Democrats Abroad New Zealand
3.02.2007
The Bush Conversion: How the President Saw the Light and Changed Foreign Policy (Guardian.co.uk)
Aggressive - and ineffective - approach abandoned in favour of diplomacy
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday March 2, 2007
The Guardian
It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say.
Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea.
In Washington, the shift was seen yesterday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous.
"The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas.
Others attribute the conversion in part as a product of Mr Bush's stark view of the world. "It is the president's impulse-driven, faith-driven, black-and-white view of the world that enabled the hardline contingent within the administration to pursue the path that it pursued," said David Rothkopf, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is writing a book about US foreign policy. "It is only the shift in recognition that that approach isn't working that has created very much the equivalent of his Come to Jesus moment when he was 40."
The deepening chaos in Iraq, the heightened nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the instability in Lebanon also served to discredit the approach advocated by the hardline powers within the administration: the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld.
(More ... Guardian > Special Report > United States of America)
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday March 2, 2007
The Guardian
It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say.
Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea.
In Washington, the shift was seen yesterday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous.
"The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas.
Others attribute the conversion in part as a product of Mr Bush's stark view of the world. "It is the president's impulse-driven, faith-driven, black-and-white view of the world that enabled the hardline contingent within the administration to pursue the path that it pursued," said David Rothkopf, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is writing a book about US foreign policy. "It is only the shift in recognition that that approach isn't working that has created very much the equivalent of his Come to Jesus moment when he was 40."
The deepening chaos in Iraq, the heightened nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the instability in Lebanon also served to discredit the approach advocated by the hardline powers within the administration: the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld.
(More ... Guardian > Special Report > United States of America)
Labels: Bush, Guardian, Iran, North Korea
¶ 21:33 0 comments
1.18.2007
Doomsday Clock Winds CLoser to Armageddon (CBC.ca)
Last Updated: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | 1:21 PM ET
CBC News
The face of the Doomsday Clock shifted two minutes closer to midnight Wednesday, symbolizing the impending destruction of humanity in a "Second Nuclear Age."
Chicago's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group that has maintained the timepiece since 1947, wound the minute hand closer to the grim hour for the first time since 2002, when it was frozen at seven minutes to midnight.
Now modern dangers such as global warming and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea have inched the clock two minutes forward — to five minutes to midnight.
Created in 1947
"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats," including nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, as well as continuing "launch-ready status" of 2,000 of the 25,000 warheads held by the U.S. and Russia, the scientists said in a statement Tuesday.
The world has used the Doomsday Clock as a measurable way to reflect the perils facing humanity since it was created in 1947. In its first year, the minute hand perched at seven minutes to midnight, and it has edged closer with each worsening nuclear and climate threat, or backwards to indicate more secure times.
(More ... CBC > World)
CBC News
The face of the Doomsday Clock shifted two minutes closer to midnight Wednesday, symbolizing the impending destruction of humanity in a "Second Nuclear Age."
Chicago's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group that has maintained the timepiece since 1947, wound the minute hand closer to the grim hour for the first time since 2002, when it was frozen at seven minutes to midnight.
Now modern dangers such as global warming and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea have inched the clock two minutes forward — to five minutes to midnight.
Created in 1947
"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats," including nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, as well as continuing "launch-ready status" of 2,000 of the 25,000 warheads held by the U.S. and Russia, the scientists said in a statement Tuesday.
The world has used the Doomsday Clock as a measurable way to reflect the perils facing humanity since it was created in 1947. In its first year, the minute hand perched at seven minutes to midnight, and it has edged closer with each worsening nuclear and climate threat, or backwards to indicate more secure times.
(More ... CBC > World)
Labels: CBC, Iran, North Korea, nuclear proliferation
¶ 22:08 0 comments
1.12.2007
Limited Effect on British Plans (Guardian.co.uk)
Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday January 12, 2007
The Guardian
Tony Blair's government voiced its support for President Bush's surge in Iraq even though it left the two allies moving in opposite directions for the first time: the US is pouring more resources in, while Britain hopes to withdraw a significant number of troops by early summer.
The Foreign Office yesterday insisted that the contrast reflected a divergence in conditions rather than a conflict in policy. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told a joint session of the Commons defence and foreign affairs committees that the implications of the US change in policy for Britain would be "somewhat limited". She added: "I would say that it's a change of direction, as the president says, for the United States and doesn't necessarily imply a change of direction for us."
She specifically emphasised the point that, unlike the US, Britain's policy was one of engaging with Iran and Syria.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Politics > Special Reports)
Friday January 12, 2007
The Guardian
Tony Blair's government voiced its support for President Bush's surge in Iraq even though it left the two allies moving in opposite directions for the first time: the US is pouring more resources in, while Britain hopes to withdraw a significant number of troops by early summer.
The Foreign Office yesterday insisted that the contrast reflected a divergence in conditions rather than a conflict in policy. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told a joint session of the Commons defence and foreign affairs committees that the implications of the US change in policy for Britain would be "somewhat limited". She added: "I would say that it's a change of direction, as the president says, for the United States and doesn't necessarily imply a change of direction for us."
She specifically emphasised the point that, unlike the US, Britain's policy was one of engaging with Iran and Syria.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited > Politics > Special Reports)
Labels: Guardian, Iran, Iraq, Syria
¶ 18:28 0 comments
The Real Disaster (NYTImes.com)
EDITORIAL
Published: January 11, 2007
President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush’s war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.
Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a “young democracy” in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one.
Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq. He described the failure of last year’s effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility.
In any case, Mr. Bush’s excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq’s neighbors.
What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush’s open-ended threats to Iran and Syria.
(More ... New York Times > Editorial)
Published: January 11, 2007
President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush’s war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.
Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a “young democracy” in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one.
Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq. He described the failure of last year’s effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility.
In any case, Mr. Bush’s excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq’s neighbors.
What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush’s open-ended threats to Iran and Syria.
(More ... New York Times > Editorial)
Labels: Iran, Iraq, New York Times, Opinion, Syria
¶ 18:19 0 comments
11.23.2006
US Could Bomb Iran Nuclear Sites in 2007: Analysts (CommonDreams.org)
22 November 2006
Agence France Press
President George W. Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year, political analysts in Washington agree.
"I think he is going to do it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think tank, told AFP.
"They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington insists are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
"It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities" added the analyst, believing a US military invasion of Iran is not on the table.
US journalist Seymour Hersh also said at the weekend that White House hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney were intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress, both houses of which switch from Republican to Democratic control in January after the November 7 legislative elections.
The New Yorker weekly published an article by Hersh saying that one month before the elections, Cheney held a meeting on Iran in which he said the military option would never be discarded.
(More ... Common Dreams > Agence France Press > US Could Bomb Iran Nuclear Sites in 2007: Analysts)
Agence France Press
President George W. Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year, political analysts in Washington agree.
"I think he is going to do it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think tank, told AFP.
"They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington insists are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
"It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities" added the analyst, believing a US military invasion of Iran is not on the table.
US journalist Seymour Hersh also said at the weekend that White House hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney were intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress, both houses of which switch from Republican to Democratic control in January after the November 7 legislative elections.
The New Yorker weekly published an article by Hersh saying that one month before the elections, Cheney held a meeting on Iran in which he said the military option would never be discarded.
(More ... Common Dreams > Agence France Press > US Could Bomb Iran Nuclear Sites in 2007: Analysts)
Labels: AFP, Iran, nuclear proliferation
¶ 18:12 0 comments
