Gingrich blasts 'diplomatic failure' at State Department

I wonder what Colin Powell's future holds. Interesting times.

This article was posted before the Gingrich speech.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14077-2003Apr22.html

 

He may not be popular, but he makes some interesting points. I heard it on NPR.

Basically, he breaks it down between 2 groups:
- Those who look at reality and results.
- Those who look at process and getting along. (my paraphrasing)

Hard to disagree with him when he puts it that way. But I wonder if there isn't a middle way? Why can't we understand the diplomatic process AND be realistic and strong? We can speak softly and carry a big stick, in other words. Rather than speak loudly and carry a big stick.

 

With any luck, Gingrich will crawl back into the obscurity he's so richly deserved.
The man is an a$$.

 

Just what the US needs at this point. Abolish the State Department and have all its functions taken over by the the "Defense" we mean War Department. A classic.

 

Well, there's this blowback failure of the intelligence agencies, again:

U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17886-2003Apr22.html
As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.


More analysis of Gingrich speech.
Neoconservatives Dislike Direction of Mideast Road Map
WASHINGTON -- Emboldened by the U.S. military victory in Iraq, neoconservatives and their allies in Congress are mounting a pre-emptive campaign against the U.S. plan to implement a so-called road map for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...3apr23,1,3127664.story?coll=la-home-headlines

 

Does anyone really think that this statement is untrue? Exactly *what* has the State Department accomplished - that has had a positive real-world impact - in the past six months? How about the past year?

I am not a proponent of making Defense run foreign policy - not in any way. That is a terrible idea. Despite what some of you may think, I think that war/defense is merely one aspect of foreign policy, only to be used in extreme situations. When those extreme situations do not exist, I want career diplomats and career political strategists running our foreign policy, not people who have made careers of killing people efficiently. In no way do I think that State should be abolished (absurd), or its role weakened. But internally, it needs a change.

Personally, I think it needs a huge shakeup. That particular department is populated largely by people who have sympathies with other nations, some of whom we are not really friends with. (The last thing we need in State is a bunch of Francophiles running the France desk). We need real-world thinkers in there whose loyalties lie squarely with the US and its interests, because after all they still work for us. I am not talking about hardcore defense-oriented people, just people who are more inclined to tell a French or Chinese diplomat how we feel about something, and not just what they want to hear. Screw being polite, tell it like it is.

Such a shakedown would fundamentally alter the way that *all* nations conducted foreign policy, because our frankness and refusal to engage in bullsh*t and fairy tales would send a rippling effect across borders, and force everyone else to be a little more honest too. It would be welcome, because the bullsh*t is pretty thick as it stands.

 

It's funny when Tom Daschle talked about diplomatic failure, everyone jumped on him, and said how unpatriotic and horrible he was for doing that.

Well now Gingrich talks about diplomatic failure with more gusto, and way more in depth than Daschle ever did, and many of the people on this board seem to take what he says as either true, making good points, etc.

I believe these are some of the very same ones that lambasted Tom Daschle. Consistency seems not to be some conservatives strong points.

 

Was Powell's proposal to meet with Syria the same kind of diplomatic failure as, I don't know, dumping your wife while she was in the hospital with cancer like Gingrich did? If this address isn't example of the incestuous you-scratch-my-back-I'll-award-your-back-a-fat-government-contract-and-tax-cut ideological world in Neo-Con Washington, I don't know what is. Newt Gingrich (and the American Enterprise Institute) are just doing Rumsfield and Chaney's dirty work in attacking Powell with this crap.

The State Department, incidentally, was not the reason for the fiasco in Turkey. The Bush Administration and specifically Rumsfield's Defense Department routinely treats even long-standing allies (see NATO) with barely concealed contempt. Also, the administration reneged on much of the funding promised to establish Hamed's government in Afghanistan. That Turkey turned down billions and billions of dollars in much needed aid speaks as much to the bad faith Washington has engendered there as to the lack of public support for the war in the region.

 

Newt Gingrich is an assclown.

 

It couldn't have anything to do with the recent (past two years or so) turn towards Islamicism among Turkey's population? And their electorate?

Or perhaps their desire to gain acceptance to the EU? With France as the gatekeeper to that position?

Note the swing in Turkey's stock market after that vote. Down. They shot themselves in the foot, and they know it. Their dominant parties know it, and are currently scrambling to repair relations with us...

I don't understand why you would expect either side to be consistent - they are in a battle (a neverending one) for political control of this country. They will do what it takes to win, because the stakes are so high that both sides, liberal and conservative, realize that the end justifies the means. Or so they think.

I can only hope that the side that realizes that the one who wins the "moral/conscience" vote is the one that will win.

For what it's worth... How consistent was it to oppose the war out of "humanitarian" concerns, when Saddam murdered on average 10,000 or so people per year? Now that's inconsistent.

 

I've got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream.
You've got your head in the clouds you're not at all what you seem.
-Fiona Apple

 

Well if one side felt there was another way of accomplishing the same goal, or even that war could wait for a short period then it makes a difference.

But even that isn't as inconsistent as bashing one person for saying something, then when a second person says the exact same thing, only with more zeal, stating that he's made good points, or that what he says is true.

 

Dubya cannot afford to lose Colin Powell. Period.

 

U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites

Methinks that those crazy NeoCons running around in the Bush Admin put more faith in their beliefs than in reality. The possibilty that a Shiite lead Iraq democracy would be anti-US should have been a real concern. But the NeoCons belief in the Democracy Domino Theory overrode these real concerns and lead to this "surprise".

Better luck next time.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

According to Ari, the war was a done deal and there was nothing Powell could do to avoid it...

From Yesterday's WH Press Conference:

Q Newt Gingrich today characterized the build-up to the Gulf War and then the prosecution of it as six months of diplomatic failures followed by a month of military success. Do you have a problem with that characterization, and what is it? And I have a follow-up to that.

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the President viewed the diplomatic process as a very important process that allowed for the military success to take place. And the process that the State Department followed and Secretary Powell led was the President's process. This is a process that the President decided on in his speech to the United Nations in September. And the fact of the matter is the State Department and Secretary Powell did an excellent job at ushering through that process. There were others who complicated the process in the Security Council. That in no way is reflective of the State Department or what the President thinks about the State Department or Secretary Powell's superb efforts.

 

How about a McCain/Powell third party ticket next year?

 

I think it would have a great chance of winning.