The Progressive Response
Volume 6, Number 39
December 12, 2002
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at www.fpif.org, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) www.irc-online.org and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE: NO. 15 | HUMAN RIGHTS: CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION AND CONCERN
By John Gershman
NEW BUSH DOCTRINE ON WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION: USING "ALL OPTIONS"
NEOCONS CONSOLIDATE CONTROL OVER MIDEAST POLICY
By Jim Lobe
II. Outside the United States
ROGUE NATIONS AND WMD: HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI REMEMBERED
By Madhavee Inamdar
NEW FROM FPIF's OUTSIDE THE U.S. PROGRAM
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-Takes
Dear Readers:
As you know, the Bush administration has officially announced its own countdown with the recent release of its National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. For the Bush team, the world is not a complicated place: economic policy means corporate policy, foreign policy is making foreigners follow U.S. policy, and military policy is about power--and there's nothing so powerful as our nuclear arsenal. So nuke them. It's a boy toy thing, with chickenhawks eager to start the countdown for war.
At Foreign Policy In Focus, we're alarmed, frightened, and angry about the policies announced in the name of our nation. Each day there's something more alarming, more frightening, more angering coming out of the White House and Pentagon. In the Progressive Response, we are doing our best to bring you timely, insightful, expert analysis of the Bush countdown to war and chaos--while highlighting the alternatives and opposition.
As you may have read, we also have our own countdown going. Fortunately, thanks to some of our readers, this countdown is more gratifying than alarming. Because of financial shortfalls, we are counting our pennies. And we estimate we need $23,500 to keep producing the weekly Progressive Response. In the past two weeks, our appeals have netted $3,050 in reader support. We are now counting up--which means we have $20,450 to go to meet our need.
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Tom Barry
FRONTIER JUSTICE: NO. 15 | HUMAN RIGHTS: CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION AND CONCERN
By John Gershman
(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column written alternately by Tom Barry and John Gershman, foreign policy analysts at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, chronicling instances of U.S. unilateralism and its assault on the multilateralism framework for managing global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are now indexed on the www.presentdanger.org site at: http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2002/index.html.)
Fifty-four years ago, international respect for human rights was just an idea. On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt was perhaps the most prominent American involved in drafting the declaration. The deliberations included major contributions from the governments of Chile, Cuba, Panama, the United Kingdom, and the United States, elements drawn from the constitutions of fifty-five nations, and recommendations from various nongovernmental human rights organizations and private citizens.
Today, international support for human rights is cause for both concern and celebration.
Fortunately, public support for the principles of human rights remain strong in the United States. A recent summary of polling data from the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that a significant majority of U.S. citizens believes in the idea of universal human rights that are intrinsic, rather than granted by governments. Asked in a November 1997 Hart Research poll, "Do you believe that every person has basic rights that are common to all human beings, regardless of whether their government recognizes those rights or not, or do you believe that rights are given to an individual by his or her government?" 76% said that every person has such rights, while 17% said that such rights are granted by governments.
Awareness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, however, is low. Asked by Hart Research in November 1997 whether "there is an official document that sets forth human rights for everyone worldwide," only 8% named the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, in a subsequent question, when told of the existence of the Declaration, another 24% said they had previously been aware of it. Also, in the same poll, 83% said that the fact that the U.S. has agreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a very (53%) or fairly (30%) strong reason for the U.S. to do "more to protect human rights in the U.S."
According to polling data, there is strong support for U.S. foreign policy that promotes human rights abroad. In a June 2002 poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR), an overwhelming 90% said that "promoting and defending human rights in other countries" should be an important goal for U.S. foreign policy. Only 10% said that it should not be an important goal. In every quadrennial survey conducted by the CCFR since 1974, more than 80% have said this goal is important, and the percentage saying it is very important has climbed to 47% in 2002 from 39% in 1998 and 34% in 1994.
But despite the strong popular support for human rights principles and a belief that the United States should promote human rights at home and abroad, there are a number of areas where U.S. human rights practice trails international human rights practice. More distressingly, the Bush administration has been engaged in a process of undermining certain institutions of the international human rights regime.
The implications of a Bush administration unchecked in its assault on international human rights norms and institutions are severe. As Amnesty International noted, "When any state, let alone a country as powerful as the USA, insists on its right to adopt a selective approach to international standards, the integrity of those standards is eroded. Why should any other state not then claim for itself the prerogative to adhere to only those portions of international human rights law which suit its purposes?"
In his December 9th message proclaiming Human Rights Day & Bill of Rights Week, President Bush noted that "America has pledged to support all individuals who seek to secure their unalienable rights." Yet this statement stands uneasily with efforts to weaken key elements of the institutions established to protect and promote international human rights. As a recent report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations noted, many people in the Middle East, and other regions "do not trust what we say because they feel our words are contradicted by our policies." This is perhaps most apparent in the area of human rights, where rhetoric and policy have diverged widely under this administration.
Given the strong support for human rights principles at home and the key role that previous administrations played in crafting the international human rights regime, the Bush administration's assault on the international human rights regime is a repudiation not only of international traditions, norms, and values, but the subordination and repudiation of an American tradition. It is a tradition worth defending; a tradition whose prospects were presciently noted by Eleanor Roosevelt at the tenth anniversary celebration for the UDHR: "the destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our communities."
For more see
Program on International Policy Attitudes
http://www.americans-world.org/digest/global_issues/human_rights/HR_Summary.cfm
Amnesty International, USA: Human rights v Public relations, August 24, 2002 http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/AMR511402002/
Public diplomacy: A strategy for reform. A report of an Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. July 30, 2002.
http://www.cfr.org/PublicDiplomacy_TF.html
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
NEW BUSH DOCTRINE ON WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION: USING "ALL OPTIONS"
In September 2002, the Bush administration released its National Security Strategy, and this month it has released its National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. The new policy directive from the Bush administration all but abandons the structure of arms control agreements that have prevented nuclear war for 50 years. The U.S. will now attempt to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction by preemptively striking at countries and nonstate actors it believes may be developing them. It also threatens to use nuclear weapons in the event of a biological or chemical attack against the U.S., its troops or its allies. A draft copy of this new strategy document is available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/nationalstrategywmd_Dec10.pdf .
William Hartung, an FPIF adviser and director of the Arms Trade Resource Center, told FPIF: "The Bush administration's threat of nuclear first strikes as a way to control weapons of mass destruction is the moral equivalent of threatening to destroy the world in order to save it. If the arms lobby wanted to dream up a plan to create maximum global anxiety and spark a new arms race, they would be hard pressed to improve on the Bush administration's actual strategy. Even as the administration makes these dangerous and destabilizing threats, it has either ignored or undermined the most effective tools for controlling these: strengthening enforcement of the chemical and biological weapons conventions, increasing funding to secure, destroy, or neutralize Russia's vast, poorly guarded stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and pursuing diplomacy to shut down North Korea's nuclear programs." Paul Walker, another arms control expert associated with FPIF and director of the Legacy Program, noted, "The newly announced 'preemptive strike' policy raises serious questions about the first use of nuclear weapons globally. It also directly conflicts with longstanding commitments made by nuclear weapons-capable signatories under the Non-Proliferation Treaty not to attack other nonnuclear signatories."
NEOCONS CONSOLIDATE CONTROL OVER MIDEAST POLICY
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0212abrams.html .)
Neoconservative hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush have won a major battle against the State Department in the fight for control of U.S. Mideast policy with the surprise appointment of Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams to the region's top policy spot in the National Security Council (NSC).
For the first time, someone who has publicly assailed the "land-for-peace" formula that has guided U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1967 war has been appointed to a top spot in Mideast policy. Abrams, appointed by the White House December 2, 2002, first came to national prominence as a controversial political appointee in the Reagan administration. He later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, and has also opposed the Oslo peace process and called for Washington to "stand by Israel," rather than act as a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Present Dangers, a book produced by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, Abrams outlined a new U.S. Mideast policy that called for "regime change" in Iraq and for cracking down on the Palestinian Authority. Foreshadowing the current U.S. policy based on superior military power, Abrams recommended that in the Middle East "our military strength and willingness to use it" should be the "key factor in our ability to promote peace."
"Yet another American Likudnik is moving to a position where they control Washington's agenda in the Mideast," said Rashid Khalidi, a Mideast historian at the University of Chicago. "This is a tragedy for the Israeli and American people." Likud is the rightwing Israeli party headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Currently the NSC staff chief for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, Abrams will become Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the NSC for Near East and North African Affairs.
Beloved by the Right
Beloved by right-wingers, who hail him as a hero for his championship of the Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s, Abrams first gained prominence as a leading neoconservative when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the early 1980s and then as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.
After Reagan left office in 1989, Abrams, like a number of other prominent neoconservatives, was not invited to serve in the Bush Sr. administration. Instead, he worked for a number of think tanks and eventually became head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) where he wrote widely on foreign policy issues, including the Middle East, and the threats posed by U.S. secular society to Jewish identity. He also remained an integral part of the tight-knit neoconservative foreign policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle, and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Then-House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich furthered his public rehabilitation by appointing him to the new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1999, for which he also served as chairman in 2000-01. Muslim groups here have complained about his refusal to criticize Israeli practices in the occupied territories and Jerusalem, such as sealing off Muslim holy sites, as violations of religious freedom.
Peace through Boldness
He is not known as an Arab-Israeli specialist but has long favored Likud positions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and even assailed former Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for caving in to U.S. pressure to respect the Oslo peace process. Shortly after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifida at the end of September 2000, he criticized mainstream Jewish groups for calling for a resumption of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, as well as a halt to the violence. Writing during the 2000 presidential campaign, Abrams observed that the coming decade "will present enormous opportunities to advance American interests in the Middle East." But these opportunities will be realized "not for the most part through painstaking negotiations of documents." Abrams called for a policy of "boldly asserting our support of our friends and opposing with equal boldness our enemies."
Like Perle, as well as Rumsfeld's civilian advisers like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Cheney's top deputy, I. Lewis Libby, he has favored a Mideast strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel and on a military alliance between Israel and Turkey against hostile Arab states, particularly Syria and Iraq, in order to create a "broader strategic context" that would ensure whatever state might emerge on Palestinian territory would be friendly to U.S. and Israeli interests and that could force Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. He has long favored forceful action to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
(Editor's Note: An FPIF-sponsored statement by fifty specialists in international law, drafted by FPIF contributor and law professor Jules Loebel, was presented at a staff briefing sponsored by Representative Lloyed Doggett (D-TX). Full statement is available online at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0212lawyers.html .)
The Bush administration claims that it does not legally need Security Council authorization to attack Iraq if the United States concludes that Iraq breaches its obligations to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions. As Professors of Law and practicing attorneys, we believe that the administration's legal position is incorrect and poses a grave danger for the future of international law, the United Nations, and a peaceful international order. It is clear from the resolution that no individual member state is authorized to use any violation by Iraq, whether very minor and technical or more serious, as legal justification to attack Iraq. The resolution requires the Security Council to meet immediately and decide what to do about an Iraqi violation--a requirement inconsistent with member states taking unilateral action. Indeed, France, Russia and China, which provided the critical votes to pass the Resolution, issued a statement upon its enactment that "Resolution 1441...excludes an automaticity in the use of force" and that only the Security Council has the ability to respond to a misstep by Iraq. Mexico's Ambassador was explicit in casting his country's vote for the resolution. He stressed that the use of force is only valid as a last resort, "with the prior, explicit authorization of the Security Council."
The United Nations charter is a treaty binding on the United States and is part of our supreme Law of the land, by virtue of Article VI of the United States Constitution. We urge the Bush administration to comply with the Constitution, to comply with the UN Charter, and not unilaterally attack Iraq.
THE ABUSE OF THE NO-FLY ZONES AS AN EXCUSE FOR WAR
By Stephen Zunes (December 6, 2002)
With the apparent willingness of the Iraqi government to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors, the Bush administration and its congressional supporters of both parties seem determined to find an excuse--any excuse--to invade this oil-rich country and replace the current regime with one more to its own liking.
PORTO ALEGRE AND BEYOND
By Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (November 22, 2002)
In this new report, U.S. activists talk about their experiences at the 2002 World Social Forum.
TALKING TURKEY ABOUT IRAQ: DEMOCRACY AND DOUBLE-TALK
By Jim Lobe (December 9, 2002)
The new Turkish government, led by the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party, finds itself almost quite literally between Iraq and a hard place.
A NIGHTMARE TO LOVE
By Jeremy Brecher (December 2, 2002)
A nightmare scenario is facing the Bush administration. Imagine that Iraq continues to let UN arms inspectors inspect without impediment.
RESPONDING TO NORTH KOREA'S SURPRISES
By John Feffer (December 2002)
For a supposedly changeless, monolithic state, North Korea shakes up the staid world of diplomacy with surprising frequency.
THE LONG ARM OF THE NED
By Mike Ceaser (December 9, 2002)
After this April's aborted coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, many observers accused Washington of having been behind the attempted ouster. The Bush administration denies any U.S. involvement in the affair, and certainly Chávez has made plenty of domestic foes for himself. However, one relatively clear connection has emerged between the U.S. government and the anti-Chávez movement: millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money that funded groups opposed to Chávez during the years preceding the April coup--often in disguised ways.
II. Outside the United States
(Editor's Note: FPIF's "Outside the U.S." component aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html. If you're interested in submitting commentaries for our use, please send your solicitation to John Gershman at <john@irc-online.org>.)
ROGUE NATIONS AND WMD: HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI REMEMBERED
By Madhavee Inamdar
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety online at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0212rogue.html .)
The Bush administration has finally laid out a formal strategy document on combating weapons of mass destruction. It has recently issued a reminder of its policy that warns any nation using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies that it will face massive retaliation, perhaps with nuclear weapons. An official says the policy statement is part of President Bush's effort to deal with threats from "rogue nations" and terrorists alike. By rehabilitating the term rogue to describe states Washington considers beyond the pale of the "civilized" political community, President Bush has brought the "Rogue Nations" phrase back into global fashion.
In March this year the British Defense Secretary had also declared in a similar fashion that Britain was ready to use nuclear weapons against any "rogue nation" that attacked Britain or its troops with weapons of mass destruction. The defense secretary's comments as part of the committee's inquiry into U.S. plans to build a defense system against a ballistic missile attack came as Prime Minister Tony Blair's government prepared to face Parliament's first emergency debate in nine years, to defend its decision to send troops to fight in Afghanistan.
The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, a six-page document released by the White House in December, is a joint report from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. The strategy is comprised of three "pillars:" 1) counter proliferation, which includes deterrence with the threat of nuclear weapons; 2) nonproliferation, which encourages arms control and reduction; 3) and consequence management, which seeks to prepare the United States in the event of an attack using weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration has decided that, to properly defend the nation against attacks by rogue nations, it was vital that the U.S. withdrew from a number of international agreements limiting its capacity to create and trade in armaments.
But, what, exactly, is a rogue nation? The Merriam-Webster American Collegiate dictionary defines rogue as: "vicious and destructive; isolated and dangerous or uncontrollable." The United States is arguing that it has the right, whatever the rest of us might agree, to possess the power to force less-well-armed countries to do its bidding with the mere threat of biological or nuclear weapons, to own and trade in the means of destruction of populations on a scale never before seen on earth.
Is it likely that 6 billion people are wrong and the Americans are right? With such an attitude, it will not be of any surprise that Americans are the targets of terrorists. America needs to do a lot of homework. The single most important part of that homework is to listen to its own people at home, thousands of whom are attending rallies to protest the culture of war and culture of gun. The second most important part would be to listen to the intellectual voices in American society who are echoing the fault lines in the American political, military, and international policies. If America wants rest of the world to go with her, the American administration will have to stop considering itself the ultimate arbiter of good and evil. The U.S. has triumphed over the philosophy of Communism; it will surely win its global war against terrorism but it will be difficult to combat the increasing anti-Americanism the world over if the U.S. continues to have the attitude of an all-powerful, isolated Superpower ready to strike and destroy as it did in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
(Madhavee Inamdar <madhavee@telus.net> is based in Vancouver, where she is a Researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is a columnist and editorial writer for Khaleej Times, a UAE-based newspaper. She has degrees in international politics and strategic studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Hull.)
NEW FROM FPIF's OUTSIDE THE U.S. PROGRAM
IRAQ: HAS THE PROSPECT OF WAR FADED?
By Paul Rogers (December 12, 2002)
Diplomatic moves by the United States to gain support for the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime have intensified in the past two weeks. One aspect of this has been the request to NATO for backing for a military campaign; more important has been a series of discussions between the U.S. and its regional allies in the Middle East and the Gulf.
LESSONS FROM MOMBASA: AL QAEDA'S LONG-TERM STRATEGY
By Paul Rogers (December 6, 2002)
The recent terrorist attacks in Mombasa, Kenya are only the most recent illustration of a general feature of al Qaeda's strategy that still seems largely unrecognized.
AFGHANISTAN: IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE IN THE NATION-BUILDING STRATEGY
By Mark Sedra (November 15, 2002)
The historical parallels between the present security situation and that which existed immediately prior to the Taliban's ascent to power are striking and should not be overlooked.
III. Letters and Comments
A fine commentary. Bravo. Tom DeLay in particular and the Christian Right in general trouble me deeply. I see a terrible future if religious extremists gain too much influence over American domestic and foreign policy. Their blindness to their own intolerance is frightening and dismaying to me.
I am a registered Republican born in the Dakotas in the Postwar era to a church-going family of Methodists and patriots. I graduated from Stanford with a degree in American history. I enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam War, believing that volunteer military service was my responsibility. I have tended to vote Republican since turning 21. I suspect, therefore, that I do not fit the Christian Right's perception of those opposed to its relentless campaign to erase the separation of church and state that is so fundamental to the politics and culture--and moral strength--of America. But I am indeed opposed and so I am heartened when I come across reasoned commentary such as yours.
The fact is, however, that all the commentary in the world can do little to thwart the abuse of political power once that power is obtained. If these people can win elections by pandering to closed and ignorant minds, those of us who practice the "secular humanism" they ridicule (though it is essentially a philosophy of being decent and kind to others, being a good citizen, and standing up to wrong when one can) are in deep trouble. This beloved country of ours will be in a situation no less perilous. The world needs more reason, not more absolutist religious fervor.
- Mark Miller <MHMLLR@aol.com>
(Editor's Note: The following is a sampling of the letters received about the Frontier Justice commentary written by Tom Barry.)
Re: Great Power and "Great Evil"
I agree that this administration is obsessed with the idea of appeasement, but for the life of me, I do not understand why. Those who continue to compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler are simply ignorant. How can anyone seriously compare today's Iraq (or even pre-Gulf War or pre-Iran/Iraq War) to late 1930's Germany? Does Iraq have anything close to the Ruhr?? Can it even manufacture bullets for its troops?
In fact, the only comparison one can make between Iraq and Nazi Germany is the level of involvement of the multinational corporations in these two countries. Nearly all of its weapons came "from away," as we say here in Maine. The West has armed Iraq. Nobody in this country's press cares to point this out, of course. With parent companies like GE why would they?
- Gerald Weinand <gaweinand@hotmail.com>
Re: Great Power and "Great Evil"
You don't get it. The great evil in the world is the United States.
- Howard Schreiber <howardhome@fullcircl.com>
Re: Great Power and "Great Evil"
One of the problems with fitting everything into frameworks is that they seldom work. Regarding appeasement of Hitler, that is true, but we also appeased Stalin because those running our country saw Hitler as the greater threat. We not only appeased him, Hollywood made the Russians noble allies. Using the doctrine that all appeasement is bad certainly was ignored, as it would be in all future instances when crises arose. By admitting to appeasement in the post-WWII era, we are ignoring realities like the tens of millions of casualties if we decided to roll back Communism. It becomes self-serving revisionism for the neocons but I don't know why sane people should buy into that.
Our dealings with Stalin bring up another one of the truisms that are extremely fragile. That is the one that we never negotiate with evil forces. We negotiated with the Vietnamese because we had no choice, despite our protests for years using the no negotiation principle. We negotiated with the North Koreans because we had to. The fact is, that in both instances it was the right thing to do. History rewritten by neocons may say otherwise, but we haven't lost anyone in Vietnam for almost three decades and in Korea for five. Often the negotiation depends on the cards in the hand of the enemy, and often, as in the case of the Palestinians, it depends on who is doing the labeling. In that vein, would I negotiate with Saddam Hussein? You bet. Would I negotiate with Osama Bin Laden? You bet. Would I be clear on what I wanted out of the negotiations?
Certainly. Finally, regarding my initial point, analogies can be less than useless, they are often harmful. Clear policies based on law and justice are the major bases for a foreign policy. History can guide us in that, as long as we do not make ourselves a prisoner of history. We should care little about the crazies around the President snapping at our heals. Every defeat, which many neocons in many ways even consider WWII, has revisionists seeking to place blame on feckless pacifists. I think betrayal is a popular word used in their rewrites. The danger today, of course, is that the crazies have the ear of the President, which makes them more than just irritating.
- H. Edward Schmidt <UpperFallsBooks@aol.com>
Re: Great Power and "Great Evil"
Concisely and powerfully written and I agree with all your points. I do have a comment, however. When I imagine a "face of evil" it looks exactly like Ariel Sharon.
- M. Johnson <strider@mykonahawaii.net>
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