itsmeeeeeee

Brent Scowcroft Echoes Obama: We Need To Talk To Enemies - Politics on The Huffington Post

"Absolutely," said Scowcroft, when asked by The Huffington Post whether he thought the next president should meet with the likes of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "It's hard to make things better if you don't talk."

Scowcroft, widely considered to be one of preeminent foreign policy minds in the United States, was appearing at an event with Henry Kissinger at Georgetown University. His take on U.S. diplomatic outreach comes as Obama's position -- to meet with our enemies even without preconditions -- has gotten the Illinois Democrat routinely criticized as naive and inexperienced from his Democratic and Republican rivals. Scowcroft declined, when asked, to directly assess the foreign policy platform of any of the presidential candidates. But he briefly outlined what he thought was the best steps forward in Iraq.

"Our goal in Iraq is to leave an Iraq that produces more stability in the region and not chaos. And that's going to take time," he said. "[It will take troop presence] for a long time...I think gradually security is improving and as it improves we can reduce troop levels. But what we need to do is provide an environment in which their political evolution continues."

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft expressed public misgivings concerning the course of action. In 2002, he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, "Don't Attack Saddam," and warned that action against Iraq, without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism."

Scowcroft has since warned about the dangers of a precipitous troop withdrawal from the country. In May 2007, he was quoted in the Financial Times as saying: "If we get out before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to resemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution." In invading Iraq, "we created a revolution; a social and religious revolution," he said. The U.S. should "gradually withdraw from inter-sectarian warfare. Shia versus Sunni is not a problem we can solve."

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PursuitOfHappinessParty

I don't understand the beligerency in our foreign policy. We are so aggressive in how we 'deal' with countries that don't toe our line. It's nice to see some support for diplomacy from such a respected source. Having said how I respect Scowcroft's knowledge, however....

Our goal is Iraq is putting into place a puppet pro-American government that is no-contract American Oil Company friendly. To retain that, we must dominate those Iraqis who don't quite see it that way.

Here is his Kissinger influence. Tho I agree that without the Israeli Palistinian resolution stability in the region is unattainable. Iraq is not about the war on terror, it's just provided an additional field of battle.

What stability issues the Middle-East must contend with are for them to contend with. Our only influence is or can be oil related. We wish to control the source of our oil, plain and simple. Any interaction with our society and theirs with us having the military supperiority is a recipe for open-ended hostilities. Either the region will join the modern era world, or they will not. Time to let them work it out and allow the UN to shoulder the monitoring.

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Its like a finger pointing at the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all that heavenly glory. - Bruce Lee in 'Enter The Dragon'

itsmeeeeeee

i agree with this statement - without any reservations.

there SHOULD be a war on terrorism.
the right KIND of war.
history will show that expanding into iraq was a blunder of unbelievable historic proportions.


attacking iraq DID destroy the REAL war on terrorism.
it HAS greatly hampered and damaged any efforts towards a israeli-palestinian resolution,
and has made the middle east more unstable and dangerous as a whole,
threatening the entire globe.

i myself made precisely these predictions, point for point, damn near word for word.
shit, half the country predicted it.
it's no great feat that scowcroft also warned against it.

but i'm interested in "what now?"

and i absolutely agree with you that THAT'S iraq's responsibility.
the military can't sustain this.
our country's coffers can't sustain this.

but history will show that withdrawal wasn't a mistake.

history will clearly show that the mistake was going in...
and it will just be one facet of the bush/cheney legacy.
they will be infamous in the history of the country.
and will probably hold that record forever.

our great great grandkids will be reading about these times.
when fascism took over the country and nearly destroyed it.

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