Kerry Says Bush Has Motivated Terror Recruiting

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Democratic White House challenger John Kerry said on Monday President Bush's policies had encouraged recruitment of terrorists and failed to make the United States as safe as it ought to be. With Washington and New York on "high risk" alert after intelligence warnings of al Qaeda threats to attack the New York Stock Exchange, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Kerry urged Bush to call Congress back into session to deal with the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations.


<snip>

Kerry received a 40-minute classified briefing on the new threats late on Sunday night. Senior foreign policy adviser James Rubin said he was briefed on a secure telephone line set up by the Secret Service.

"The policies of this administration, I believe ... have resulted in an increase of animosity and anger focused on the United States of America," Kerry said. "And the intelligence agencies of our country will tell you .... the people who are training terror, are using our actions as a means of recruitment."

He faulted Bush for not reaching out to other countries and the Muslim community and failing to adequately protect ports as well as chemical and nuclear facilities. Rubin said later that by alienating allies, making the United States so unpopular abroad and diverting resources from the fight against al Qaeda to the war in Iraq, the Bush administration had made it harder for moderate Islamic countries to crack down on terrorists. "By not doing all that we can to stop extremism, we have made the (terrorist) pool grow," Rubin said. "Our sense is that we are not as safe as we should be."

http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=902171&tw=wn_wire_story

[jpgray]

1. As I said in LBN, this is an ace attack

Even though it is mostly a reimagining of Dean statements, there is a treasure trove of valid attacks on this administration, and one can't be picky.

[TexasSissy]

2. The Repubs will go into a frenzy when they hear him say that, but

I believe it's true.

[pinto]

3. It's great to hear Kerry talk about including the Islamic countries in

the broad effort at building a rational and realistic American policy that directly effects....the Islamic countries.

Iraq is not a suburb of Washington.

I applaud him for recognizing that.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. You might want to revisit his January 23, 2003 foreign policy speech

Americans deserve better than a false choice between force without diplomacy and diplomacy without force. I believe they deserve a principled diplomacy...backed by undoubted military might...based on enlightened self-interest, not the zero-sum logic of power politics...a diplomacy that commits America to lead the world toward liberty and prosperity. A bold, progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and the imminent but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decades, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease. These are, in the truest sense, not just issues of international order and security, but vital issues of our own national security.

So how would this approach, this bold progressive internationalism, differ from the Bush Administration's erratic unilateralism and reluctant engagement? The answer starts by understanding the nature and source of the threat we face.

While we must remain determined to defeat terrorism, it isn't only terrorism we are fighting. It's the beliefs that motivate terrorists. A new ideology of hatred and intolerance has arisen to challenge America and liberal democracy. It seeks a war of Islam - as defined by extremists - against the rest of the world and we must be clear its epicenter is the Greater Middle East.

It's critical that we recognize the conditions that are breeding this virulent new form of anti-American terrorism. If you look at countries stretching from Morocco through the Middle East and beyond...broadly speaking the western Muslim world...what you see is a civilization under extraordinary stress.
The region's political and economic crisis is vividly captured in a recent report written by Arab scholars for the United Nations Development Program and the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development. Let me quote:

"The wave of democracy that transformed governance in most of the world has barely reached the Arab states...The freedom deficit undermines human development and is one of the most painful manifestations of lagging political development."

According to Freedom House, there are no full-fledged democracies among the 16 Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa. The Middle East is not monolithic; there are governments making progress and struggling effectively with change in Jordan, Morocco and Qatar. But Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria are among the 10 least free nations in the world.

Political and economic participation among Arab women is the lowest in the world and more than half of Arab women are still illiterate.

And these countries are among the most economically isolated in the world, with very little trade apart from the oil royalties which flow to those at the very top. Since 1980, the share of world trade held by the 57 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference has fallen from 15 percent to just four percent. The same countries attracted only $13.6 billion worth of foreign direct investment in 2001. That is just $600 million - only about 5 % - more than Sweden, which has only 9 million people compared to 1.3 billion people. In 1969, the GDP of South Korea and Egypt were almost identical. Today, South Korea boasts one of the 20 largest economies in the world while Egypt's remains economically frozen almost exactly where it was thirty years before.

A combination of harsh political repression, economic stagnation, lack of education and opportunity, and rapid population growth has proven simply explosive. The streets are full of young people who have no jobs... no prospects... no voice. State-controlled media encourage a culture of self-pity, victimhood and blame-shifting. This is the breeding ground for present and future hostility to the West and our values.

From this perspective, it's clear that we need more than a one-dimensional war on terror. Of course we need to hunt down and destroy those who are plotting mass murder against Americans and innocent people from Africa to Asia to Europe. We must drain the swamps of terrorists; but you don't have a prayer of doing so if you leave the poisoned sources to gather and flow again. That means we must help the vast majority people of the greater Middle East build a better future. We need to illuminate an alternative path to a futile Jihad against the world...a path that leads to deeper integration of the greater Middle East into the modern world order.

<snip>

Fourth, The Middle East isn't on the Bush Administration's trade agenda. We need to put it there.
The United States and its transatlantic partners should launch a high-profile Middle East trade initiative designed to stop the economic regression in the Middle East and spark investment, trade and growth in the region. It should aim at dismantling trade barriers that are among the highest in the world, encouraging participation in world trade policy and ending the deep economic isolation of many of the region's countries.

I propose the following policy goals:
We should build on the success of Clinton Administration's Jordan Free Trade Agreement. Since the United States reduced tariffs on goods made in "qualifying industrial zones," Jordan's exports to the US jumped from $16 to $400 million, creating about 40,000 jobs. Let's provide similar incentives to other countries that agree to join the WTO, stop boycotting Israel and supporting Palestinian violence against Israel, and open up their economies.

We should also create a general duty-free program for the region, just as we've done in the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the Andean Trade Preference Act. Again, we should set some conditions: full cooperation in the war on terror, anti-corruption measures, non-compliance with the Israel boycott, respect for core labor standards and progress toward human rights.

Let's be clear: Our goal is not to impose some western free market ideology on the greater Middle East. It's to open up a region that is now closed to opportunity, an outpost of economic exclusion and stagnation in a fast-globalizing world.

These countries suffer from too little globalization, not too much. Without greater investment, without greater trade within the region and with the outside world, without the transparency and legal protections that modern economies need to thrive, how will these countries ever be able to grow fast enough to provide jobs and better living standards for their people? But as we extend the benefits of globalization to people in the greater Middle East and the developing world in general, we also need to confront globalization's dark side.

We should use the leverage of capital flows and trade to lift, not lower, international labor and environmental standards. We should strengthen the IMF's ability to prevent financial panics from turning into full-scale economic meltdowns such as we've seen in Argentina. And in the Middle East especially, we need to be sensitive to fears that globalization will corrupt or completely submerge traditional cultures and mores. We can do these things.

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MORE: http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/issues/kerr012303spfp.html