[Hi folks, this is the **last message** before Christmas. CSL will reopen on
MONDAY 6 January 2003. Merry Christmas and Best wishes to all on CSL, John &
Joanne.]
====================================================
From: Progressive Response
To: Progressive Response
Sent: 12/12/02 23:00
Subject: [PR] Countdown, Abrams Returns, Nuke 'em, Human Rights, Appeasement
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Click http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume6/v6n39.html to view an
HTML-formatted version of this issue of Progressive Response.
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The Progressive Response 12 December 2002 Vol. 6, No.
39
Editor: Tom Barry
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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
http://www.fpif.org/, or email <[log in to unmask]> to share your
thoughts with us.
Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org)
and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at
<[log in to unmask]>.
**** We Count on Your Support ****
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I. Updates and Out-Takes
*** COUNTDOWN IN FOREIGN POLICY ***
*** 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
*** INTERNATIONAL LAW & IRAQ WAR ***
*** NEW FROM FPIF ***
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
*** DEEP TROUBLE ***
*** NO APPEASEMENT HERE ***
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I. Updates and Out-Takes
*** COUNTDOWN IN FOREIGN POLICY ***
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.
Please consider donating through our secure server:
https://secure.iexposure.com/fpif.org/donate.cfm
Or simply give us a call at 505-388-0208 with your credit card
information. And we welcome checks, too, which can be sent to:
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
PO Box 2178
Silver City, NM 88062-2178
Thank you.
Tom Barry
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*** 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_Summ
ary.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 <[log in to unmask]> 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.)
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*** 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."
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*** 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 <[log in to unmask]> is a political analyst for Foreign
Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
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*** INTERNATIONAL LAW & IRAQ WAR ***
(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.
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*** NEW FROM FPIF ***
THE ABUSE OF THE NO-FLY ZONES AS AN EXCUSE FOR WAR
By Stephen Zunes (December 6, 2002)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0212nofly.html
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)
Online at http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2002/0211wsf.html
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)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0212turkey.html
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)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0212nightmare.html
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)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol7/v7n14nk.html
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)
Online at http://www.americaspolicy.org/articles/2002/0212venezuela.html
After this April's aborted coup against Venezuela's President Hugo
Chavez, many observers accused Washington of having been behind the
attempted ouster. The Bush administration denies any U.S. involvement in
the affair, and certainly Chavez has made plenty of domestic foes for
himself. However, one relatively clear connection has emerged between
the U.S. government and the anti-Chavez movement: millions of dollars in
U.S. taxpayer money that funded groups opposed to Chavez during the
years preceding the April coup--often in disguised ways.
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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 <[log in to unmask]>.)
*** 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 <[log in to unmask]> is based in Vancouver, where she
is a Researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is a columnist and
editorial writer for Khaleejtimes, a UAE-based newspaper. She has
degrees in international politics and strategic studies from Jawaharlal
Nehru University and University of Hull.)
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*** NEW FROM FPIF's OUTSIDE THE U.S. PROGRAM ***
IRAQ: HAS THE PROSPECT OF WAR FADED?
By Paul Rogers (December 12, 2002)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0212iraq.html
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)
Online at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0212mombasa.html
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)
Online at
http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0211afghanistan.html
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.
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III. Letters and Comments
*** DEEP TROUBLE ***
Re: Another "Toxic" Texan (available online at
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0211delay.html )
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 <[log in to unmask]>
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*** NO APPEASEMENT HERE ***
(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" (available online at
http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2002/1127power.html )
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 <[log in to unmask]>
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Re: Great Power and "Great Evil"
You don't get it. The great evil in the world is the United States.
- Howard Schreiber <[log in to unmask]>
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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 <[log in to unmask]>
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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 <[log in to unmask]>
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