Announcement

**faye** · 02-19-2011, 12:58 AM

neoconservatives are meglomaniacs who have the reins of america and are riding it down the drain. check the names and religions of them.

**faye** · 02-19-2011, 01:32 AM

i just noticed i still have the 'mellow' mood up. that wasn't very mellow, was it?
my apologies osho, i was just so shocked to see support of those i despise.

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 01:45 AM

Originally posted by osho View Post

Lets have a meaningful discussion on neoconservatism and interventionism in relation to Pashtuns with the spirit of mutual sharing and learning and in the larger interest of Pashtuns and the world and not just to win the argument on rebuttals and argument for the sake of argument.

According to Britanica neoconservatism, is variant of the political ideology of conservatism that combines features of traditional conservatism with political individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets. Neoconservatism arose in the United States in the 1970s among intellectuals who shared a dislike of communism and a disdain for the counterculture of the 1960s, especially its political radicalism and its animus against authority, custom, and tradition.

In economics, neoconservatives believe that markets are an efficient means of allocating goods and services.

Neoconservatives have been especially influential in the formulation of foreign and military policy, particularly in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They contend that power—military, economic, or political—that is unused is for all practical purposes wasted. The military might of the United States should be employed around the world to promote American interests. And it is in the interests of the United States, they say, to promote the development of democratic regimes abroad.

According to Howard Dean Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic.

According to Wikipedia Neoconservatism in the United States is a version of US Conservatism which based on the tenets of Neoliberalism supports free markets and representative democracy.

In foreign policy it defines national interests to include ideological interests e.g. the defense of other nations with similar ideologies for geopolitical purposes, proposing to use American economic and military power to bring democracy and capitalism to other countries

As per wikipedia Interventionism is a term for a policy of non-defensive (proactive) activity undertaken by a nation-state, or other geo-political jurisdiction of a lesser or greater nature, to manipulate an economy or society. The most common applications of the term are for economic interventionism (a state's intervention in its own economy), and foreign interventionism (a state's intervention in the affairs of another nation as part of its foreign policy)

I believe that Neoconservatism and Interventionism of USA or other countries is a big benifit for Pashtuns and a great opportunity because Pashtuns are an underveloped nation with high rate of illiteracy. Democracy and human rights are not so far in vogue among Pashtuns and Pashtunland is a hub of terrorism, violent extremism, obscurantism and fundamentalism. USA and the developed must intervene in this situation to save Pashtuns from further degeneration and at the same time to save the world from the terrorism and extremism growing on Pashtunland.

If the developed world ignore Pashtuns then this will be a colossal catastrophe for Pashtuns, the USA and the world at large. Its in the national interest of USA and others to adopt neoconservative and interventionist policies in Pashtunland which will be a win-win situation for both Pashtuns and the world.If we lose interest in Pashtun affairs then this will be a true loss for both Pashtuns and the world.

I applaud your honesty in your open endorsement of Neoconservatism. Now at least, others can see directly where you derive your ideologies without the veneer overcovering where you stand. I am so very glad that I forced this admission. Well Baygham Khan, there you have it, one of the three musketeers openly admits his affiliations.

**Shlombay** · 02-19-2011, 01:49 AM

What ever we do osho we must bring secularism to afghanistan. I am tired of these religious fantatics who have ruined afghanistan. We need a secular pashtun land where people people can quietly live without worrying about people like sangar who want to kill them for not being a follower of wahabism. Secularism is what we need and i hope you people know that. I hope barakzai abdali agrees and i hope he is not a hypocrite.

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 01:52 AM

Now let us see what Buchanon says about your success rates:

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/mar/24/00007/

Whose War?

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.</I>
By Patrick J. Buchanan

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers ... that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.

Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)

David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: “Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. ... Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.”

Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: “In London ... one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”

Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine “has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of ... Ariel Sharon and the ‘neoconservative war party.’”

Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation, and Gary Hart of implying that “members of the Bush team have been doing Israel’s bidding and, by extension, exhibiting ‘dual loyalties.’” Kaplan thunders:

The real problem with such claims is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.

What is going on here? Slate’s Mickey Kaus nails it in the headline of his retort: “Lawrence Kaplan Plays the Anti-Semitic Card.”

What Kaplan, Brooks, Boot, and Kagan are doing is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson does when caught with some mammoth contribution from a Fortune 500 company he has lately accused of discriminating. He plays the race card. So, too, the neoconservatives are trying to fend off critics by assassinating their character and impugning their motives.

Indeed, it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.

And this time the boys have cried “wolf” once too often. It is not working. As Kaus notes, Kaplan’s own New Republic carries Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman. In writing of the four power centers in this capital that are clamoring for war, Hoffman himself describes the fourth thus:

And, finally, there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States. … These analysts look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation’s founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

“If Stanley Hoffman can say this,” asks Kaus, “why can’t Chris Matthews?” Kaus also notes that Kaplan somehow failed to mention the most devastating piece tying the neoconservatives to Sharon and his Likud Party
.

In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council. (Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, whose magazine has for decades branded critics of Israel as anti-Semites.)

Noting that Sharon repeatedly claims a “special closeness” to the Bu****es, Kaiser writes, “For the first time a U.S. administration and a Likud government are pursuing nearly identical policies.” And a valid question is: how did this come to be, and while it is surely in Sharon’s interest, is it in America’s interest?

This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the neocon smears, we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, “Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.”

We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.

Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold War.
They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.

The Neoconservatives
Who are the neoconservatives? The first generation were ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism’s long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

A neoconservative, wrote Kevin Phillips back then, is more likely to be a magazine editor than a bricklayer. Today, he or she is more likely to be a resident scholar at a public policy institute such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) or one of its clones like the Center for Security Policy or the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). As one wag writes, a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank.

Almost none came out of the business world or military, and few if any came out of the Goldwater campaign. The heroes they invoke are Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, Martin Luther King, and Democratic Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson (Wash.) and Pat Moynihan (N.Y.).
All are interventionists who regard Stakhanovite support of Israel as a defining characteristic of their breed. Among their luminaries are Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Bennett, Michael Novak, and James Q. Wilson.
Their publications include the Weekly Standard, Commentary, the New Republic, National Review, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Though few in number, they wield disproportionate power through control of the conservative foundations and magazines, through their syndicated columns, and by attaching themselves to men of power.

Beating the War Drums
When the Cold War ended, these neoconservatives began casting about for a new crusade to give meaning to their lives. On Sept. 11, their time came. They seized on that horrific atrocity to steer America’s rage into all-out war to destroy their despised enemies, the Arab and Islamic “rogue states” that have resisted U.S. hegemony and loathe Israel.
The War Party’s plan, however, had been in preparation far in advance of 9/11. And when President Bush, after defeating the Taliban, was looking for a new front in the war on terror, they put their precooked meal in front of him. Bush dug into it.

Before introducing the script-writers of America’s future wars, consider the rapid and synchronized reaction of the neocons to what happened after that fateful day.

On Sept. 12, Americans were still in shock when Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in “a struggle between good and evil,” that the Congress must declare war on “militant Islam,” and that “overwhelming force” must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama’s terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us?

The Wall Street Journal immediately offered up a specific target list, calling for U.S. air strikes on “terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt.” Yet, not one of Bennett’s six countries, nor one of these five, had anything to do with 9/11.
On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, “Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan.” Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while “attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain … Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable.”

On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”
Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon.

President Bush had been warned. He was to exploit the attack of 9/11 to launch a series of wars on Arab regimes, none of which had attacked us. All, however, were enemies of Israel. “Bibi” Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, like some latter-day Citizen Genet, was ubiquitous on American television, calling for us to crush the “Empire of Terror.” The “Empire,” it turns out, consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and “the Palestinian enclave.”

Nasty as some of these regimes and groups might be, what had they done to the United States?

The War Party seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts. Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) called for an immediate invasion of Iraq. “Nor need the attack await the deployment of half a million troops. … [T]he larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over,” he wrote.

Donnelly was echoed by Jonah Goldberg of National Review: “The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.”
Goldberg endorsed “the Ledeen Doctrine” of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” (When the French ambassador in London, at a dinner party, asked why we should risk World War III over some “****ty little country”—meaning Israel—Goldberg’s magazine was not amused.)

Ledeen, however, is less frivolous. In The War Against the Terror Masters, he identifies the exact regimes America must destroy:

First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.

Rejecting stability as “an unworthy American mission,” Ledeen goes on to define America’s authentic “historic mission”:

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

Passages like this owe more to Leon Trotsky than to Robert Taft and betray a Jacobin streak in neoconservatism that cannot be reconciled with any concept of true conservatism.

To the Weekly Standard, Ledeen’s enemies list was too restrictive. We must not only declare war on terror networks and states that harbor terrorists, said the Standard, we should launch wars on “any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future.”
Robert Kagan and William Kristol were giddy with excitement at the prospect of Armageddon. The coming war “is going to spread and engulf a number of countries. … It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. … t is possible that the demise of some ‘moderate’ Arab regimes may be just round the corner.”

Norman Podhoretz in Commentary even outdid Kristol’s Standard, rhapsodizing that we should embrace a war of civilizations, as it is George W. Bush’s mission “to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam.” By his count, the regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘“friends” of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority. Bush must reject the “timorous counsels” of the “incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell,” wrote Podhoretz, and “find the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated” Islamic world. As the war against al-Qaeda required that we destroy the Taliban, Podhoretz wrote,
We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced … to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority). I can even [imagine] the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. … I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.

Podhoretz credits Eliot Cohen with the phrase “World War IV.” Bush was shortly thereafter seen carrying about a gift copy of Cohen’s book that celebrates civilian mastery of the military in times of war, as exhibited by such leaders as Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurion.

A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction thus includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and “militant Islam.”
Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?
Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.
Indeed, Sharon has been everywhere the echo of his acolytes in America. In February 2003, Sharon told a delegation of Congressmen that, after Saddam’s regime is destroyed, it is of “vital importance” that the United States disarm Iran, Syria, and Libya.
“We have a great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after” the war on Iraq, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations. After U.S. troops enter Baghdad, the United States must generate “political, economic, diplomatic pressure” on Tehran, Mofaz admonished the American Jews.
Are the neoconservatives concerned about a war on Iraq bringing down friendly Arab governments? Not at all. They would welcome it.
“Mubarak is no great shakes,” says Richard Perle of the President of Egypt. “Surely we can do better than Mubarak.” Asked about the possibility that a war on Iraq—which he predicted would be a “cakewalk”—might upend governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, former UN ambassador Ken Adelman told Joshua Micah Marshall of Washington Monthly, “All the better if you ask me.”
On July 10, 2002, Perle invited a former aide to Lyndon LaRouche named Laurent Murawiec to address the Defense Policy Board. In a briefing that startled Henry Kissinger, Murawiec named Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” of the United States.
Washington should give Riyadh an ultimatum, he said. Either you Saudis “prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including the Saudi intelligence services,” and end all propaganda against Israel, or we invade your country, seize your oil fields, and occupy Mecca.
In closing his PowerPoint presentation, Murawiec offered a “Grand Strategy for the Middle East.” “Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize.” Leaked reports of Murawiec’s briefing did not indicate if anyone raised the question of how the Islamic world might respond to U.S. troops tramping around the grounds of the Great Mosque.
What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.
Washington Times editor at large Arnaud de Borchgrave calls this the “Bush-Sharon Doctrine.” “Washington’s ‘Likudniks,’” he writes, “have been in charge of U.S. policy in the Middle East since Bush was sworn into office.”
The neocons seek American empire, and Sharonites seek hegemony over the Middle East. The two agendas coincide precisely. And though neocons insist that it was Sept. 11 that made the case for war on Iraq and militant Islam, the origins of their war plans go back far before.

“Securing the Realm”
The principal draftsman is Richard Perle, an aide to Sen. Scoop Jackson, who, in 1970, was overheard on a federal wiretap discussing classified information from the National Security Council with the Israeli Embassy. In Jews and American Politics, published in 1974, Stephen D. Isaacs wrote, “Richard Perle and Morris Amitay command a tiny army of Semitophiles on Capitol Hill and direct Jewish power in behalf of Jewish interests.” In 1983, the New York Times reported that Perle had taken substantial payments from an Israeli weapons manufacturer.

In 1996, with Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, Perle wrote “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” for Prime Minister Netanyahu. In it, Perle, Feith, and Wurmser urged Bibi to ditch the Oslo Accords of the assassinated Yitzak Rabin and adopt a new aggressive strategy:
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right—as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq.

In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel’s enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad. Their plan, which urged Israel to re-establish “the principle of preemption,” has now been imposed by Perle, Feith, Wurmser & Co. on the United States.

In his own 1997 paper, “A Strategy for Israel,” Feith pressed Israel to re-occupy “the areas under Palestinian Authority control,” though “the price in blood would be high.”
Wurmser, as a resident scholar at AEI, drafted joint war plans for Israel and the United States “to fatally strike the centers of radicalism in the Middle East. Israel and the United States should … broaden the conflict to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza. That would establish the recognition that fighting either the United States or Israel is suicidal.”
He urged both nations to be on the lookout for a crisis, for as he wrote, “Crises can be opportunities.” Wurmser published his U.S.-Israeli war plan on Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9/11.

About the Perle-Feith-Wurmser cabal, author Michael Lind writes:
The radical Zionist right to which Perle and Feith belong is small in number but it has become a significant force in Republican policy-making circles. It is a recent phenomenon, dating back to the late 1970s and 1980s, when many formerly Democratic Jewish intellectuals joined the broad Reagan coalition. While many of these hawks speak in public about global crusades for democracy, the chief concern of many such “neo-conservatives” is the power and reputation of Israel.

Right down the smokestack.

Perle today chairs the Defense Policy Board, Feith is an Undersecretary of Defense, and Wurmser is special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, John Bolton, who dutifully echoes the Perle-Sharon line. According to the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, in late February,
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials … that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards.

On Jan. 26, 1998, President Clinton received a letter imploring him to use his State of the Union address to make removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime the “aim of American foreign policy” and to use military action because “diplomacy is failing.” Were Clinton to do that, the signers pledged, they would “offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.” Signing the pledge were Elliott Abrams, Bill Bennett, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. Four years before 9/11, the neocons had Baghdad on their minds.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine
In 1992, a startling document was leaked from the office of Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post called it a “classified blueprint intended to help ‘set the nation’s direction for the next century.’” The Wolfowitz Memo called for a permanent U.S. military presence on six continents to deter all “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Containment, the victorious strategy of the Cold War, was to give way to an ambitious new strategy designed to “establish and protect a new order.”
Though the Wolfowitz Memo was denounced and dismissed in 1992, it became American policy in the 33-page National Security Strategy (NSS) issued by President Bush on Sept. 21, 2002. Washington Post reporter Tim Reich describes it as a “watershed in U.S. foreign policy” that “reverses the fundamental principles that have guided successive Presidents for more than 50 years: containment and deterrence.”
Andrew Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, writes of the NSS that he marvels at “its fusion of breathtaking utopianism with barely disguised machtpolitik. It reads as if it were the product not of sober, ostensibly conservative Republicans but of an unlikely collaboration between Woodrow Wilson and the elder Field Marshal von Moltke.”

In confronting America’s adversaries, the paper declares, “We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.” It warns any nation that seeks to acquire power to rival the United States that it will be courting war with the United States:
[T]he president has no intention of allowing any nation to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. … Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States.

America must reconcile herself to an era of “nation-building on a grand scale, and with no exit strategy,” Robert Kagan instructs. But this Pax Americana the neocons envision bids fair to usher us into a time of what Harry Elmer Barnes called “permanent war for permanent peace.”

The Munich Card

As President Bush was warned on Sept. 20, 2001, that he will be indicted for “a decisive surrender” in the war on terror should he fail to attack Iraq, he is also on notice that pressure on Israel is forbidden. For as the neoconservatives have played the anti-Semitic card, they will not hesitate to play the Munich card as well. A year ago, when Bush called on Sharon to pull out of the West Bank, Sharon fired back that he would not let anyone do to Israel what Neville Chamberlain had done to the Czechs. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy immediately backed up Ariel Sharon:
With each passing day, Washington appears to view its principal Middle Eastern ally’s conduct as inconvenient—in much the same way London and Paris came to see Czechoslovakia’s resistance to Hitler’s offers of peace in exchange for Czech lands.

When former U.S. NATO commander Gen. George Jouwlan said the United States may have to impose a peace on Israel and the Palestinians, he, too, faced the charge of appeasement. Wrote Gaffney,
They would, presumably, go beyond Britain and France’s sell-out of an ally at Munich in 1938. The “impose a peace” school is apparently prepared to have us play the role of Hitler’s Wehrmacht as well, seizing and turning over to Yasser Arafat the contemporary Sudetenland: the West Bank and Gaza Strip and perhaps part of Jerusalem as well.

Podhoretz agreed Sharon was right in the substance of what he said but called it politically unwise to use the Munich analogy.

President Bush is on notice: Should he pressure Israel to trade land for peace, the Oslo formula in which his father and Yitzak Rabin believed, he will, as was his father, be denounced as an anti-Semite and a Munich-style appeaser by both Israelis and their neoconservatives allies inside his own Big Tent.

Yet, if Bush cannot deliver Sharon there can be no peace. And if there is no peace in the Mideast there is no security for us, ever—for there will be no end to terror. As most every diplomat and journalist who travels to the region will relate, America’s failure to be even-handed, our failure to rein in Sharon, our failure to condemn Israel’s excesses, and our moral complicity in Israel’s looting of Palestinian lands and denial of their right to self-determination sustains the anti-Americanism in the Islamic world in which terrorists and terrorism breed.

Let us conclude. The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders. We should help them secure these rights. As a nation, we have made a moral commitment, endorsed by half a dozen presidents, which Americans wish to honor, not to permit these people who have suffered much to see their country overrun and destroyed. And we must honor this commitment.

But U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail. Moreover, we do not view the Sharon regime as “America’s best friend.”

Since the time of Ben Gurion, the behavior of the Israeli regime has been Jekyll and Hyde. In the 1950s, its intelligence service, the Mossad, had agents in Egypt blow up U.S. installations to make it appear the work of Cairo, to destroy U.S. relations with the new Nasser government. During the Six Day War, Israel ordered repeated attacks on the undefended USS Liberty that killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 and included the machine-gunning of life rafts. This massacre was neither investigated nor punished by the U.S. government in an act of national cravenness.
[I]Though we have given Israel $20,000 for every Jewish citizen, Israel refuses to stop building the settlements that are the cause of the Palestinian intifada. Likud has dragged our good name through the mud and blood of Ramallah, ignored Bush’s requests to restrain itself, and sold U.S. weapons technology to China, including the Patriot, the Phoenix air-to-air missile, and the Lavi fighter, which is based on F-16 technology. Only direct U.S. intervention blocked Israel’s sale of our AWACS system.
Israel suborned Jonathan Pollard to loot our secrets and refuses to return the documents, which would establish whether or not they were sold to Moscow. When Clinton tried to broker an agreement at Wye Plantation between Israel and Arafat, Bibi Netanyahu attempted to extort, as his price for signing, release of Pollard, so he could take this treasonous snake back to Israel as a national hero.

Do the Brits, our closest allies, behave like this?
Though we have said repeatedly that we admire much of what this president has done, he will not deserve re-election if he does not jettison the neoconservatives’ agenda of endless wars on the Islamic world that serve only the interests of a country other than the one he was elected to preserve and protect.

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 02:01 AM

Originally posted by Shlombay View Post

What ever we do osho we must bring secularism to afghanistan. I am tired of these religious fantatics who have ruined afghanistan. We need a secular pashtun land where people people can quietly live without worrying about people like sangar who want to kill them for not being a follower of wahabism. Secularism is what we need and i hope you people know that. I hope barakzai abdali agrees and i hope he is not a hypocrite.

A hypocrite how Shlombay? In that I refuse to force upon a people, whether they be hindu, Korean, Pashtun, etc. a philosophy that took centuries to bloom in the West? As I noted to you, you are at Columbia and ought to take advantage of those resources. Read about American democracy, its roots, and secularism, and its roots. The former finds its roots leading back to the mid 1200s at the signing of the Magna Carta and the latter to the enlightenment. You cannot force ideologies onto people and expect accelerated acceptance. Look at Turkey right now and where it is going in relation to what suits American interests. Turkey refused to allow us to utilize its land for launching the war, the military mentality there is under seige, and blowback to the British imposed Ataturk enforced rules are happening right in front of our eyes.

Here is what Buchanon says about this:
-------------------------------------------------
"In 2000, Turkey was a reliable U.S. ally, a friend to Israel, an aspiring candidate for membership in the EU. Since then, Turkey has set a different course, welcomed by her people, that has measurably enhanced her prestige.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime is far more Islamic than any Turkish government since the caliphate. He and his Justice and Development Party have effected constitutional reforms to curb the power of the judiciary and military, guardians of the secular state established by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Scores of generals have been indicted for treason.
Turkey refused President George W. Bush permission to use its territory to invade Iraq. Denied a fast track to membership in the EU, Turkey now looks to the south and east. Relations with Syria have been repaired. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Istanbul.

To the rage of Hillary Clinton, the Turks and Brazil cut a deal with Iran to transfer half the low-enriched uranium at Natanz out of the country. This was seen as undercutting U.S. policy. When the U.N. imposed the latest sanctions on Iran, Turkey voted no.

“The Turks are out of their lane,” said a U.S. diplomat.
Indeed they are. And as Turkey moves out of America’s orbit, she is moving back into a Muslim world much of which she ruled for centuries. A sure sign is the bristling hostility to Israel, with which Turkey has had close political and military ties.

At Davos in 2009, in a debate with Shimon Peres about the Gaza war, Erdogan shouted at Israel’s president, “You know well how to kill,” stormed out and flew home to a hero’s welcome.

Eight of the nine dissidents shot by Israeli commandos in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla trying to run the blockade were Turks. Erdogan’s backing of the flotilla and condemnation of Israel for a “bloody massacre” made him and Turkey more admired in Gaza than are Iran and Ahmadinejad."
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/02...thout-america/

I will conclude with Pat's answer to you:

"The U.S. press is transfixed by all this, but a question arises: What vital interest of a United States staring at bankruptcy would be imperiled if we got out of the way, stopped fighting these countries’ wars and paying these countries’ bills and let these people determine their own future for good or ill?"

**Shlombay** · 02-19-2011, 02:06 AM

Originally posted by BarakzaiAbdali View Post

A hypocrite how Shlombay? In that I refuse to force upon a people, whether they be hindu, Korean, Pashtun, etc. a philosophy that took centuries to bloom in the West? As I noted to you, you are at Columbia and ought to take advantage of those resources. Read about American democracy, its roots, and secularism, and its roots. The former finds its roots leading back to the mid 1200s at the signing of the Magna Carta and the latter to the enlightenment. You cannot force ideologies onto people and expect accelerated acceptance. Look at Turkey right now and where it is going in relation to what suits American interests. Turkey refused to allow us to utilize its land for launching the war, the military mentality there is under seige, and blowback to the British imposed Ataturk enforced rules are happening right in front of our eyes.

Here is what Buchanon says about this:
-------------------------------------------------
"In 2000, Turkey was a reliable U.S. ally, a friend to Israel, an aspiring candidate for membership in the EU. Since then, Turkey has set a different course, welcomed by her people, that has measurably enhanced her prestige.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime is far more Islamic than any Turkish government since the caliphate. He and his Justice and Development Party have effected constitutional reforms to curb the power of the judiciary and military, guardians of the secular state established by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Scores of generals have been indicted for treason.
Turkey refused President George W. Bush permission to use its territory to invade Iraq. Denied a fast track to membership in the EU, Turkey now looks to the south and east. Relations with Syria have been repaired. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Istanbul.

To the rage of Hillary Clinton, the Turks and Brazil cut a deal with Iran to transfer half the low-enriched uranium at Natanz out of the country. This was seen as undercutting U.S. policy. When the U.N. imposed the latest sanctions on Iran, Turkey voted no.

“The Turks are out of their lane,” said a U.S. diplomat.
Indeed they are. And as Turkey moves out of America’s orbit, she is moving back into a Muslim world much of which she ruled for centuries. A sure sign is the bristling hostility to Israel, with which Turkey has had close political and military ties.

At Davos in 2009, in a debate with Shimon Peres about the Gaza war, Erdogan shouted at Israel’s president, “You know well how to kill,” stormed out and flew home to a hero’s welcome.

Eight of the nine dissidents shot by Israeli commandos in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla trying to run the blockade were Turks. Erdogan’s backing of the flotilla and condemnation of Israel for a “bloody massacre” made him and Turkey more admired in Gaza than are Iran and Ahmadinejad."
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/02...thout-america/

I will conclude with Pat's answer to you:

"The U.S. press is transfixed by all this, but a question arises: What vital interest of a United States staring at bankruptcy would be imperiled if we got out of the way, stopped fighting these countries’ wars and paying these countries’ bills and let these people determine their own future for good or ill?"

our people are uneducated and it is our job to show them the tolerance secularism provides. you yourself live in a secular country and you enjoy the benefits why do you not want afghans to get same benefits? barakzaiabdali many pf members are cowards and they refuse to meet up with me to have a talk but i invite you to come meet me in Columbia University so I can introduce you to some of the political scholars here and to some of my professors they can make u understand the benefits of a secular society and how it is working. the political science department people are friendly and i can arrange a meeting for you. it will be fun. i do take advantage of our resources and I debate frequently with my professors but i have realized secularism is what we afghans need look at Turkey they rapidly advancing. I am a proud American who loves his secular nation . i want my qandahr to also be secular and tolerant

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 02:07 AM

Originally posted by Shlombay View Post

What ever we do osho we must bring secularism to afghanistan. I am tired of these religious fantatics who have ruined afghanistan. We need a secular pashtun land where people people can quietly live without worrying about people like sangar who want to kill them for not being a follower of wahabism. Secularism is what we need and i hope you people know that. I hope barakzai abdali agrees and i hope he is not a hypocrite.

Bottom line Osho, just as Osho has openly stated his ideologies, I too will state mine:

Practically, I could care less about Afghanistan. I could care less about Bosnia. Iraq can sink into a sandpit. Saudi can sink into the sea. Somalia is a rat hole not worth traveling to, much less being concerned about. Europe... well Europe is about as useful as it ever was... which is not useful at all. As an American, I have no duty to worry about a starving child in Bolivia, except in the capacity of a private citizen. Haitian earthquake? Fine, activate the churches and the mosques and the synogogues and send some money there if you want... but a tax dollar being sent there? Heck No. Nation states earn the right to survive and subsist.

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 02:11 AM

Originally posted by Shlombay View Post

our people are uneducated and it is our job to show them the tolerance secularism provides. you yourself live in a secular country and you enjoy the benefits why do you not want afghans to get same benefits? barakzaiabdali many pf members are cowards and they refuse to meet up with me to have a talk but i invite you to come meet me in Columbia University so I can introduce you to some of the political scholars here and to some of my professors they can make u understand the benefits of a secular society and how it is working. the political science department people are friendly and i can arrange a meeting for you. it will be fun. i do take advantage of our resources and I debate frequently with my professors but i have realized secularism is what we afghans need look at Turkey they rapidly advancing. I am a proud American who loves his secular nation . i want my qandahr to also be secular and tolerant

Great, I am happy you have this goal. I have no problem if Qandahar and if all of the middle east and central asia adopted Secularism and worshipped the Sun. I would be disappointed that they left Islam, but I would make it none of my business. Where I part ways with you is that my friend Ben, a marine, should not have to do what you must accomplish for your people (our people) with your own two hands. I refuse to be a parasite on America and drag my countrymen into a fools errand. I believe that if you want this secularism, you should take your M16, make a lashkaar of like minded people, and take on the project yourself. Not a single tax dollar, not a single American life, not a single American loan etc ought to fund that endeavor.

Let me ask you a question in return: Are you willing to kill Afghans and Americans by continuing to enforce on ideology on people that are not receptive to it? I can provide you data that they do not agree with you. So why should I at all join you in forcing something on them.

**Shlombay** · 02-19-2011, 02:17 AM

Originally posted by BarakzaiAbdali View Post

Great, I am happy you have this goal. I have no problem if Qandahar and if all of the middle east and central asia adopted Secularism and worshipped the Sun. I would be disappointed that they left Islam, but I would make it none of my business. Where I part ways with you is that my friend Ben, a marine, should not have to do what you must accomplish for your people (our people) with your own two hands. I refuse to be a parasite on America and drag my countrymen into a fools errand. I believe that if you want this secularism, you should take your M16, make a lashkaar of like minded people, and take on the project yourself. Not a single tax dollar, not a single American life, not a single American loan etc ought to fund that endeavor.

Let me ask you a question in return: Are you willing to kill Afghans and Americans by continuing to enforce on ideology on people that are not receptive to it? I can provide you data that they do not agree with you. So why should I at all join you in forcing something on them.

Secularism does not mean they have to leave Islam why did you say that SIR? SIR I will not force it on my people i will educate them with its ideology and I know Pashtuns of Pashtunkhwa and Afghansitan are very dumb and uneducated so they might want to kill me for telling them be tolerant of other faiths but i will not give up and i will try to make them realize how good it is for them. SIR I will never force my ideas on them I have very abstract ideas and the same way I dont want Sangar enforcing his radical islamic views on me i wouldnt want to enforce my liberal views on them. you should join me because we are both Pashtun and we are both Qandahari. you should join me because you live in a secular country you have seen secularism work and function and if you are making 100thousand a year in a secular nation you should also want your people back home to make less money but live secular like you are. SIR WE NEED TO PAY OUR COUNTRY BACK.

**BarakzaiAbdali** · 02-19-2011, 02:25 AM

Originally posted by Shlombay View Post

Secularism does not mean they have to leave Islam why did you say that SIR? SIR I will not force it on my people i will educate them with its ideology and I know Pashtuns of Pashtunkhwa and Afghansitan are very dumb and uneducated so they might want to kill me for telling them be tolerant of other faiths but i will not give up and i will try to make them realize how good it is for them. SIR I will never force my ideas on them I have very abstract ideas and the same way I dont want Sangar enforcing his radical islamic views on me i wouldnt want to enforce my liberal views on them. you should join me because we are both Pashtun and we are both Qandahari. you should join me because you live in a secular country you have seen secularism work and function and if you are making 100thousand a year in a secular nation you should also want your people back home to make less money but live secular like you are. SIR WE NEED TO PAY OUR COUNTRY BACK.

I didnt say that they would automatically lose Islam etc. I completely understand that that one need not lose their faith in a secular society. My point was that those that want to violently hoist an ideology onto people, whether it be Islam or Secularism or Communism have the right to undertake this endeavor... but they also then have earned the right to a response from those that they attempt to force this upon.

I loathe and cringe at fifth column citizenry: the idea that America is some massive cadillac that ought to be taken for a ride and used like some cheap prostitute. I loathe Saudi citizens, Israeili citizens, Haitain citizens, and yes, Afghans that want to use American blood and treasure and force America to take on that albatross.

I owe not a single thing to Afghanistan or Pakistan or Saudi for that matter. I owe my life to God alone. I am thankful that the US was the vehicle through which God executed his favor upon me. Now in return, I will do my best to not take part in struggles that Washington and John Quincy Adams warned us to not get involved in. That ensures that Americans of all creeds not die for some fools errand and it ensures that those that yearn for freedom and whatever form of government that they desire can do so abroad.

My view is that Sangar, Omar Hotak Saib, Toramana, Baygham Khan, Osho, Karzai, yourself i you want it, etc should all deal with one another and leave the rest of us to live as we are.

America will be just fine even if a Caliphate of all the rest of the world forms. We have more warheads than a kid has candy on Halloween and an independent country. Mutually assured destruction is a fine principle to abide by and it works.

**Shlombay** · 02-19-2011, 02:30 AM

Originally posted by barakzaiabdali View Post

i didnt say that they would automatically lose islam etc. I completely understand that that one need not lose their faith in a secular society. My point was that those that want to violently hoist an ideology onto people, whether it be islam or secularism or communism have the right to undertake this endeavor... But they also then have earned the right to a response from those that they attempt to force this upon.

I loathe and cringe at fifth column citizenry: The idea that america is some massive cadillac that ought to be taken for a ride and used like some cheap prostitute. I loathe saudi citizens, israeili citizens, haitain citizens, and yes, afghans that want to use american blood and treasure and force america to take on that albatross.

I owe not a single thing to afghanistan or pakistan or saudi for that matter. I owe my life to god alone. I am thankful that the us was the vehicle through which god executed his favor upon me. Now in return, i will do my best to not take part in struggles that washington and john quincy adams warned us to not get involved in. That ensures that americans of all creeds not die for some fools errand and it ensures that those that yearn for freedom and whatever form of government that they desire can do so abroad.

My view is that sangar, omar hotak saib, toramana, baygham khan, osho, karzai, yourself i you want it, etc should all deal with one another and leave the rest of us to live as we are.

America will be just fine even if a caliphate of all the rest of the world forms. We have more warheads than a kid has candy on halloween and an independent country. Mutually assured destruction is a fine principle to abide by and it works.

you have very weird and non uniformed views. What you are saying makes no sense. On one hand you are saying leabe the rest of us alone and one the other hand you fail to realize we afghans are suffering. Do you not care about kandahar and pashtuns? I am sorry but i am not like you. I want to see people prosper. As an american i am aware that we have countries like pakistan and germany in our pocket but i also want to make sure my pashtuns are doing good. And i know that the only way to do good we must have secularism sir. Sir think about islamic law has not worked. Its outdated. Secularism has worked look at every advanced nation in the world. And sir you are wrong with your reference to adams. If washington would have been alive he would have told you to go liberate afghanistan from these islamic extremists.

**Shlombay** · 02-19-2011, 02:31 AM

Originally posted by BarakzaiAbdali View Post

I didnt say that they would automatically lose Islam etc. I completely understand that that one need not lose their faith in a secular society. My point was that those that want to violently hoist an ideology onto people, whether it be Islam or Secularism or Communism have the right to undertake this endeavor... but they also then have earned the right to a response from those that they attempt to force this upon.

I loathe and cringe at fifth column citizenry: the idea that America is some massive cadillac that ought to be taken for a ride and used like some cheap prostitute. I loathe Saudi citizens, Israeili citizens, Haitain citizens, and yes, Afghans that want to use American blood and treasure and force America to take on that albatross.

I owe not a single thing to Afghanistan or Pakistan or Saudi for that matter. I owe my life to God alone. I am thankful that the US was the vehicle through which God executed his favor upon me. Now in return, I will do my best to not take part in struggles that Washington and John Quincy Adams warned us to not get involved in. That ensures that Americans of all creeds not die for some fools errand and it ensures that those that yearn for freedom and whatever form of government that they desire can do so abroad.

My view is that Sangar, Omar Hotak Saib, Toramana, Baygham Khan, Osho, Karzai, yourself i you want it, etc should all deal with one another and leave the rest of us to live as we are.

America will be just fine even if a Caliphate of all the rest of the world forms. We have more warheads than a kid has candy on Halloween and an independent country. Mutually assured destruction is a fine principle to abide by and it works.

YOUR FATHER WAS BORN IN QANDAHAR. YOU OWE A LOT TO IT SIR. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. IF WE ALL START not CARING. AFGHANISTAN WILL NEVER SUCCEED. SIR PLEASE RECONSIDER AND TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT OUR PEOPLE. WE NEED PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

**faye** · 02-19-2011, 02:35 AM

well written article b.a. did you see who they are sending as the new envoy for afghanistan/pakistan?

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