US Foreign Policy Experts Oppose Bush’s Surge
WASHINGTON — More than half of top U.S. foreign policy experts oppose President George W. Bush’s troop increase as a strategy for stabilizing Baghdad, saying the plan has harmed U.S. national security, according to a new survey.
As Congress and the White House await the September release of a key progress report on Iraq, 53 percent of the experts polled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress said they now oppose Bush’s troop build-up.
That is a 22 percentage point jump since the strategy was announced early this year.
The survey of 108 experts, including Republicans and Democrats, showed opposition to the so-called “surge” across the political spectrum, with about two-thirds of conservatives saying it has been ineffective or made things worse in Iraq.
Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the experts polled on May 23 to June 26 included former government officials in senior positions including secretary of state, White House national security adviser and top military commanders.
The findings were published in the form of a Terrorism Index in the magazine’s September/October issue, to be released on Monday. The magazine published similar indices in July 2006 and in February.
Bush has deployed 30,000 additional U.S. forces in and around Baghdad to quell sectarian violence in a bid to foster political reconciliation between Iraqi’s Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish communities.
The strategy was announced early in the year but U.S. forces did not reach their intended strength in Baghdad until mid-June.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, are due next month to provide Congress with a progress report that could prove vital in determining how long U.S. troops stay.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress say it is time to begin bringing troops home.
Foreign Policy said seven of 10 experts supported the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq. Experts have increasingly cited the war as the root cause of what they believe to be U.S. failure to win in its war on terrorism.
Ninety-one percent of those polled said the world has grown more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percent from February.
More than 80 percent of the experts said they expected another September 11-scale attack on the United States over the next decade, despite what they described as significant improvements among U.S. security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
A decade from now, the Middle East still will be reeling from the ill-effects of the Iraq war, particularly heightened Sunni-Shi’ite tensions in the region, 58 percent said.
Thirty-five percent believed Arab dictators will have been discouraged from pursuing political reforms as a result.
Only 3 percent believed the United States will achieve its goal of rebuilding Iraq into a beacon of democracy within the next 10 years.
© Reuters 2007
Bush & Cheney are lackeys for the ruling elite. The insanely greedy bastards that control the USA. They hide behind a carefully crafted illusion - that some call a democratic republic, and some call a democracy. The truth is, the USA is under the thumb of a faceless, totalitarian regime. Those sad creatures think that the accumulation of money & power is the highest good, and indicator of intelligence.
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“The lords of the financial war have put the planet under the scalpel of organized economic destruction. They attack the normative power of the States, challenge the sovereignty of the people, subvert democracy, wreak havoc on nature, destroy human beings and their freedoms. The liberalization of the economy, the “invisible hand” of the market, is their way of dealing with the universe; the maximalization of profit is the way it works. I call this practice and this cosmogony structural violence.
The order of the current world is not only murderous, it is also absurd. It kills, destroys, slaughters, but it does so for no other reason than the desire for maximum profit for some cosmocrats who are driven by an obsession for power and unlimited greed. …Bush, Sharon, Putin? Lackeys, henchmen…”
Jean Ziegler - author of “Empire of Shame”
http://www.counterpunch.org/accardo12202005.html
Apologies to those readers who have already read this but this article is definitely worth posting again….
Blow-Back from this Iraqi fiasco will be horrendous….Bu$hCo are oblivious or purposely perpetrated the worst foreign policy in US history….
ARTICLE:
“US Hegemony Spawns Russian-Chinese Military Alliance”
by Paul Craig Roberts
This week Russian and Chinese military s are conducting a joint military exercise involving large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan, and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.
This new potent military alliance is a real world response to neo-conservative delusions about US hegemony. Neo-cons believe that the US is supreme in the world and can dictate its course. The neoconservative idiots have actually written papers, read by Russians and Chinese, about why the US must use its military superiority to assert hegemony over Russia and China.
Cynics believe that the neocons are just shills, like Bush and Cheney, for the military-security complex and are paid to restart the cold war for the sake of the profits of the armaments industry. But the fact is that the neocons actually believe their delusions about American hegemony.
Russia and China have now witnessed enough of the Bush administration’s unprovoked aggression in the world to take neocon intentions seriously. As the US has proven that it cannot occupy the Iraqi city of Baghdad despite 5 years of efforts, it most certainly cannot occupy Russia or China. That means the conflict toward which the neocons are driving will be a nuclear conflict.
In an attempt to gain the advantage in a nuclear conflict, the neocons are positioning US anti-ballistic missiles on Soviet borders in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is an idiotic provocation as the Russians can eliminate anti-ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. Neocons are people who desire war, but know nothing about it, hence spawning the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reagan and Gorbachev ended the cold war. However, US administrations after Reagan’s have broken the agreements and understandings. The US gratuitously brought NATO and anti-ballistic missiles to Russia’s borders. The Bush regime has initiated a propaganda war against the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.
These are gratuitous acts of aggression. Both the Russian and Chinese governments are trying to devote resources to their economic development, not to their militaries. Yet, both are being forced by America’s aggressive posture to revamp their militaries.
Americans need to understand what the neocon Bush regime cannot: a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia, and China would establish the hegemony of the cockroach.
In a mere 6.5 years the Bush regime has destroyed the world’s good will toward the US. Today, America’s influence in the world is limited to its payments of tens of millions of dollars to bribed heads of foreign governments, such as Egypt’s and Pakistan’s. The Bush regime even thinks that as it has bought and paid for Musharraf, he will stand aside and permit Bush to make air strikes inside Pakistan. Is Bush blind to the danger that he will cause an Islamic revolution within Pakistan that will depose the US puppet and present the Middle East with an Islamic state armed with nuclear weapons?
Considering the instabilities and dangers that abound, the aggressive posture of the Bush regime goes far beyond RECKLESSNESS. The Bush regime is the most irresponsibly AGGRESSIVE regime the world has seen since HITLER’S.
“More than 80 percent of the experts said they expected another September 11-scale attack on the United States over the next decade, despite what they described as significant improvements among U.S. security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
They consider an open border policy and checking 1% of the millions of containers that enter this country every year significant improvement in security while they expect another 9/11-scale attack on our country? Are they joking?
Bring the troops home….Secure our borders….And check every container that comes into this country!
“US Foreign Policy” has become such a scary, nausea inducing term over the last 7-10 years, as if it wasn’t bad enough before. Why is it so hard for our leaders to be intelligent, decent people? Why does corruption and greed rule? Maybe it is because they are more powerful forces. The revolution won’t be televised and it won’t be elected either, under the status quo. Real change is going to require real, heavy handed, forceful action. Sorry, it isn’t a nice world, good doesn’t win in the end, the strong do.
Veitnam ended with 58,000 U.S. troops dead and 185,000 wounded. Guess the number Bush will have killed by the time Iraq is over,and we will have thier OIL? Guess the correct number and win all expenses paid trip to the WHITE HOUSE.So you can thank Bush personaly making you rich in oil investments.
Destroying democracy in the U.S. is essential to the globalists agenda. Government by the will of the people flies in the face of will by corporatists. The question is whether good men/women in the U.S. will stand up for once and support democracy or the globalist agenda. So far the globalists are winning big time.
George W. Bush has done his very best as President.
If that’s his very best, he should probably just kill himself and do us all a big favor.
Saywhat, are you joking? Bush is not sane man so when you say he “has done his best” what do you mean?
saywhat August 20th, 2007 1:47 pm whatever you are smoking I want some….
I know of some psychologists/psychiatrists that work with and study drug addiction and they say that Bush exhibits a classic example of someone who blew his mind with too much cocaine. That makes him a great lackey for the ruling elite. He can’t be critical of himself, and his consciouness is unable to grasp the unfathomable amount of suffering that his regime has caused, or the fact that none of it has been necessary. Trying to tell him (or his fervant supporters) that dropping a few hundred thousand bombs on a city of 5.7 million (Bhagdad) was an extreme form of terrorism, and they simply can’t grasp it. Their twisted, white-washed minds actually “see” their own terrorism as a “war on terror”.
saywhat is probaly right. This IS the best that he could do as president. (Which is why he should never have been appointed)
Bush, Cheney and all their accomplices shoulld be hauled before the World Court for their trial for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.
We now live in a corportaracy. Greed is good.
The hell with the middle and lower classes. This is the US now.
Saywwhat, I want some of your smokes too.
The stated goal of the surge was to bring peace to Baghdad. It has not done that and will never to do…case closed.
kittyladyoregon, I agree with hauling them before the World Court, but I’d just as soon stay away from whatever saywhat is smoking.
saywhat, may I suggest two books for you to inform yourself about reality? Try “Bush on the Couch” and “Armed Madness”. And then let’s have a conversation about Bush’s intentions.
“Insanely greedy” and “murderous” are not useful terms in finding our way out of this mess. It’s hyperbole that only increases fear and misunderstanding.
My guess is that Bush, Cheney, their corporate masters, all their minions, and the voters who support them sincerely believe that what they are doing in the Middle East is “heroic”. They either see the current conflict as the so-called “clash of civilizations” or a last-ditch effort to stave off economic collapse here in the USA.
There’s always been and anti-democratic streak in American politics… one that says, “The little people don’t understand what’s good for them - but we do”. So they package their colonial adventures in patriotic colors and send the troops off to conquer the copper mines, rubber plantations and oil fields of the world for the “benefit of the American people”… and they feel good about it!
The people who vote for them feel good about the cause… even if the outcome isn’t as great as promised.
And… a LOT of Americans earn a good living working for military contractors. The Pentagon’s tentacles run deep through our economy. It provides many of the the last good-paying industrial jobs left in this coutnry.
I also think there’s widely-held and deeply repressed understanding that our current standard of living really does rely on cheap oil from the Persian Gulf.
Let’s stop talking nonesense about the World Court and put our minds to a more difficult task: How to convince our neighbors who work at the aerospace factory and drive a gas-guzzler pickup truck to haul their jet skis to the lake that they need to stop voting for the hand that feeds them.
The decline and fall of the American Empire. Who would have thought that one man could do so much dammage. Not since Cortez.
August 20th, 6:45 pm, Eastern Standard Time: CNN just reported that 1/3rd of the the CIA is “contracted help”!
The Superpower has become the CORPORATE POWER.
Do you wonder why this government doesn’t want us to know how much of our tax dollars are being spent on “intelligence”? Are you familiar with the “Black Budget” that Congress doesn’t like to talk about?
Let’s quit mincing words here. The Bush administration is the terror organization in the world, period. These bloodsucking criminals will do anything to keep the war on terror going. So they commit the most heinous and inhumane acts known to man. They have been doing this for 6 years now and no one in The United States of America can do anything about it because they would be imprisoned tortured and executed. The entire Bush family should be convicted as anti-American terrorist and put to death. Then we as a nation could began the healing.
I’ve been hearing a lot of fuss about Michael Vick lately. I do not understand why he does not become a contractor to the CIA so he could quit messing with dogs and torture people. Make him a contractor like blackwater and he would be making more than he was as a quarterback. He would be an American hero, again.
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfled represent a machine that is not just American… it is International Corporate Fascism owned and operated by an international corporate plutocracy (mostly American, European, and East Asian)…. including companies that go back to the rise of German-Italian-Japanese fascism of the 30s (supported by US Republicans and Chinese Kuomintang).
Think about it… if the machine driving Bush-Cheney-RumsFled were American, it wouldn’t be destroying the infrastructure of the United States.
For core sources we need to look at old ruling corporate elite families in the USA, Europe, and East Asia (and White South Africa)…. and the political parties and corporations they have festered in for decades… perhaps over a century now. In the USA this includes some of the old Robber Baron families, and much of the oil, railroad industries and stock-market manipulators and vultures.
For hints on historical roots (as of 1968), read ‘The Rich and the Super Rich’ by Ferdinand Lundberg. The Bush family is very much a part of the Vulture Capitalist corporate monster eating the planet, but they are not All of it…. they need a clown like Geo-Boy to disarm people with his stupidity and apparent impotence while we are railroaded into International Corporate Fascist rule displacing and overriding democratically controlled governments (those that remain). Privatization is one of their main weapons. Also look to their old business partners like Daimler-Benz-Mercedes (changing names to hide), the old Nazi money that got recently funneled back into the Frankfurt Eurobank, I G Farben Chemicals and their links with Bush’s Eli Lilly. And the military contractors in Germany that Prescott Bush hobnobbed with and profited from.
The European Union bureaucracy is showing itself increasingly to be a part of the new fascist machine, now tossing away the liberal images used to get into power.
These are people who kill for money, conduct war strictly for profit, and operate concentration camps to profit from their victims on the way to death. Although there may be some good people in the CIA, the org itself has long been controlled by the corporate machine described above…. the shadow government that belies democracy.
The Solution? Take power away from these companies and institutions by not supporting them, refusing to collaborate with their agendas, exposing their corruption, and empowering ourselves so we don’t need them.
They want us fearful, resigned, ‘powerless’, drugged, and ultimately passive and weak and destroyable. In the meantime, they want us to be their cannon-fodder and worker-bees, so they can snort coke, gloat, feed their delusions of superiority, and ‘live it up’ like Nero while the planet crumbles.
Sorry about the Lundberg book has to go back to 1968…. the start of the Nixon Era and of America’s New Fascism. Since then, a book covering the same topic with names and numbers might not get past the Censor’s desk and into print…. much of the info is still highly pertinent, needing to consider name changes and new faces since then…. the books is about about the old established rich families called ‘The Establishment’ during the Movement for Social Change in the 60s and 70s that was Killed by Reago-Bush using political infiltration, ‘drug culture’ infusion, and sabotage from within…. as is being used on the Greens now. If you snooze, you lose.
“August 20th, 6:45 pm, Eastern Standard Time: CNN just reported that 1/3rd of the the CIA is “contracted help”!
The Superpower has become the CORPORATE POWER.”
Ironically, the ‘independence’ of the CIA became a cause for democrats (small d) after Cheney’s strong-arming, Tenet’s tenure & the outing of Valerie Plame.
The CIA has never been anything other than a corporate assassination bureau. We shouldn’t lose sight of that simply because some ex-CIA employees have shown public spiritedness.
“Are you familiar with the “Black Budget” that Congress doesn’t like to talk about?”
Declassifying the budget would make it transparent; “intelligence oversight” is one of the great oxymorons.
I find the terrorism index grimly amusing. While Israel is licking its chops at the prospect of harnessing the U.S. as its attack dog against Iran, the index predicts the far-more likely prospect for spillover violence from Iraq to be Jordan. If so, the spillover violence from Jordan should give Israel pause for thought.
Somebody list all the successes of these foreign policy experts, like peace in the middle East, a disarmed North Korea and an end to genoicide in Africa.
In their spare time these guys most be averaging global temperatures for Gore/Hansen.
Put these guys to useful work refereeing NBA games.
Come on - Foreign policy experts - Please. Bu$h the inferior’s crack team is writing the report for General lap dog. The fact that Criss Angel couldn’t make this disaster elephant disappear will not deter them.
The media will dutifully report this report without the derision it will so richly deserve. Either a trumped up attack on Iran or a warning of disturbing ‘intelligence’ indicating a possible terror attack will we pumped and dumped by the right wing spin machine right after the report to prevent careful analysis from hitting the headlines.
Congress will keep on ignoring their duty to impeach.
More will die in Iraq and almost everyone who can do something about it won’t.
Have a nice day!
US Foreign Policy Experts Oppose Bush’s Surge
by David Morgan
So What? Who cares?
For all the good it will do - I give a great big yawn!
All to Relevant Quote:
How is the World Ruled & how do wars start?
Diplomats tell lies to journalists & then believe what they read.
(Karl Kraus, Austrian Press,1874-1936)
General Eisenhower’s warnings concerning the dangers of the military industrial complex were preceded by Albert Einstein in 1932 when he cited munition makers as the main thrust for war machines. The need to scrutinize such adventures by the executive branch was cited by John Adams and other constitutional framers.
Unfortunately this war is an example of the neglect and/or ignorance of pertinent history, along with the profiteering motives.
Such misguided disasters can occur only when a compliant & apathetic populace allows their legislators to tolerate these types of abuses from arrogant and unlearned administrations guided by special interests.
simonhhh August 20th, 2007 12:31
Errata to your quoted post..
The Bush regime is the most irresponsibly AGGRESSIVE regime the world has seen EVER. Bar none.
Politics; http://www.jibjab.com/originals/this_land
U.S. Foreign Policy Experts Oppose Bush’s Surge
By David Morgan.
Fifty-three percent of the experts, up from
thirty-one percent several months ago ? Come
on foreign policy experts you can do it if you try. The lay population have already figured out the whole damn thing is a lie and a hoax, and you guys are just tipping into the majority ?
A curious and very timid expertise it must be.
How much more of a hoax will it take to get the rest of you on board ? Doesn’t matter,
because curmudgeon99 is absolutely right…
the news of your revised opposition really is
a big yawn.
How does one fight fear/terror? It is evident that the tactics used by Bush and his cohorts are not effective, rather, they have served to escalate the acts of terrorism. we have ignored or skirted every humanitarian law regarding the treatment of prisoners but that is in accord with a nation which takes away even the voting rights of its own citizens who have been imprisoned. If our own are not afforded even a modicum of dignity or respect, why then would we expect that the powers that be should grant these to prisoners of war/terrorism? That being said, is it any wonder that violence continues to escalate? A war based on lies can only proceed badly as we perpetuate this supposed war on terror.
1st we need to get rid of the fear/terror within ourselves.
We’ve become fearful because we have been told by the powers that be to be afraid. Being fearful causes mankind to accept terrible practices in the name of protection. And so it goes, on and on and on.
Here are some comments by a man who stood by Gandhi - Badshah Khan, who led a 100,000 person army of non-violent Pashtuns. He was a Pashtun (Afghan) political and spiritual leader known for his non-violent opposition to British Rule during the final years of the Empire on the Indian sub-continent. He was a lifelong pacifist and a devout Muslim. He was known as Badshah Khan (sometimes written as Bacha Khan), the `King of Chiefs’, and `Frontier Gandhi’.
“To me nonviolence has come to represent a panacea for all the evils that surround my people. Therefore I am devoting all my energies toward the establishment of a society that would be based on its principles of truth and peace.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
“Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to an interviewer in 1985
His story is contained in Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, A Man To Match His Mountains, by Eknath Easwaran (Published by Nilgiri Press).
I thought I told you people to keep shopping or else the terrorists were going to win.
In the past, it might have been arms makers. Now it is arms makers AND contractors. This has been the most expensive outsourced war ever. From driving trucks, to delivering meals, everything has been outsourced to private sector for-profit firms at a much higher price.
I beleve saywhat may very well be correct to state that___ “Bush has done the best he can”.
What Bush has done is worse than horrible ____ and that’s his speed,__ his very best.
These so called foreign policy “experts” are nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacks. Now 53% say they oppose Bush’s policy on the surge, where only 31% disapproved six months ago. Of course, after seeing the mess, they now jump on the dissaprove band wagon. It should have been clearly obvious to any of the “experts”, with a little serious thought, a war with Iraq would be a disasterous mistake. The “surge” only drags on the increasing mayhem and criminal waste. Halliburton loves it of course, there is the prime evil of it all.___ Cheney!!!
RestoreDemocracy: You are correct. The essential clash of our economy with the principles of democracy is that, theoretically, leaders are chosen by their followers in democracy. In capitalism, everyone is hired by their bosses, bosses are hired by their bosses, and so on up to the very top of the chain. It’s totally inverted from bottom-up emergent democratic power.
At the very top aren’t American industrial elites, since American industry has increasingly offshored itself. At the top are non-citizens, non-patriots, people who see the world in global investment terms, people who aren’t bootstrapped by any single set of laws or legislation, private investment firms, etc. They are international financiers, banking, etc. with mobility, power, etc. to basically go anywhere and do anything.
Any government which falls prey to them has, in a nutshell, been invaded by a foreign power. This goes pretty far in explaining why Bush & Co. aren’t at all interested in America or Americans — rather, they’re interested in pillaging wherever the pillaging is good.
Bush won’t get out of Iraq because to do so would be to admit failure on a Grand Scale. So many more will die for nothing while the greatest punk in the history of the United States presidency keeps telling himself he’s Winston Churchill in 1940. The greater tragedy now looming is that the cowardly poltroons known as the Democratic party will win the presidency next year . . . and keep us there. This may very well be a permanent change. The United States will become Sisyphus forever pushing the boulder of empire up the hill of utter futility. And all of it wrought by one of the most stupid, cruel and vacuous mediocrities ever to stain American politics at its highest level.
The ruling elite like the world just as it is, but they worry about the true democracy breaking out in Venezuela and Latin America. In their minds, Latin Americans are supposed to be their servants.