Tried this out earlier at Daily Kos; it didn’t fly. Will try to ripple the waters of the Frog Pond.
Am I alone in this, or do you, too, want to hear more truth-telling from this country’s “elder” statesmen? Gratifying as it was to read Jerome’s headline story from the DKos front page —
Brzezinski blasts ‘Bush’s hollow fiction of Iraq war’ — I’d like to hear from other former policy big-wigs, credentialed either in foreign or domestic policy, whether elected or appointed.
People like Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, ex-Sen. George Mitchell, and William Cohen — a bipartisan group — should be stepping up to the microphone of the public stage to air their views on the war.
I don’t care which side they come down on as long as they present reasoned analytical justifications for their positions.
We need leadership! And leadership isn’t what you get from a blind ideologue goose-steepping along as he stays the course.
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There are voices trying to tell us something about our adventuristic entanglement. Some from recent history, some from other countries. Will we hear them if there is nothing to hear from our fellow countrymen?
As a Nation, are we being taught what Sir John Glubb, a British general who fought Iraqi insurgents in the 1920s knew in 1957? “It is easy to conquer an Arab country,” observed the general. But drawing on years of experience in the Middle East, he added that the Arabs’ “natural inclination to rebellion makes it difficult for the invader to maintain his control.”
Can we hear when Qian Qichen, one of the main architects of China’s foreign policy, says
the United States was dreaming if it thought the 21st century was the “American Century.” In a strongly-worded commentary, the Chinese leader says, “The Iraq war has … destroyed the hard-won global anti-terror coalition.”
And again here. . .
“The Iraq war was an optional war, not a necessary one, and the pre-emptive principle should be removed from the dictionary of the US national security, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also said,” Qian wrote, citing the Clinton administration official.
No wonder China is more popular than this country is at present. It seems to have leaders who are reality-based and who know who the rational people are — and aren’t — in our nation’s political landscape.
Here is an arena for PBS to enter, for it’s certainly in the public interest: Hold a roundtable forum featuring the above mentioned and others. Give us the opportunity to listen to the wisdom of our best policy makers, rather than the sound bites of our worst politicians.
Where are the voices in the wilderness? Who would you like to appear on the Iraq Roundtable discussion?
