Bush Policy: Cut and Run

Why Did Bush Cut And Run In Afghanistan?
Taliban Use Beheadings and Beatings to Keep Afghanistan's Schools Closed
By Tom Coghlan, The Independent UK
The letter pinned overnight to the wall of the mosque in Kandahar was succinct. "Girls going to school need to be careful for their safety. If we put acid on their faces or they are murdered then the blame will be on their parents."

Today the local school stands empty, victim of what amounts to a Taliban war on knowledge. The liberal wind of change that swept the country in 2001 is being reversed. By the conservative estimate of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, 100,000 students have been terrorised out of schools in the past year. The number is certainly far higher and many teachers have been murdered, some beheaded.

In the province of Zabul a teacher and female MP, Toor Peikai, said yesterday: "There are 47 schools in my province but only three are open." Only one teaches girls. It is 200 metres from a large US military base in the provincial capital.

…And When He Cut and Ran, Did He Expect to Create This?
Sectarian violence kills about 60 in Iraq
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

BAGHAD, Iraq - Suicide bombers struck Tuesday across the street from the heavily guarded Green Zone, killing up to 16 people — the deadliest attack in a wave of bombings and shootings that threatened to shatter confidence in Iraq's new government.

In all, about 60 people died in more than a dozen bombings, shootings and ambushes — mostly in the Baghdad area, according to police reports. The dead included 10 Shiites slain by gunmen who fired on their bus as it left the capital for a funeral in southern Iraq, police said.

Lawmakers summoned the defense and interior ministers to explain the failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's security plan for the capital — where most of the recent violence has occurred.

The attack near the Green Zone occurred at midmorning when two suicide bombers detonated explosives at a restaurant frequented by police, the U.S. military and witnesses said.

Sixteen other people were killed in the blast, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police put the casualty figure at 12 dead and 13 wounded. Blue-uniformed Iraqi police hauled the dead from the wreckage in body bags as heavily armed American soldiers stood guard.

A statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Israeli military operations in Gaza and the alleged rape-slaying by U.S. soldiers of a young Iraqi woman south of Baghdad.

The Islamic Army is a major insurgent group but authenticity of the statement could not be determined.

Much of the violence Tuesday appeared sectarian, part of a surge in tit-for-tat killings that began Sunday when Shiite gunmen rampaged through a mostly Sunni area of west Baghdad, killing 41 people, according to police.

Throughout Tuesday, car bombs detonated and mortar shells exploded in Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods across the sprawling capital. Most caused few deaths and injuries but collectively the toll was high, suggesting that U.S. and Iraqi forces are powerless to stop the violence soon.

But North Korea (who actually has weapons) Is No Threat?
from Democracy In Action and C A P

By virtually every measure, the Bush administration's North Korea policy is a failure. Diplomatic efforts have broken down, missiles are being test fired, and plutonium production has resumed. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow unveiled the administration's new strategy: bash Clinton. At the press conference, Snow accused the Clinton administration of going to North Korea with “flowers and chocolates” and "light water nuclear reactors." Snow said that the Clinton administration policy had "failed" and the Bush administration had "learned from that mistake." The reality is that the Bush administration is now scrambling to return to where the Clinton administration left off: meaningful diplomatic engagement that puts North Korea's nuclear program on ice.

THE CLINTON RECORD -- NORTH KOREA PRODUCES NO PLUTONIUM: In 1994, the United States almost went to war with North Korea to prevent the further development of their nuclear arsenal. (North Korea produced enough plutonium to create one or two nuclear weapons during the first Bush administration.) The conflict was narrowly avoided with the creation of the "Agreed Framework." Under the agreed framework, North Korea agreed to shut down its major nuclear reactor, stop construction of two nuclear power plants, and subject spent nuclear fuel to international inspection. In return, Japan and South Korea agreed to build two light-water reactors (far less of a proliferation concern) and the U.S. would supply North Korea with heavy oil to make up for the lost energy from its shuttered nuclear plants. Once the light-water reactors were completed, their existing nuclear reactors were to be dismantled. The deal wasn't perfect, but during the Clinton administration, North Korea didn't make any nuclear bombs. It was later discovered that the North Koreans, as early as 2000, were attempting to aquire technology for uranium enrichment which violated their agreements. It does not appear that this program advanced very far before the U.S. detected it and confronted North Korea with the evidence in 2002. BIPARTISAN POLICY: The Clinton administration approach was a bipartisan effort. In order to fulfill its end of the bargain, Congress had to appropriate funds to finance the shipments of heavy oil. Congress, controlled at the time by staunch conservatives such as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), approved the funds every year.

THE BUSH RECORD -- NORTH KOREA PRODUCES ENOUGH PLUTONIUM FOR AS MANY AS 10 NUKES: Upon taking office, the Bush administration rejected former Secretary of State Colin Powell's recommendation to "pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off." Instead, the Bush administration reversed Theodore Roosevelt's approach to foreign policy, speaking loudly but carrying no stick. The Bush administration ramped up the rhetoric. President Bush included North Korea in the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address, and the National Security Strategy Statement of the United States released in 2002 talked about the possible need to take preemptive military action against North Korea. When North Korea responded by expelling international inspectors and unsealing its nuclear facilities, the Bush administration had no effective response. The result is that North Korea now has enough plutonium to produce as many as ten additional nuclear weapons. Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute writes, "The United States should stop huffing and puffing and threatening to blow down the North Koreans house. This will not work and simply makes America look like a big, bad wolf, albeit one who blew and blew but nothing happened."

POLICY PARALYSIS: The Bush administration has been paralyzed on North Korea, split between pragmatists who want to negotiate an end to the nuclear program and ideologues who want to end the regime. Its strategy of "six-party talks," meetings between the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia, is a good one, but for two years these sessions went nowhere as U.S. negotiators were forbidden to actually negotiate. The hardliners counted on the Iraq war intimidating North Korea into submission. But the North accelerated its program after the Iraq invasion. When the strategy of regime elimination proved feckless, the hardliners went to Plan B: Let China do it. After North Korea test-launched several missiles on July 4, the administration pushed China to apply more pressure on North Korea to end its missile tests and return to international nuclear disarmament talks. China will never push North Korea into a collapse that would destabilize the peninsula and send refugees flooding into China. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opened direct, bilateral negotiations with North Korea in 2005, she made rapid progress producing a landmark agreement in September 2005 to end the nuclear program. But it was immediately sabotaged by hardliners who wanted to squeeze the North by blocking bank credits. The Korean responded with missile tests. It's time to put Rice back in charge and to negotiate a final end to the nuclear and missile programs.

Yeah…”Stay The Course”