"Losing Afghanistan" - nyt op-ed. STILL the cowering Democrats can NOT formulate a dynamic response to Bush's incompetence & corruption....
When the history of the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration is written, it will be noted that the George W. Bush administration really had one, and only one, strength: the ability to use billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars - the government's power to tax - to buy-off, co-opt, and seduce America's corporations, the corporate 'mainstream' media, and the cowering Democrats into siding with ATROCIOUS BushCo policies that HARM America and WEAKEN the standard of living, health, and futures of American citizens.
Besides daily winning the PROPAGANDA battle to have the power to MISMANAGE America, the Bush administration probably can not point to a SINGLE accomplishment of their administration.
"Defend America's security"?
The Bush administration has ENCOURAGED world nuclear proliferation, and we are now even selling India $5 billion in GE state-of-the-art nuclear technology that includes 'an understanding' that India will be permitted to operate 17 'secret' nuclear enrichment reactors for the sole purpose of creating nuclear weapons grade material. Pakistan will undoubtably reply in kind, and it is strongly suspected that Pakistan's 'security forces' were somehow behind the bombing of India's commuter trains a few weeks ago, terror attacks that left over 100 dead. In addition to SPURRING nuclear weapons development in India, Pakistan, North Korea, probably China and Russia, and Iran as well, the Bush administration has also WEAKENED the US military with their Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, to the point that the United States will ONLY be able to maintain the occupation of Iraq by INSTITUTING A DRAFT.
Then there is the whole Katrina/New Orleans disaster, and abysmal disaster reconstruction efforts. The Bush admin. has spent BILLIONS of dollars on NO-BID, NO-OVERSIGHT rebuilding contracts in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast... AND STILL entire swaths of New Orleans lie under stinking rubble and flood debris, with thousands of homeowners driven to bankruptcy as their insurance companies have refused to pay for "wind" or "water" damage to those homes that the owners must still pay mortgages on.
As Neil Young asks in his "Impeach the President" song (off of his new "Living with War album, neilyoung.com) "WOULD NEW ORLEANS HAVE BEEN SAFER, if the TERRORISTS has blown the levees?"
George W. Bush is a disagrace to the governance of America, and a failure at leading the nation in a world that looks to America for leadership, but finds that America's PNACers (boht Bush Republicans and AIPAC Democrats) are trying to revamp that whole "Sudentland/Liebensraum" thing, instead of for Russia's breadbasked for Mideast oil.
Bush revamps message on terror fight
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
Aug 24, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060824/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_fighting_them_here_5
WASHINGTON - In the thick of an election campaign, President Bush has revived and retooled his argument that the U.S. must fight terrorists overseas or face them here. Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, some GOP candidates are borrowing Bush's line.
"We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here," Bush warned at a news conference this week.
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., locked in a tight Philadelphia-area re-election race, went a step further. "We either fight them there, or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here," he said Wednesday in an interview with CNN.
Bush is not on the ballot this midterm election year. But control of the GOP-led Congress is. So the elections could determine the fate of what's left of Bush's second-term agenda.
The fight-them-there theme has been part of Bush's national security stump speech since 2003. But the "follow us here" part is a relatively new twist.
Noting polls that show growing Iraq war opposition, Bush and other Republicans have been stressing links between Iraq and the broader war against terrorism — a connection Democrats generally dismiss.
They've also been trumpeting their record of urging aggressive action against terrorists.
"What you're seeing here is a restatement of what the administration, and I think most Republicans, consider to be a truth, which is that Iraq is right now the principal battleground in the war on terror," said GOP consultant Rich Galen.
The foiling by British authorities of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes gave new impetus to the terrorism issue for Republicans — even as it underscored that potential terror strikes against the United States could come from anywhere.
An AP-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 60 percent of Americans believe that in the long run there will be more terrorism in the United States because of the war in Iraq.
That's up substantially from an AP-Ipsos poll taken in December 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, when the figure was 40 percent.
In the new poll, 40 percent of Republicans said they believe there will be more terrorism in the U.S. because of the war. That compares with 74 percent of Democrats. The poll of 1,001 adults, taken Aug. 7-9, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Also, a CBS-New York Times poll on Wednesday said just 44 percent of Americans now consider the Iraq conflict part of the broader war on terror — as the administration contends — down 10 points from June. More than half now say it is not.
"That's exactly why the president is refocusing on this, to remind people that that's an incorrect assessment. They are tied together," said Galen.
Stephen Cimbala, a professor at Penn State University who studies the interaction between war and U.S. politics, said Bush and Republican leaders clearly have decided that emphasizing their leadership in fighting terrorism is the best way to maintain congressional GOP majorities.
"And the more issues they can commingle with the war on terror, the better for them," Cimbala said.
Republicans hope that by cranking up their rhetoric on fighting terrorism they can offset the growing opposition to the Iraq war and blunt Democratic calls for troop withdrawals.
"That's their strategy and message: We're going to make you safer at home if we fight the terrorists there," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "The language may have changed, but the theme has not."
Is Bush right? Will staying in Iraq keep the U.S. from having to fight terrorists at home?
"It's partly true and partly not true," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He said al-Qaida and other terror groups who once found refuge in lawless places like Afghanistan would probably fill any vacuum in Iraq created by departing U.S. troops, setting up training camps and lines of communication.
"But what is also true is that sometimes in fighting a war on terror, you create the conditions under which more people decide to be terrorists," Alterman said. "there's a lot on both sides of the ledger. Part of it depends on how Iraq turns out and part of it depends on the conduct of U.S. policy."
More and more Republicans, even war supporters like Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., are voicing unhappiness with the administration's efforts to sell the war to Americans.
McCain, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said Tuesday the administration had misled Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach." McCain was in Ohio campaigning for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), who is in a tough re-election fight in which the war is a key issue.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Wednesday disputed McCain's characterization, saying the president "has been consistent in saying how tough and difficult it's going to be" to stabilize Iraq.
"But he also said it would be a mistake if we left, and that the terrorists would follow us here," Perino said, reprising Bush's line.
=====================================
Losing Afghanistan
Published: August 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/opinion/24thu3.html
Reclaiming Afghanistan from the Taliban remains a crucial element in America’s global struggle against terrorism. So it should be setting off alarm bells in Washington that Afghans are becoming disenchanted with the performance of the country’s pro-American president, Hamid Karzai.
The democratically elected Karzai government is a big improvement over any of its recent predecessors. But it has not brought security, economic revival or effective governance to most of the country. That has left it vulnerable to complaints about blatant corruption, the pervasive power of warlords and drug lords, and escalating military pressure from a revived and resupplied Taliban.
Nearly five years after American military forces help topple a Taliban government that provided sanctuary and training camps to Osama bin Laden, there is no victory in the war for Afghanistan, due in significant measure to the Bush administration’s reckless haste to move on to Iraq and shortsighted stinting on economic reconstruction.
The Taliban, operating from cross-border sanctuaries in Pakistan, has exploited Washington’s strategic blunders and Mr. Karzai’s disappointing performance to rebuild its political and military strength, particularly in the southern region where it first began its drive to power more than a decade ago. Daily battles now rage across five southern provinces. Civilian and military casualties are rising sharply, including those among the NATO forces that have recently moved into these areas.
Mr. Karzai cannot deliver security and redevelopment without sustained and effective international help. But he should be doing a lot more to curb the corruption of his political allies and appointees.
Their ostentatious greed has widened the gap, and sharpened political antagonisms, between the favored few and the desperately poor majority in one of the world’s least developed countries. Such venality is a gift to austere Taliban recruiters.
So is the notorious corruption of the police and judges, which makes it impossible for people to win redress of simple grievances. Frustration with the courts is again driving people to look to the swift and brutal punishments that have always been a Taliban specialty. Mr. Karzai did himself no favors by appointing a warlord and organized-crime figure as Kabul’s police chief earlier this year.
Americans are coming to see the war in Iraq as something apart from the war against 9/11-style terrorism — and a distraction from it. The war in Afghanistan has always been an essential part of that larger struggle. That makes it a war that America simply cannot afford to lose.
Besides daily winning the PROPAGANDA battle to have the power to MISMANAGE America, the Bush administration probably can not point to a SINGLE accomplishment of their administration.
"Defend America's security"?
The Bush administration has ENCOURAGED world nuclear proliferation, and we are now even selling India $5 billion in GE state-of-the-art nuclear technology that includes 'an understanding' that India will be permitted to operate 17 'secret' nuclear enrichment reactors for the sole purpose of creating nuclear weapons grade material. Pakistan will undoubtably reply in kind, and it is strongly suspected that Pakistan's 'security forces' were somehow behind the bombing of India's commuter trains a few weeks ago, terror attacks that left over 100 dead. In addition to SPURRING nuclear weapons development in India, Pakistan, North Korea, probably China and Russia, and Iran as well, the Bush administration has also WEAKENED the US military with their Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, to the point that the United States will ONLY be able to maintain the occupation of Iraq by INSTITUTING A DRAFT.
Then there is the whole Katrina/New Orleans disaster, and abysmal disaster reconstruction efforts. The Bush admin. has spent BILLIONS of dollars on NO-BID, NO-OVERSIGHT rebuilding contracts in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast... AND STILL entire swaths of New Orleans lie under stinking rubble and flood debris, with thousands of homeowners driven to bankruptcy as their insurance companies have refused to pay for "wind" or "water" damage to those homes that the owners must still pay mortgages on.
As Neil Young asks in his "Impeach the President" song (off of his new "Living with War album, neilyoung.com) "WOULD NEW ORLEANS HAVE BEEN SAFER, if the TERRORISTS has blown the levees?"
George W. Bush is a disagrace to the governance of America, and a failure at leading the nation in a world that looks to America for leadership, but finds that America's PNACers (boht Bush Republicans and AIPAC Democrats) are trying to revamp that whole "Sudentland/Liebensraum" thing, instead of for Russia's breadbasked for Mideast oil.
Bush revamps message on terror fight
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
Aug 24, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060824/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_fighting_them_here_5
WASHINGTON - In the thick of an election campaign, President Bush has revived and retooled his argument that the U.S. must fight terrorists overseas or face them here. Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, some GOP candidates are borrowing Bush's line.
"We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here," Bush warned at a news conference this week.
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., locked in a tight Philadelphia-area re-election race, went a step further. "We either fight them there, or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here," he said Wednesday in an interview with CNN.
Bush is not on the ballot this midterm election year. But control of the GOP-led Congress is. So the elections could determine the fate of what's left of Bush's second-term agenda.
The fight-them-there theme has been part of Bush's national security stump speech since 2003. But the "follow us here" part is a relatively new twist.
Noting polls that show growing Iraq war opposition, Bush and other Republicans have been stressing links between Iraq and the broader war against terrorism — a connection Democrats generally dismiss.
They've also been trumpeting their record of urging aggressive action against terrorists.
"What you're seeing here is a restatement of what the administration, and I think most Republicans, consider to be a truth, which is that Iraq is right now the principal battleground in the war on terror," said GOP consultant Rich Galen.
The foiling by British authorities of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes gave new impetus to the terrorism issue for Republicans — even as it underscored that potential terror strikes against the United States could come from anywhere.
An AP-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 60 percent of Americans believe that in the long run there will be more terrorism in the United States because of the war in Iraq.
That's up substantially from an AP-Ipsos poll taken in December 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, when the figure was 40 percent.
In the new poll, 40 percent of Republicans said they believe there will be more terrorism in the U.S. because of the war. That compares with 74 percent of Democrats. The poll of 1,001 adults, taken Aug. 7-9, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Also, a CBS-New York Times poll on Wednesday said just 44 percent of Americans now consider the Iraq conflict part of the broader war on terror — as the administration contends — down 10 points from June. More than half now say it is not.
"That's exactly why the president is refocusing on this, to remind people that that's an incorrect assessment. They are tied together," said Galen.
Stephen Cimbala, a professor at Penn State University who studies the interaction between war and U.S. politics, said Bush and Republican leaders clearly have decided that emphasizing their leadership in fighting terrorism is the best way to maintain congressional GOP majorities.
"And the more issues they can commingle with the war on terror, the better for them," Cimbala said.
Republicans hope that by cranking up their rhetoric on fighting terrorism they can offset the growing opposition to the Iraq war and blunt Democratic calls for troop withdrawals.
"That's their strategy and message: We're going to make you safer at home if we fight the terrorists there," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "The language may have changed, but the theme has not."
Is Bush right? Will staying in Iraq keep the U.S. from having to fight terrorists at home?
"It's partly true and partly not true," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He said al-Qaida and other terror groups who once found refuge in lawless places like Afghanistan would probably fill any vacuum in Iraq created by departing U.S. troops, setting up training camps and lines of communication.
"But what is also true is that sometimes in fighting a war on terror, you create the conditions under which more people decide to be terrorists," Alterman said. "there's a lot on both sides of the ledger. Part of it depends on how Iraq turns out and part of it depends on the conduct of U.S. policy."
More and more Republicans, even war supporters like Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., are voicing unhappiness with the administration's efforts to sell the war to Americans.
McCain, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said Tuesday the administration had misled Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach." McCain was in Ohio campaigning for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), who is in a tough re-election fight in which the war is a key issue.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Wednesday disputed McCain's characterization, saying the president "has been consistent in saying how tough and difficult it's going to be" to stabilize Iraq.
"But he also said it would be a mistake if we left, and that the terrorists would follow us here," Perino said, reprising Bush's line.
=====================================
Losing Afghanistan
Published: August 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/opinion/24thu3.html
Reclaiming Afghanistan from the Taliban remains a crucial element in America’s global struggle against terrorism. So it should be setting off alarm bells in Washington that Afghans are becoming disenchanted with the performance of the country’s pro-American president, Hamid Karzai.
The democratically elected Karzai government is a big improvement over any of its recent predecessors. But it has not brought security, economic revival or effective governance to most of the country. That has left it vulnerable to complaints about blatant corruption, the pervasive power of warlords and drug lords, and escalating military pressure from a revived and resupplied Taliban.
Nearly five years after American military forces help topple a Taliban government that provided sanctuary and training camps to Osama bin Laden, there is no victory in the war for Afghanistan, due in significant measure to the Bush administration’s reckless haste to move on to Iraq and shortsighted stinting on economic reconstruction.
The Taliban, operating from cross-border sanctuaries in Pakistan, has exploited Washington’s strategic blunders and Mr. Karzai’s disappointing performance to rebuild its political and military strength, particularly in the southern region where it first began its drive to power more than a decade ago. Daily battles now rage across five southern provinces. Civilian and military casualties are rising sharply, including those among the NATO forces that have recently moved into these areas.
Mr. Karzai cannot deliver security and redevelopment without sustained and effective international help. But he should be doing a lot more to curb the corruption of his political allies and appointees.
Their ostentatious greed has widened the gap, and sharpened political antagonisms, between the favored few and the desperately poor majority in one of the world’s least developed countries. Such venality is a gift to austere Taliban recruiters.
So is the notorious corruption of the police and judges, which makes it impossible for people to win redress of simple grievances. Frustration with the courts is again driving people to look to the swift and brutal punishments that have always been a Taliban specialty. Mr. Karzai did himself no favors by appointing a warlord and organized-crime figure as Kabul’s police chief earlier this year.
Americans are coming to see the war in Iraq as something apart from the war against 9/11-style terrorism — and a distraction from it. The war in Afghanistan has always been an essential part of that larger struggle. That makes it a war that America simply cannot afford to lose.
posted by verifi at 8:41 AM
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