It’s going to get worse. Much worse.

So you thought US foreign policy in Bush’s first term was as bad as it could get??
Ha-ha-ha. Does Unca Dick Cheney have some surprises in store for you.
Those talented and straight-talking Knight-Ridder journos Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay wrote yesterday that:

    U.S. officials and foreign policy analysts said Monday that by agreeing to Powell’s departure and approving a purge by new CIA chief Porter Goss, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appear to be eliminating the few independent centers of power in the U.S. national security apparatus and cementing the system under their personal control.
    Powell and his State Department team – quietly backed by the intelligence community – argued often for a foreign policy that was more inclusive of allies and that relied on diplomacy and coercion rather than on force to deal with adversaries.

Strobel and Landay also report that some of Powell’s friends said he had “hoped to stay on a little longer”.
Bombs-Away Don will be staying on, meanwhile, and of course Condi’s heading over to State. S & L have this great quote from the Brookings Institution’s Ivo Daalder… (read on)

    “We are seeing the consummation of the revolution… Anybody who thought that a `Bush 2′ foreign policy would be a more moderate, multilateral, (John) Kerry-like foreign policy just doesn’t understand this president, or this election,” Daalder said.

And to underline what might be in store for the Middle East, the LA Times reported that Assistant Sec of State for the Near East Bill Burns is being moved on from that post. Fair enough… But the next possibility they mention is quite terrifying:

    One possible replacement [for Burns] is Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington public policy center.

Pletka is an unbelievable, Ann Coulter-like ideologue of a figure. Or, as the LAT folks put it, more diplomaticlly: “She has been an outspoken advocate of the Iraq war and Israel’s interests.”
She used to be Jesse Helms’s chief foreign-policy aide. At a time in his career, of course, when he was virulently pro-Likud, as opposed to the earlier ophase when he was virulently anti-Semitic.
Here in the Middle East, jaws have dropped on hearing of the possibility of her appointment. In Lebanon she’s known as “Mrs. Legs”, because of her habit of wearing extremely short mini-skirts to official meetings.
Not at all an appropriate thing to do in Arab or Muslim countries.
Lebanon is one thing. But one person here recalled seeing her wear similarly revealing clothing while walking around Gaza, a place marked by much more social conservatism in matters of dress. Then, when some Gaza men started staring at her, apparently unable to believe their eyes, she harangued them loudly.
This is not trivial, but it’s just one sign of the determinedly “in yer face” attitude she takes to Muslims and Arabs on the whole range of issues. Especially, of course, Israeli-Palestinian issues and questions about war and peace in Iraq. Let’s hope someone comes up with a better alternative for this job than Pletka.

11 thoughts on “It’s going to get worse. Much worse.”

  3. The press has identified “unarmed sleeper cells” found in Fallujah. What the heck is that? Civilians without guns or ammo who have fantasies about being rebels?
    Anyway, I got to thinking that those of us following Iraq and what is happening there are “armed nonsleeper cells”…. armed, of course, with our words and our knowledge. And we are not sleeping through this nightmare at all. So, everyone, please stay active and do whatever you can!
    And I want to say how disappointed I am in the Christian Science Monitor’s story on how the video of the Marine shooting an unarmed injured Iraqi damaged the US’s “image”. I don’t care at all about “image”, but I do care about MORALITY and how human beings are treated. And I always expect the CSM to reflect these values.

  4. “I do care about MORALITY and how human beings are treated. And I always expect the CSM to reflect these values.”
    Susan– I don’t always, alas, EXPECT the CSM to reflect these values, but I do HOPE that would.
    I too was disaapointed in that coverage. Probably, Letters need to be sent to the Editor, don’t you think?

  6. No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect. martha Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

  8. It is a wise father that knows his own child. trevor See first that the design is wise and just: that ascertained, pursue it resolutely; do not for one repulse forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.

  9. No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect. chuck The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s, When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

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