Robert Kuttner: A Foreign-Policy Emergency

[huckleberry]

The hallmark of the Bush foreign policy has been a naive radicalism married to an operational incompetence. A small clique with a preconceived blueprint took advantage of a national emergency and a callow president, blowing a containable threat into war while dismissing more ominous menaces. These people are out to remake the world, with little sense of risk, proportion or history. At this writing, the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has seized some authority over the Iraq policy from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who responded with adolescent pique. The long-abused Secretary of State Colin Powell offered new respect for the UN. President Bush even directly contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's discredited claim of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In a different administration, these shifts would signal that the chief executive, clearly in control, had recognized the misjudgments and costs of a failed policy, demoted those responsible and shifted authority to others. But Bush seems incapable of that kind of decisiveness or discernment. These are mere skirmishes, indicative of the absence of leadership at the top. Bush is as callow as ever. The man even boasts that he never reads the papers.

snip

Meanwhile, little progress has been made in stabilizing Afghanistan or rooting out al-Qaeda. The so-called road map to a durable Israeli-Palestinian peace is in tatters, while the administration fails to rein in Ariel Sharon's excesses. America's own homeland security is in the hands of an agency that has largely failed to assist first responders or coordinate the federal bureaucratic fragmentation. Instead, the administration keeps taking short cuts at the expense of civil liberty.

snip

This issue of the Prospect includes a special report on the foreign-policy emergency, in which thinkers who have served five different administrations offer a better, more secure path. The report is timed to coincide with a national leadership conference on American security, convened by The American Prospect, The Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress. The conference, Oct. 28-29, will be webcast. See www.prospect.org for details.

more at:
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/10/kuttner-r.html

[Capt_Nemo]

1. Best quote: "We are pushing our luck."

It perfectly condenses in a single phrase the current geopolitical
standing of the US.
To the neo-cons I say:
Go ahead, make my day! :evilgrin: