Bush 'greatest threat to life on planet'

We must be getting complacent about W. The Brits still remember how to do it...

Livingstone says Bush is 'greatest threat to life on planet'

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, launched a stinging attack on President George Bush last night, denouncing him as the "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen".

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=464783

That makes me feel good that Ken Livingstone doesn't like Bush. Let's face it, even the Brits call him "Red Ken" and if he doesn't like Bush then I am in good company.

BTW, since "Red Ken" is a member of the Labor Party, you might check out the post farther down the line - in fact I will copy it in for you - concerning how the Labor Party people feel about Bush:

SOMEBODY'S CATCHING ON: "The director of Amnesty International USA warns that the left must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles Bush -- or risk irrelevance." Indeed.

Jeff Jarvis rounds up some advice.

UPDATE: Apparently, the head of Amnesty in Britain hasn't caught on, as she's slouching toward irrelevance with another bit of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism:

THOUSANDS of people will take to the streets in Britain next week to voice their anger, frustration and political opposition to President George W Bush's policies.

Some will criticise these protestors, writing off their views as knee-jerk anti-Americanism. But the critics should think before condemning them.

Why? Because after almost three years of President Bush's "war on terror" many would argue that the world is now a more dangerous and divided place than it was immediately after 9/11.

Two years and two months is "almost three years?" Well, Amnesty has never, at least lately, let a fear of exaggeration get in the way of a good anti-American line. This doesn't seem to reflect British opinion, though:

More than half of Labour supporters back US President George Bush's state visit to Britain, according to a survey.

They were among an overall 43% of voters who told pollsters ICM they welcomed the visit - some 7% more than the 36% who said they would prefer the President to stay away. Twelve per cent were undecided.

The survey, published in The Guardian as Mr Bush flies to the UK, contradicted the widely-held assumption that the visit will damage Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It recorded improved ratings for the Prime Minister personally, as well as a slump in opposition to the war in Iraq.

And it indicated that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American, with 62% of respondents agreeing the US was "generally speaking, a force for good", compared to 15% who described it as "an evil empire".

>That makes me feel good that Ken Livingstone doesn't like

>Bush. Let's face it, even the Brits call him "Red Ken" and if

>he doesn't like Bush then I am in good company.

Exactly. Ken Livingston is a full-fledged Socialist. How revealing that so many people here share his world-view about Bush - and even more revealing that someone would come here and post his statement as something to which we should aspire.

It's clear to me that many liberals in this country actually hate George Bush more than, say, Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or any other mass murderers who want to destroy our civilization. The fact that someone here can re-state this Livingstone quote WITH APPROVAL shows how extreme many of them are in their hatred and insanity. If Democrats have any hope of winning the 2004 election, they better hope that their Party is able to hide the "AdamSmith's" of the world, who do nothing but sicken the vast majority of our citizenry, understandably so.

And, as usual, the "Conservative Media" is reporting the events in London with the most anti-Bush spin possible, making it sound like all of England is in an upheaval of hatred towards Bush. In fact, as you point out, and as the Guardian article below confirms, the vast majority of Brits think that Bush is a force for good in the world.

_________________________________________

Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges

Alan Travis and David Gow

Tuesday November 18, 2003

The Guardian

A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.

The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world.

Further on "Red Ken" is that when he ran for mayor of London, even the Labor Party supported an opponent of his for the position - they did not want him elected. That says something when even your own party is trying to disavow you, particularly under the British form of Parliamentary Democracy.

>The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is

>overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that

>the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in

>the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom

>at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to

>Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea

>that America is the "evil empire" in the world.

“Overwhelmingly” pro-American? I guess it’s a matter of perspective, but that means that 38% -- almost 4 out of 10 – believe the US is generally NOT a force for good. More than 1 out 10 believe we are downright evil. And this from one of our staunchest allies!

I would be very interested to see what those statistics were before Bush took office. I certainly don’t believe that the aim of our foreign policy should be to please the Europeans, but a little diplomacy and statesmanship by this administration would be much appreciated.

You can get one idea from the fact that Warren Christopher, the Secretary of State at the time, was on a trip to Europe and could not get any of the heads of government to see him - in fact in a couple of cases even his equivalent wasn't able to find time to see him.

Call Me a Bush-Hater

Molly Ivins, The Progressive

November 14, 2003

Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think George W. Bush is a terrible president.

Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his 44 years of covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the topic of "Bush-haters" in Time magazine as though he had never before come across a similar phenomenon.

Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to--our last president. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of murder, rape, drug running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery, and official misconduct. And they accuse his wife of even worse.

For eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio talk shows and "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously racist pasts--all were given hearings, credence, and air time. Sliming Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an ambitious young rightwing hit man like David Brock, who has since made full confession, took that golden opportunity.

And these folks didn't stop with verbal and printed attacks. From the day Clinton was elected to office, he was the subject of the politics of personal destruction. They went after him with a multimillion-dollar smear campaign funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing billionaire. They went after him with lawsuits funded by rightwing legal foundations (Paula Jones), they got special counsels appointed to investigate every nitpicking nothing that ever happened (Filegate, Travelgate), and they never let go of that hardy perennial Whitewater.

After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and dragged this country through more than a year of the most tawdry, ridiculous, unnecessary pain. The day President Clinton tried to take out Osama bin Laden with a missile strike, every right-winger in America said it was a case of "wag the dog." He was supposedly trying to divert our attention from the much more breathtakingly important and serious matter of Monica Lewinsky. And who did he think he was to make us focus on some piffle like bin Laden?

"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the ineffable Mr. Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush? "Whence the anger?" asks Krauthammer. "It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy."

I'd say so myself, yes, I would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election fight, and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush overall. But I also remember thinking, as the scene became eerier and eerier, "Jeez, maybe we should just let them have this one, because Republican wing-nuts are so crazy, their bitterness would poison Gore's whole presidency." The night Gore conceded the race in one of the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through every word of it.

One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal--milk of human kindness flowing through every vein, and heart bleeding over everyone from the milk-shy Hottentot to the glandular obese--is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses. Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time ago--attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a point there."

Part 2:

To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports, it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only president we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election," well, good. I don't think we should forget that.

But, onward. So George Dubya becomes president, having run as a "compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own conservative and dick for compassion.

His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets $92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for the rich.

By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!) but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to praise a job training effort, and then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we still don't have bin Laden.

Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction, and our president "without doubt," without question, knows all about them, even unto the amounts--tons of sarin, pounds of anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.

By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr. Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.

Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy president?

Sure, all that is just what's happening in people's lives, but what we need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.

"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a singular act of presidential will," says Krauthammer.

You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have weapons of mass destruction.

It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred.

Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies.

If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.

Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist out of Austin, Texas, is the co-author of "Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America."

Molly Ivans is a godess!!

Oops! I mean goddess.

I think one of the problems with this whole tone of discussion concerning the European perception of the US is a little counter-productive. I am not saying this from the standpoint of some of the nations of Europe not joining us in Iraq. I am saying this from the standpoint that Europe does not know how to deal with the US.

By this I mean that in many cases the Europeans are used to dealing with "empires" and the US has gone to great lengths not to have "empires" over the years. We have come to the assistance of the Europeans in their wars and when the war is over and things are patched up again, we went home for the most part. We did not try to take over their governments and run them. We also have a history of leaving the job half done, e.g., Somalia, Haiti, and others. I have been reading a website called Politalk.com which is a transatlantic political discussion group. The people posting to this site are from all over Europe and the US and they post in different forums for the various countries involved. One of the subjects that came up recently is the subject of "American Empire" or not.

A professor of Harvard wrote a paper in which he postulated that America went out of its way not to have an empire. A professor of Chicago wrote a paper in which he said that the US was backing into the existence of a "virtual" empire. The Europeans thought that when the Cold War ended, then America would become a pseudo-empire just on the basis that there was no one capable of standing up to us. Then they got fooled by the fiddling around that happened in the 1990's (I am not making this up even though I do somewhat agree with the poster) in that the US went into Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and other places for reasons of trying to make things better; when Somalia was not so amenable to what the US wanted to do, then the US backed out; in Haiti the US accomplished only half of what it wanted to do; in Bosnia the US "had to ask the European allies" to come to our aid in that situation. Given this as the scenario of what some of the Europeans believe (these, by the way, were all liberals), they thought that the US did not have a coherent policy of what it wanted to do.

Now that Bush is in power and he is not dithering around when he does something unilateral, the Europeans are not sure if what has happened is that we in fact now want to have an empire of sorts. I think this is part of the reason for the problem we have with the Europeans. They thought that with the dithering policy of the Clintons with regard to international politics, they had a handle on what the US policy would be. Now that it is different, they have problems with it, either of their own understanding or ours. That is what needs to be addressed and I don't see anyone addressing it in any coherent way at all - not the Europeans, not the US, not the UN. I am not even sure who really needs to initiate a discussion on this subject.

I think that part of the problems that the EU will have with its constitution is based on the relationship or non-relationship with the US - some of the posters even hinted that they wanted the US to be a part of the EU and some of the posters didn't even want the US to have a watching brief in the EU. There was a big discussion over the fact that the US was not a European country - to that one, some of the posters felt that the only reason there was still a Europe that was not a slave state was the US and there was a lot of discussion over THAT statement.

I guess my rambling point is that whether 38% of the Brits think we are evil and a threat or not, there is still a majority who think that we are not evil and a threat which gives us at least a basis for some sort of discussion there. The question is what form should this discussion take and what should be our position on it. As the lone superpower, we do have a stake in many places whether we want to or not just based on our position; the problem we face is how do we handle that stake without upsetting the whole world and still perform the function that much of the world expects of us and how do we as a country accept this function.

I agree. She is someone I am happy to be associated with.

I was first introduced to her style back in '85 when I lived in Austin, Tx. My roommate used to tape the McNeil/Lehrer Report every night on the chance that he'd catch one of her pieces. I love her wit.

Poor Mollie Ivins. She hated George Bush Sr to begin with. She really went into Bush hatred overdrive because Bush Jr beat her good buddy Anne Richards for governor and she has written 3 of every 4 columns since with vitriol for Bush Jr. I just disregard her. She comes out of the alcohol every now and then and writes something that is pretty good (and she is a very good writer) but then she goes back under again.

Nothing like letting that compassionate conservatism shine through

Compassionate does not mean doormat.

>“Overwhelmingly” pro-American? I guess it’s a matter of

>perspective, but that means that 38% -- almost 4 out of 10 –

>believe the US is generally NOT a force for good. More than 1

>out 10 believe we are downright evil. And this from one of

>our staunchest allies!

Wars are controversial things - especially ones fought on a pre-emptive basis. I don't think it's suprirsing at all that a significant MINORITY of the population of another country, even "one of our staunchest allies," is against the war and thinks it's bad.

There's a portion of the population that is against every war. If that portion in Europe had its way, the whole continent would be speaking German.

>I would be very interested to see what those statistics were

>before Bush took office.

Statements like this confound me. There was this event that occurred subsequent to Bush's taking office that sort of changed things a little bit. It happened in September two years ago. That event meant that the U.S. had to start behaving more aggressively, since war was declared on this country.

Is it really surprising that lots of people dislike that - and liked us better when we had pretty much of any "anything goes" mentality -- including allowing basically everyone into our country for any reasons and letting our enemies around the world sit unmolested and unattacked?

I agree that diplomacy is important, that strong alliances can make us more secure, and that this Administration has done a very poor job of maintaining these relations, even going out if its way at times to alienate almost everyone in the world, to the detriment of our security.

But if we're going to defend ourselves from the incontestably dangerous meance that exists, it's inevitable that we're going to step on lots of toes of people who aren't used to that. That's really just too bad.

>I guess my rambling point is that whether 38% of the Brits

>think we are evil and a threat or not, there is still a

>majority who think that we are not evil and a threat which

>gives us at least a basis for some sort of discussion there.

>The question is what form should this discussion take and what

>should be our position on it. As the lone superpower, we do

>have a stake in many places whether we want to or not just

>based on our position; the problem we face is how do we handle

>that stake without upsetting the whole world and still perform

>the function that much of the world expects of us and how do

>we as a country accept this function.

I agree that we need increased dialog with the Europeans, but I doubt that we would agree on the nature of that dialog. You seem to be okay with Bush’s unilateral approach. I believe he uses it far too much.

There will be times (and I still believe Iraq was one of them) when we have to do what we believe is necessary even when our allies disagree. However, he doesn’t seem to be able to operate in any other mode. He is all bluster and bravado and no finesse.

As the lone superpower I would like my leaders to have enough sense to realize that you actually have to walk much more softly because of the size of your stick. There is an obvious imbalance of power that is going to make any country leery of the US. You don’t foster additional resentment by adopting a “power rules” attitude and thumbing your nose at all the little guys. It’s just stupid and short sighted. It alienates our friends when a little benevolence and grace about our power would go a long way to maintaining those friendships.

>Statements like this confound me. There was this event that

>occurred subsequent to Bush's taking office that sort of

>changed things a little bit. It happened in September two

>years ago. That event meant that the U.S. had to start

>behaving more aggressively, since war was declared on this

>country.

And immediately after that event we had the full support of a large part of the planet – all our allies and many of our detractors. What happened to that?

I don’t even pretend to know how everything should have been handled, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to believe that it could have been handled better. The better way would have been to accomplish our military goals without alienating our allies. I don’t know exactly how that could have been accomplished, but I know that Bush and his people did not do it.

It’s already become a cliché but he really is losing the peace. Do we give up and bail out? Absolutely not. Does Bush deserve praise for achieving military objectives? Sure he does. Does he deserve criticism for failing on virtually every other objective? I believe he does.

Nor does 'Compassionate Conservative' mean compassionate, apparently.

Your response to her eloquent points is that she's a drunk. Bush was a coke head and drunk, including a "lost" DUI, but she didn't even need to bring that up. You see, she used logic and basic skills of debate instead of bullshit, bile, and bluster, which seem to be about the only way for a conservative to 'win' an argument.

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2003/db031116.gif

RE: "generally speaking..."

That's a rather odd phrase, isn't it? "62% of the British believe that the US is GENERALLY SPEAKING, a force for good, not evil."

What does that mean, exactly? It seems like a weak prize to me. I think most Europeans are used to watching their multitudinous political parties bounce in and out of office, like so many balls in a pachinko machine. They've become used to seeing their countries' images as separate, beyond the image of the party-du-jour holding office.

Likewise, they're more likely to look at the US in the same manner. Had the poll asked their opinion about the Bush administration, specifically, there may have been a different percentage breakdown in the responses. I think, anyway, who knows.

I also feel that the US, Generally Speaking, is a force of good. However, that does not mean that it is not open to criticism and self-examination.

In my opinion removing Bush from office ASAP is a step in the right direction in coordinating the path of the USA with that of Goodness.

La Trix

RE:

That's because there's a BUT at the end of the sentence which goes...BUT in this case, Bush lied.

A superb address by Zbignew Brezezinski pretty much deflates your way of thinking on this issue. The negativity overseas seen these days is not so much directed against all Americans, as it is one particular American and his ii-founded policies.

One particular quotation from that speech frames the issue quite effectively, which I quote, followed by the text of the speech in its entirety, less anyone make the spurious claim that it is somehow taken out of context:

"Ladies and gentlemen, forty years ago almost to the day an important Presidential emissary was sent abroad by a beleaguered President of the United States. The United States was facing the prospect of nuclear war. These were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Several emissaries went to our principal allies. One of them was a tough-minded former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson whose mission was to brief President De Gaulle and to solicit French support in what could be a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the Soviet Union but the entire NATO Alliance and the Warsaw Pact.

The former Secretary of State briefed the French President and then said to him at the end of the briefing, I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons. The French President responded by saying, I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America.

Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary who would go abroad and say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction which threaten the United States? There's food for thought in that question. Fifty-three years ago, almost the same month following the Soviet-sponsored assault by North Korea on South Korea, the Soviet Union boycotted a proposed resolution in the U.N. Security Council for a collective response to that act.

That left the Soviet Union alone in opposition, stamping it as a global pariah. In the last three weeks there were two votes on the subject of the Middle East in the General Assembly of the United Nations. In one of them the vote was 133 to four. In the other one the vote was 141 to 4, and the four included the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia.

All of our NATO allies voted with the majority including Great Britain, including the so-called new allies in Europe -- in fact almost all of the EU -- and Japan. I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena -- the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

Both together can be summed up in a troubling paradox regarding the American position and role in the world today. American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir. Why? What is the cause of this? These are facts. They're measurable facts. They're also felt facts when one talks to one's friends abroad who like America, who value what we treasure but do not understand our policies, are troubled by our actions and are perplexed by what they perceive to be either demagogy or mendacity."

And here's the entire speech:

A Must-Read Speech

Zbigniew Brzezinski's remarks from the "New American Strategies for Security and Peace" conference

By Zbigniew Brzezinski

Web Exclusive: 10.31.03

Print Friendly | Email Article

The following is a transcript of the speech delivered by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski on Oct. 28 at New American Strategies for Security and Peace, a conference co-sponsored by the Prospect in Washington, D.C. The speech followed an introduction by David Aaron, a former deputy national security adviser.

David, distinguished guests, friends, and there's some overlap between the two categories. It's very touching to be introduced by a close friend, a colleague who worked very closely with me for four years, with whom we tried to forge policies that would be responsive to the realities of power and to the demands of principle.

To the extent that there were any accomplishments to which I can lay claim I am certainly more than eager rightfully so to share them with David Aaron. What more can I say about that introduction. Since our relationship with President Jimmy Carter was invoked perhaps the only additional thing I can say is to repeat what he recently said after being equally generously introduced.

He came up to the podium and said of all of the introductions I have ever heard this one was the most recent.

Ladies and gentlemen, forty years ago almost to the day an important Presidential emissary was sent abroad by a beleaguered President of the United States. The United States was facing the prospect of nuclear war. These were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Several emissaries went to our principal allies. One of them was a tough-minded former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson whose mission was to brief President De Gaulle and to solicit French support in what could be a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the Soviet Union but the entire NATO Alliance and the Warsaw Pact.

The former Secretary of State briefed the French President and then said to him at the end of the briefing, I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons. The French President responded by saying, I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America.

Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary who would go abroad and say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction which threaten the United States? There's food for thought in that question. Fifty-three years ago, almost the same month following the Soviet-sponsored assault by North Korea on South Korea, the Soviet Union boycotted a proposed resolution in the U.N. Security Council for a collective response to that act.

That left the Soviet Union alone in opposition, stamping it as a global pariah. In the last three weeks there were two votes on the subject of the Middle East in the General Assembly of the United Nations. In one of them the vote was 133 to four. In the other one the vote was 141 to 4, and the four included the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia.

All of our NATO allies voted with the majority including Great Britain, including the so-called new allies in Europe -- in fact almost all of the EU -- and Japan. I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena -- the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

Both together can be summed up in a troubling paradox regarding the American position and role in the world today. American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir. Why? What is the cause of this? These are facts. They're measurable facts. They're also felt facts when one talks to one's friends abroad who like America, who value what we treasure but do not understand our policies, are troubled by our actions and are perplexed by what they perceive to be either demagogy or mendacity.

Maybe the explanation is that we are rich, and we are, and that we are powerful, and we certainly are. But if anyone thinks that this is the full explanation I think he or she is taking the easy way out and engaging in a self-serving justification. I think we have to take into account two troubling conditions.

Since the tragedy of 9-11 which understandably shook and outraged everyone in this country, we have increasingly embraced at the highest official level what I think fairly can be called a paranoiac view of the world. Summarized in a phrase repeatedly used at the highest level, "he who is not with us is against us." I say repeatedly because actually some months ago I did a computer check to see how often it's been used at the very highest level in public statements.

The count then quite literally was ninety-nine. So it's a phrase which obviously reflects a deeply felt perception. I strongly suspect the person who uses that phrase doesn't know its historical or intellectual origins. It is a phrase popularized by Lenin (Applause) when he attacked the social democrats on the grounds that they were anti-Bolshevik and therefore he who is not with us is against us and can be handled accordingly.

This phrase in a way is part of what might be considered to be the central defining focus that our policy-makers embrace in determining the American position in the world and is summed up by the words "war on terrorism." War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes in my view to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind. By this I mean the absence of a clearly, sharply defined perception of what is transpiring abroad regarding particularly such critically important security issues as the existence or the spread or the availability or the readiness in alien hands of weapons of mass destruction.

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States. That failure was contributed to and was compensated for by extremist demagogy which emphasizes the worst case scenarios which stimulates fear, which induces a very simple dichotomic view of world reality.

I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety? Can it really mobilize support and particularly the support of friends when we tell them that if you are not with us you are against us?

I think that calls for serious debate in America about the role of America in the world, and I do not believe that that serious debate is satisfied simply by a very abstract, vague and quasi-theological definition of the war on terrorism as the central preoccupation of the United States in today's world. That definition of the challenge in my view simply narrows down and over-simplifies a complex and varied set of challenges that needs to be addressed on a broad front.

It deals with abstractions. It theologizes the challenge. It doesn't point directly at the problem. It talks about a broad phenomenon, terrorism, as the enemy overlooking the fact that terrorism is a technique for killing people. That doesn't tell us who the enemy is. It's as if we said that World War II was not against the Nazis but against blitzkrieg. We need to ask who is the enemy, and the enemies are terrorists.

But not in an abstract, theologically-defined fashion, people, to quote again our highest spokesmen, "people who hate things, whereas we love things" -- literally. Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom. They hate some of us. They hate some countries. They hate some particular targets. But it's a lot more concrete than these vague quasi-theological formulations.

I think in the heat of debate Democrats should not be nay-sayers only, criticizing. They certainly should not be cheerleaders as some were roughly a year ago. But they should stress a return to fundamentals in so far as American foreign policy is concerned. Above all else in stressing these fundamentals, Democrats particularly should insist that the foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition.

That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times. That has been the basis for American foreign policy that has been remarkably successful and has led us not only to a triumph in the Cold War but to emerging as the only global superpower with special responsibilities.

Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances. It causes compromises and accommodations. So let's cooperate. Let's cooperate and challenge the administration to cooperate with us because within the administration there are also moderates and people who are not fully comfortable with the tendencies that have prevailed in recent times.

That has a number of specific implications that are of a policy type. The first and most important is to emphasize the enduring nature of the alliance relationship particularly with Europe which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies. But the sharing of values and interests is fundamental, and we partake of the same basic beliefs.

We cannot have that relationship if we only dictate or threaten and condemn those who disagree. Sometimes we may be right. Sometimes they may be right. But there is something transcendental about shared values that shouldn't be subordinated to tactical requirements. We should seek to cooperate with Europe, not to divide Europe to a fictitious new and a fictitious old.

And we should recognize that in some parts of the world Europeans have more experience and more knowledge than we and certain interests as important as ours. I think particularly of the Middle East. We should be therefore supporting a larger Europe, and in so doing we should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity in the world which is the necessary foundation for a stable international system in which our leadership could be fruitfully exercised.

Part of the process of building a larger zone of peace involves also engaging Russia and drawing it into a closer relationship simultaneously with Europe and with the Euro-Atlantic community. But we can only do that if we are clear as to what we are seeking in pursuing that strategy. I would say that what we ought to be seeking unambiguously is the promotion of democracy and decency in Russia and not tactical help of a very specific and not always all that very useful type purchased at the cost of compromising even our own concept of what democracy is.

I am troubled by the unqualified endorsements of a government in which former KGB types are preponderant as a successful democracy. That has been the judgment rendered at the highest levels again within the last few weeks without any qualification. But in fairness we have to say that some of that happened before this administration assumed office as well.

We should be aware of that. If we are going to pursue a bipartisan policy let's be willing also to accept some shortcomings on our part. But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media.

I think we should be sensitive to that even if they do arrest oligarchs with whom some of our friends on K Street have shared interests. That is not to be approved. It is to be condemned, but surely there are deeper causes for emphasizing that it is important that Russia should move towards democracy.

To increase the zone of peace is to build the inner core of a stable international zone. While America is paramount it isn't omnipotent. We need the Europeans. We need the European Union. (Applause) We have to consistently strive to draw in Russia while at the same time being quite unambiguous in what it is that disqualifies Russia still from genuine membership in the community of democratic, law abiding states.

Secondly, we have to deal with that part of the world which is a zone of conflict and try to transform it into a zone of peace, and that means above all else the Middle East. In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option. But once we say that we have to ask ourselves what is the definition of success? More killing, more repression, more effective counter-insurgency, the introduction of newer devices of technological type to crush the resistance or whatever one wishes to call it -- the terrorism?

Or is it a deliberate effort to promote by using force a political solution? And if there's going to be a political solution in Iraq, clearly I think it is obvious that two prerequisites have to be fulfilled as rapidly as feasible namely the internationalization of the foreign presence in Iraq regarding which too much time has been lost and which is going to be increasingly difficult to accomplish in spite of the somewhat dialectical successes with which we are defining progress in Iraq lately. (Laughter)

In addition to the internationalization of Iraq we have to transfer power as soon as is possible to a sovereign Iraqi authority. Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively. Ultimately even the United States is not fully sovereign as we go around asking for more men and money to help us in Iraq.

Therefore there's nothing to be lost in prematurely declaring the Iraqi authority as sovereign if it helps it to gain political legitimacy in a country which is searching to define itself, which has been humiliated, in which there is a great deal of ambivalence, welcoming on the one hand the overthrow of Saddam as the majority does, and on the other hand resenting our presence and our domination.

The sooner we do that the more likely is an Iraqi authority under an international umbrella that becomes itself more effective in dealing with the residual terrorism and opposition that we continue to confront. We will not understand what is happening right now in Iraq by analogies to Vietnam because I think they are all together misplaced, and one could speak at length about it.

If you want to understand what is happening right not in Iraq I suggest a movie that was quite well known to a number of people some years ago. Maybe not many in this audience, given the age of some present, but it's a movie which deals with a reality which is very similar to that that we confront today in Baghdad. It's called "The Battle For Algiers". It is a movie that deals with what happened in Algeria after the Algerian Liberation Army was defeated in the field by the French army and the resistance which used urban violence, bombs, assassinations, and turned Algiers into a continuing battle that eventually wore down the French.

I do not expect we'll be worn down, but I think we want to understand the dynamics of the resistance. This provides a much better analogy for grappling with what is becoming an increasingly painful and difficult challenge for us. A challenge which will be more successful in meeting if we have more friends engaged in meeting it and if more Iraqis begin to feel that they are responsible for the key decisions pertaining to their country.

We will not turn the Middle East into a zone of peace instead of a zone of violence unless we more clearly identify the United States with the pursuit of peace in the Israeli/Palestinian relationship. Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated defacto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall.

Let us not kid ourselves. At stake is the destiny of a democratic country, Israel, to the security of which, the well-being of which, the United States has been committed historically for more than half a century for very good historical and moral reasons. But soon there will be no option of a two-state solution.

Soon the reality of the settlements which are colonial fortifications on the hill with swimming pools next to favelas below where there's no drinking water and where the population is 50% unemployed, there will be no opportunity for a two-state solution with a wall that cuts up the West Bank even more and creates more human suffering.

Indeed as some Israelis have lately pointed out, and I emphasize some Israelis have lately pointed out, increasingly the only prospect if this continues is Israel becoming increasingly like apartheid South Africa -- the minority dominating the majority, locked in a conflict from which there is no extraction. If we want to prevent this the United States above all else must identify itself with peace and help those who are the majority in Israel, who want peace and are prepared to accept peace.

All public opinion polls show that and the majority of the Palestinians, and I believe the majority of the Jewish community in this country which is liberal, open-minded, idealistic and not committed to extremist repressions.

The United States as the government, but all of us as citizens and Democrats particularly, will soon have an opportunity to underline their commitments to a peaceful solution in the Middle East because in the next two weeks a group of Israelis and Palestinians are going to unveil a detailed peace plan on which they have been working for months and months. It's a fifty-page document with maps and detailed compromise solutions for all of the major contentious issues, solutions which public opinion shows 70% of the Israelis would accept.

When that happens what will be the stance of the United States? Sharon has already condemned it, and not surprisingly. I hope we do not decide to condemn it. I hope we will show at least a positive interest, and many of us as citizens, as people concerned, should I think endorse it because if we count on the people who want peace eventually we will move towards peace. But they have to be mobilized and given support.

I think one of the reasons that that support from the United States has not been forthcoming is in fact political cowardice which I think is unjustified because I have real confidence in the good judgment, both of the Israeli people and of the American Jewish community and more basically of the basic American preference for a moderate peaceful solution. (Applause)

The last third area pertains more broadly to strategic doctrine and to strategic commitment. It involves trying to deal with nuclear proliferation, and we are learning fortunately that we can only deal with that problem when it comes to North Korea or to Iran by cooperation with other major powers.

That we have to support, and if the administration moves in that direction or is prodded to move in that direction that is all to the good because there is no alternative. If we try to resolve the North Korean problem by arms alone we will produce a violent reaction against the United States in South Korea--and don't underestimate the growing anti-American tendencies in South Korean nationalism -- and will precipitate a nuclear armed Japan and thereby create a whole duel strategic dynamic in the Far East.

In the case of Iran it is also in our interest that the theocratic despotism fade. It is beginning to fade. It is in its thermidorean phase. The young people of Iran are increasingly alienated. The women of Iran are increasingly assertive and bold. Notice the reception given to the Nobel Peace Prize winner when she returned to Tehran. That is a symptom of things to come. (Applause)

And if we take preemptory action we will reinforce the worst tendencies in the theocratic fundamentalist regime, not to speak about the widening of the zone of conflict in the Middle East. But beyond that we still have one more challenge in the area of strategic doctrine which is how to respond to the new conditions of uncertainty of weapons of mass destruction perhaps eventually being available to terrorist groups.

Here I think it is terribly important not to plunge headlong into the tempting notion that we will preempt unilaterally on suspicion which is what the doctrine right now amounts to. The reason for that being we simply do not know enough to be able to preempt with confidence. That to me involves one fundamentally important lesson. We have to undertake a genuine national effort to revitalize and restructure our intelligence services.

For four years I was the principal channel of intelligence to the President of the United States. We had a pretty good idea of the nature of the security challenge that we faced because the challenge itself was based on a highly advanced scientific technological system of arms. Today the problem is much more difficult.

It's more elusive. We're not dealing with nuclear silos and coordinated structures necessary for an effective assault on American security, structures that we could begin to decipher and also technologically seek to undermine or in the event of warfare paralyze. We were really remarkably well informed and in some respects prepared for a central nuclear war to a degree to which we certainly are not today in dealing with the new challenges of security.

These can only be addressed if we have what we do not have, a really effective intelligence service. I find it appalling that when we went into Iraq we did not know if they had weapons of mass destruction. We thought they had weapons of mass destruction based largely on extrapolation. But that also means that our commanders in the field went into battle without any knowledge of the Iraqi WMD order of battle.

They did not know what units, brigades or divisions in the Iraqi armed forces were equipped with what kind, allegedly, of weapons of mass destruction. Were there chemical weapons on the battalion level or on the brigade level or were there special units in the different divisions that were supposed to use chemical weapons?

What about the alleged existence of bacteriological weapons? Who had them? Who had the right to dispose of them? What about the allegedly reconstituted nuclear program? At what level of development was it? Where were these weapons to be deployed? The fact is none of that was known regarding a country that was permeable, that was not as isolated as the Soviet Union.

All of that cumulatively testifies to a fundamental shortcoming in our national security policy. If we want to lead we have to have other countries trust us. When we speak they have to think it is the truth. This is why De Gaulle said what he did. This is what others believed us. This is why they believed us prior to the war in Iraq.

It isn't that the Norwegians or the Germans or whoever else had their own independent intelligence services. They believed us, and they no longer do. To correct that we have to have an intelligence that speaks with authority, that can be trusted, and if preemption becomes necessary can truly tell us that as a last resort preemption is necessary. Right now there's no way of knowing.

Ultimately at issue, and I end on this, is the relationship between the new requirements of security and the traditions of American idealism. We have for decades and decades played a unique role in the world because we were viewed as a society that was generally committed to certain ideals and that we were prepared to practice them at home and to defend them abroad.

Today for the first time our commitment to idealism worldwide is challenged by a sense of security vulnerability. We have to be very careful in that setting not to become self-centered, preoccupied only with ourselves and subordinate everything else in the world to an exaggerated sense of insecurity.

We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness. Thank you. (Applause)

Zbigniew Brzezinski

>And immediately after that event we had the full support of a

>large part of the planet – all our allies and many of our

>detractors. What happened to that?

That was not meaningful "support" - it was just sympathy. People always love the weak and the crippled and the hurt and the pained. If you lie on the floor and scream in pain and beg for help, lots of people will come running over to you and want to administer help. Nobody will hate you. The weaker you are, the more vulnerable you are, the more sympathy you get.

So of course, in the immediate aftermath 9/11 -- when the world, probaby for the first time, saw the U.S. as a wounded victim, when the images of our country were of human beings diving to their deaths and our buildings collapsing and everyone wallowing in very intense grief and despair and when all you could see was our vulnerability and wounds -- of course everyone around the world expressed symapthy and "support." It's the type of symapthy one naturally feels if you see a quadruple amputee or quadraplegic child - "oh, how sad."

But we couldn't remain in that state if we wanted to survive. It was necessary that we show strength and aggression and induce FEAR in our enemies - that is still necessary. And when you show strength and aggression and induce fear, other people - especially those who aren't as strong - become resentful and start fearing you, and that quickly merges into contempt.

That's why we had 2 choices after 9/11: (a) maintain the sympathy of the world by maintaining the weakness and vulnerability and VICTIMHOOD that induced it; or (b) assert ourserlves and smash our enemies at the risk of alienating those who worship weakness, found most prominently in Europe.

Lots of political leaders would have opted for course (a), lacking the courage to alienate large numers of European elites, even if maintaining their "support" came at the expense of U.S. national security. And while I agree, as I said, that a much better job could have been done on the diplomatic front, the idea that the unpopularity of our actions throughout the world proves that they are wrong is, particularly in this post-9/11 world, one of the most dangerous ideas being peddled.

>That's why we had 2 choices after 9/11: (a) maintain the

>sympathy of the world by maintaining the weakness and

>vulnerability and VICTIMHOOD that induced it; or (b) assert

>ourserlves and smash our enemies at the risk of alienating

>those who worship weakness, found most prominently in Europe.

>

>

>Lots of political leaders would have opted for course (a),

>lacking the courage to alienate large numers of European

>elites, even if maintaining their "support" came at the

>expense of U.S. national security. And while I agree, as I

>said, that a much better job could have been done on the

>diplomatic front, the idea that the unpopularity of our

>actions throughout the world proves that they are wrong is,

>particularly in this post-9/11 world, one of the most

>dangerous ideas being peddled.

There you go again, Doug, with your black and white, only two choices weltanschaung.

You suggest we could only maintain sympathy by maintaining victimhood. What a crock! Since you seem forgotten the significant measure of support, both here and abroad for invading Afghanistan to take out Al Queda and the Taliban, let me remind you of it. Of course, you probably want to forget about Afghanistan, since we tried to do it "on the cheap" with few too resources, too few troops, and too little resolve. After Bush had stepped in shit by all of his swaggering language about getting bin Laden, soon he assumed it would be much easier to go after Saddam. The Taliban is regrouping, the poppy fields are in full swing production again, and Osama is still on the loose, as is Saddam Hussein.

The real culprits in 9-11 were overwhelmingly Saudi Arabians.......but the Bush family ties wouldn't allow us to go after the Saudis who are a much bigger threat to this country than Iraq has ever been. When all other air traffic was suspended in the U.S. following the 9-11 attacks, corporate jets were zipping across the country picking up the bin Laden family to whisk them back to Saudi Arabia, without prior interrogation by U.S. authorities. Now why would that be? Could it be because the bin Laden family invested heavily in Dubya's failed oil ventures like Arbusto and Harken Energy and was also a member of the Carlyle group with Poppy Bush? Much easier to go after anybody but the real culprits, because we wouldn't want to anger our business cronies.