Perle and Ghengis . . . ideology behind the recent past layed out in print
Perle and Frum have written a book that spells out their ideas as to how to "End Evil"
In it you will find a portrait of the kind of world that they envision and the kind of portrait that has been shaping this administrations actions since before they were elected (
HAHA) into office.
Simply go through the Salon Day-Pass process (no emails or info . . . only takes a split second) and read the four page review HERE
In the book you get the whole world-view that is pushing the actions of this admin
here are the basic ideas in bullets:
The review reveals much more about their ideas and shows how they are motivated by very suspect assumptions about the world.
It will, of course be dismissed even before being complettely read, by the knee-jerk squad here . . . simply because the reviewer's excellent use of derogatory adjectives . ..
however, the substance of the critique NEEDS TO BE KNOWN and thought about
It also needs to be clearly seperated from Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories while at the same time not shying away from the fact that much of the real motivations for the admins actions are hand-in-hand the same as ideologies that blindly at all costs refuse a two state solution and deny any rights to Palastinians
also, the deeper relationship of the ideas in this book to the same notions as expressed in the Pax Americana Doctrine and their influence on 911 and the administrations actions needs to be scrutinized . .
all of the sources (even from ex-members of the admin itself) that are questioning the motivations of the admins actions are just TOO NUMEROUS to be simply shrugged off . . .
its as plain as day . . . the emperor has no cloths! just admit that we are being pulled around by covert motivations to invade the Middle East and "spread Democracy'
. . . not simply for security reasons . . .
it is right here. . . in print by the very admin itself, unknowingly shown to the world
In it you will find a portrait of the kind of world that they envision and the kind of portrait that has been shaping this administrations actions since before they were elected (
HAHA) into office.Simply go through the Salon Day-Pass process (no emails or info . . . only takes a split second) and read the four page review HERE
In the book you get the whole world-view that is pushing the actions of this admin
here are the basic ideas in bullets:
Quote:
* --Preparing to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea, after moving our troops out of range of their artillery and missiles.
* --Taking direct action to topple the regime in Iran, by providing aid to Iranian dissidents.
* --Being prepared to invade Syria, of whom the authors write, "Really, there is only one question to ask about Syria: Why have we put up with it as long as we have?"
* --Being prepared to invade Libya. "The illusion that Muammar al-Qaddafi is 'moderating' should be treated as what it is: a symptom of the seemingly incurable wishful delusions that afflict the accommodationists in the foreign policy establishment." (Now that those accommodationists in State have been proven right, don't expect an apology from the authors: They'll claim Qaddafi got rid of his WMD programs only because Bush invaded Iraq. All other answers, no matter if they're true, don't fit with their Manichaean, evildoers-respond-only-to-force worldview. Besides, those who are always right must never apologize. It is a sign of weakness, which our evil Muslim terrorist enemies (TM) will exploit with evil terror.)
* --Taking a superconfrontational line with Saudi Arabia, including letting them know that if they don't reform we would look with favor upon a Shiite uprising in their oil-rich Eastern Province.
* --Abandoning the Israeli-Palestinian peace process altogether. In a radical departure from U.S. policy, they say the Palestinians should not be given a state. Creating a Palestinian state out of the West Bank and Gaza, they write, will not bring peace to the region, because the Palestinians and other Arabs are only interested in vengeance, not justice. Instead, the Palestinians should "let go of the past" and content themselves with becoming citizens of the Arab countries in which they now live. The authors do not say what should happen to the 3.9 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories: Presumably they should either agree to become second-class citizens like the other Israeli Arabs, or leave.
Their domestic policies are equally arresting:
* --Requiring all residents to carry a national identity card that includes "biometric data, like fingerprints or retinal scans or DNA," and empowering all law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws. The authors admit that such a card "could be used in abusive ways," but reassure us by saying that victims of "executive branch abuse will be able to sue." Those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear!
Encouraging Americans to "report suspicious activity." Apparently alone among Americans, the authors lament the demise of the TIPS program.
* --Changing immigration policy so that the U.S. can bar all would-be visitors who have "terrorist sympathies." The authors define "terrorist sympathies" so broadly that this would rule out a high percentage of visitors from Muslim or Arab countries.
* --Reforming the CIA to make it more hard-line on the Middle East. There can be no argument that American intelligence desperately needs reform. But after the yellowcake scandal, after the Valerie Plame leak, after the lies and distortions and creation of special offices to cook evidence, for Bush hard-liners to trash the intelligence community and the State Department takes some chutzpah.
* --Preparing to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea, after moving our troops out of range of their artillery and missiles.
* --Taking direct action to topple the regime in Iran, by providing aid to Iranian dissidents.
* --Being prepared to invade Syria, of whom the authors write, "Really, there is only one question to ask about Syria: Why have we put up with it as long as we have?"
* --Being prepared to invade Libya. "The illusion that Muammar al-Qaddafi is 'moderating' should be treated as what it is: a symptom of the seemingly incurable wishful delusions that afflict the accommodationists in the foreign policy establishment." (Now that those accommodationists in State have been proven right, don't expect an apology from the authors: They'll claim Qaddafi got rid of his WMD programs only because Bush invaded Iraq. All other answers, no matter if they're true, don't fit with their Manichaean, evildoers-respond-only-to-force worldview. Besides, those who are always right must never apologize. It is a sign of weakness, which our evil Muslim terrorist enemies (TM) will exploit with evil terror.)
* --Taking a superconfrontational line with Saudi Arabia, including letting them know that if they don't reform we would look with favor upon a Shiite uprising in their oil-rich Eastern Province.
* --Abandoning the Israeli-Palestinian peace process altogether. In a radical departure from U.S. policy, they say the Palestinians should not be given a state. Creating a Palestinian state out of the West Bank and Gaza, they write, will not bring peace to the region, because the Palestinians and other Arabs are only interested in vengeance, not justice. Instead, the Palestinians should "let go of the past" and content themselves with becoming citizens of the Arab countries in which they now live. The authors do not say what should happen to the 3.9 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories: Presumably they should either agree to become second-class citizens like the other Israeli Arabs, or leave.
Their domestic policies are equally arresting:
* --Requiring all residents to carry a national identity card that includes "biometric data, like fingerprints or retinal scans or DNA," and empowering all law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws. The authors admit that such a card "could be used in abusive ways," but reassure us by saying that victims of "executive branch abuse will be able to sue." Those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear!
Encouraging Americans to "report suspicious activity." Apparently alone among Americans, the authors lament the demise of the TIPS program.
* --Changing immigration policy so that the U.S. can bar all would-be visitors who have "terrorist sympathies." The authors define "terrorist sympathies" so broadly that this would rule out a high percentage of visitors from Muslim or Arab countries.
* --Reforming the CIA to make it more hard-line on the Middle East. There can be no argument that American intelligence desperately needs reform. But after the yellowcake scandal, after the Valerie Plame leak, after the lies and distortions and creation of special offices to cook evidence, for Bush hard-liners to trash the intelligence community and the State Department takes some chutzpah.
The review reveals much more about their ideas and shows how they are motivated by very suspect assumptions about the world.
It will, of course be dismissed even before being complettely read, by the knee-jerk squad here . . . simply because the reviewer's excellent use of derogatory adjectives . ..
however, the substance of the critique NEEDS TO BE KNOWN and thought about
It also needs to be clearly seperated from Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories while at the same time not shying away from the fact that much of the real motivations for the admins actions are hand-in-hand the same as ideologies that blindly at all costs refuse a two state solution and deny any rights to Palastinians
also, the deeper relationship of the ideas in this book to the same notions as expressed in the Pax Americana Doctrine and their influence on 911 and the administrations actions needs to be scrutinized . .
all of the sources (even from ex-members of the admin itself) that are questioning the motivations of the admins actions are just TOO NUMEROUS to be simply shrugged off . . .
its as plain as day . . . the emperor has no cloths! just admit that we are being pulled around by covert motivations to invade the Middle East and "spread Democracy'
. . . not simply for security reasons . . .
it is right here. . . in print by the very admin itself, unknowingly shown to the world
Comments
I am going to give you a chance by deleting the second and the third post.
I will remind you two rules : no personal attacks, never post in a thread that you want someone banned or have his privileges revoked.
Throughout the whole thing he subtly put Perle to task. It was pretty amusing.
Also, when Perle was making the rounds a couple weeks ago to promote the book, I hear he was saying that the CIA needs to be purged of those that don't "get it," just like is now happening in the Pentagon (as he apparently put it).
Oh, and on top of all of the shady conflict of interest investment deals which are popping up at a rate of ~1 a month, did everyone see that he recently spoke at what was likely a terrorist fundraiser:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jan28.html
the book by Richard Perle, a member of this administration, lays out his ideas as to what would make a better world and why
in these ideas we see a world-view that has clearly been behind the actions of this administration
after all, Perle himself is IN THIS ADMINISTRATION
AND, Perla and Wollfowits and Cheney and others in the administration are also signatories (sp?} (meaning: people who put their name to) to a famous document that recommends certain extreme political actions for the future.
This document was published in the late '90s.
This document is called the Pax Americana Doctrine and is still online for everyone to read . . it is not conspiracy theory
The reason that I relate this book to this document is that they say much the same things.
Now, if you read the review of the book you will get an idea of how extreme the ideas are that are influencing the current administration
(after all, this book IS FROM a member of THIS ADMINISTRATION)
It will be clear to see, if you care to read intelligently, how the ideas expressed have steered the actions of our Government
especially with regards to the war in Iraq
It would also clearly put into question what is becoming more obviouse everyday,
namely, that the administration intended to invade Iraq NO MATTER WHAT
and lied to us in order to do so
The book also shows how th aadministrations misunderstanding of the mideast peace process has played an important role in the actions and inactions taken thus far
now, regarding what I have just said, I think that my sanity should in no way be put into question as has been done by the lead knuckledrag of the knee-jerk squad himself . . . .
OSS BOOK REVIEW: David Frum & Richard Perle, AN END TO EVIL--How to Win the War on Terror (Random House, 2003), 284 pp.
There are some real gems in this book. The authors:
1) Document the split between the hard-line neo-conservatives who have captured the mind of 43, and their growing (and increasingly public) disrespect for 41 and for General Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State and former General Colin Powell.
2) Are correct in their condemnation of the Clinton national security team for being weak and incompetent. Any Democratic candidate foolish enough to appoint such individuals as their advisors is not smart enough to beat 43.
3) Make it clear that the top priority for neo-conservatives in the war on terrorism is not overseas action, but the implementation of a national identification card system here at home.
4) Are correct in their condemnation of US-based Muslim charities and clerics (and FBI agents of the Muslim faith) unwilling to speak out against Islamic radicalization and those who recommend jihad in America, abusing our freedom of speech. They are also correct when they propose to end all tax exemptions and breaks for those that fail to condemn terrorism and fatwas against Americans.
5) Are correct when they point out that the trillions of dollars we have spent on national intelligence have resulted in a vacuum on both Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and a lack of knowledge about terrorist financing.
6) They are correct when they emphasize the importance of funding the education and elevation of women into power within Islamic societies.
7) Are correct when they point out that with the exception of Jordan, no Arab country has been willing to give Palestinians a break--no access to schools, ownership of land, or passports. Lebanon, they say, forbids Palestinians from 72 professions.
8 ) Are correct when they point out that we are "fighting the war on terror with the same people and the same bureaucracies that so conspicuously failed us on 9/11." They are especially powerful when they criticize the CIA for failing to collect, read, translate, or understand the openly published writings of Khomeini during the Carter years--CIA is operating on perhaps 2% of the available global knowledge because it obsesses on spying and disrespects open sources of information in 29 languages--something Herb Meyer understood when he was Special Assistant to then DCI Bill Casey.
9) Are correct when they characterize the US Army specifically, and the entire US military generally, as "forces of the past, built to counter threats that no longer exist."
10) Are correct to emphasize how the U.S. Government as a whole is completely fragmented and lacking in an inter-agency management and coordination structure that both Kissinger and Rubin have suggested is urgently required to keep pace with the threats and demands of the modern world.
11) Are correct to slam the FBI for being incompetent at counter-intelligence, and to call for a new national homeland security agency reporting to the secretary for homeland security. They do however overlook the equal importance of funding state and local intelligence centers and counterintelligence personnel.
12) Are correct to emphasize that US free trade agreements with various nations should demand that the nations sign the same agreement with one another (e.g. in South Asia).
13) Are correct to point out that the United Nations and its focus on "armed attack" is completely out-dated, and that America should increase and sustain its support to the UN only on condition that the UN modernize both its by-laws and its operating procedures.
14) Are correct to propose that national security funding should rise to 5% of the national budget, up from 3%, but they fail to understand that modern warfare requires co-equal funding for non-military sources of power including massive preventive *peace* operations.
There is, then, a great deal of good in this book. It is, however, also full of a great deal of crap. It has no footnotes, no bibliography, no index, and a great deal of either badly researched material or plain disinformation. They misrepresent or ignore a number of very important facts. On page 24, for example, they discuss the debriefing of Hussein's son-in-law, defector Hussein Kamel, and fail to mention that he told us all the stocks had been destroyed, and only the cookbooks remained. Throughout the book, while lambasting CIA for not knowing (half true), they decline to discuss the unethical and unprofessional manner in which the neo-cons not only shut out the professionals from the Iraq war deliberations, but cherry-picked and fabricated information to mislead the president as well as the American people. On page 32 and again on page 35 they lie when they say that Iraq was "one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the region." On various pages they gloss over the fact that Chalabi was both a thief and a liar, fired by CIA for stealing millions from covert funds, and ultimately found by CIA to be fabricating translations to deceive the US military intelligence people. On pages 45-46 they repeat the long proven lie about Mohammed Atta meeting an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Not only has the FBI determined that Atta was in Florida at the time, but Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, recently honored by President Bush, has repeatedly stated this did not happen. On page 155, they deliberately avoid mentioning that it was Rumsfeld who allowed 3000 Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape by approving a Pakistani air evacuation operation that went on all night. Rumsfeld's naiveté and ignorance cost us the chance to nail Bin Laden early on. There are many other points where the facts differ from their representations.
The book does *not* offer a true strategy for the future of American security or even the near-term war on terrorism. It is largely a baloney justification for the war on Iraq. It fails to acknowledge that unilateralist American behavior is spawning more terrorists than we are catching. On balance, this book is worth reading to understand both the good and the bad of the neo-conservative viewpoint.
Originally posted by giant
[ . . .] did everyone see that he recently spoke at what was likely a terrorist fundraiser:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jan28.html
That does not surprise me . . . as one of Perle's experessed ideas is the covert funding of Iranian counter-insurgents
IE: money-4-guns-in Iran
sound familiar?!?
Originally posted by pfflam
(after all, this book IS FROM a member of THIS ADMINISTRATION)
Don't forget that Frum was Bush's speechwriter for a while, and supposedly the one who coined "axis of evil."
America Unbound
The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy
Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay
Brookings Institution Press 2003
c. 245pp.
Trade Cloth, 0-8157-1688-5, $22.95
George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions impose on its freedom of action. He has insisted that an America unbound is a more secure America.
How did a man once mocked for knowing little about the world come to be a foreign policy revolutionary? In America Unbound, Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay dismiss claims that neoconservatives have captured the heart and mind of the president. They show that George W. Bush has been no one's puppet. He has been a strong and decisive leader with a coherent worldview that was evident even during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Daalder and Lindsay caution that the Bush revolution comes with significant risks. Raw power alone is not enough to preserve and extend America's security and prosperity in the modern world. The United States often needs the help of others to meet the challenges it faces overseas. But Bush's revolutionary impulse has stirred great resentment abroad. At some point, Daalder and Lindsay warn, Bush could find that America's friends and allies refuse to follow his lead. America will then stand alone - a great power unable to achieve its most important goals.
Yeah. Tell us another one, L. Ron.
<watches the thread carefully>
Originally posted by giant
That the dumbest thing I ever heard. When campaigning he didn't even know musharraf's name, yet somehow in one year he learned all of the various relationships between different groups in each of these countries, the history of US support and then just happened to create a foreign policy that lined up exactly with what a group of his advisors have been promoting very publicly for fifteen years? A group of advisors who have been studying international relations for 30+ years and worked as advisors in various other admins and responsible for such major events as iran-contra and (according to them) the end of the cold war?
Yeah. Tell us another one, L. Ron.
It's not complicated and yet it's still somehow beyond you. He didn't NEED to know Musharef's name. Quite simply President Bush believes that the US is ''the greatest force for good in history.'' Overthrowing the Taliban and Saddam's regime in Iraq are perfectly consistent with such a worldview.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
It's not complicated and yet it's still somehow beyond you. He didn't NEED to know Musharef's name. Quite simply President Bush believes that the US is ''the greatest force for good in history.'' Overthrowing the Taliban and Saddam's regime in Iraq are perfectly consistent with such a worldview.
That's sick in the head though. It's called fascism. Hitler thought German was 'the greatest force for good in history', but he was wrong too.
Originally posted by bunge
That's sick in the head though. It's called fascism. Hitler thought German was 'the greatest force for good in history', but he was wrong too.
:: Bunge enters thread... Compares Bush with Hitler.::
Your work is done. Run along now.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
:: Bunge enters thread... Compares Bush with Hitler.::
Get real.
Anyone who thinks that they are the 'greatest force for good in history' is as dangerous as Hitler. I'm not comparing Bush to Hitler.
Originally posted by bunge
Get real...
Get a clue... Get bent... Get help... Get along little doggie.
But, I would say a few things, Ghengis Khan was probably the most murderous leader in history up until the 20th century, (when he invaded and conquered the Middle East area he killed all the citizens on his flanks and burned their crops because his supply lines were vulnerable, as well as completely decimating several cities)
but at least he was a good leader to his citizens, introducing the first state in history to NOT discriminate against any religion . . .(I know, its absurd to be sympathetic to Ghengis, but if he hadn't been ruthless during battles he would have been thought of as a great leader and master organizer)
but, what he has that Perle apparently lacks is that he was probably the greatest military leader -with the exception of Hannibal- that the world has ever seen . . .
so maybe I shouldn't have compared . . . but since we were talking comparisons here . . .
Originally posted by pfflam
. . . but since we were talking comparisons here . . .
Nobody's making any comparisons here... Honest! bunge says so...
The former is a simple minded world view akin to "love makes the world go around", entirely devoid of particulars. The latter is the product of an extremely detailed, political agenda, written down for all to see.
The devil is in the details, no?
Originally posted by addabox
The devil is in the details, no?
well, since you put it that way . . .and the Latter group is in charge of details, then I might be inclined to agree
If only I believed in the devil