Must Reading On Kerry Foreign Policy Compared to Bush

[tedzbear]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6949.htm


Here is a snip from the long, last paragraph of a fabulous interpretation of the Bush-Kerry foreign policy agenda:

...in the aftermath of the Cold War, and the U.S. emergence as the sole (military) superpower declining vis-à-vis Europe and East Asia as an economic power, how should the U.S. deal with complicated, politically divided and vulnerable, oil-rich Southwest Asia? Washington could leave the region to its own leaders' devices (as international law suggests it do), or it can impose "regime change" such as it has already achieved in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush policy has been to damn the world, the United Nations, the Vatican and all who noted the obvious (that the invasion of Iraq was illegal), and to bully a handful of allies into significant cooperation in the Iraq occupation, while aspiring to acquire the lion's share of contracts for reconstructing what it has destroyed and punishing war-foes by threatening to cancel the Saddam regime's contractual obligations to them. The Kerry policy is to reconcile Europe (Russia, Germany, France) by promising to split the Iraqi pie in exchange for "peace-keeping" troops who will share the cost of ongoing, "globalized" occupation, and to treat Syria and Iran as problems to be confronted through consultation with allies. This is the nuanced difference between the two candidates running for president on the ticket of U.S. imperialism, who while appealing to all politically powerful constituencies interested in the Middle East, represent rival factions of an ideologically unified, ruling "two party system" that they'd like to export (under the brand name "Democracy") to the complicated and resistant outside world.
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If you take the time to navigate through this rather dense article, it makes an excellent argument that Kerry is nothing more than Bush Lite when it comes to foreign policy. Kerry is NOT representative of what us Kucinich, Dean supporters have in mind for American foreign policy. Yes, I am voting for Kerry. I am ABB. But once Kerry is elected, he won't be immune from anti-war protests just because he is a Democrat. Kerry better review what happened to LBJ after he inherited a corrupt, imperialistic war.

I will not put away my anti-war poster just because Kerry wins in November.

:kick:

[LittleClarkie]

1. I give Kerry more credit than that

I think he just wants to clean up Bush's mess before he beats feet. And I don't think he's an imperialist. Oh, we may see more covert ops under Kerry (actually that's a contradiction in terms, isn't it.) But I think Kerry would like to focus on HOMELAND security, and use diplomacy around the world. War as a last option, not the first.

To say that he wants to carve up the Iraqi pie in a more multi-national sense is a distortion of what I think he really wants to do, which is get the American face off the force in Iraq to put the Iraqis more at ease. And in order to get the other countries in there, he's going to have to give them something -- part of the reconstruction pie. And not a bunch of bases and an embassy either. Actual running water without sewage, among other things.

Please give Kerry time once he gets in there to show he will do the right thing, whatever that thing turns out to be come January. If the situation is too fubar to fix, he won't leave our troops in there. He cares about them too much.

I picture the freepers shooting Kerry from one direction, and anti-war veterans pelting him with medals from the other. Poor guy, it's gonna suck being president right after Bush and having to clean up the bastard's mess.

Time? Even a small honeymoon? Please?

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. It's dense alright

Keep in mind that Kerry, as well as just about anybody else would have never invaded Iraq in the first place, so the issue of imperialism would have never come up.

[eridani]

3. One VERY important difference--

Kerry has explicitly disavowed permanent military bases in Iraq. I think that's important.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/politics/campaign/07campaign.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Asked his timetable for pulling troops out of Iraq, Mr. Kerry told a few hundred people in Canonsburg, Pa.: "My goal would be to get them home in my first term. And I believe that can be done." He said he would make it clear that "we do not have long-term designs to maintain bases and troops in Iraq."

[Iceburg]

4. I don't buy your arg. More importantly neither do 32 of 35 countries

-- and they my friend are the ones that matter. The world report card is in and bush has failed
-- Judgement101 .. failed;
-- Adherence-To-Law101 ... failed;
-- Credibility101...can't rate, not observed telling the truth during the rating period, therefore cannot trust anything he says now

Judgement101

We're at War not with a State but an Armed Ideology
by Gene Healy

Gene Healy is senior editor at the Cato Institute.

Last October (2003), in an internal Pentagon memo leaked to the press, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hit on the key question in assessing U.S. progress in the war on Al Qaeda: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Three years after the destruction of the Twin Towers, that question is as vital as ever.

Rumsfeld's question is key because it recognizes the nature of the enemy: We're not at war with a state, but with an armed ideology with murderous adherents in more than 60 countries. Responses appropriate to a state-based threat will only rarely be effective against a private, self-organizing, adaptable enemy that can operate without state support or central direction. Indeed, such responses may exacerbate the problem, drawing new recruits to jihad.

Sept. 11, 2001, should have concentrated the mind wonderfully as to the type of enemy we're fighting. Too often, however, the administration has insisted on "fighting the last war." Having rightfully removed the one state that was directly related to the terror threat, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the administration continued on to Iraq, as if the war against terror was a war against states. But it's hard to understand how regime change in Iraq aided the war against anti-American terrorism. Iraq appears to have had few, if any, genuine Al Qaeda links and no WMD stockpiles to speak of, much less a plan to pass off weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terrorists.

"Anonymous," the author of "Imperial Hubris," a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center's Bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999, is nobody's peacenik. But he says that "there is nothing Bin Laden could have hoped for more than the invasion and occupation of Iraq."
more http://www.cato.org/dailys/09-23-04.html

Adherence-To-Law101

War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal

Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

more http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html

Credibility101

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
TransAfrica’s Bill Fletcher: Bush's UN Speech Proves He Has "No Moral Credibility On International Affairs"
...
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking at the U.N. General Assembly. Bill Fletcher joining us from Washington studio, President of TransAfrica. Welcome, Bill. Can you respond to President Bush's statement about Sudan and the U.S. now using the term “genocide?”

BILL FLETCHER: Well, thank you. Let me just say, in terms of the President's speech, first of all I think we understand when we look and listen to that speech why the Bush Administration has no moral credibility on international affairs. The manipulative use of this speech for political ends was really quite blatant. It's interesting in looking at his remarks, listening to his remarks with regard to the Sudan the-- it took a considerable amount of international pressure to get the Bush Administration, after countless denials, to actually acknowledge the extent of the humanitarian crisis that's underway in the Sudan. But when you link the President's speech with the crisis in the Sudan, you can understand why many countries are a bit skeptical about endorsing any initiative advanced by the United States, because they see it as, more often than not, a cynical adventure in the international realm.

more ... http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/1422217