[Peace] Continutity in ignoring guidelines #1

[C. G. Estabrook]

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

But deliver us from evil.


Matt Murrey wrote:
> And the event being announced in entry #1 is...?????
> 
> --- On *Thu, 12/18/08, peace-request at lists.chambana.net wrote:
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
> 1. Continuity in killing (C. G. Estabrook) 2. Fwd: [radcaucus] Petition to 
> "Defend the Shoe Man	Journalist" making the rounds (Brian Dolinar) 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1 Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:44:33 -0600 From: "C. G. Estabrook" 
> <galliher at uiuc.edu> Subject: [Peace] Continuity in killing To: Peace 
> <peace at anti-war.net>
> 
> "...the next president has no intention of genuinely getting out of Iraq ...
>  he will make symbolic withdrawals of combat brigades, but plans to make 
> permanent most of the 14 military bases constructed since the invasion ... 
> [And his] commitment to troop escalations in Afghanistan ... represents 
> continuity with the Bush Doctrine more than it does rupture...
> 
> Published on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by The Providence Journal A
> Hypocrite as Our Diplomat in Chief by John R. MacArthur
> 
> WHEN IT COMES to foreign affairs, Barack Obama seems like a serious person 
> with an authentic liberal's concern about the health of the world beyond our 
> borders. After all, he campaigned for president in Berlin and his blurb 
> appears on the back of a book by Reinhold Neibuhr, the great liberal 
> theologian and internationalist.
> 
> But so far, the president-elect's Cabinet choices make a joke of the liberals
>  who backed him in the hope that something fundamental might change in 
> America's belligerent behavior abroad. As the neo-conservative Max Boot 
> approvingly observed, the appointment of Gen. James Jones as chairman of the
>  Joint Chiefs of Staff and the retention of Robert Gates as defense secretary
>  "could just as easily have come from a President McCain."
> 
> So too, in principle, could that of hawkish Hillary Clinton as secretary of 
> state, which makes Obama's rhetoric of restraint in foreign affairs begin to
>  sound as empty as President Bush's professed skepticism about "nation 
> building" eight years ago during his race against Al Gore.
> 
> It's worth recalling that in the second debate with Gore, Bush even smirked 
> at the concept: "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in 
> the lands they live in to build the nations. . . . I mean, we're going to 
> have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not. Our 
> military is meant to fight and win wars. . . . And when it gets overextended,
>  morale drops."
> 
> He had that right. Indeed, you wouldn't recognize the pre-emptive war fanatic
>  of post 9/11 if it weren't for Bush's earlier statement during the debate in
>  support of the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia/Serbia during the Kosovo 
> crisis of 1999. It was then that the Clinton administration initiated its own
>  pre-emptive war - in response to Serbia President Slobodan Milosevic's 
> alleged "genocide" against the Kosovar Albanians. The three-month bombing 
> campaign was conducted under the auspices of NATO, not the United Nations, 
> and thus was every bit as illegal under international law as the American 
> invasion of Iraq, in 2003. At the time, Kosovo was formally part of a 
> sovereign Yugoslavia and NATO could not argue that the Milosevic regime had 
> threatened or attacked a NATO member.
> 
> Hillary Clinton favored both pre-emptive wars, and was particularly 
> aggressive in the case of Serbia, according to Gail Sheehy's book, Hillary's 
> Choice. Sheehy quotes Hillary's recollection of a talk with her husband: "I 
> urged him to bomb." Challenged by the president on the possible consequences
>  - for example, more executions of ethnic Albanians and damaging the NATO 
> alliance - Hillary replied, "You cannot let this go on at the end of a 
> century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO 
> for if not to defend our way of life?"
> 
> At the very least, this was a gross exaggeration. Serb repression of Kosovo's
>  national aspirations, while often brutal, was nothing resembling a 
> "holocaust," and the Kosovo Liberation Army's provocation, including the 
> assassination of Serb policemen, helped worsen the conflict. No doubt 
> Milosevic was a very bad man, but that didn't stop U.S. special envoy Robert
>  Gelbard from calling the KLA, in 1998, a terrorist organization. Civilian 
> casualties on the two sides are impossible to pin down accurately, but they 
> appear to have been comparable, perhaps 2,000 Albanians killed by Serb forces
>  and 1,500 Serbs killed by NATO warplanes in Belgrade and elsewhere.
> 
> This all may be blood under the bridge, but it gives us an insight into the 
> shoot-first temperament of the future secretary of state. According to former
>  Clinton adviser Dick Morris, "Hillary has a Manichean view of issues, 
> splitting the political world into dueling forces of good and evil. . . . She
>  sees herself as idealistic, moral, and righteous, and can only conclude that
>  those with opposing views must have opposite motives."
> 
> After Bush offered his solidarity with the Clintons over bombing Belgrade, 
> Hillary was happy to return the favor over bombing Baghdad. In her Oct. 10, 
> 2002, Senate speech explaining her vote for war authorization, she declared 
> that "perhaps my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on 
> the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House watching my husband 
> deal with serious challenges to our nation." Like little Serbia's oppression 
> of its Albanian minority and its alleged threat to the American "way of 
> life"?
> 
> Politician to the core, Hillary couldn't resist the following hypocrisy: 
> While she wanted "to ensure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our 
> national unity and support for the president's efforts to wage America's war 
> against terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," she insisted that her 
> vote was not "a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or of 
> unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose."
> 
> Well, they say you can't have it both ways. And trying to may well have cost
>  Hillary the presidency, since Obama's early stance against the war is what 
> gave him a leg up in the primaries.
> 
> But it's not Hillary's bellicose positions that are surprising. As a 
> long-standing member of the Washington policy establishment and a 
> "humanitarian interventionist," it's easy to see why she went along with the 
> received political wisdom on Kosovo and Iraq.
> 
> What's harder to understand is why Obama - elected on a platform of greater 
> prudence - chose a trigger-happy hypocrite, who once mocked his "lack of 
> experience" in foreign affairs, to be his diplomat-in-chief. I suspect it's 
> because the next president has no intention of genuinely getting out of Iraq
>  - that he will make symbolic withdrawals of combat brigades, but plans to 
> make permanent most of the 14 military bases constructed since the invasion.
> 
> Furthermore, I think that his foolish commitment to troop escalations in 
> Afghanistan - much of which will come from troops transferred from Iraq - 
> represents continuity with the Bush Doctrine more than it does rupture.
> 
> In the end, maybe Hillary and Barack don't make such an odd couple. We won't
>  know for sure, however, until a Democratic Party-sponsored cluster bomb - 
> dropped in the name of women's rights and democracy - kills a lot of women 
> and children in a village near Kandahar.
> 
> © 2008 The Providence Journal
> 
> John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine. Among other books, he is 
> the author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War...