Separated at birth?
Posted on 07/28/2006 4:26:14 PM PDT by RWR8189
Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe "pops up" isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had "resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties," i.e., between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Christopher's piece needs to be read to be believed. It needs to be read as an example of the fatuousness of liberal elite opinion about the world we live in. That opinion is dominant in the Democratic party--and, unfortunately, has penetrated the Bush State Department more than one would wish. Still, Christopher's op-ed is such a convenient reminder of how much worse things could be that one wonders whether he's on Karl Rove's payroll.
He's probably not. After all, this is the man who, as secretary of state, allowed ethnic cleansing to go on far too long in the Balkans, presided over humiliations in Somalia and Haiti, did nothing in the face of genocide in Rwanda, didn't respond to terror at Khobar Towers, and allowed Hafez al-Assad to treat him as a supplicant. He's back, basically articulating the line of the non-Lieberman wing--that is, 95 percent--of the Democratic party.
What's his line? That "we should focus our efforts on stopping the killing." How? Three recommendations. First, "an immediate cease-fire must take priority, with negotiations on longer-term arrangements to follow." In other words, the fact that one of the warring parties is a state that had withdrawn from occupied territory and was scrupulously complying with its obligations, and the other is a terror group that was arming itself to the teeth and killing and kidnapping citizens of a neighboring country, is irrelevant. And the notion that a terror group should be in any way disadvantaged by the "longer-term arrangements to follow," that the terrorists should pay any price for their actions, is nowhere suggested by Christopher. Indeed, he is so much the Compleat Diplomat that he never mentions the incident that caused the outbreak of hostilities: Hezbollah's attack across the Israel-Lebanon border.
Second: "If a cease-fire is the goal, the United States has an indispensable role to play." The highlighting of U.S. indispensability is a (moderately clever) way of disguising the fact that Christopher wants the United States to yield in its view of the Middle East conflict to the Europeans and the United Nations. What does U.S. indispensability mean to Warren Christopher? That only we can muscle the Israelis into an agreement, and that "the Europeans are unlikely to participate in a multinational enforcement action until the United States commits to putting its own troops on the ground." In other words, what is indispensable is not a distinctively American view of the situation or the exercise of American leadership. It is helping the international community to impose an evenhanded settlement on Israel and Hezbollah.
Third: The United States has to engage in "direct dialogue" with Syria, since Syria has "more leverage over Hezbollah's actions than any other country save Iran." And what about Iran? Christopher leaves unsaid what would undoubtedly be his recommendation: direct engagement without conditions with that regime as well. He does write, "as the situations with North Korea and Iran confirm, refusing to speak with those we dislike is a recipe for frustration and failure." It would, I suppose, be undiplomatic to mention North Korea's missile launches and Iran's nuclear weapons program. They just happen to be nations "we dislike."
In Warren Christopher's world, we should dislike fewer regimes. Then, presumably, we'd be disliked less. Israel, however, we should dislike. After all, "every day America gives the green light to further Israeli violence, our already tattered reputation sinks even lower." This isn't even evenhandedness. Nowhere in his op-ed is Christopher as harsh about Hezbollah--or Syria or Iran--as he is about Israel. Israeli violence is the problem. Anti-Israeli policies are the solution. Warren Christopher, meet Kofi Annan.
The Bush administration has wavered and floundered too much over the last year. Its State Department remains in some considerable denial about Iran, and its Defense Department about Iraq. We look forward to resuming our constructive criticisms of the administration. But we pause this week to say this: Given the spirit of today's liberal establishment and Democratic party, so perfectly personified by Warren Christopher, thank God we have a Bush and not a Kerry administration.
--William Kristol
Never in the history of this country has a "President" assembled more idiots than Clinton did for his "cabinet". An untold embarassment to the United States, these fools continue to pontificate and demonstrate their utter incompetence and anti-Americanism.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Warren Christopher was really 'out there'. He couldn't tell you his middle name without first getting a briefing from his aides.
I believe that during his time of service in the Clintoon
misadministration, Warren Christopher was in fact DEAD.
They just propped him up on various couches.
Carter reject, enough said.
Warren Christopher is still alive? Geez, it seems like he was Woodrow Wilson's SoS as well.
"Fired by Bill" should be his epitath.
Warren was too incompetent for even the Clintons. And that's saying a lot.
Separated at birth?
Just what we need -- advice from the members of the failed Carter administration that is chiefly responsible for the foreign policy debacle that created present-day Iran.
It would be acceptable if we could learn something from these has-beens if they had learned from their own mistakes. But it's simply ludicrous to give a forum to the members of a thoroughly incompetent and inept administration that, tragically for themselves and the nation, showed themselves utterly incapable of governing.
mark
The dregs of that horrible administration were mined for slick willie's cabinet.
Make no mistake, if her heinous were ever president, (G-D FORBID)......those same dregs would be back in power with their dangerous advice.
I read in Halberstam´s ´War in a Time of Peace´ that as Secretary of State, Christopher spent most of his time sitting in his office staring at a picture of a sailboat on his desk.
I think that Warren Christopher would have been a good cast for ´Weekend at Bernies.´
Just like Weekend with Bernie. Prop him up, move hi, around but do not stop the party. Bernie is more alive than Christopher.
The last I heard, Christopher's still waiting in the lobby for the Syrian President...
Actually, the Clinton cabinet -- along with the Vice Presidential candidate -- were very carefully chosen.
Three primary qualifications were necessary:
1. A certain dull-minded stupidity -- so as to remain blissfully unaware of the brazen corruption planned by the President and First Lady.
2. Unquestioning loyalty -- so as to be willing to believe anything the Chief Executive might say ("I did not have sex with...")
2. Absence of a higher ambition -- so as not to seek power for themselves if, for some reason, a mistake was made regarding #1.
In that sense, I'd submit that the Clinton cabinet lived up to their not-so-lofty specifications.
I stood shocked in 1993 as Clinton picked out - specifically - failure after failure from the Carter administration. One would expect him to pick people from Carter, being fellow Democrats, but specific failures? Warren Christopher's appointment was a suprise even to people who supported him, as he'd been known more for annoying others into compromise through persistance rather than coming up with solutions to problems himself.
Christopher did, however, come up with the position paper on Iran that advised Carter to just let the Shah fall.
I think this episode speaks volumes about why liberal foreign policy sucks so bad in this harsh world.
Christopher did, however, come up with the position paper on Iran that advised Carter to just let the Shah fall.
----
Yep, this was the great foreign policy President that Kerry recently tried to shove down the throat of Bolton, which of course, turned out to be a HUGE MISTAKE and Kerry got the issue used as a suppository on him --- Kerry is such a Marxist idiot.
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