Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary Madeleine Albright. In this position, he gave daily press conferences on U.S. foreign policy issues, accompanied both Secretaries of State on all their foreign trips and coordinated all of the Department’s public outreach programs.
Mr. Burns, a career Senior Foreign Service Officer, served for five years (1990-1995) on the National Security Council staff at the White House. He was Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs. He had lead responsibility in the White House for advising the President on all aspects of U.S. relations with the fifteen countries of the former Soviet Union."
None of which says anymore, or enlightens us anymore than does his tenure as the lead foreign policy advisor to John Kerry in 2004.
You can listen to Kerry's more academic policy speeches during the campaign, look at the change in our negotiating stance and positions, vis-a-vis Korea, Iran and Israel-Palestinian issues since Condi, and see the hand of Nicholas Burns in both places.
They will want war, because we will have convinced them that they will win.
a) there was no coordination with Japan regarding a reaction: when Abe stressed that Japan would not acquire nuclear weapons in Beijing, we lost 90% of our bargaining position with Beijing;
b) Bolton is now groveling for a pathetic, meaningless UN resolution that not only excludes the use of force, it doesn't even include an arms embargo;
All of this is evidence that the Bush admin was not prepared for the test nor was it provided any meaningful political advice on how to manouver a response (this is a failure of the national security apparatus as a whole, not just the Agency).
It's pathetic all around.
Exactly, and for that we can say thank you Condi and Burns.
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