Neo-cons have hijacked US foreign policy

Boston Globe | 9/10/2003 | Robert Kuttner,

[Ben Ficklin]

Although the Phase I(aug 99) report does not mention preemption it certainly points out that prevention and deterrence will not be effective in the 21st century.

The phase II report(april 2000) plainly states:

"The magnitude of the danger posed by WMD compels this nation to consider carefully the means and circumstances of preemption"

This passage is to be found in the first paragraph on page 9 of the Phase II report.

Here is the link to all the Hart-Ruddman Commission reports from whence you can navigate. These reports should be required reading.

[dogbyte12]

I have lost the right to a lawyer, a preliminary hearing if any government official decides I am a terrorist.

I have lost the right to privacy. I am about to lose the right to have a judge or a grand jury first authorize a subpoena before they execute a search warrant, or to force me to testify if Ashcroft gets his latest folly passed. The beauty part of that one is that he can also put a gag order on you, so you are not allowed to reveal what was done to you.

No, they haven't gone after me, yet...

They are charging meth dealers for producing chemical weapons under the patriot act. No big deal. We all hate meth labs. However, they have proved already that they are willing and able to use these laws against people who aren't suspected of terrorism even though we were promised that they were for terrorism only.

I am not a great believer in the slippery slope as a rule, but this one is a landslide in the making. If you want a democratic administration determining what is a "weapon of mass destruction", or a "chemical weapon", be my guest.

You and I both know, (even though it short cuts your argument), that congress passed the chemical weapons law to go after fanatic bombers, not meth labs. The law is being perverted already.

I am still safe. For now. Hell, people have been saying that if you criticize the war on terror, you are supporting the terrorists. Isn't that worthy of a detention without charges, without the ability to consult a lawyer?

I refuse to allow the bill of rights to be shredded for other people just because my ox isn't being gored.

If you are willing to take away the freedoms of others, you aren't worthy of freedom for yourself. Our founding fathers could have allowed warrantless searches, being held without charges, and we would have been "safer". They valued liberty more than safety. I do as well.

[Theyknow]

Are you suggesting that the Hart/Ruddman report is what is driving foreign policy? Are you aware that the administration dismissed that report in its entirety before 9/11? The fact that the word “preemption” is in the report does not support in any way your position that that is where the modern doctrine originated. I’ll give you a hint, it was about a decade earlier and Hart and Ruddman had nothing to do with it.

[Cronos]

We haven't succeeded yet in Afgh, not until we eliminate the talibs and alQ south of Kabul, namely Pak

[Cronos]

Oh, no, it's not a failure, it's succeeding, but it's not over yet. We need to be in there in Afgh and irQ for hte long haul, and we can't leave now.

[Ben Ficklin]

You can spin it to say that the Bush Administration dismissed Hart-Ruddman but the the reality is that they, like all of Washington, the media, and the public, ignored it. The Bush Administration knew that pre-9/11 implementaion of HR would be impossible and a political hot potato, a loser for whoever pushed it. In fact, they ignored HR even after 9/11, waiting for momentum in Congress. Then, preempting Lieberman, they got out in front of it to shape it as they saw fit.

Instead of hints, you might try links. As it has been pointed out on this thread, there is a long world history of preemption, and by definition, that would include interdiction.

[Theyknow]

Placing US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has been extremelly productive.

Afghanistan:

Taliban gone.
Numerous terrorists in Afghan captured/killed.
Connections between Osama and 911 found in Afghanistan.
Entire nation of people freed.


Taliban threaten mutilation for Afghans who shave or listen to music
Not exactly. Since our commit
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=9&u=/afp/afghanistan_taliban

Commitment to Afghanistan was too small; consistent with the neocon view of “war light.” We haven’t done much to control the Taliban outside of the capital. Things are actually worse for the average Afghani citizen according to the aid workers. What must be done is for the US to abandon this attitude that technology will conquer all and send in the man power necessary to win in Afghanistan also.

[Theyknow]

Placing US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has been extremelly productive.

Afghanistan:

Taliban gone.
Numerous terrorists in Afghan captured/killed.
Connections between Osama and 911 found in Afghanistan.
Entire nation of people freed.


Taliban threaten mutilation for Afghans who shave or listen to music

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=9&u=/afp/afghanistan_taliban

Not exactly, because our committment to Afghanistan was too small; consistent with the neocon view of “war light.” We haven’t done much to control the Taliban outside of the capital. Things are actually worse for the average Afghani citizen according to the aid workers. What must be done is for the US to abandon this attitude that technology will conquer all and send in the man power necessary to win in Afghanistan also.

[Theyknow]

Here is a link which addresses what real conservatives think of what is going on. There has been a change in US foreign policy and it is time that that issue becomes the debate. Unless or until we talk about the real issues the solutions will not come.

I would post the whole thing but I'm not sure if that is ok with the Washington Post.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A38891-2003Aug9&notFound=true
A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles

By Dan Morgan

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page A03


At forums sponsored by policy think tanks, on radio talk shows and around Cleveland Park dinner tables, one topic has been hotter than the weather in Washington this summer: Has the United States become the very "empire" that the republic's founders heartily rejected?

Liberal scholars have been raising the question but, more strikingly, so have some Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials.

For example, C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to President George H.W. Bush, has joined a small group that is considering ways to "educate Americans about the dangers of empire and the need to return to our founding traditions and values," according to an early draft of a proposed mission statement.

"Rogue Nation," a new book by former Reagan administration official Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute, contains a chapter that dubs the United States "The Unacknowledged Empire." And at the Nixon Center in Washington, established in 1994 by former president Richard M. Nixon, President Dimitri K. Simes is preparing a magazine-length essay that will examine the "American imperial predicament."

[Luis Gonzalez]

"I have lost the right to a lawyer, a preliminary hearing if any government official decides I am a terrorist."

"Decides"?

You mean has proof to that effect, and a reason to believe that you are.

And who has been arrested as a terrorist that has not been one?

No one that.

"I have lost the right to privacy."

You have?

Constitutionalists, and pro-lifers argue that there is no such right. So do pro-family, anti-gay voters.

Today's terrorists are the enemy combatants of World War II, let them burn.

"I am still safe. For now. Hell, people have been saying that if you criticize the war on terror, you are supporting the terrorists. Isn't that worthy of a detention without charges, without the ability to consult a lawyer?"

Half of FR would be in jail having the rights violated if that were true.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"I have lost the right to a lawyer, a preliminary hearing if any government official decides I am a terrorist."

"Decides"?

You mean has proof to that effect, and a reason to believe that you are.

And who has been arrested as a terrorist that has not been one?

No one that.

"I have lost the right to privacy."

You have?

Constitutionalists, and pro-lifers argue that there is no such right. So do pro-family, anti-gay voters.

Today's terrorists are the enemy combatants of World War II, let them burn.

"I am still safe. For now. Hell, people have been saying that if you criticize the war on terror, you are supporting the terrorists. Isn't that worthy of a detention without charges, without the ability to consult a lawyer?"

Half of FR would be in jail having the rights violated if that were true.

[ex-snook]

"I remember Candidate Bush saying he would only send in forces if there were a clear exit strategy. Was this the exit strategy? Stand around and get shot at . . . spend taxpayer's money on Iraq? "

Maybe Cheney and the campaign contributors wanted access to oil. Also the neo-cons duped Bush into thinking an Iraq war would bring Democracy to the area and peace to Israel-Palestine. 2004 may be his exit 'stratergy'.

[Theyknow]

Dick Cheney in April 1991, then Defense Secretary, as quoted in the Slate on October 16, 2002:


"If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein,you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?"

He said that after Saddam gassed his own people.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here's what the President's father thought of a war with Iraq.

From George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 489-90:


"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
We discussed at length the idea of forcing Saddam personally to accept the terms of Iraqi defeat at Safwan just north of the Kuwait-Iraq border--and thus the responsibility and political consequences for the humiliation of such a devastating defeat. In the end, we asked ourselves what we would do if he refused. We concluded that we would be left with two options: continue the conflict until he backed down, or retreat from our demands. The latter would have sent a disastrous signal. The former would have split our Arab colleagues from the coalition and, de facto, forced us to change our objectives."

[justa-hairyape]

Here are the important parts of your article.

"It is the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies who bother people. They can do nothing because people hate them and they don't have the power to fight in a front so they carry out guerrilla attacks on government posts and aid workers," the governor said.
"We are chasing them and they will be finished soon."

The war in Afghanistan was planned incredibly well. We should have lost thousands, just like the Soviets and just like most other conquerors suffered over the milleniums.

[l33+h4x0r]

Interesting quote from Perle, re the author's point that the diplomacy was a sham:

reporter: "BUT KNOWING GEORGE W. BUSH HE WOULD NOT BE INCLINED TO AUTOMATICALLY EMBRACE THIS CONCERN FOR MULTILATERALISM OR THE UNITED NATIONS."

Perle: "I think there were some - I think there were overwhelming practical considerations. One is we weren't ready so the argument that you've got nothing to lose by going to the UN, you know, it may take a week or two or six or eight but we're not going to be ready for 8 or 10 or 12 weeks. So you've got nothing to lose. Second, there's a high probability that you will get the approval of the United Nations and in that case you'll be in a much stronger situation politically. So why not go to the UN?"

[justa-hairyape]

I think A. Pole's point, is that are 3,000 lives enough to give up our liberty? What is the magic number? What if the towers didn't fall and everybody on the non hit floors got out? Just say 300 people died. Would that be worth giving up our bill of rights?

We are at war. We have suffered one of the greatest attacks on our home soil ever. The enemy wants us dead. They have no morals. They will kill women. They will kill children. They will kill the ederly. They will kill the non-combatant. Historically they are barbarians. All that was painfully clear on 911. We will have no nation at all if we do not defeat them.

Ancient Rome thought the same thoughts you and the modern Democratic party are apparently thinking. 'We can asborb a few hits'. 'Just give the barbarians some goods'. 'Buy them off'. That philosphy has been historically proven to be wrong.

[justa-hairyape]

This punk ass has the gall to say that after 12 years of the JFK-LBJ Vietnam adventure?

Although I was too young to realize it back then, I am begginning to understand why we abandoned Vietnam. The mainstream media kept portraying military victories as military defeats. They brainwashed the public into thinking the war was lost and not worth fighting. Much like the Modern left is doing today. Back then however, the North Vietnamese were not a threat to our homeland. Today we know that Islamic Terrorism is a realized threat to our homeland. To abandon the war on terror is to abandon our future freedom. Unless of course you actually want to pray to Saudi Arabia every day.

[x]

The mainstream media kept portraying military victories as military defeats. They brainwashed the public into thinking the war was lost and not worth fighting.

True, but it was a reflection of the fact that the enemy wasn't going to give up and go away, and that there would be no exit from Vietnam and no end to the war. I don't know if that's true of Iraq, but it's worth thinking more about what we are really capable of doing in the world before we intervene.

[Theyknow]

We haven't won it yet. Talk about good planing when there is victory.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=9&u=/afp/afghanistan_taliban