Via Arms and Influence:
Michael Kraft at The Counterterrorism Blog caught the first such casualty: the line item for the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance Program. As Kraft notes, “The program provides a wide range of proven-valuable courses, ranging from airport security to bomb detection, hostage negotiation and to handling threats from weapons of mass destruction threats.” […..]
… The DoD is a very capable organization–but the people who head it (especially the ones in uniform) will be among the first to tell you that diplomacy is not their business.
And I’ll add that this is yet one more instance of Bushco squeezing the funding of homeland security-type programs. See “Bush Abandons Homeland For Battles Abroad.”
Kraft writes, “Foreign personnel trained under this program have thwarted or mitigated a number of attacks. For instance, Jordan, a major ATA participant, disrupted major attacks planned against American tourists during the December 1999 millennium threat.”
But, preventive measures are oh so less sexy than “shock and awe” and nuclear bunker busters. The fucking cowboy is truly all hat no cattle. He’s a steroid-stoked Stetson with no sense or sensibility.
the image produced by reading the headline rendered me incapable of considering stuff as dull as budgets.
Me bad. Maybe BooMan should rewrite it 🙂
I usually miss the “inside jokes”, but I “got” the Kos reference above, and laughed out loud. 😉
I clicked right away, hoping Susan would have some HOT * HOT * PIX * to share. Oh, darn, just politics again . . .
You are very, very sick.
hehe Great title.
I would contend that the only real way to win the WOT is through diplomacy. What it comes down to is this: You can’t shoot an “ism.” This is as true of terrorism as it was of communism.
When you shoot the person (or people) behind the “ism,” you create a martyr(s). Anyone who identifies with the person/people being shot (culturally, ethnically, religiously, linguisticlly, economically, etc) will eventually see you as a threat or enemy. Suddenly, you have cut off one head and 2 have sprung up in its place. That is why Iraq has been such a disaster; for every one terrorist or “insurgent” we kill, we create 2 or 3 more.
You can’t spread freedom and democracy at the barrel of a gun — it is hypocritical and contradictory. “My gun is bigger than yours,” is not an argument that wins hearts and minds, and that is the only way to defeat an “ism.”
So Bush is not only screwing Condi, he’s screwing us all.
Beautifully said: “you can’t shoot an “-ism”…as our unfortunate soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding out too well.
Did you post this a Kos? Seems an important story to me. Pleus I love your snarky title, lol.
Seems to be the inevitable conclusion since the DoD IS our foreign policy.
My first thought, as with so many here, was “Where is Laura?”
However, on a less entertaining level, doesn’t this just go along with the downgrading of diplomacy by the Bush admininstration? A recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN indicates their effort to destroy the UN. Condi Rices’ decision not to attend the ASEAN Conference (I think that is what it was)indicates a withdrawal from dealing with Southeast Asian Nations. Further back in time is his immediate withdrawal from as many treaties as possible. He hasn’t initiated any new ones, either, that I know of. In Iraq it is the military who are negotiating with the insurgents, not the diplomats. I guess that only the guy with the gun can negotiate from a position of strength.
That goes along with Rove’s New York rhetoric about how liberals supposedly dealt with 9/11.
What does Bush really need the State Department for? They don’t carry guns or wear uniforms, so they can’t force furriners to obey the mighty Americans, can they?
Giving the DOD budgetary authority over the DOS is a logical step for this administration.