As Sunday talk shows are flooded with possible VPs for both tickets, political junkies start the next round of speculation--about the best Secretary of State to help the US repair its relations with the rest of the world.
In the Christian Science Monitor, its former editor John Hughes, who served as an Assistant Secretary under Reagan, gets the ball rolling with a rundown of possible choices for an Obama or McCain Administration.
After owning up to a prejudice for his former boss, George Shultz, now 87, Hughes gets more realistic by touting Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense as "an advocate of a strong military supplemented by vigorous 'soft power,' or public diplomacy, and economic aid. Remarkable for a secretary of Defense, he has argued that the State Department is under-budgeted and understaffed."
Runners-up are Dick Lugar and, raising some doubts about Hughes' judgment, Condoleeza Rice.
For Obama, if they don't get the VP nod, Joe Biden and Sam Nunn head a list that includes foreign policy advisors Susan Rice, Dennis Ross and Tony Lake, all with high-level State Department experience.
But perhaps the most intriguing possibility is former Rep. Lee Hamilton, 77, who earned bipartisan respect as co-chair of both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, one of the most universally admired politicians of his generation.
Once Dick Cheney vacates the VP office, the Secretary of State may very well revert to being the most influential member of an Administration facing challenges in every part of the world. Voters won't get to make that choice, but it's worth keeping in mind when they pick someone who does.
Showing posts with label Lee Hamilton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Hamilton. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Salvation for Democrats
Is it time for Howard Dean to call in the party's Three Wise Men to build an ark and save the Democrats from a flood of Biblical proportions?
Mixed metaphors seem an apt response to the confusing news that one out of four Florida Democrats is incensed enough over the primary re-vote issue to consider skipping the ballot in November or casting it for McCain.
As today's Sunshine State pols argue bitterly, Dean is way over his head in trying to mediate a solution. One quick fix would be to turn to the party elders--Lee Hamilton, who has studied everything from 9/11 to Iraq; George Mitchell, the savior of major-league baseball from steroid users; and Jimmy Carter, who specializes in guaranteeing the fairness of elections in the Third World.
Older, wiser heads behind the wheel might slow down or stop the partisan bickering that threatens to drive Democrats off a cliff as it did in the unruly 1968 convention. If the party doesn't change direction, the country could be heading for the abyss of another war-loving, economically tone-deaf Republican administration.
The Obama and Clinton campaigns may want to think long and hard about whether there is any salvation for anybody in that.
Mixed metaphors seem an apt response to the confusing news that one out of four Florida Democrats is incensed enough over the primary re-vote issue to consider skipping the ballot in November or casting it for McCain.
As today's Sunshine State pols argue bitterly, Dean is way over his head in trying to mediate a solution. One quick fix would be to turn to the party elders--Lee Hamilton, who has studied everything from 9/11 to Iraq; George Mitchell, the savior of major-league baseball from steroid users; and Jimmy Carter, who specializes in guaranteeing the fairness of elections in the Third World.
Older, wiser heads behind the wheel might slow down or stop the partisan bickering that threatens to drive Democrats off a cliff as it did in the unruly 1968 convention. If the party doesn't change direction, the country could be heading for the abyss of another war-loving, economically tone-deaf Republican administration.
The Obama and Clinton campaigns may want to think long and hard about whether there is any salvation for anybody in that.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
New View of the 9/11 Stonewall
From the start, the Bush Administration did everything possible to hamper the 9/11 Commission, opposing its creation altogether and then, after authorizing it under pressure, appointing housebroken Henry Kissinger to head it until public outcry made them back off.
Today the chairman, former Republican Governor Tom Kean, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton in a New York Times OpEd review the CIA's and the White House's efforts to deny the Commission access to or even knowledge of the tapes that recorded Al Qaeda interrogations and, stopping just short of calling their actions illegal, characterize the process as "obstruction."
This only confirms what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas in 2003 described as a "stonewall" of "public pledges of cordial cooperation with investigators, followed by private resistance, delay, excuses, partial compliance or self-righteous assertion of constitutional prerogatives."
The Commission, as Kean and Hamilton make clear, was not authorized to judge whether or not torture was involved in the questioning but had a critical need to learn what the senior Al Qaeda operatives knew. Apparently while trying to hide their methods, the CIA and White House denied them that information.
The more we learn, the worse it gets.
Today the chairman, former Republican Governor Tom Kean, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton in a New York Times OpEd review the CIA's and the White House's efforts to deny the Commission access to or even knowledge of the tapes that recorded Al Qaeda interrogations and, stopping just short of calling their actions illegal, characterize the process as "obstruction."
This only confirms what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas in 2003 described as a "stonewall" of "public pledges of cordial cooperation with investigators, followed by private resistance, delay, excuses, partial compliance or self-righteous assertion of constitutional prerogatives."
The Commission, as Kean and Hamilton make clear, was not authorized to judge whether or not torture was involved in the questioning but had a critical need to learn what the senior Al Qaeda operatives knew. Apparently while trying to hide their methods, the CIA and White House denied them that information.
The more we learn, the worse it gets.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Everything a Politician Should Be
Lee Hamilton was visibly angry this week, a rare sight in more than 40 years as one of the most admirable figures in American politics.
Reacting to news that the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission said, "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge."
In a hero-less age, Americans might want to take a closer look at Hamilton, as the Christian Science Monitor did yesterday in a profile titled, "Washington's Bipartisan Power Broker."
The piece cites his success, as head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, in getting Haleh Esfandiari, his director of Middle East Studies, out of a Tehran prison on charges of spying.
After being rebuffed for months by political leaders, Hamilton appealed to Iran's most powerful man, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and won her release.
Hamilton, the Monitor says, is "Washington's middleman, the mild-mannered moderate more interested in solutions than sound bites. People who know him well compare him...as a man of pragmatism, to 'that other Hamilton'–-Alexander, the Founding Father famous for his worry about the dangers of faction."
Watching Hamilton chair the House’s Iran-Contra hearings a quarter of a century ago, it struck me he should run for President in 1988.
It struck others, too, but the boomlet soon ended. “He told them he didn’t want to do it,” his aide announced, “he didn’t want to look into it, he just wants to keep doing what he’s doing.” The New York Times called his response “a standard of modesty believed to be extinct on Capitol Hill.”
Hamilton had skewered Oliver North, Bush pere and President Reagan himself with a flat-out “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” simplicity: “Policy was driven by a series of lies...A few do not know what is better for the American people than the people themselves.”
But he resisted pressure for impeachment, saying it would damage the country after the trauma of Nixon's departure a decade earlier.
Lee Hamilton was thinking about what's best for America, He still is.
Reacting to news that the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission said, "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge."
In a hero-less age, Americans might want to take a closer look at Hamilton, as the Christian Science Monitor did yesterday in a profile titled, "Washington's Bipartisan Power Broker."
The piece cites his success, as head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, in getting Haleh Esfandiari, his director of Middle East Studies, out of a Tehran prison on charges of spying.
After being rebuffed for months by political leaders, Hamilton appealed to Iran's most powerful man, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and won her release.
Hamilton, the Monitor says, is "Washington's middleman, the mild-mannered moderate more interested in solutions than sound bites. People who know him well compare him...as a man of pragmatism, to 'that other Hamilton'–-Alexander, the Founding Father famous for his worry about the dangers of faction."
Watching Hamilton chair the House’s Iran-Contra hearings a quarter of a century ago, it struck me he should run for President in 1988.
It struck others, too, but the boomlet soon ended. “He told them he didn’t want to do it,” his aide announced, “he didn’t want to look into it, he just wants to keep doing what he’s doing.” The New York Times called his response “a standard of modesty believed to be extinct on Capitol Hill.”
Hamilton had skewered Oliver North, Bush pere and President Reagan himself with a flat-out “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” simplicity: “Policy was driven by a series of lies...A few do not know what is better for the American people than the people themselves.”
But he resisted pressure for impeachment, saying it would damage the country after the trauma of Nixon's departure a decade earlier.
Lee Hamilton was thinking about what's best for America, He still is.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Distorting Obama's "Inaugural Address"
At the invitation of Lee Hamilton, one of the nation’s wisest elders, Barack Obama made the speech of his life today, one that presages what he might say as President in January 2009. Typically it was mined for a media headline and reduced to: “Obama Might Send Troops Into Pakistan.”
Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, whose director of Middle East Studies is in a Teheran prison, Obama laid out a foreign policy that projects the use of U.S. military strength and diplomacy in a way that would reverse the bluster and bungling of the Bush-Cheney Administration.
He began with an indictment: “After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. To devise new strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us...
”We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.
”Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”
From there, Obama proposed in detail a new approach to “stop fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight” and “wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”
As President, Obama promised to remove troops from Iraq and put them "on the right battlefield," sending at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increasing nonmilitary aid by $1 billion as well as initiate a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.
In Pakistan, he said, “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”
Obama’s speech is sure to generate criticism from other Presidential contenders and ridicule from commentators and bloggers as a ploy to one-up Hillary Clinton in their squabble about talking to enemies.
But, prepared with the best foreign-policy advice he could get, it is a serious statement by a serious man that should go far to ease voter qualms about his lack of experience or possible softness as Commander-in-Chief.
If the critics have substantive counter-arguments, let’s hear them. Invective won’t cut it.
Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, whose director of Middle East Studies is in a Teheran prison, Obama laid out a foreign policy that projects the use of U.S. military strength and diplomacy in a way that would reverse the bluster and bungling of the Bush-Cheney Administration.
He began with an indictment: “After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. To devise new strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us...
”We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.
”Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”
From there, Obama proposed in detail a new approach to “stop fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight” and “wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”
As President, Obama promised to remove troops from Iraq and put them "on the right battlefield," sending at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increasing nonmilitary aid by $1 billion as well as initiate a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.
In Pakistan, he said, “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”
Obama’s speech is sure to generate criticism from other Presidential contenders and ridicule from commentators and bloggers as a ploy to one-up Hillary Clinton in their squabble about talking to enemies.
But, prepared with the best foreign-policy advice he could get, it is a serious statement by a serious man that should go far to ease voter qualms about his lack of experience or possible softness as Commander-in-Chief.
If the critics have substantive counter-arguments, let’s hear them. Invective won’t cut it.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Straight Talk About Taking Out Al-Qaeda
Finally someone says the glaringly obvious about what we have to do to prevent terrorist attacks here: Stop wringing our hands about Musharraf’s shaky situation in Pakistan and cross the Afghanistan border to take out bin Laden’s people who are dug in there.
Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."
For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.
Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.
If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.
Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."
For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.
Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.
If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.
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