Who wrote this?

Why are we so hated in the Middle East? Three fundamental reasons:
Our invasion of Iraq is seen as a premeditated and unjust war to crush a weak Arab nation that had not threatened or attacked us, to seize its oil. We are seen as an arrogant imperial superpower that dictates to Arab peoples and sustains regimes that oppress them. We are seen as the financier and armorer of an Israel that oppresses and robs Palestinians of their land and denies them rights we hypocritically preach to the world.
Until we address these perceptions and causes of the conflict between us, we will not persuade the Arab world to follow us.
What should Bush do now? He should declare that the United States has no intention of establishing permanent bases in Iraq, and that we intend to withdraw all U.S. troops after elections, if the Iraqis tell us to leave. Then we should schedule elections at the earliest possible date this year.
The Iraqi peoples should then be told that U.S. soldiers are not going to fight and die indefinitely for their freedom. If they do not want to be ruled by Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr or some future Saddam, they will have to fight themselves. Otherwise, they will have to live with them, even as they lived with Saddam. For in the last analysis, it is their country, not ours.
The president should also offer to withdraw U.S. forces from any Arab country that wishes us to leave. We have already pulled out of Saudi Arabia. Let us pull out of the rest unless they ask that we remain. Our military presence in these Arab and Islamic countries, it would seem, does less to prevent terror attacks upon us than to incite them.
A presidential election is where the great foreign policy debate should take place over whether to maintain U.S. troops all over the world, or bring them home and let other nations determine their own destiny. Unfortunately, we have two candidates and two parties that agree on our present foreign policy that is conspicuously failng.

I know.

Do you find it shocking that he wrote that?

Interesting to note though, that we have already pulled out of Saudi Arabia, because we eliminated Saddam, and absent the war, we would still be there.

I assume a conservative wrote this because it reeks of isolationism and cutting and running, exactly what got us into trouble into Somalia. It also reeks of small thinking, a lack of nuance and ignorance to the complexities of doing things such as organizing free elections in a country warped by violence. Yeah, definitely a conservative.

People need to accept that elections are not an easy thing and cannot be organized on a whim. We need a change of policy in Iraq far before we can even think about laying the groundwork for elections. Those are very far off indeed, and when they do happen, they will undoubtedly be very, very messy with massive intimidation and fraud. Elections as free and fair as we are used to here are a rarity in any case, even in regions like Eastern Europe and East Asia. In Iraq they will be a mess. They are probably January of '05 at best, and that assumes we have a change in policy tomorrow to allow more poltical legitimacy and more military strength from abroad. If Bush had gone back to the UN on the day we took Baghdad, we would have had elections by now. But since he didn't, we should prepare to be there for at least another two years.

And yes, an elected Iraqi government will insist that our troops stay, because only we can protect them from some of their neighbors. It also prevents a war from erupting between Turkey and the Kurds which would jeopardize Kirkuk and the northern oil fields for the entire country. So, come hell or high water, they'll want us there even if we don't particularly want to be there. Unfortunately we are committed for the foreseeable future. I'm sure they will put limitations on our force structure though, much like South Korea does.

Yes, that's right. It's a rather dated editorial written by paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan.

Isn't he running for president again this year? Oh, well. There goes the fascist vote. . .
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Pat Buchanan is a very interesting character.


The good parts: He is very smart, a brilliant polemicist and strategist, an excellent stump speaker, and surprisingly funny (much funnier than Rush Limbaugh, who is overrated). He seems to have had a genuine conversion to concern for the declining wages and lost jobs among blue collar workers, which fuels his economic nationalism.

He is the only Republican willing to attack big corporations or sincerely support campaign restrictions on lobbyists and big campaign money. Buchanan runs a low-budget campaign (he spent $600,000 - $700,000 in Iowa, vs. $4 million for Forbes) and doesn't suck up to big donors nearly as much as the other major party candidates, including Clinton. Of course, this is relative -- Buchanan raised $6.7 million last year from 86,000 people, vs. Dole's $25 million, and Alexander's $10.2 million from only 17,629 contributors.) Though much of Pat's money came in small donations, he uses very slick (and expensive) direct mail professionals to get them. Still, he clearly has more grass roots support than any other candidate in the Republican primaries.

Another great thing about Buchanan is his willingness to take surprising political positions for such a right- winger. Most famous, of course, is his trade protectionism and attacks on corporations. More impressive -- and much less known -- is his support for allowing medical use of marijuana by dying cancer patients -- a decent, principled stand that few politicians will take in the face of heavy emotions over the drug issue.





The bad parts:


Hypocrite Buchanan calls himself an outsider, which is ridiculous. When not running for president, he makes $1 million a year as part of the "liberal media", and he has worked in the White House for 3 presidents.

Buchanan is a big hypocrite. Though he attacks big corporations like AT&T and General Electric for laying off Americans and investing overseas, he gets a piece of their profits from the stock he owns -- between $15,000 and $50,000 each in AT&T, DuPont, General Motors and General Electric. Pat owns between $50,000 and $100,000 in IBM stock as well. His multi-million portfolio also includes interests in a British bank, YPF Sociedad Anonima (an Argentine oil company), and China Light and Power, a Hong Kong utility that owns part of a Chinese power plant.

Buchanan attacks immigrants and foreigners, but his housekeeper is South American, and when he eats at his favorite restaurant -- Washington's pricey Jockey Club -- his favorite desert is the Grand Marnier soufflé. His expensive house is just down the road from Ted Kennedy and Colin Powell in McLean Virginia.

He likes to brag that his biggest campaign contributor -- Roger Milliken, a textile billionaire -- gave him just $60,000. But Milliken also secretly gave $1.7 million to The American Cause, Buchanan's protectionist group, and to an affiliated lobbying arm. And Milliken directly paid for "99 percent" of the anti-GATT ads Buchanan ran in 1994, according to a Buchanan accountant quoted in Newsweek.




Sheltered Washington Insider:



Pat has always led a very sheltered upper class life, and has never worked for anyone except the federal government and the media -- while attacking both the whole time. In fact, he lived off the federal payroll even as a kid -- his dad was a government accountant and then managing partner of Councilor, Buchanan & Mitchell, one of the largest accounting firms in the Washington D.C. area. He earned enough to raise several kids in an affluent neighborhood, with enough left over to buy a Cadillac. Even George Bush was less sheltered than Buchanan -- he at least lived in Texas and China, and worked in the private sector.

Has Buchanan really grown up? Here is a man who apparently has never challenged anything he learned from his father or his school. He has never lived or worked outside of the Washington "beltway" cocoon, except a 3 year stint as an editorial writer for a now-defunct conservative paper in St. Louis. His own big sister runs his campaign, for God's sake. By all accounts she is a bright, hard working woman, but still -- the guy needs to get out a little more.

Buchanan's sheltered life explains why it took him until 1992 to discover that working men were losing jobs, and their wages were falling. That's why he didn't notice his own hypocrisy of preaching "America First" while driving a Mercedes in the 1992 election. (Worse yet, he tried to blame it on his wife.) As of 1992, he had never ridden the Washington subway in a lifetime living there, and his work for the "liberal media" was earning him close to a million dollars a year.--

<a href='http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm</a>

OUGwave Wrote:Interesting to note though, that we have already pulled out of Saudi Arabia, because we eliminated Saddam, and absent the war, we would still be there.

I assume a conservative wrote this because it reeks of isolationism and cutting and running, exactly what got us into trouble into Somalia. It also reeks of small thinking, a lack of nuance and ignorance to the complexities of doing things such as organizing free elections in a country warped by violence. Yeah, definitely a conservative.

People need to accept that elections are not an easy thing and cannot be organized on a whim. We need a change of policy in Iraq far before we can even think about laying the groundwork for elections. Those are very far off indeed, and when they do happen, they will undoubtedly be very, very messy with massive intimidation and fraud. Elections as free and fair as we are used to here are a rarity in any case, even in regions like Eastern Europe and East Asia. In Iraq they will be a mess. They are probably January of '05 at best, and that assumes we have a change in policy tomorrow to allow more poltical legitimacy and more military strength from abroad. If Bush had gone back to the UN on the day we took Baghdad, we would have had elections by now. But since he didn't, we should prepare to be there for at least another two years.

And yes, an elected Iraqi government will insist that our troops stay, because only we can protect them from some of their neighbors. It also prevents a war from erupting between Turkey and the Kurds which would jeopardize Kirkuk and the northern oil fields for the entire country. So, come hell or high water, they'll want us there even if we don't particularly want to be there. Unfortunately we are committed for the foreseeable future. I'm sure they will put limitations on our force structure though, much like South Korea does.

The U.S. troop pullout from Saudi began before Saddam's nation was invaded, before Saddam was deposed and at the behest of the ruling Saudi royal family.

Speculations abound about back-room dealings and a Saudi prince issuing an ultimatum to Donald Rumsfeld. The ultimatum was something in the area of 'good luck with the backbone of your economy--oil, unless you get this drunken swill outta here...' I embellished the speculative-ness here, but that is the gist of the speculations. And these are only speculations, so I'm not too apt to believe it, but the U.S. troops were asked to leave.

I don't think U.S. pullout of Iraq or any other nation reeks of isolationism, regardless of how ill-advised such an action would be at this point. I think that term 'isolationism' is red-herring/slippery slope vernacular employed by many in the neo-cons (or rad-cons) arguments. Depending on the way they employ the dreaded 'isolationism' card, it could also be a strawman.

I'm not too well versed on Somalia as I should be, I admit that, but what is so terrible about leaving that nation to its own devices? What enormous calamity has befallen the U.S. because we have left that nation? Have the Somalis stopped all date exports to U.S. cereal manufacturers? Oh my gawd, there aren't any dates in my Fruitful Bran!

You mention free elections. The complexities of establishing free elections in a society in the middle-east, Arab culture are enormous.

Let's say the Iraqis (or the Somalis) all of the sudden have free elections. Should this scenario take place, then it will be free only within the confines of their cultural framework, i.e. free elections would be for property owning males only, or free elections would only apply to religiously established males. Many middle-class women in these nations are apt to agree here; they too find it bombastic for women to be enfranchised.


"And yes, an elected Iraqi government will insist that our troops stay, because only we can protect them from some of their neighbors."

I don't think the elected Iraqi gov. will insist the allied occupyers stay. The U.S. has likely done a good job of dividing various groups much like the British did in the 19th century during that nation's occupation of Iraq. Dividing the supporters of central power-wielding figures and fomenting divisions among various larger groups is elemental in weakening whatever power structure that will ensue. It remains in U.S. national interest that any power structure, any gov. body in Iraq be weak. It is also a strategic interest.

Again, reverting back to the above scenario, let's say the Iraqis have the "universal" franchise (women, the impoverished NOT enfranchised, of course) right now. Whoever or whatever body holds the most power will simply be politically incapable of asking the allied occupyers to leave.

On predictions of U.S. involvement in Iraq, I'd say 20, 25, 50 years. Somewhere in that neighborhood. Heck, look at Japan. We're still over there!

I'm not saying at troop levels upward of 100K, but we'll have longterm military bases over there--it was one of the reasons for waging this war.

How can we protect Israel in the future without firm, permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq? How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat?
:laugh:

Oh yeah, Donnie Rumsfeld wrote this. Don't know for sure, but just an educated guess.