Bush Kerry i wojna

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Gość: wanniski Re: komentarz na temat debaty IP: *.ny325.east.verizon.net 04.10.04, 00:35

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A Few Comments on the Debate

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Uninformed Political Leaders

I asked my golfing buddy, Jim Biondi, 84, a lifelong Republican, how he thought
President Bush did last night in the debate with Senator Kerry. He frowned and
said Mr. Bush did not do that well. I agreed, and he asked why I thought Mr.
Bush did not do well. "He is basically uninformed on important issues," I said.
Biondi bristled: "The President isn't uninformed. He is the President. He has
to be informed." I told my friend that ordinary Americans do not believe that
their President can be the least informed, if his information comes to him from
advisors who want him to do as they wish. Unless he is wise enough to see
through this, he will make decisions that are not necessarily informed.

The issue I raised, which I thought the low point in the debate as far as the
President was concerned, involved North Korea and nuclear weapons. Here is the
exchange I had in mind:

Mr. Lehrer: New question, Mr. President. Do you believe that diplomacy and
sanctions can resolve the nuclear problems with North Korea and Iran, taking
them in any order you would like?

Mr. Bush: North Korea first, I do. Let me say I certainly hope so. Before I was
sworn in the policy of this government was to have bilateral negotiations with
North Korea. And we signed an agreement with North Korea that my administration
found out that was not being honored by the North Koreans.

And so I decided that a better way to approach the issue was to get other
nations involved, just besides us. And in Crawford, Tex., Jiang Zemin and I
agreed that the, a nuclear-weapons-free North Korea peninsula was in his
interest and our interest and the world's interest. And so we began a new
dialogue with North Korea, one that included not only the United States but now
China. And China's got a lot of influence over North Korea. In some ways more
than we do. As well we included South Korea, Japan and Russia. So now there are
five voices speaking to Kim Jong Il, not just one. And so if Kim Jong Il
decides again to not honor an agreement he's not only doing injustice to
America, be doing injustice to China as well. And I think this will work. It's
not going to work if we open up a dialogue with Kim Jong Il. That's what he
wants. He wants to unravel the six-party talks or the five-nation coalition
that's sending him a clear message...

Mr. Lehrer Senator Kerry, 90 seconds.

Mr. Kerry: With respect to North Korea, the real story: We had inspectors and
television cameras in the nuclear reactor in North Korea. Secretary Bill Perry
negotiated that under President Clinton. And we knew where the fuel rods were.
And we knew the limits on their nuclear power. Colin Powell, our secretary of
state, announced one day that we were going to continue the dialogue and work
with the North Koreans. The president reversed him, publicly, while the
president of South Korea was here. And the president of South Korea went back
to South Korea bewildered and embarrassed because it went against his policy.
And for two years, this administration didn't talk at all to North Korea. While
they didn't talk at all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were kicked
out, the television cameras were kicked out and today there are four to seven
nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That happened on this president's
watch. Now that, I think, is one of the most serious sort of reversals or mixed
messages that you could possibly send…

Mr. Lehrer: Yes sir, we-but in this one minute, I want to make sure that we
understand - that the people watching here understand the differences between
the two of you on this. You want to continue the multinational talks. Correct?

Mr. Bush: Right.

Mr. Lehrer: And you want - you're willing to do it.

Mr. Kerry: Both. I want bilateral talks which put all of the issues from the
armistice of 1952, the economic issues, the human rights issues, the artillery
disposal issues, the D.M.Z. issues and the nuclear issues on the table.

Mr. Lehrer: And you're opposed to that, sir. Right?

Mr. Bush: The minute we have bilateral talks, the six-party talks will unwind.
It's exactly what Kim Jong Il wants. And by the way, the breach on the
agreement was not through plutonium. The breach on the agreement is highly
enriched uranium. That's what we caught him doing. That's where he was breaking
the agreement.
* * * * *

Bilateral? Multilateral? What Kim Jong Il wants? What's going on here. The fact
is that the United States has been acting in bad faith with Pyongyang for the
last decade. I mean our own Uncle Sam!! Mr. Bush himself acknowledges that
before he became President, it was the policy of the United States to have
bilateral talks with North Korea, but he STOPPED that policy because he learned
that North Korea was violating the 1994 Accord that provided for bilateral
talks.

Now I am absolutely sure the President believes what he says, but in fact the
North Koreans never violated any agreement with us. They have lived up to the
letter and spirit of all their agreements with us, as far as I can tell. Kim
Jong Il will happily agree to return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
Safeguards Agreement, which would permit the International Atomic Energy Agency
to inspect any site in North Korea that seemed suspiciously to be part of a
nuclear weapons program. But Kim is being most reasonable when he points out
that Saddam Hussein made those same commitments and did in fact allow
inspectors to snoop in every noon and cranny
Gość: Wanniski Re: Kerry ma zapewnione zwyciestwo IP: *.ny325.east.verizon.net 04.10.04, 00:42

With only weeks before the 2 November elections in the United States, it is
clear to informed Americans that if the rest of the world could vote for
President, Sen John Kerry would win in a landslide.

The reason of course is the war in Iraq. A survey of 35,000 people in 35
countries this month showed Kerry winning 46% and President George W Bush
winning only 20%. Even though Kerry is unknown, in many European countries Bush
gets the support of fewer than 15% of those with an opinion: Germany 10%,
France 5%, Norway 7%, Spain 7%, Italy 14%.

In Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair is Bush's closest ally in the war
on terror, Kerry beat the incumbent 47 percent to 16 percent.

In a broader sense, the global electorate is not so much expressing an opinion
about Iraq, but of the USA's "management" of the world. It is in that sense
that the world is taking a greater interest in this election than it has in our
lifetimes. This is because everyone in the world now lives in a unipolar world.

After all, the end of the Cold War in 1991 marked not only the end of the
Soviet experiment in communism, but also the dawn of a unique epoch in the
history of civilization. For the first time since all humankind lived in the
Garden of Eden, there was now only one nation that clearly sat atop the global
pyramid of power.

To answer the question, "What's going on in the USA?"; we can put it simply:
The people of the United States are trying to figure out how to use its power
through the same kind of trial and error process that brought it to the top of
the global pyramid. It is now being forced to concede that it made a serious
mistake in the way it dealt with Iraq.

"All the rules have been written for a world of adversarial divisions".

How shall we go about determining the limitations on our powers and the extent
of our responsibilities? The questions are different than any Americans have
ever encountered, requiring that our people think about the world differently
than we ever have before. There is no historic guidebook to help us at this
frontier of boundless opportunity.

All the rules have been written for a world of adversarial divisions. This
means we must think through with extraordinary care the steps we take and the
paths we choose. Major missteps can only mean we will lose this preeminence and
find new power pyramids forming to challenge our leadership.

If we think of the United States as the "father" of the entire family of
nations, what it did under Mr Bush 18 months ago was ignore the United Nations,
the world's only legal framework for the adjudication of "family problems."
Given the fact that Saddam Hussein did everything asked of him by the Security
Council in permitting inspections for weapons of mass destruction, the
President's decision to go to war seemed terribly unjust not only to most of
the world, but also to many Americans who believed the UN diplomacy was working
as it was designed to work.

It is as if a father decided to severely beat one son for a perceived
misbehaviour even though his wife and other children insisted the son had done
no wrong.

Whether Americans like it or not, the United States by this behaviour is viewed
as a threat to the world, not a leader working to make the world a better,
safer, more prosperous place. We now have UN General Secretary Kofi Annan so
exasperated with the continued moves of the US in Iraq, and in other world
trouble spots, that he is willing to label the Iraq invasion an "illegal" act.
Perhaps Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein, but if the war was
unnecessary, as many as 100,000 people – military and civilian on all sides –
have paid for the mistake with their lives. They are not better off.

"It is now being forced to concede that it made a serious mistake in the way it
dealt with Iraq".

The reason I have been asked to write in this space is that I have made the
argument in the American media for several years that it is the responsibility
of our leaders to pay special attention to the opinions of the Islamic world.

I say this as a Roman Catholic who has been a lifelong supporter of the state
of Israel. The reason is that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation in
a world that contains more than 1.2 billion Muslims.

A citizen of any other nation in the world who has a problem with the United
States can have it addressed as long as he or she is a Protestant, Catholic or
Jew. This is because there are Protestants, Catholics and Jews in every branch
of the US government, at the highest levels of the executive branch, the
Congress, and the Supreme Court.

But there are no Muslims who participate in this policy-making apparatus. This
is a primary source of disequilibrium in the world political economy.

It was because I recognised this problem a dozen years ago that I made efforts
to contact American Muslims, including Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of
the Nation of Islam. He is the American Muslim most visible to the almost 300
million Americans. Minister Farrakhan and I have become good friends, having
spent countless hours with each other in conversation since our first meeting
in December 1996. We have both benefited from the experience, I believe, and I
have at least introduced him to several of my friends on Wall Street who are
Jewish and who share my desire to bridge this political gap between the Judeo-
Christian world and Islam.

"If we think of the United States as the "father" of the entire family of
nations, what it did under Mr. Bush 18 months ago was ignore the United
Nations, the world's only legal"

Indeed, on his world travels in recent years, Minister Farrakhan has made the
same point I make in this essay… that the people of the United States should
not be judged harshly because they are trying as best they can to figure out
their responsibilities in this new unipolar world and are bound to make
mistakes along the way.

[Jude Wanniski founded Polyconomics, Inc., in New Jersey in 1978, to advise
individual and institutional investors on the impact political decisions have
on financial markets. Previously, he was associate editor of the Wall Street
- Gość: a Re: kwasniewski popiera Kerry IP: *.nycmny83.covad.net 04.10.04, 16:25
  
  dlatego glosil ze wycofa polskie wojska w przyszlym roku. teraz Bush nie moze
  powiedziec ze ma jakas koalicje

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