Prestowitz Attacks Neocons from the right in World Council PBS Broadcast

World Affairs Council of Northern California media site ^ | 07/21/03 | World Affairs Council

[risk]

Economic Strategy Institute's Clyde Prestowitz

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Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (Meet the Author)

Date:	07/21/03
Speaker(s):	Clyde Prestowitz
Description:	Examining the erosion of goodwill toward the United States, Prestowitz lays out a scathing criticism of American foreign policy. He insists that America's intentions are usually good, and that the world admires Americans when they live up to their own ideals. However, according to Prestowitz, the world is able to see, with glaring clarity, some of the hypocrisies of American foreign policy and this is a primary source of resentment.

Duration:	01:08:09
Bitrate:	16Kbps

Rogue Nation
by Clyde Prestowitz
Average Customer Review:

From Publishers Weekly
As the worldwide outpouring of post-9/11 sympathy for America has given way to worldwide anti-American protests, Americans are asking why the world hates us. This nuanced but unsparing book gives a bill of particulars. American high-handedness has exacerbated tensions in hot spots from the West Bank to the Korean peninsula. American unilateralism has sabotaged a host of international agreements on such issues as land mines, biological weapons and the International Criminal Court. America preaches free trade while protecting its steel, textiles and agriculture from foreign competition. America, Atkins argues, runs a wasteful, SUV-centered economy while it rejects treaties on the environment and global warming. America's self-proclaimed role as champion of democracy flies in the face of its history of installing and supporting dictators in countries from Indonesia to Iraq. Most of all, Atkins says, the world fears America's overwhelming military might, now ominously paired with a doctrine of "preempting" the emergence of rival powers. These problems have been much discussed of late, but Prestowitz, author of Trading Places, pulls them together into a comprehensive and historically informed survey of contemporary U. S. foreign relations. Although he forthrightly calls the United States an imperial power, Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration trade official, is by no means anti-American. He insists that America's intentions are usually good, and that the world likes and admires Americans when they live up to their own ideals. Still, his is a damning portrait of the United States as seen through the angry, bewildered eyes of foreigners: selfish, erratic, hypocritical, muscle-bound and a bad citizen of the world.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[risk]

The WMD genie is already out of the bottle

That's like saying you have a leak in your car's radiator, but you don't think you need to fix it.

Like other ethnic and religious wars, I think we should make it a point to stay out of it - in every way.

So you're an anti-Zionist who doesn't see the moral difference between the Islamic pan-arab culture and the Jewish one? In your view, they're just uninteresting cultural combatants in a land that just happens to have oil? Would you have said the same during the Holocaust,, that the Germans were just another cultural combatant? Because if we were to abandon Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew left alive in Israel within five years. That is the stated goal of all of Israel's enemies. And it is not symmetric: Jews are tolerant of Arabs in most situations.

Americans are not too weak to take a stand in support of Israel. We would be considered weak in the eyes of our enemies if we didn't support Israel now.

There isn't any connection between Iraq and 9/11.

What about the first WTC bombing? The OKC bombing? What about Saddam's attack on Bush Senior? What about the use of chemical weapons on our troops in Gulf war I? What about the continual AAA ordnance hurled against our no-fly enforcers?

In my view, we'll need to return to the draft if our committments aren't quickly reduced and we don't return to a policy which places the emphasis on defense instead of playing policeman to the world.

The draft issue is mostly caused by the low pay our service members receive, at least in my view. In any case, you haven't answered my biggest objection to critics of our war in Iraq: the Axis of Evil is a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. Iraq was the easiest one on the list to neutralize, and I think we're just getting started.

[caltrop]

My point on WMDs is that, if even a dippy cult in Japan can produce Sarin gas, we'd better accept the fact the stuff is out there. Merely because a country, however, has the stuff doesn't mean they'll be able to use it in anything other than a defensive mode.

I don't know if being completely indifferent to Israel's fate makes me an anti-Zionist. I guess if it does I must also be anti-Biafran, anti-Cambodian, etc. The US taking sides in a religious war is, IMHO, anti-American. My guess is the rest of the world wouldn't see us as weak if we chose to stay out of the Israeli-Palestinian War, just that we finally came to our senses.

If you think Iraq had a connection to 9/11 contact the government with your information. They'll be happy to hear from you as they've tried hard, and without success, to make a connection. If all you've got is promotional material designed to sucker us into invading Iraq they won't be any more interested in it than I am.

The recruiting/retention problems I see looming have nothing to do with pay. I served in the Army to defend my country and stayed in the reserves for the same reason. When I volunteered for Vietnam, where I served for a year, I didn't do it for the combat pay and when I gave up evenings, weekends, took time off and went away every year in the reserves I lost money most of the time. I've since been retired. Were I younger and still in the reserves I'd probably be retiring at the first moment they'd let me - solely because wandering around the globe looking for dragons to slay isn't something I support.

[RightWhale]

the world is able to see, with glaring clarity, some of the hypocrisies of American foreign policy and this is a primary source of resentment.

Of course. But doesn't change the truth that America is still lightyears ahead of whoever is in second place.

[risk]

My point on WMDs is that, if even a dippy cult in Japan can produce Sarin gas, we'd better accept the fact the stuff is out there.

I have to reject this point of view. Western (and that includes Japanese) law enforcement and military agencies should be doing everything they can to eliminate these weapons. Deciding that they are simply out of control and warrant a mere buildup of deterrence-style counterforce is insufficient. I think the horror of Aum Shinrikyo's subway attacks is plenty of evidence to that effect. They just happen to be virulently anti-semitic, as well.

I don't know if being completely indifferent to Israel's fate makes me an anti-Zionist. I guess if it does I must also be anti-Biafran, anti-Cambodian, etc

I think it makes you an isolationist. That's a choice we all need to make, but I don't see the world as being more stable or less threatening than it was in 1937 today. There were plenty of people making similar justifications for our isolation then. But I think many of us have learned that preemption is a better way. Nations in the Axis of Evil or international terror groups that talk about attacking us and show an ability to do so are little less of a threat than Hitler was in the 1930s. Don't you think it the least bit significant that they speak the same language, the hatred and vilification of the Jews?

The US taking sides in a religious war is, IMHO, anti-American.

As I've said, it's not a religious war. Muslim extremism is barbarism without a doubt. Judaism is just another religion that happens to be practiced in the west with no deep-seated animosities for you or me. If 9/11 didn't persuade you, if the continual stream of death threats to Americans that we've heard over the past 30 years hasn't persuaded you that the pan-Arab nationalism (either Islamic or Baathist) isn't about anti-westernism, anti-modernity, and nothing short of a war on human progress, then I don't know how to persuade you. Prestowitz's attack on Bush's Christianity is an affront to my own secularism. When President Bush speaks of our duty to defend freedom, I don't hear the religion first, I hear his call to recognize an American opportunity to improve the world from a humanist standpoint. Prestowitz is just grandstanding and playing to the anti-Christian sentiments in this leftist crowd.

If you think Iraq had a connection to 9/11 contact the government with your information.

I dont know anything that you don't about that, and I don't think it's necessary to justify our presence in Iraq.

I think this concludes my argument. I'll let it stand for itself. I think you've earned the right to advocate isolationism, and you've earned the right to say that you'd sit out our overseas "adventure." So please don't take any of my continued disagreements with your position as a lack of respect for your status as a citizen soldier.

[risk]

hasn't persuaded you that the pan-Arab nationalism (either Islamic or Baathist) isn't about anti-westernism, anti-modernity, and nothing short of a war on human progress

Is, not isn't.

[monkeyshine]

It used to be that a liberal wanted people to be free.