Another international blunder

[SDR]

March 7, 2006 -- NY Times
Editorial
Mr. Bush's Asian Road Trip

There is a lot of good a president can do on a visit to another country: negotiate treaties that enhance American security, shore up a shaky alliance, generate good will in important parts of the world. Unfortunately, President Bush didn't do any of those good things on his just-completed visit to Pakistan and India and may have done some real harm.

The spectacularly misconceived trip may have inflicted serious damage to American goals in two vital areas, namely, mobilizing international diplomacy against the spread of nuclear weapons and encouraging Pakistan to take more effective action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters operating from its territory.

The nuclear deal that Mr. Bush concluded with India threatens to blast a bomb-size loophole through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It would have been bad enough on its own, and disastrously ill timed, because it undercuts some of the most powerful arguments Washington can make to try to galvanize international opposition to Iran's nuclear adventurism.

But the most immediate damage was done on Mr. Bush's next stop, Pakistan. Washington is trying to persuade Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, to defy nationalist and Islamic objections and move more aggressively against Pakistani-based terrorists. This is no small issue because both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, are now believed to operate from Pakistani soil.

But sticking Mr. Musharraf with the unwelcome task of explaining to Pakistanis why his friend and ally, Mr. Bush, had granted favorable nuclear terms to Pakistan's archrival, India, while withholding them from Pakistan left him less likely to do Washington any special, and politically unpopular, favors on the terrorism front.

It's just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him. India and Pakistan are military rivals that have fought each other repeatedly. They have both developed nuclear weapons outside the nonproliferation treaty, which both refuse to sign. When India exploded its first acknowledged nuclear weapons eight years ago, Pakistan felt obliged to follow suit within weeks.

So when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment, and that Mr. Musharraf would be embarrassed by Mr. Bush's explicit refusal to provide it.

Mr. Bush was right to say no to Pakistan. It would be an unthinkably bad idea to grant a loophole to a country whose top nuclear scientist helped transfer nuclear technology to leading rogue states. Granting India a loophole that damages a vital treaty and lets New Delhi accelerate production of nuclear bombs makes no sense either.

Mr. Bush should have just stayed home.

[csintexas]

It's sooooooooooooooooooo embarrassing.

I'm sorry world, the USA should do better.

[SDR]

Just think - if every red-blooded American stood up and said "I'm sorry -- this ain't me" -- what a wonderful message it could send. Following that, the politicians would have to FOLLOW the will of the people, instead of the other way around. . .wouldn't they ?

Or am I hopelessly naive. . .(don't answer that)

[csintexas]

certainly not every American is going to agree but that was some of the point of my "So what now" thread.

I will answer that. I don't think you are naive. I think some group of Americans need to stand up for what is right. I think America does need to apologize for things we have done in the past that where wrong. We need to reevaluate the current world and our place in it. The whole world needs to put the past behind them and work on what we can do today and tomorrow to give all people the fair opportunity they deserve.

[Ed Ziomek]

I think America needs an integrity revolution. I am not talking about the elitist oil mafia or the Haliburton mafia, or the corporate mafia lobbyists that have robbed America of its voice.

Americans... increasingly a land of "color" and dual linguistic speaking. A majority of its people now marginalized by outsourced manufactured jobs and imported, brilliant skilled workers who have taken our jobs.

Americans, who have their popular vote overturned by election spins and tampering. Americans, who are routinely lied to, and spied on, and blamed for all sorts of failures, then told to send their sons to make other nations happy and content, and suffer casualties in the process.

I am waiting for the fed-up Iraqi veterans to come home and challenge the political process as we know it... starting with the Democratic party, then the Republican party.

Yes, in all fairness, we have heroes standing up, the Diane Feinsteins, the Hillary Clintons, the Murthas, Johnny McCains, and other Republicans questioning the idiocy that is going on. They are not enough.

We need the grass-roots youth organize, to activate, and kick these bums in their wallet side!

Or this country is lost in an implosion of corruption, greed, indifference, like all great empires before it.

Question...
Colin Powell. Can the Democrats draft a "Republican" as a possible Presidential candidate?

Returning vets... Who will stand up?

College-age Youth... Who will stand up?

It is time to shake the tree down to the roots.

[SDR]

Maybe it's time to reprint Molly Ivin's wonderful editorial from late January:


I will not support Hillary Clinton for president

Molly Ivins
January 20, 2006



AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up.

Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

_______________________________________________________

This is the excerpt from Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer” referred to above.

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

[csintexas]

What amazes me is how little real dialog there is. Both democrats and republicans have adopted sound bits and good looks as their party platform. Instead of working together they see how each can make the other look bad even if it means bending the truth.

What is really strange is that most Americans would probably agree with each other when presented with logical reasoning and the two parties keep everyone so confused and miss informed no one can tell what to do.

How can anyone come together with parties like these as our leaders?

[SDR]

An excellent description of the situation, I'm afraid. . .

I'd feel less bad if I knew enough of human history to know that this is essentially the oldest story ever. . . Even if it is, what's new is the speed and ferocity of the dissemination of (edited) news and information -- true, balanced, false, and/or edited -- that are seen by all, globally, every day.

To what extent does this -- the mixture of a regrettable human flaw, with a powerful catalyst -- constitute a new, potentially fatal paradigm, do you suppose.

SDR

[csintexas]

I don't think we have to be historians to know that we are dealing with human nature.

We have had pretty fast information flow since the newspaper became widely available so I'm not sure how much difference a day or two makes. I think the real problem is the commercialization of politics. Now a days it's all about your advertising budget how many times can you get your name and face to the voter who has given up on caring what you say because they know it doesn't mean much anyway. Certainly modern media has made that possible.

My view as always is that with some refining the internet will be a great benefit and will allow us to get past this stage in our development.

So my opinion is that we have always been fed false information by the people in power. Today we are at least able to get false information from other points of view so I think that is, all and all, better.

If I had my way I would make political advertising illegal.

[SDR]

Well, I agree with that. It's all about staying in power -- or gaining power in the first place. And I remain uneasy about the amount of political discourse which deals only with this aspect of "the public's interest": what is happening in Washington ("inside the Beltway") and in state legislatures, in terms of who is gaining or losing political (and, by extension, personal) power.

I agree fully that the money (that it takes to be elected, for one thing) should be extracted --by statute -- from the pursuit of political office. But the bulk of public (ie, media) discussion should be about what those in power ARE DOING TO JUSTIFY THEIR POSITIONS in the corridors of power. Americans as a whole seem blissfully unconcerned with what their elected and paid representatives are actually accomplishing, in their behalf.

I fear it is still far to easy to be an unengaged citizen, in fat 'n lazy ol' overfed and under-"taxed" 'Merica. . .!

[csintexas]

"I fear it is still far to easy to be an unengaged citizen, in fat 'n lazy ol' overfed and under-"taxed" 'Merica. . .!"

What an excellent sentance. It captured our predicament perfectly. I wish I could come up with one that good.

Yes, What to do? What to do?

[Ed Ziomek]

Heard it today on Air America... two thoughts on the "why" of the Iraqi war...

One, from Cindy Sheehan, that the war was a planned endeavor for the Bush "cabal" to gain political power in the House and Senate, then gain re-election in the second term, then start the process of dismantling the Roosevelt social programs (Social Security?), and these items were discussed as early as 1999 to some close auto-biographer.

Two, there is the concept that the Euro currency is threatening the Dollar currency for dominance, and the American society might not survive a switch to the Euro, something about... all the trillions of dollars floating out there in the world, that would sink America's ship.

Any thoughts on these interesting comments?

Ed Z

[SDR]

A new book (whose ?) mentioned by a writer-to-the-editor this week, says that the fear of the Administration is that Iran will institute their own oil market and will base it on the Euro (they joined the EU last year ?); the two existing oil-trading markets (one in NYC, one in London) are dollar-based. Thus, according to the writer, the US animus toward Iran. . .

SDR

[Richard Haut]

Very widely quoted as a reason for the coming attack on Iran - a Euro-based oil trading bourse in Iran.

However, probably less well quoted is the very recent announcement of yet another Euro-based oil trading bourse to be started by .... Norway.

The scenario being discussed is a nuclear explosion (on a barge) off a US port which will not cause massive casualties, but maximum panic (the "next 9.11" that Cheney has been salivating about - did NOBODY wonder why Bush & Co wanted Arabs in charge of US ports, huh ?). Then Iran - which of course has no nuclear weapons - will be attacked with nuclear weapons.

Why is civil war being deliberately aggravated in Iraq ? Why was Iraq attacked ? Why will Iran be attacked ? I have not the faintest idea - all the theories may provide partial clues, but not one of them makes sense.

[Ed Ziomek]

Rich, I have learned not to question your ideas. Too often, your comments today become NY Times info two weeks from now.

As an ancient history buff... I am oversimplifying... but my "ears are ringing"...

Fall of Athens... military excursions in so many remote "foreign" places, including overseas locations that they were defeated (Sicily?), apparently they overextended themselves and didn't have the money or manpower to defeat barbarians at their own gates....

Fall of Rome... defeated in Germany by the Gauls. Battled to a draw in England against the Barbarians, overextended in North Africa and Constantinople... imploded with decadence and corruption... then Rome was defeated at their own gates by the Barbarians in 476 AD.

Did I get it right? Is America so overextended, worrying about alleged threats in far off places, mystery rumors from alleged enemies, that we are imploding in our effectiveness?

I worry that this administration thinks "WAR" is a path of security. That "having enemies" is better than "having friends". Forget diplomacy?!

I only have major confusion. The world is not crazy, I must be mentally ill. Seriously! I don't know what is going on.