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Originally Posted by dc_dux
I would suggest we are losing our eminence because we have lost our moral authority, both in the eyes of many Americans, and among our allies around the world, through many of the policies and actions of the current administration.
Here is just one perspective on one specific Bush action:
In a letter (pdf) to Congress about Bush's plan to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, Colin Powell recognized both the moral implications and the risk to our own troops: “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
~ Colin Powell <b>Eminence requires a demonstration of leadership and leadership requires a capacity to listen and not simply bully those who may not support your "cause.". And it requires a recognition that imposing our military might should not be always our first option.</b> |
From the emphasis on human rights and diplomacy of the Carter administration, as a consequence of the Kennedy / Johnson / Nixon/Kissinger militarism, to your having to post what you did.....just 25 years later.
dc_dux, it is as obvious as posting "look both ways before crossing", but there is a need for you to spell it out.....Greg700 does not see that the "problem", the principle shortcoming in US policy, is totally opposite what he posted that it is.
The next reaction by the American people to the policies that took us from Le Monde's 9/12 headline, <b>"We are all Americans, Now!"</b>...to THIS, is already underway....since the mid-term election, last november.
The continuing "military madness" of the last 5 years and 5 months, along with the tottering state of US currency exchange rate, will determine how far away from militarism we journey, in this new cycle of voter sentiment, already underway.....
....and Greg700, re: your early comments about Clinton cutting the military in 1995.....Even at the end of 1995, with Clinton in office just 35 months, that "activity" was the still the early stages of the Cheney designed, Bush '41 approved, post cold war era, post Gulf war I reductions in military programs and force size. I'd be happy to show you the accuracy of this with links, excerpts, etc.
....and your "lament" about US forced failing to kill al Sadr in Najaf in 2004.....what have you been reading? Recall that Saddam was behind al Sadr's father's assassination in 1999.....it made him a a martyr, and.....since al Sadr the younger, took over the leadership of his father's huge, mainly poor shi'a following, and the fact that al Sadr is fiercely nationalistic, unlike the shi'a political leadership that spent time in exile in Iran, and is closely aligned with Iran, al Sadr is the shi'a leader who has no ties to Iran, and has avoided making them. It is a truer statement that it is a stroke of luck that the US failed to kill al Sadr.
In your closed world, can you see the "logic" in posting an advocacy, on this forum of all places....for killing the son of a man who was killed by Saddam, and was so despised by him, that this exchange took place:
(....and, to an extent, isn't there a measure of truth in Saddam's claims....he repeated them as he stood at the gallows....that his shi'a enemies are "persians", i.e. Iranian spies? Can you perceive, at all, even now, the delicate balance in the region that only existed because Saddam was Saddam because Iraq was where, and how, it was....next to Iran, populated mainly by shi'a aligned by both blood and religious sympathies, with Iran? Can you see that, in destroying Saddam's Iraq, the US gained the Saddam's role of checking Iran, but with the liability, that, unlike Saddan and his sunni base, the US is regarded as an infidel.... ?)
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3712145/site/newsweek/
.....Saddam's successors, the Iraqi Governing Council, were allowed to see and question Saddam. The former ruler was haggard but defiant. When one of the Governing Council members demanded to know why had killed so many people, Saddam spat back that his victims were all "thieves and Iranian spies." (The Shiite members of the delegation were particularly incensed by Saddam's mocking tone when the Iraqi ruler was asked if he had played a role in assassinating Shiite Ayatollahs Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr, in 1999, and Mohamad Baqir al Hakim, killed by a truck bomb this year. "Sadr" means "chest" in Arabic, and Saddam made a pun about getting him off his chest.).......
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I've already posted the support for the accusation that US troops are fighting and dying in Iraq to give the "fragile" shi'a Iraqi government, which is closely aligned to Iran, including agreeing, for more than a year, to an "intelligence sharing" relationship with Iran, "MORE TIME"....the question, Greg700, is "more time", to do what? If the US had supported al Sadr, instead of the shi'a al Dawa and SCIRI party leaders, would Iraq have closer ties to Iran, than currently? Is there more "democracy", less theocracy, under the current leadership? Your al Sadr was bad....so it was necessary to support the shi'a who were closely aligned to Iran....the ones who lived in Tehran in exile, POV, is a symptom of where we are in the progress towards a US victory in Iraq...
I don't have easy solutions to offer, but I didn't proclaim that it was necessary or justified to invade and occupy Iraq, and as willravel said, <b>did we miss the post where one of us advocated immediate US military withdrawal from Iraq?</b>
But....I do have a clue. I know that the killing of al Sadr, by US forces..... killing the sole major shi'a leader with no ties to Iran, and an intent to discourage forming them, would have been another in a long series of profound, and very troubling US mistakes in it's GWOT!