Who is this jerk urging Kerry to be even MORE Bushist in Iraq?!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15FEAV.html

June 15, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Go Negative on the Allies
By PETER D. FEAVER

URHAM, N.C. — For months, Senator John Kerry has been among the loudest in the chorus criticizing President Bush for not persuading our allies to shoulder more of the Iraq burden. But now it is time for Mr. Kerry to start admonishing the allies. The problem today is not the administration's reluctance to woo allies, but rather the allies' reluctance to be wooed.

In the past few weeks, Mr. Bush has, with the help of the United Nations, identified Iraqi leadership that appears to have sufficient domestic and international legitimacy to assume sovereignty after June 30. The next phase of the transfer of power has won unanimous endorsement from the Security Council. The Group of 8 summit meeting last week, however, showed that our on-again allies were reluctant to move beyond lip service to much real aid, either in the form of troops or Iraqi debt relief.

For instance, Senator Kerry says NATO should assume a greater role in Iraq. This prospect is blocked by a stubborn president, but not the one named in Mr. Kerry's critique. Rather it is President Jacques Chirac of France who rejects a NATO role.

Mr. Kerry also said that the allies would find it difficult to contribute without greater cover from the United Nations. We now have it. Why can't Mr. Kerry find it in his heart to express a modicum of disappointment with, say, the Germans, who for months have vowed not to provide troops even with United Nations endorsement, even if NATO authorizes them to do so?

In fact, there are a couple of good reasons that the senator's foreign policy pronouncements are long on critique of Mr. Bush and short on everything else....



Peter D. Feaver is a professor of political science at Duke University and the author of "Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight and Civil-Military Relations."

What a prick.

Doesn't Duke have a progressive reputation? I'm not saying that means every faculty member must be a lefty, just that the fact that he's from Duke says (to me, anyway) nothing about who this guy is.

Their players have this sterling reputation, therefore they get away with crimes and don't get NCAA sanctions.

As for their academic reputation, they are known as progressives.

with Bush*. They don't trust him or like him but when America elects a new President world opinion probably will change for the better. Kerry will not try and browbeat world leaders for the sake of the Bush* Cabal. It is not his place to belittle world leaders. That is what the Bush* Cabal excells at.

who believes "Our way or the highway; USA right or wrong." The US--the whole world--needs a US President who leads a dialogue toward solutions.

The Clinton Mind-Set

By Peter D. Feaver
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A21


"Albright is partly correct; there was a pre-9/11 mindset that shaped Clinton-era responses. The mind-set was "counterterrorism as law-enforcement." The role of the military was at best a supporting one. Moreover, because the uniformed military themselves opposed a military role, the law enforcement mind-set was reinforced by Clinton's pathological civil-military relations. Even if President Clinton wanted to conduct military operations against al Qaeda, he was simply too weak a commander in chief to prevail over a military that wanted nothing to do with a war in Afghanistan.

"The Clinton record on military operations was clear: frequent resort to low-risk cruise-missile strikes and high-level bombings, but shunning any form of decisive operations involving ground troops in areas of high risk. The Clinton White House was the most casualty phobic administration in modern times, and this fear of body bags was not lost on Osama bin Laden. Indeed, al Qaeda rhetoric regularly "proved" that the Americans were vulnerable to terrorism by invoking the hasty cut-and-run after 18 Army soldiers died in the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" events in Somalia -- a strategy developed and implemented, ironically enough, by the same Richard Clarke who torments the Bush team today."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A19164-2004Mar23

Works for me.

thier Kerry is just like bush meme isn't working.

Joking aside, the allies are NOT reluctant to line up behind the U.S., but they are understandably reluctant to line up behind bush*.
Unlike the American right-wing, they recognize gross incompetence when they see it. That team will play for President Kerry, IMO.

Allies simply don't trust Bush*. They've seen him play it fast and loose with the truth and they saw how he whiplashed Tony Blair (re: going back to the UN), they understood very clearly that the attempt at "diplomacy" to prevent an invasion of Iraq was nothing more than window dressing.

Kerry's policies may resemble those of Bush* (more precisely, Bush has mirrored Kerry) but the element that Bush* cannot provide is trust.

Kerry can.

Mr Feaver seems to have forgotten that Mr. Kerry has not yet been elected President. Though Bush* hasn't either, he is the one who sits in the Oval Office, and therefore isn't it Bush*'s job to get support from NATO? I found it odd that Mr Feaver would suggest that Kerry criticize our NATO allies, while not saying a word about what Bush* should do.

Maybe Mr Feaver recognizes that Bush*'s previous performance insulting our allies beared little fruit, and now he wants Kerry to level the playing field by repeating Bush*'s mistakes.

Ergo he's turning his attention away from an ineffectual loser to the probable next commander in chief.