Singapore wants U.S. ties with China, Japan to be strong

(Kyodo) –Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong urged the United States on Friday to maintain rock-solid ties with China and Japan because of Southeast Asian countries’ reluctance to be torn between the two Asian powers.

After a meeting with Lee at the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush said he will travel to Singapore in September for the first summit with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

On the U.S. relationship with China and Japan, Lee said during a joint appearance with Bush before journalists that the two Asian nations “set the context within which Southeast Asia can prosper.”

“And good relations between America and the major countries, China and Japan, are critical because the Southeast Asian countries want to be friends with both and do not want to have to choose sides with either,” he said.

Bush said he will visit Singapore in September on his way to Australia, where he will attend an annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

“I talked to Prime Minister Lee about America’s desire to stay in close contact with not only Singapore, but our partners” in ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam., he said.

“To this end, the prime minister has invited me, and I’ve accepted an invitation, to go back to Singapore to talk to our partners and friends about trade and security, and we’ll do so on my way to the APEC meetings in Australia,” he said.

ASEAN has long sought a summit with the United States but failed to materialize one, primarily owing to Washington’s aversion to Myanmar’s poor record on human rights and democracy.

This year has been a major target as it commemorates the 30th anniversary of their dialogue relationship that began in 1977. ASEAN already has annual summit meetings with other so-called dialogue partners such as Japan, China and South Korea.

Lee, who is on a weeklong official U.S. visit that began Wednesday, said he encouraged Bush to further ties between ASEAN and the United States both as a group and bilaterally.

He said he suggested that both sides “should consider suitable new initiatives which perhaps would be able to take our relations another step forward.”

On other issues, the two leaders said they discussed Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea, in addition to what Bush termed “very strong” bilateral relations.

Lee lauded Bush for the steadfastness and resolve with which he is grappling with complicated problems in the Middle East and Iraq, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It’s critical for us in Southeast Asia that America does that,” he said. “And the president continues to give strong leadership on that because it affects America’s standing in Asia and the world, and also the security environment in Asia.”

Extremists, the Singapore premier said, “watch carefully what’s happening in the Middle East and take heart, or lose heart, depending on what’s happening.”

Bush thanked Singapore for its help in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S., British officials drop ‘war on terror’

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 5, 2007

British bureaucrats and U.S. lawmakers are abandoning the phrases “war on terror” and “long war” as the Bush administration redefines the battle against al Qaeda as a global war of ideology against a network of terrorists.
    
“I recognize that using the term ‘war’ with respect to the struggle we’re engaged in makes some people uncomfortable,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told students during a speech Thursday at Johns Hopkins University.
    
“We have to recognize we are fighting members of a movement and an ideology that seeks to advance a totalitarian world vision around the globe,” he said.

“And if we don’t understand that and contend in the field of ideology, we cannot really match this enemy across the entire spectrum of the challenge.”
    
The change in rhetoric began in March, when the Pentagon quietly ditched the phrase “long war.” Last month, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee decreed they would no longer use the phrases “war on terror” and “long war.”
    
Hilary Benn, the international development secretary in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet, said last week that his government has instructed all diplomats to discontinue using the phrase “war on terror.”
    
“We can’t win by military means alone,” Mr. Benn said. “And because this isn’t us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives.”
    
Mr. Chertoff said the war being waged by the United States and its allies is a struggle that “requires us to prevail in the battle over ideas and ideology.”
    
The Allies prevailed in World War II and the Cold War “because the ideology that the West and the free world proposed was a triumphant ideology, or virtually triumphed all over the world,” he said. “The fact that one uses tools of terror as opposed to massed armies with flags and tanks doesn’t mean that you’re not dealing with a war.”
    
Terrorism “is not a movement, it’s a tactic. But terrorism is a tactic that can be used in a war,” Mr. Chertoff said.
    

The new war on terror

By Daniel Gallington
April 30, 2007

Just when we need creative solutions and new strategies to fight global terrorism, we’re getting political posturing for the 2008 presidential election.
    
Both sides are a little bit guilty of this: The Congress passed a war funding Bill any president would have vetoed because it interfered with presidential prerogatives as commander in chief. The administration says it is looking for a “war czar” to coordinate the war-related efforts of the State and Defense Departments, an odd idea that critics say looks like part of an exit plan — a political “hand-off” of an increasingly unpopular war.
    
Neither effort is likely to address the fundamental policy issues raised by the war in Iraq or the larger “war on terrorism.” What’s wrong with our efforts isn’t a matter of exit dates or more coordination — though better coordination is almost always a good thing. The problem is our basic strategy for the war on terror is flawed — this is an extremely dangerous situation and can only encourage further terrorist attacks on us, attacks al Qaeda described recently as “on a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
    
In fact, here is the very scary proposition: We could fail in Iraq — and in the larger “war on terror” — unless we change our basic strategy to target the various strategic components (financial, political and logistic) that terrorism needs for its continued operational success. However, so far we have mostly fought terrorism using traditional counterinsurgency strategies, with only mixed success. Not surprisingly, Americans have tired of this.
    
Some history is instructive: World War II was a massive logistic endeavor for us and cost thousands of lives, but it was mostly over in four-plus years — in Europe, just 18 months after D-Day — and we clearly won it. The war in Iraq has already gone that long with no possibility for a “military victory” (according to Henry Kissinger, who learned it firsthand in the 1970s) even though “victory” is still the word of choice used by the administration to describe our goal there.
    
The war in Korea ended in a stalemate that continues to this day. By many objective measures, we lost the war in Vietnam and at the same time showed anyone interested exactly how to beat us. And the Vietnam War answered this question: Do we have the stomach and patience to fight an insurgency to a successful conclusion? Regardless of whether we should have, the warring factions in Iraq have determined we don’t.
    
Lesson? Americans are impatient: We only give our political leaderships so much time to win a war — any war — and we had better win this one soon.
    
The new strategy: The September 11, 2001, attack was an asymmetric attack on us. Should we have responded with say, a withering — perhaps asymmetric — strike on the leadership or infrastructure of the countries we know sponsor terror, despite lack of a direct cause-and-effect relationship with the September 11 attack?
    
This strategy would assume we may never have a direct cause-and-effect relationship when terrorists strike us. In fact, it is often the trademark of terrorist attack against us that the responsibility for it is “stateless” — so we will not be sure whom to blame.

This new strategy would blame the most likely state sponsors of the terror and take action against them.
    ”Impossible” you might say: The United States has never engaged in asymmetric warfare and never will — this because it’s impossible for a democracy like ours to conduct war other than “by the rules.” By the way, the obvious implication of this idiom explains why asymmetric warfare is so often used against us: Because it has proven so effective and because opposing us conventionally would result in certain defeat — witness the two “conventional” wars in Iraq.
    
But we have used asymmetric warfare — we used it to end World War II in the Pacific against an increasingly radical, irrational and desperate enemy who refused to capitulate, employing human wave and suicide attacks against us. So, “can we do it” is probably the wrong question, especially against an enemy who has chosen asymmetric warfare as its primary means of military operations against us, and against enemies who have sworn to kill us all, young and old, Democrat or Republican, and who are willing to die trying.
    
In short, if we truly have had enough of this craziness and want to protect our children and grandchildren against even grander-scale terrorist attacks than those of September 11, we should stop talking about “end games” and “war czars” and dust off some strategic concepts that incorporate these new strategies.
    
We need make it clear we are tired of counterinsurgency (we clearly are) and intend to hold the leaderships and infrastructures of Iran, Syria, et al., at strategic risk for their support of terrorism — and that this could include asymmetric responses.
    
Sure we can do it, and in the final analysis we may have no real choice — unless we have become comfortable in the role of the primary target for fanatical terror approved and financed by the various radical, hatemonger, nation-states in the Middle East.

And, if you still have reservations about the new strategy, how do you feel about a new attack on the U.S. “on a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki”?
    
    Daniel Gallington is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va.
    

Terror War Called Riskier Than Vietnam

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 29, 2007; Page A19

President Bush recently said that “there’s a lot of differences” between the current war in Iraq and the Vietnam War.

As fighting in Iraq enters its fifth year, an increasing number of experts in foreign policy and national strategy are arguing that the biggest difference may be that the Iraq war will inflict greater damage to U.S. interests than Vietnam did.

“In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam,” said former defense secretary William S. Cohen. “The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope.”

About 17 times as many U.S. troops died in the Vietnam War — the longest war in U.S. history — as have been lost in Iraq, the nation’s third-longest war.

Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict. However, Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy and festering with terrorism, experts say, leading many of them to conclude that the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States.

“It makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk,” said retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, a veteran of the Vietnam War. The domino theory that nations across Southeast Asia would go communist was not fulfilled, he noted, but with Iraq, “worst-case scenarios are the most likely thing to happen.”

Iraq is worse than Vietnam “in so many ways,” agreed Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a retired Army officer and author of one of the most respected studies of the U.S. military’s failure in Vietnam. “We knew what we were getting into in Vietnam. We didn’t here.”

Also, President Richard M. Nixon used diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union to exploit the split between them and so minimize the fallout of Vietnam. By contrast, Krepinevich said, the Bush administration has “magnified” the problems of Iraq by neglecting public diplomacy in the Muslim world and by not developing an energy policy to reduce the significance of Middle Eastern oil.

In strategic terms, the Vietnam conflict was understood even by many of its opponents as part of a global stance of containment, a policy that preceded the war and endured for 15 years after Saigon fell, noted retired Army Col. Richard H. Sinnreich, a veteran of two Vietnam tours of duty. “I’m not sure we can count on a similarly prompt strategic recovery this time around,” he continued. “Bush’s preemption strategy was controversial even before Iraq, and the war itself has been so badly mismanaged that even our allies doubt our competence.”

Gary Solis, who fought as a Marine in Vietnam and more recently taught the law of war at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he is hearing more such discussions. “Most of my military acquaintances agree that the issues in our departure from Vietnam will pale beside those that will be presented by an Iraq withdrawal,” Solis said.

In addition, some experts say that the ethical burden of the Iraq war is heavier for Americans. “Vietnam had an ongoing civil war when the U.S. intervened, while Iraq’s civil war did not begin until after the U.S. intervention,” said a State Department official who served in Iraq and is not authorized to speak to the media. “This makes it much harder — morally — for us to extricate ourselves, at least from where I sit.”

To be sure, not everyone agrees that Iraq’s damage to the United States will exceed that of Vietnam. Cornell University historian Fredrik Logevall, an expert on the origins of the Vietnam conflict, said he hears the argument frequently from both supporters and opponents of the Iraq war, but he doesn’t buy it, because it rests on predictions rather than facts.

Although both conflicts were “wars of choice” that frustrated and angered Americans, Vietnam caused far more death and destruction, he said. “It’s hard to see how it’s worse at present,” he concluded. He was interviewed by e-mail on the same day that he was delivering a lecture in Nottingham, England, comparing the two wars.

“Those who argue about Iraq being worse than Vietnam tend to make those worst-case assumptions,” said retired Army Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, now a professor of international relations at Boston University.

But the pessimists respond that their view is warranted. “I believe the deception and incompetence have been far worse in Iraq,” said former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), a Vietnam veteran. And Nathaniel Fick, a Marine veteran of Iraq, noted that until recently U.S. generals have not been criticized much in the Iraq war — a sharp contrast to the lambasting that Army Gen. William Westmoreland and others received during Vietnam.

Some of those making the argument say they already are beginning to see the outlines of an “Iraq syndrome” that will replace the “Vietnam syndrome” that haunted U.S. foreign policy for decades.

“I think the hangover from this war will be at least as bad as Vietnam and wouldn’t be surprised by a growing movement toward retrenchment and isolationism,” said Erin M. Simpson, a counterinsurgency expert at Harvard University. She also is worried by a “stab-in-the-back narrative” emerging about who lost Iraq that could poison discourse between the military and political leaders for years to come.

“We have seen how subsequent generations looked at the world and the exercise of American power through Vietnam-colored lenses,” agreed Thomas Donnelly, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who was a leading advocate of invading Iraq. “I would be surprised if future generations didn’t begin to see things, distortedly, through an Iraq-colored prism.”

Cheney slams Reid’s ‘the Iraq war is lost’

By S.A. Miller and Jon Ward
The Washington Times
April 25, 2007

Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for making “uninformed and misleading” statements about the war in Iraq.
    
“What is most troubling about Mr. Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism,” the vice president said in a rare Capitol Hill press conference.
    
“Indeed, last week, he said the war is already lost, and the timetable legislation he is pursuing would guarantee defeat.”
    
Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, fired back by calling Mr. Cheney an “attack dog,” the same slur he used to describe the vice president a day earlier.
    
“The president sends out his attack dog often, also known as Dick Cheney, and he was here again today attacking not only me, but the Democratic Caucus,” he said.
    
Mr. Reid declined to respond directly to Mr. Cheney’s criticism that Democratic opposition to the current troop surge in Baghdad was a “political calculation.”
    
“I am not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating,” Mr. Reid said.
    
He said President Bush is “in a state of denial” about the dire situation in Iraq and called on the president to sign a $124 billion war-funding bill that includes a timetable to withdrawal troops as early as July — before the 30,000-troop surge is fully implemented.
    
A little more than half of the additional troops have arrived in Baghdad since the new strategy began two months ago, said Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
    
The president says that he will veto any legislation that dictates war strategy and that the standoff with the Democrat-controlled Congress threatens to stall the funding and forces the Pentagon to raid other military accounts to pay for the war until July.
    
“Our troops should not be caught in the middle of that discussion,” Mr. Bush said yesterday.
    
“The Democratic leadership’s proposal is aimed at restricting the ability of our generals to direct the fight in Iraq,” the president said. “They passed legislative mandates telling them which enemies they can engage and which they cannot. That means our commanders in the middle of a combat zone would have to take fighting directions from legislators 6,000 miles away on Capitol Hill.”

Mr. Bush said he would never agree to “handcuff our general.”
    
The bill approved in a conference of both chambers of Congress sets a timetable to start a troop withdrawal as early as July 1 and no later than Oct. 1. It also would end combat missions by limiting military action to training Iraqi forces, protecting U.S. bases and conducting targeted counterterrorism operations. 
   
The legislation heads to a final vote today in the House and tomorrow in the Senate.
    
A presidential veto could come as soon as next week, and then negotiations on war funding begin anew.
    
Earlier versions of the timetables passed both chambers by narrow margins, and Democrats likely cannot muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.
    
“If the president doesn’t like what we have tried to do to help the troops … tell us what’s wrong with it,” Mr. Reid said. “Don’t do the ‘my way or no way.’ “
    
He said the president would have to learn to deal with “this pesky little thing we have in the Constitution called the legislative branch of government.”
    
Under the legislation, the troop withdrawal would commence July 1 if the Iraqi government does not meet benchmarks, including reducing sectarian violence, establishing a militia-disarmament program and enacting laws to share oil revenue.
    
If Iraqis satisfy the benchmarks, the troops would start to pull out Oct. 1 with a goal of most troops coming home by next April.
    
The Democratic strategy would limit combat operations by rolling back security patrols by the U.S. military in sectarian hot spots and by barring participation in the systematic search for insurgents — tasks typically determined by commanders on the ground and Mr. Bush as the commander in chief.
    
The new timetables appeal to anti-war House Democrats by moving up the pullout to as early as July and calling for an immediate end of U.S. involvement in military combat. It also satisfies the party’s more conservative senators by retaining that chamber’s carefully worded language that sets a “goal” for pulling out troops rather than a deadline. 
    

Reid: Bush in denial over war in Iraq

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  said Monday President Bush is in a state of denial over Iraq, “and the new Congress will show him the way.” Holding his ground, Bush renewed his staunch opposition to timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals.

“I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job,” Bush said at the White House after meeting with Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Iraq war. “I believe artificial timetables for withdrawal would be a mistake.”Reid, D-Nev., said the Democratic-controlled House and Senate will soon pass a war funding bill that includes “a fair and reasonable timetable” for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. In a speech prepared for delivery later Monday, he also challenged Bush to present an alternative if, as expected, he vetoes the measure.

Reid’s office released excerpts of the speech a few hours before Bush made his comments.

The president said that Petraeus will go to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers what’s going right in Iraq — and what’s not.

“It’s a tough time, as the general will tell Congress,” Bush said. Still, the president insisted, progress is being made in Iraq as more U.S. troops head into the country to provide security.

Reid drew criticism from Bush and others last week when he said the war in Iraq had been lost.

The Nevada Democrat did not repeat the assertion in his prepared speech, saying that “The military mission has long since been accomplished. The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential.”

Congress is expected to pass legislation this week that contains a nonbinding timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by spring of 2008.

In addition, Democratic officials have said the measure will require the military to meet its own standards for equipping, training and resting troops who are sent to Iraq. Bush would be able to waive the requirements.

Officials also say the measure will set standards for the Iraqi government to meet as it tries to establish itself as a democratic society.

Bush has pledged repeatedly to reject any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and there is no doubt that Republicans in Congress have the votes to sustain his veto.

That would require Congress to approve a second funding bill quickly to avoid significant disruptions in military operations.

Reid’s speech blended an attack on Bush, an appeal for patience to the anti-war voters who last fall gave Democrats control, and an attempt to shape the post-veto debate.

“I understand the restlessness that some feel. Many who voted for change in November anticipated dramatic and immediate results in January,” he said.

“But like it or not, George W. Bush is still the commander in chief — and this is his war,” Reid said.

Reid said Democrats have sought Republican support for their attempts to force Bush to change course. “Only the president is the odd man out, and he is making the task even harder by demanding absolute fidelity from his party.”

Looking beyond Bush’s expected veto, he said, “If the president disagrees, let him come to us with an alternative. Instead of sending us back to square one with a veto, some tough talk and nothing more, let him come to the table in the spirit of bipartisanship that Americans demand and deserve.”

Reid noted disapprovingly that in a speech last week, Bush repeatedly said there were signs of progress in Iraq in the wake of a troop increase he ordered last winter.

“The White House transcript says the president made those remarks in the state of Michigan. I believe he made them in the state of denial,” said Reid.

Democratic officials have also said they intend to add a minimum wage increase to the war funding bill. Key lawmakers announced agreement late last week on a package of business tax breaks to accompany the boost in the wage floor, which would total $2.10 cents an hour in three equal installments.

Apart from the clash over war policy, Bush has pledged to veto the funding bill if Democrats go ahead with plans to include billions of dollars in domestic spending.

Lieberman Goes After Reid On ‘Iraq War Is Lost’ Comment

(The Politico) Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) took after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for Reid’s statement on Wednesday that the “Iraq War is lost.”

Lieberman, who has been a strong proponent of the U.S. campaign in Iraq, had this to say today:

“This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is ‘lost.’

With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid’s statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.

Al Qaeda’s strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. They are trying to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in an effort to reignite sectarian fighting and drive us to retreat from Iraq.

The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes – abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week’s atrocities – or whether we stand united to fight them.

This is exactly the wrong time to conclude that we have lost the war in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed. Instead, we should provide General Petraeus and his troops with the time and the resources to succeed.  We should not surrender in the face of barbarism.”

Pelosi Over The Line, Out of Bounds

Our opinion of the Speaker’s trip to Syria….

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
April 4, 2007

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has committed an unusual breach of protocol in time of war. The unwritten rules she has broken include:

-Conducting an international trip at government expense to a location, nation and leader that the President of the United States asked her to avoid.

-Conducting what could be viewed as foreign policy (certain diplomatic contacts) without first receiving briefings and preparation from the Secretary of State and the State Department.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States is second in the line of succession to the presidency, behind the Vice President of the United States and ahead of the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate.

Therefore, by virtue of her office, heads of state will accord her much courtesy and respect. They may listen to her and think she is speaking “United States policy” on topics of international interest.

In fact, she is speaking only about what her party believes, not national policy.

Mrs. Pelosi’s trip to Syria reminds me of another renegade act. In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being “murdered by the United States of America” and said he had gone to Paris and “talked with both delegations at the peace talks” and met with communist representatives.

Especially in time of war, the self important need to restrain their conduct with regard to speaking with leaders clearly fighting against America.

Syria supported Hezbollah during the war with Israel and served as a trans-shipment site for Iranian arms, ammunition and fighters. Only representatives of the President of the United States should be conducting discussions with a nation like this.

Bush mocks pork in war funding

By Joseph Curl
The Washington Times
March 29, 2007

President Bush yesterday ridiculed House and Senate lawmakers for pork-laden Iraq war funding bills that set 2008 deadlines for full U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing to veto what he called “arbitrary” limits on U.S. military commanders.
    
Addressing a group of raucous ranchers at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Washington, the president drew laughter and applause as he lampooned the competing bills now working their ways through Congress.
    
On the Senate bill, Mr. Bush noted that “there’s $3.5 million for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works.” To loud laughter from the cattlemen, he added: “I’m not kidding you.”
    
“The bill includes $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers,” he said to laughter. “There’s $6.4 million for the House of Representatives’ salaries and expense accounts. I don’t know what that is, but it is not related to the war and protecting the United States of America,” he said to more laughter and applause.
    
The president urged lawmakers to deliver a bill he can sign.
    
“Here’s the bottom line: The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders, and an artificial timetable for withdrawal,” Mr. Bush said. “And I have made it clear for weeks, if either version comes to my desk, I’m going to veto it.
    
“It is also clear from the strong opposition in both houses that my veto would be sustained. Yet Congress continues to pursue these bills, and as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field,” he said.
    
Democrats, however, accused the president of stubbornly sticking with a failed Iraq policy and demanded that Mr. Bush listen to the American people.
    
“Now that congressional Democrats have voted to give the troops the resources they need in combat, including a strategy to change course and get them out of a civil war, it’s up to the president to drop his stubborn veto threat so there is no delay in funding for our troops,” said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“He should also stop ignoring the will of the American people, put partisanship aside and work with Congress to fix his failed policies in Iraq.”
    
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada agreed.
    
“Why doesn’t he get real with what’s going on with the world?” he said after Mr. Bush’s speech. “We’re not holding up funding in Iraq, and he knows that. Why doesn’t he deal with the real issues facing the American people?”
    
But the president said that the Democratic strategy will not force him to negotiate and said the “consequences of imposing such a specific and random date of withdrawal would be disastrous.”

“Our enemies in Iraq would simply have to mark their calendars. They’d spend the months ahead plotting how to use their new safe haven once we were to leave. It makes no sense for politicians in Washington, D.C., to be dictating arbitrary timelines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000 miles away,” Mr. Bush said.
    
“If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world and we will endanger our citizens,” the president said. “If we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here.”
    
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats won’t back down.
    
“This Congress will hold him accountable for the conduct of this war, and we will have legislation that will give him every dollar he asks for for our troops and more, but with accountability,” she said.
    
The Senate yesterday continued debate on a bill that provides $96 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about $20 billion for domestic spending. The bill would require Mr. Bush to begin bringing home some combat troops right away with a nonbinding goal of ending combat missions by March 31, 2008.
    
The House last week passed a similar bill by a 218-212 vote. That bill orders combat troops out by Aug. 31, 2008 guaranteeing the final spending measure negotiated with the Senate will include some sort of timetable on the war. 
    

Sea Change in World Cultures, Economies, Politics and Issues

The stakes in our near term elections could be enormous….

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
March 27, 2007
(Updated March 28, 2007)

There are few possible connections between these topics or issues, right? What are the topics and issues we are discussing? Day Care, Family Values, National Culture, Education, Birth Rates, Population, National Economies, Foreign Students, Religion, and Illiteracy.

Lets continue with a few more questions:

– In Washington D.C., the Capital City of the United States of America, nearly 36 percent, or 170,000, of the District’s residents are functionally illiterate, compared with 21 percent nationally. The agency bills the report as “the first comprehensive review on the District’s state of adult literacy.”

Adults who have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications are considered functionally illiterate.Is this a good thing for the nation and the society?

–The Washington Post reported today that High School students in the District of Columbia, starting next year, will have more stringent graduation requirements.

Our question is: why weren’t all students required to complete a curriculum geared to get them into college a long rime ago? Everyone knows that a college education almost always means better pay and a better life. Why would anyone not encourage every high school student to set college as a goal; and then make a system that fosters that goal?

So we congratulate Superintendent Clifford B. Janey of Washington D.C. on his announcement yesterday that the school system has adopted a new graduation policy. Staring next year, all students will be required to take four years of math, science, social studies and English, in an “attempt to increase academic rigor and give a high school diploma more meaning.”

And we ask, what about college? What about the high school’s responsibility to prepare students adequately for college and to counsel them and help them to achieve that goal? When do we stop “aiming our sights too low”?

–On March 28 this news from the World Economic Forum: European countries and Singapore have surpassed the United States in their ability to exploit information and communication technology.
 
The Forum’s index, which measures the range of factors that affect a country’s ability to harness information technologies for economic competitiveness and development, also cited the United States’ low rate of mobile telephone usage, a lack of government leadership in information technology and the low quality of math and science education.  Good news?
 
–One final thought on America and education: Nationally recognized author and educator Alfie Kohn argues that there is virtually no statistical data to support giving daily homework assignments to young American students.
 
Kohn claims homework is a burden on parents, causes stress for children and family conflict, allows less time for other activities and leads to less interest in learning.

Well isn’t that too bad.  I have news for Mr. Kohn: they do homework in places like China and Singapore because not doing so makes students fall behind the overachievers.  And those same overachievers get better jobs and the students not doing homework to save themselves stress end up driving taxis in places like Singapore and Beijing.  I have no statistical data (either)  but I did talk to the cab drivers about it (and many regret they didn’t do more homework).

So the question is: Do Americans want to compete in the global economy or not?

–Germany has a very low birthrate (among non-Muslim women) and an ageing population. In an effort to reverse these trends, Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen has made the suggestion that Germany triple the number of day care spots for young children.

Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen has seven children of her own.

After the government introduced generous benefits in January paying parents to take time off work after having a baby, the day care proposal proved too much for the Catholic bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa.

In February, he attacked von der Leyen, a physician before she went into politics, for an idea that he said would turn women into “birthing machines” and hinder the development of a close maternal bond.

In the United States, the role of the Mother and Wife is sometimes lumped into the category of “Family Values.” Liberals hate this phrase and dubbed it an evil concoction of the “Religious Right.”

A low birthrate can mean a shrinking tax base to support a generous social security system at the same time that a growing elderly population requires more government spending on health care and pensions.

Also, Germany, the world’s leading exporter, would have difficulty finding qualified people for jobs in key industries. Those problems could be mitigated by increased immigration, but many German politicians remain opposed to looking abroad to solve the country’s baby gap.

This in part because the vast majority of new arrivals to German immigration lines are Muslims.
Is this a good situation?

–Meanwhile, in the United States we abort more than we graduate from high school. This might resolve our troubles in public education but it may impact our population, our cuture and our national psyche in other ways.

What do you think? No negative impacts?

–United Press International reported today that “U.S. children who spent time in day care settings may have more problems with aggressive and disobedient behavior in elementary school, a study found.

The study is the latest installment of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study, started in 1991 to examine relationships between children’s care in the first 54 months of life and subsequent development. Researchers also found children with higher-quality early child care have somewhat better vocabularies through fifth grade than children who are enrolled in lower-quality care.”

So, Day Care is a good idea?

–The Des Moines Register reported on March 22, 2007, that Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told about 300 southwest Iowa supporters today that he maintains his tough stance on illegal immigration but proposes offering foreign students attending U.S. colleges and universities the chance to remain legally in the country upon graduation.

“Our immigration laws are upside down,” said Romney. “It makes no sense at all that we have concrete borders with people who have skills and education, but we’re wide open to people who have neither.”

What a concept. Governor Romney is saying, why are we allowing so many migrant fruit pickers into the U.S. without red tape and then we make it extremely difficult for American educated foreigners to stay in the U.S. after they get their college degrees?

There is a sea change taking place in the population of the world, how we view parenting and families, our religious attitudes, how we educate our children and other key factors in “culture.”

Muslim populations are migrating into Europe at a steady rate while the traditional populations of those nations are in decline. In Europe, fewer and fewer Christians attend public religious events; while more and more Muslims worship in Mosques.

Will this change the culture and the society?

The Pope in Rome thinks so. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI made a lengthy statement upon this issue in January 2006 (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=70 ).

But mostly, in Europe, what the Pope says falls on deaf ears.

We submit that the unifying fabric of many societies is changing at a breathtaking rate: and not all for the better. Public education in the United States is not receiving rave reviews. In fact, parents are increasingly choosing private schools for their children. And school vouchers now are somewhat codified making this acceptable: that we will allow the public schools to be sub-standard.

The U.S. population, already a melting pot of immigrants for two centuries, now is increasingly Spanish speaking.

The largest employer in the United States is no longer industrial: it is WalMart: a store that sells mostly products from China. In fact, in December 2006, 66% of the products imported by WalWart by ship came from China.

Seem like a lot to you?

China now hold a huge stake of America’s debt.

Al Gore keeps saying climate change is a threat to our very existance. Some experts say our ruination of the environment will cause widespread disease, famine, drought and crop failures: mostly in Africa and Asia. Other areas will become flooded and unusable. Mostly in the U.S.

The next presidential election in the United States is being billed as centered upon foreign policy and the war. But there are many more issues demanding our attention, care and management.

Our choices in the near term may partially shape our culture and the way of things for the remainder of our present century.