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Lugar: energy more important than Al Qaeda

by Jerome a Paris Tue May 30th, 2006 at 09:07:22 AM EST



Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate's powerful foreign relations committee, suggested that "there are a good many who would feel that the possibilities for devastation of countries, including our own, may come much more from our myopia in terms of energy policy than our ability to track down the last of the al-Qaeda cells".


This comes from a pretty scathing article in the Financial Times, with a pretty explicit title: US right questions wisdom of Bush's democracy policy

Lots more goodies below:




But as the US struggles to assert itself on the international stage, the president's most radical supporters now dismiss this as mere rhetoric, and traditional conservatives are questioning the wisdom of a democratisation strategy that has brought unpleasant consequences in the Middle East.

Administration officials speak privately of a sense of fatigue over the worsening crisis in Iraq that has drained energy from other important policy issues. Senior officials are leaving - not so unusual in a second term, but still giving the sense of a sinking ship run in some quarters by relatively inexperienced crew.

Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine.

"Bush killed his own doctrine," they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea.

The neo-conservatives offered no explanation for desertion of the doctrine, other than a desire to make quick but transitory short-term gains. "The president continues to believe his own preaching, but his administration has become incapable of making the hard choices those beliefs require," they wrote.

(...)

Graham Fuller, former diplomat and intelligence officer, suggests the US is suffering from "strategic fatigue" brought on by "imperial over-reach".

(...)

Short-term economic costs of the empire have been bearable, says Mr Fuller, but long-term indicators show it is not sustainable - massive domestic debt, growing trade imbalances, an extraordinary gap in wealth between rich and poor Americans, the growing outsourcing of jobs.

More immediately, the unprecedented unilateral character of the US exercise of global power has proved its undoing.

(...)

"In the last few years, diverse countries have deployed a multiplicity of strategies and tactics designed to weaken, divert, complicate, limit, delay or block the Bush agenda through a death by a thousand cuts," says Mr Fuller.

Even some traditional Republicans are challenging the concept that the global "war on terror" is the paramount issue for generations to come.

Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate's powerful foreign relations committee, suggested that "there are a good many who would feel that the possibilities for devastation of countries, including our own, may come much more from our myopia in terms of energy policy than our ability to track down the last of the al-Qaeda cells".

So, if I get this right:

  • Bush has betrayed democracy activists in various countries for short term gain, and his own principles; (what a surprise)

  • The administration has no drive left to push its missionary imperialist strategy, after it failed against the realities of the isolation of the USA in the world; (I suppose that's good news)

  • this comes from Republicans and coservatives, who call the administration a "sinking ship" (didn't they empower it for all these years, and are thus just as responsible??);

  • also, the acknowledgement that these policies have had a very real diplomatic cost and, more importantly, an unsustainble economic cost as well.

  • of more interest to me (and thus the title of the diary), the acknowledgement by senior figures that Al Qaeda is not the paramount issue that it been touted to be, and that energy issues are a bigger threat to the country.

Time to Energize America...

See also LondonYank's Anti-Americanism is the new black

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/30/65635/3152

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 09:08:05 AM EST
Also now linked from the News Bucket over at Booman Tribune.  :-)

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? - Thoreau
by Dem in Knoxville (green_planet_2000 (at) yahoo (dot) com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 09:23:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So...whatcha gonna talk about at Yearlykos...I mean, I know it will be on energy...but, what exactly?

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
by whataboutbob on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 09:22:16 AM EST
I'll be presenting Energize America.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 09:57:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Short-term economic costs of the empire have been bearable, says Mr Fuller, but long-term indicators show it is not sustainable - massive domestic debt, growing trade imbalances, an extraordinary gap in wealth between rich and poor Americans, the growing outsourcing of jobs.

But all of these four downsides were designed into policies. I cannot accept any of these as unforeseen or unforeseeable, rather they are deliberate and inevitable consequences of policy.

Policies that strip out the middle classes and destroy health care.
Policies that export well-paid jobs and plunge those displaced into the nether world of McJobs.
Policies that gave multi-millionaires and corporates huge tax cuts, necessarily placing a greater tax burden on Middle and working class america.
By exporting production overseas they had to harm the trade balance. That's like Duh !!

And they stand there amidst the wreckage and effect to walk away as if it's nothing to do with them !!!

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 10:32:31 AM EST


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