Originally given March 21, 2006 at the Foreign Policy Center in London.
Over these past nine years, Britain has pursued a markedly different foreign policy. We have been strongly activist, justifying our actions, even if not always successfully, at least as much by reference to values as interests. We have constructed a foreign policy agenda that has sought to link, in values, military action in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq with diplomatic action on climate change, world trade, Africa and Palestine. I set out the basis for this in the Chicago speech of 1999 where I called for a doctrine of international community, and again in the speech to the US Congress in July 2003.
The basic thesis is that the defining characteristic of today's world is its interdependence; that whereas the economics of globalisation are well matured, the politics of globalisation are not; and that unless we articulate a common global policy based on common values, we risk chaos threatening our stability, economic and political, through letting extremism, conflict or injustice go unchecked.
The consequence of this thesis is a policy of engagement not isolation; and one that is active not reactive.
Confusingly, its proponents and opponents come from all sides of the political spectrum. So it is apparently a "neo-conservative" ie right wing view, to be ardently in favour of spreading democracy round the world; whilst others on the right take the view that this is dangerous and deluded - the only thing that matters is an immediate view of national interest. Some progressives see intervention as humanitarian and necessary; others take the view that provided dictators don't threaten our citizens directly, what they do with their own, is up to them.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/11/2007 00:39 ||
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#1
Wow. Is there a Cliff Notes version?
I read enough to know it's worth remembering, 15 months later, and saved a copy for a trip to the 'reading room'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/11/2007 7:37 Comments ||
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#2
A crucial mistake - both in thinking and in rhetoric - of the neocons is in taking a Wilsonian line in distinguishing policy based on interest and policy based on values. The liberation of half a billion muslim women from a Dark Ages rape-cult is not only an expression of our values; it is in our vital interest. The Jacksonians, and a selfish cringing "left", will never be convinced the freedom of people of faraway countries of whom we know nothing is worth our blood and treasure. Hell, they may even be right. But cleaning out the rat-holes of the world in an age of nuclear terror is not virtuous, it is not even selfish, it is sane.
#3
Blair is as unflinching as W and is sort of a British version of Clinton in that he is smart, politically astute, has a progressive lawyer for wife and actually can speak French. Brown on the other hand is penny pinching, taxing, uninspiring Scot who will pull the Brits back from our reach and become more isolationist and more European. Sarkozy won't even have the chance to work witih Blair putting W in a very lonely position to accomplish anything with Sarkozy and Merkel. Love to have Tony around with the new French, Germans, Canadians and UK. I have the feeling the Euros have been reading Mark Steyn and are scared to death and have voted with that fear.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
05/11/2007 10:20 Comments ||
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#4
If the local recent elections are any indication, Jack, Mr Brown will only be PM until the next Parliamentary election. We can hope, anyway.
#5
Oh, and don't forget the incredibly self-centered Jeffersonians, Excalibur: The Prototype for that group sold Haitian independence down the river to prevent a Black Democracy from upsetting the Southern States applecart.
I think the Jacksonians can be sold on the idea that the liberation of the Muslim woman as being in the national interest IF the case was articulated by the "White Knight Leader". Alas, Reagan now rides with the angels, and Dubya's not the Gipper.
#6
I was commenting on Excalibur's comment, and failed to comment on Tony's speech.
He gets a few things right, and a whole lot of things wrong: His reading of Islam, its goals, its intents, and its history, is so PC that it is breathtaking. One has to continually remind people who believe in a variant that "Islam is a religion of peace" is that it grew by ARMED FORCE. The only people who listened to Islam and who embraced it voluntarily, without any coercion, were the Mongols, and they had beaten the crap out of the Arabs militarily. Only by posing as the divinely blessed race were the Arabs able to save face, gain control, and retain control, over the Mongols.
The Mongols. THE MONGOLS. Man, that's like being endorsed by Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, both Il-Jongs, and the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, what sort of religion is Islam if murderous, rampaging, pillaging Mongols find it so attractive that the whole society embraces it wholeheartedly and propagates it back to their own homeland, dropping their own native religion like a hot potato?
What's more amazing is that people think they will solve problems and get things right even if the "facts" that they think they know are fundamentally WRONG? Stupid as shit.
#7
Tony gives a great speech, and he did commit Britain to the WOT. Thank you, Tony. However, Britain has been subsumed by the EU on his watch. The British military is being downsized. Their military equipment is being bought in the EU. The result will be an army like the French. Not operable with US forces and no projection ability. Iraq will be the last cooperative military venture for the forseeable future. In fact the "special relationship" may be over for now.
If one wants a look at how multiculti and political correctness work out, one only has to look at Britain.
#1
I'm optimistic, but can one man change the french national pastime of being annoying? There will no doubt be stiff resistance from the socialist minded elite that believe the world would be a much better place if it were more "french".
#2
the socialist minded elite that believe the world would be a much better place if it were more socialist, elite, PC and appeasing of the mooselimbs.
I hope the "elected" leader, his party, and the people of France can change the direction of France. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of change from the status quo.
When we clicked yesterday morning on the Drudge Report's headline "Republican Congressmen Take It To Bush," it took us to a story in the New York Times about how Republican moderates had gone to warn President Bush that their support for the war was faltering. The Times quoted Congressman LaHood of Illinois as saying, "It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war."
At that, we reached for Lloyd Wendt's history of the Chicago Tribune, which begins with a chapter about what could have been called the Civil War Surge. It tells of an encounter, in 1865, between the young editor of the Tribune, Joseph Medill, and President Lincoln, the Illinois lawyer the Tribune had, to oversimplify the story a bit, essentially assigned to go down to Washington to run the country. "Some observers went even further," Mr. Wendt writes, "asserting that the Tribune had started the war, a compliment the proprietors were disinclined to accept."
The encounter Mr. Wendt describes between Medill and Lincoln started when a delegation comprising Medill and two other Chicagoans had gone to the war department to try to get Secretary Stanton to back off from drafting more men from Cook County. An angry Stanton rebuffed them, and they'd gone over his head, to the White House, and met with Lincoln in his office. Lincoln wouldn't back off, either; a dozen states were trying to get out of draft calls. But Lincoln agreed to walk back over to Stanton's office and "hear the argument on both sides."
"The War Department's blue-uniformed sentries came rigidly to attention as the president appeared," Mr. Wendt writes. Lincoln, he says, gave them a friendly "at ease" and led his visitors through the "chattering telegraph operations room," where he knew everyone by name, to Stanton's "vast cave of maps and charts," where Stanton glowered beneath dark oil paintings of Generals Knox and Dearborn. Stanton was none too pleased to see the same Chicagoans whom he'd shooed out of his office earlier in the day return with his boss. Medill made a game effort, reading from his own newspaper about how no other congressional district had put so many men into the war.
For months, Mr. Wendt explains, the Tribune had "acknowledged to its readers that after four years of the most brutal fighting known to man, even greater sacrifices would be required. The armies were devouring men on a scale not known before in military history, as new weapons outmarched generals' old tactics." Draft riots ensued, particularly in New York. The Tribune required an entire supplemental page, Mr. Wendt notes, just to list Illinois casualties among the more than 13,000 suffered by the Union at Shiloh.
When Medill finished his plea, Stanton nodded to his provost marshal, General Fry, who "read the sanguinary statistics of four years of fighting in a loud, sonorous voice," while Lincoln listened with his head bowed. Stanton then rejected the plea, saying, as Mr. Wendt paraphrases it, that there could be no city nor section nor state asking for special favor, not even Illinois. Medill left the meeting pledging to remain silent about it until the war ended. It would be 30 years before he could bring himself to write the account that Mr. Wendt quotes at some length.
"I shall never forget," Medill said of Lincoln, "how he suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face. Gentlemen,' he said, in a voice full of bitterness, after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for Emancipation, and I have given it to you. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you have demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Go home, and raise your 6,000 extra men."
Then, in Medill's own account, Lincoln turned on the great editor. "And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had more influence than any [other] paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men.'" Wrote Medill: "I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an answer. "
***
That was how The Great Emancipator turned the tables on the Republicans who had gone weak-kneed in the middle of a war. Chicago did meet its draft call, sending, by Mr. Wendt's count, nearly a fifth of its population into the struggle for the Union. For nearly three decades, we have carried in our wallet a dog-eared passage of Medill's confession to share with aspiring young editors. There are those who will say that the circumstances are different today. But by our lights, it doesn't matter whether the pleaders are newspaper editors or congressmen. It is Bush who is in Lincoln's boots. The rest of the country knows in its heart the honorable course, which history will remember for generations after the encounters now taking place.
#2
Today Medill would return to his office and write an editorial accusing Lincoln of hate speech, war mongering, and raising the "chill wind" of "supression of dissent".
I've seen your writing and it's eloquent when you want it to be.
That's the problem with to many people - they see the problem, but don't think they're smart enough, eloquent enough, or guilty enough to do what they know they need to do.
Write your congresscritters. They may not listen, but they'll damn well know somebody spoke up.
Write your newspapers. They will listen and if they get enough letters to the editor they virtually have to print some of them on our side (they will print opposing viewpoints, but that's only to be expected and it's also the right thing for them to do).
Write the pollsters - tell them they don't speak for you when they poll 50% more Democrats in a poll than they do Republicans and they do it intentionally. Public pressure will work on them too.
Write your blogs and bloggers. Stand up to the Kos kiddies and the MoveOn.org morons. Support groups like Move America Forward. Let people know where you stand.
Write the news agencies - ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, Fox and others need to know what the American heartland thinks more than anything else. Fox practically begs for watchers to write them. Do it. If they face enough public pressure, they must concede to it.
Finally, become a force to be reckoned with in your own communities. Write, distribute free newsletters, find a way to get your voice heard, print flyers, do anything you can - there's enough trash on telephone poles and bulletin boards that any voice of rationality, loyalty, patriotism, and more might just draw attention.
Organize. Without organization we stand idly by as the enemy takes us over and robs us of our freedoms.
Remember, those who will concede liberty for security deserve neither (Thomas Jefferson).
Without my suggesting anything, but filling his head with my rantsopinions, my fifteen-year-old son is doing just that at school. He makes a point to speak up and argue when teachers start spewing their PC indoctrination, whether global warming, "racism" or the WoT. He gets the teachers so flustered all they can do is appeal to their authority or accuse him of changing the subject or going off on tangents, when they raised the issue int the first place. He recently did a speech (assignment: be persuasive, but include documented facts). He chose to highlight progress in the war, using centcom.mil as his primary source. We don't know what grade he got yet, but he got plenty of eye rolling and condescending sneers for his efforts - especially when he quoted Bush. He seems to take pride in that kind of reaction, though.
#6
the fact that LaHood, et al - notified Tim Russert (D-NBC) of their tongue-lashing of Bush shows that it was nothing more than a cowardly public act of ass-covering - they deserve to be replaced by suitable REPUBLICANS in the next election. F&CKERS
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/11/2007 18:57 Comments ||
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#7
An aside about Secretary Stanton. Other than being a superb Secretary of War, Stanton made a decision that is influential even today.
Ironically, for the wrong reason.
He directed that every War Department record, and every record that passed through the War Department, be kept on file in perpetuity. In addition, he ordered that every single Confederate record captured by the Union army be carefully preserved in the archive.
He assumed that at the end of the Civil War, there was going to be litigation the likes of which was unimaginable. Lawsuits about the war running the length and breadth of the nation for 50 years.
Fortunately, as we know today, that did not happen. But such was the high esteem that Stanton was held that those records still exist today, and in amazing detail.
Listed are most of the names of the men who fought in the war, a treasure trove for genealogists matched only today with the Internet. Other historical data also abounds concerning commerce, technology, general history, war history, and statistics.
It was the first great snapshot of an entire nation, at the birth of the modern age. All due to a fear that the destruction of the war would be redoubled by lawyers.
#8
FOTSGreg, I do write sometimes, and call sometimes. But my style works in this forum because so many here reason primarily on facts, not wishes. My best value outside this forum is talking to my children and their friends... and carefully with people in my circle. Both trailing daughters are persuaded that the Democrats are the party of stupid reactionaries and willfully blind pseudointellectuals, whereas the Republicans are where the truly intelligent and innovative put their vote. Both have spoken up in their circle and at school about the War on Terror, etc. And both, when they have time or hear me giggle, come look over my shoulder to read the latest at Rantburg (TD #1 saved Rantburg: The Movie to her favourites on her laptop). They've even been known to get homework help here on occasion. ;-)
You, my dear, and so many others here, are suited to make waves in the world. I'm more a pebble, hoping that my ripples spread wide across my little pond.
Legalizing abortion by judicial fiat (Roe v. Wade) instead of by democratic means has its price. One is that the issue remains socially unsettled. People take to the streets when they have been deprived of resort to legislative action.
The other effect is to render the very debate hopelessly muddled. Instead of discussing what a decent society owes women and what it owes soon-to-be-born infants, and trying to balance the two by politically hammering out regulations that a broad national consensus can support, we debate the constitutional niceties of a 35-year-old appallingly crafted Supreme Court decision.
Just how tangled the issue gets is illustrated by the current brouhaha over Rudy Giuliani's abortion response in the first Republican presidential debate. Spokesmen for the other candidates have gleefully seized upon what they deem to be Giuliani's gaffe -- not only defying Republican orthodoxy but appearing to want to have it every which way.
On repealing Roe v. Wade:
Giuliani: It would be OK to repeal. It would be also (OK) if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent and I think a judge has to make that decision.
Moderator: Would it be OK if they didn't repeal it?
Giuliani: I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it. ... states can make their own decisions.
Giuliani's response has been almost universally characterized as a blundering two-way pander. I think not. I've actually heard Giuliani elaborate his position on abortion. His debate answer is an overly concise version of it, which makes it so open to ridicule.
Democrats are pro-choice and have an abortion litmus test for judges they would nominate to the Supreme Court. Giuliani is pro-choice but has no such litmus test. The key phrase in his answer is "strict constructionist judge.'' On judicial issues in general he believes in "strict constructionism,'' the common conservative view that we don't want judges citing penumbral emanations and other constitutional vapors to justify inventing new rights they fancy the country needs.
However, one strict constructionist might look at Roe v. Wade as the constitutional travesty it is and decide to repeal it. Another strict constructionist judge could, with equal conviction, decide that after 35 years the habits and mores shaped by Roe v. Wade are so engrained in society that it should not be overturned.
And there is precedent for strict constructionists accepting even bad constitutional rulings after the passage of time. The most famous recent example is Chief Justice William Rehnquist for years opposing the original 1966 Miranda ruling as "legislating from the bench," but upholding it in 2000 on the grounds that it had become so engrained in American life that its precedental authority trumped its bastard constitutional origins. (He used different words.)
In a country with a rational debate about abortion, Giuliani would simply have been asked how he would regulate (up to and including banning) abortion. That's not a relevant question here because neither presidents nor legislatures nor referendums decide this. Judges do. All presidents do is appoint judges.
Giuliani's answer on how to go about picking such judges is perfectly reasonable. It appears to be a dodge about the abortion issue itself simply because -- thanks to Roe -- every such debate becomes tangled with otherwise irrelevant issues of constitutional doctrine and stare decisis.
To give you an idea of how muddied the abortion debate has become thanks to this gratuitous constitutional overlay, consider the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. It has been misread by partisans on both sides. Pro-choice advocates denounced it as the beginning of a gradual cutting back on abortion rights. Pro-lifers celebrated it for precisely that reason.
It is nothing of the kind. The only reason the court upheld the ban is because an alternative (far more commonly used, in fact) to this mid-to-late-term procedure is readily available. Hence no "undue burden'' on the woman. Hence it respects the confines of existing abortion jurisprudence. Roe (and its successors) lives.
I hope for the day when Roe is overturned, not because I want to see abortion criminalized -- I once voted in a Maryland referendum to keep abortion legal if Roe is ever repealed -- but to sweep away this ridiculous muddle. Perhaps Giuliani should have said something like that rather than leaving the precedent question up to judges. Abortion is already so contaminated with legalisms, why not turn the issue into one of simple democracy? Let the people decide. Let them work it out the way everything else in this country is worked out -- by political argument and legislative accommodation.
#1
...I have always been a little confused by something, and let me state up front I'm NOT looking to start a flame war.
My understanding has always been that a good chunk of Roe v. Wade was based on false information provided in the original case by 'Jane Roe'. If that is the case, why wouldn't that invalidate the original SCOTUS decision?
Let me stresss again that I'm not trying to incite a war here; I distinctly remember watching Norma McCorvey ('Jane Roe')state that she was not truthful regarding the circumstances of her pregnancy.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/11/2007 8:27 Comments ||
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#2
To my knowledge man is the the only earthly taxonomic group which utilizes the population control measure of reaching inside the womb in order to terminate the natural continuation of the species. Our society has advanced significantly in our quest for the amelioration of the "perfect type" (ie, societal and personal convenience) from the German-federally funded skeletal studies, feature measurement, twin studies of Mengele. We should all be very proud of our.... "choice."
#3
Legalizing abortion by judicial fiat (Roe v. Wade) instead of by democratic means has its price.
That's the point the 'ends justify the means' crowd try to desperately ignore. We went through a rough challenging and emotional stretch in the early 1960s as a country over the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were finally passed, but certainly not unanimously and with aspects that were compromises. However, no one today seriously considers repealing the legislation. That's because it was passed through the democratic branches [those subject to the consent of governed] of government.
The price we pay today in filling SCOTUS seats is largely the consequences of the judicial dictate of Roe. For that which issues one day and revoke the next. How many nomination fights have been so pointed and centered around any other issue? How much political capital, resources, and emotion are spent with every nomination just because of one decision? Any thing less than Dred Scott?
The fact that the issue is still volatile today clearly shows that the 'consent of the governed' was never a consideration and that the justices believed that law can be imposed without such a consent. English king or SCOTUS Justice, Jefferson's words of the Declaration of Independence are as true today as they were on July 4, 1776.
#4
To my knowledge man is the the only earthly taxonomic group which utilizes the population control measure of reaching inside the womb in order to terminate the natural continuation of the species.
Rabbits and such reabsorb their fetuses when conditions are unsuited for having offspring, eg severe overcrowding, neatly avoiding the abortion issue. Most other animals either kill unwanted offspring or simply abandon them. Before abortion methods were developed, humans either exposed unwanted babies where carnivores could find them (the Greeks were fond of nearby hilltops) or sacrificed them to the gods, thus seeing a double benefit from the action. In Communist Romania and Mainland China, unwanted babies are given up for adoption, where too many of them end up more or less as psychopaths.
#5
"To my knowledge man is the the only earthly taxonomic group which utilizes the population control measure of reaching inside the womb in order to terminate the natural continuation of the species."
Lions don't have to worry about finding a way to raise young alone for years if abandoned by the father. They don't have to worry about paying the bills while raising their young. They don't have to worry about leaving their young alone while they go out to hunt for food-they do it, even when sometimes those young die BECAUSE they are left alone. Animals, without the intervention of humans, are at the mercy of their environments and their biology. They die from ugly and painful diseases and some animals are slain for food in horrific ways every day.
Humans are not the same as other creatures in a multitude of ways, nor should we want to be. Humans can't have absoulate control over our environments and biology, but to the extent that we have SOME control over environment and biology, I am not ready to model my life after animals, especially in terms of procreation. I am an animal lover, but imitation is not the way to go.
#6
When male lions take over a pride from a rival male, they will kill any suckling cubs in that pride, in order for the newly "owned" females to come into heat. Sometimes these males will eat the cubs they have "murdered." The females who thus lose their cubs don't seem to mind much once they come into heat. The lives of animals are a very poor guide for humans.
The United States dodged another bullet - several in fact - when authorities foiled an alleged terrorist attack on the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey by six men described by authorities as "radical Islamists." Three of the men are illegal immigrants.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said there is "no direct evidence" that the suspects have ties to international terrorism. Perhaps not in the traditional way that "ties" has been defined, but there are other ties that bind people to international terrorism without commissions or charters from a terrorist organization. That is what makes this freelance form of terrorism especially difficult to thwart.
Had it not been for the carelessness of one of the suspects who asked a local video store to copy a training video depicting men with weapons shouting "God is great" and proclaiming jihad, the alleged plot might have succeeded. The owner of the store tipped off authorities, which then began a 15-month investigation resulting in the arrests of the men. Some advocacy groups want the right to sue people who report suspicious activity, as in the case of passengers aboard a U.S. Airways flight who reported several imams they believed were behaving suspiciously. Now the imams, with the help of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim lobby group, have filed suit in hopes of obtaining the names of the passengers so they can be sued.
The usual groups issue the predictable statements condemning the alleged terrorist plot at Fort Dix, repeating that Islam is a "peaceful religion." Recall that the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, repeatedly condemned terrorist attacks he either helped instigate or inspired.
It is more prudent to pay attention to what terrorists say and do rather than to what the sophisticated, media-savvy conveyers of disinformation tell us.
Authorities said one of the suspects is believed to have been a sniper in Kosovo and he and the other men had been training at a firing range in Pennsylvania. Eljvir Duka, 23, is quoted in the complaint as saying, "When it comes to defending your religion, when someone is trying to attack your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad." This is the triumph of the brainwashers throughout the Islamic world. They teach the youngest of children that jihad and dying for Allah is their sole guarantee of heaven. That's a tough doctrine to overcome, especially when Western diplomats are seen as infidel "cross-worshippers" and "Jewish pigs" deserving of death.
Christopher J. Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, told a news conference, "This is a new brand of terrorism where a small cell of people can bring enormous devastation."
Is anyone in doubt as to the terrorist game plan? It is to intimidate, subjugate and eradicate U.S. citizens and bring the United States to its knees. This is not a secret. It is preached throughout the world in mosques and in Arab and Muslim media. As more aliens enter this country - legally and illegally - those who are Muslims are building mosques faster than coffee shop chains. The Saudis, who teach the most virulent and violent strain of Islam, underwrite most of them. That is not to say all Muslims are terrorists, or that all mosques are centers for terrorist training, but surely some are and how do we identify them before we experience another Sept. 11 -- times 10?
According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the number of mosques in America grew 60 percent between 1995 and 2000, second only to the Christian mega-churches and well ahead of the Mormons and Assemblies of God. One finds no reciprocity in Muslim countries, where churches, and especially synagogues, are either tightly controlled or banned outright. In the Washington, D.C., area, alone, there are an estimated 45 mosques. It only takes one to serve as a theological instruction center for young jihadists who believe that killing Americans is his or her highest "calling."
It is long past time to stop worrying about political correctness and "sensitivities" and do what is necessary to improve our security before someone with official ties to al-Qaida, or simply religious freelancers, shoot up a shopping mall or a school. Congress can start by putting real teeth into the immigration bill that will be up for debate soon. And then we have to get serious about dealing with the threat living in our midst.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/11/2007 10:43 Comments ||
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#2
I propose a federal law that would make it illegal for any foriegn money to be used to finance any kind of religious or political activity in the United States and if they don't like it they can FOAD.
#3
"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia Allan forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
#5
no problem :-) - but one of the helpful mods moved it, not I
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/11/2007 11:53 Comments ||
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#6
This is the triumph of the brainwashers throughout the Islamic world. They teach the youngest of children that jihad and dying for Allah is their sole guarantee of heaven.
The chief brainwasher being Mohammed.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
05/11/2007 11:59 Comments ||
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#7
treo,
I think there is already a law. Any one representing a foreign power has to register. Since Islam is a political power and Saudi is a foreign nation I propose that every one that is a member of such mosques must register as foreign agents with all that means.
Without prejudging whether President Bush's "surge" policy will work, the administration and its critics ought to be seriously thinking about a Plan B, the "80 percent solution" - also known as "winning dirty." Right now, the administration is committed to building a unified, reconciled, multisectarian Iraq - "winning clean." Most Democrats say that's what they want, too. But it may not be possible.
The 80 percent alternative involves accepting rule by Shiites and Kurds, allowing them to violently suppress Sunni resistance and making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious.
No one has publicly advocated this Plan B, and I know of only one Member of Congress who backs it - and he wants to stay anonymous. But he argues persuasively that it's the best alternative available if Bush's surge fails. Winning will be dirty because it will allow the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military and some Shiite militias to decimate the Sunni insurgency. There likely will be ethnic cleansing, atrocities against civilians and massive refugee flows.
On the other hand, as Bush's critics point out, bloody civil war is the reality in Iraq right now. U.S. troops are standing in the middle of it and so far cannot stop either Shiites from killing Sunnis or Sunnis from killing Shiites.
Winning dirty would involve taking sides in the civil war - backing the Shiite-dominated elected government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and ensuring that he and his allies prevail over both the Sunni insurgency and his Shiite adversary Muqtada al-Sadr, who's now Iran's candidate to rule Iraq.
Shiites make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population, so Shiite domination of the government is inevitable and a democratic outcome. The United States also has good relations with Iraq's Kurdish minority, 20 percent of the population, and would want to cement it by semipermanently stationing U.S. troops in Northern Iraq to ward off the possibility of a Turkish invasion.
Ever since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Sunnis - representing 20 percent of the population - have been the core of armed resistance to the U.S. and the Iraqi government. The insurgency consists mainly of ex-Saddam supporters and Sunni nationalists, both eager to return to power, and of jihadists anxious to sow chaos, humiliate the United States and create a safe zone for al-Qaida operations throughout the Middle East.
Bush wants to establish Iraq as a model representative democracy for the Middle East, but that's proved impossible so far - partly because of the Sunni insurgencies, partly because of Shiites' reluctance to compromise with their former oppressors and partly because al-Qaida succeeded in triggering a civil war.
Bush's troop surge - along with Gen. David Petraeus' shift of military strategy - is designed to suppress the civil war long enough for Iraqi military forces to be able to maintain even handed order on their own and for Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite politicians to agree to share power and resources. The new strategy deserves a chance, but so far civilian casualties are not down, progress on political reconciliation is glacial, and U.S. casualties have increased significantly.
As a result, political patience in the United States is running down. If Petraeus cannot show dramatic progress by September, Republicans worried about re-election are likely to demand a U.S. withdrawal, joining Democrats who have demanded it for years.
Prudence calls for preparation of a Plan B. The withdrawal policy advocated by most Democrats virtually guarantees catastrophic ethnic cleansing - but without any guarantee that a government friendly to the United States would emerge. Almost certainly, Shiites will dominate Iraq because they outnumber Sunnis three to one. But the United States would get no credit for helping the Shiites win. In fact, America's credibility would suffer because it abandoned its mission. And, there is no guarantee that al-Sadr - currently residing in Iran and resting his militias - would not emerge as the victor in a power struggle with al-Maliki's Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.
Iran formerly backed the SCIRI and its Badr Brigades but recently switched allegiances - foolishly, my Congressional source contends - to al-Sadr, who's regarded by other Shiites as young, volatile and unreliable. Under a win dirty strategy, the United States would have to back al-Maliki and the Badr Brigades in their eventual showdown with al-Sadr. It also would have to help Jordan and Saudi Arabia care for a surge in Sunni refugees, possibly 1 million to 2 million joining an equal number who already have fled.
Sunnis will suffer under a winning dirty strategy, no question, but so far they've refused to accept that they're a minority. They will have to do so eventually, one way or another. And, eventually, Iraq will achieve political equilibrium. Civil wars do end. The losers lose and have to knuckle under. As my Congressional source says, "every civil war is a political struggle. The center of this struggle is for control of the Shiite community. Wherever the Shiites go, is where Iraq will go. So, the quicker we back the winning side, the quicker the war ends. ... Winning dirty isn't attractive, but it sure beats losing."
#3
You want to know the problem with this? It is encapsulated in this statement....
"...making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious..."
And just how, pray tell, do we do that? We would have to take out Mucky and his bad-boys enmasse or they would take over all of the Shiites and turn the whole stinkin' place into little Iran.
Not to mention that the Saudis would probably have a fair amount to say about this and they DO have some leverage.
#4
Given that the Saudis and Iran are already adding ingredients to this soup, a pullout would just leave them free to continue their little proxy war without hindrance. The only way Iraq will have a chance of making something out of itself without out us there is if Iran and Saudi Arabia are smacked down hard, which I don't think we're ready to do until world oil production increases enough to cover at least some of the Saudi exports (Iran's have not been doing well recently). While Canadian production has been increasing steadily this past year or two, they and others aren't where they need to be yet, as far as I understand it.
#5
TW "In some ways, this really is about the oil." is an understatement.
If it wasn't for oil the whole mess in WWI would have worked out differently. Would we have given a shit about Kuwait if it wasn't for oil? Would Saddam?
The whole world would be perfectly happy to put a cage around the whole area and let them kill each other.....except for oil.
#9
Plan B's what we should have done and been doing all along!
This ridiculous policy of not backing a duly elected government we allowed to be put in place in the first place is just idiotic. Sitting and watching a civil war break out around your head is stupid.
Take sides and take sides now! Kill any party or individual in Iraq that resists. Loyal opposition is fine. Armed opposition or insurrection against the government or the USA should be put down as hard, as fast, and in as brutal a manner as possible in order to avoid many more casualties.
#10
IMPORTANT NOTE: It must be remembered that the public is fickle, and that leaving Iraq early may not help any Republicans keep office--in fact it may lose them even more seats.
Remember what happened to Bush's father, who rode high on a wave of public adoration following the easy success of Gulf War I, only to be crushed by a fop and a fool indifferent to foreign or domestic policy--interested only in his own pleasure.
The son is leaving office, and not at the behest of the public, who would turn him out if they could, but by term limitation. This means that the question becomes that of his potential Republican successor, and his party, and how they can turn things around.
Many want to cut and run, for they are lily-livers. The wiser ones know that for all intents and purposes, Iraq is no longer much of a problem at all. It is at risk not from terrorism or civil war, but only from a conventional attack from Iran.
This means that more than anything else, we must encourage Iraqi nationalism, and distrust and even hatred of Iran. The rest will take care of itself, though it would be very nice to have bases on Iraqi soil.
#11
Exactly how "dirty" would be a hardline approach to Iraq? That polluted parliament of fanatics, is a mechanism for harborage of terrorists. Outside of the Kurds, seculars and some non-fundamentalist Muslims, the rest can go to hell. If they are the majority, then they can still go to hell. Nazi parties couldn't participate in elections in occupied Germany; why should islamonazis be so honored in occupied Iraq? Revising Augustine: Kill terrorists, then do as you will.
#12
WOT > is, among other premises = agendas, etc. A WAR FOR ANTI-US OWG, WHICH MUST BE PC "JUSTIFIED". The greatest "Battle/War" is NOT the ME, etal. but for CONTROL OF WASHINGTON DC, THE US NPE, + ESPEC REACTION OF THE USA TO ITS OWN DEFEAT, SUBORNMENT, IFF NOT PER SE DESTRUCTION. Few iff any in the MSM are overtly arguing for US-LED/CENTRIC OWG - its the OPPOSITE, i.e. are FOR A OWG NOT RULED OR DOMINATED BY THE USA andor the WEST = WESTERN DEMOCRACY-DEMOCAPITALISM in any way. Unfortunately for mainstream America, Anti-US Agendists-Globalists are NOT taking "NO" for an answer. RACE TO ISOLATION = no different than WAR/RACE FOR EMPIRE AS LONG AS THE USA [and WEst] LOSES.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
