Wider U.S. War?

By BARTLE BREESE BULL
NY Times: August 13, 2008

BARACK OBAMA and John McCain have plenty of disagreements, but one thing they are united on is promising a troop surge in Afghanistan. Senator McCain wants to move troops to Afghanistan from the Middle East, conditional on continued progress in Iraq. Senator Obama goes much further, arguing that we should have sent last year’s surge to Afghanistan, not Iraq, that Afghanistan is the “central front” and that we must rebuild Afghanistan from the bottom up along the lines of the Marshall Plan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on board, too. He has endorsed a $20 billion plan to increase substantially the size of Afghanistan’s army, as well as the role and numbers of Western troops there to aid it. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with the idea of an Afghan surge. A recent Time magazine cover anointed the fighting there as “The Right War.”

Reopening the Tent of Abraham

Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman and Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow *

The world is falling helter-skelter down a steep incline toward a fatal cliff: an endless world war between the whole Muslim world and the West, or perhaps the United States. A war between the different families of Abraham.

Sometimes it seems we are already over the edge of the cliff, but perhaps, God willing, im yirtzeh hashem, inshallah, not quite yet. Barely.

Such a war would leave us all at constant risk of death, impoverishment for all public and many private goods, ridden and riddled with fear and rage. Write large – write "global" -- the tip of Manhattan on September 11, 2001; the city of Baghdad all of June, July, August, 2006; Qana on July 30, 2006; Kfar Giladi on August 6.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

We sometimes think of diplomacy and negotiation as merely political efforts to match up different political or economic interests. But at their root is a deeper spiritual hope: stretching ourselves to broaden the circle of community.

Through negotiating, through diplomacy, at best we become able not just to compromise, to "split the difference," but to stand in someone else's shoes and figure out how to meet that person's needs while not abandoning our own need. (As Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and probably others have said, the whole point of a circle dance is that everyone gets to stand in everyone else's place.)

By Helena Cobban

** Despite the death of Zarqawi, Bush's huge gamble in Iraq has failed. As a result, the U.S. is weaker everywhere in the world.

**Salon.com & Spiegel International June 9, 2006

The Bush administration has just received two pieces of welcome news from Iraq. It learned first that a U.S. attack plane had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the long-hunted leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, and then that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was finally able to name designees for the three security posts in his government. The new ministers were sworn in within hours.

However, the longer-term trends within Iraq remain grim for the administration. Zarqawi's killing might dent but certainly promises no quick end to the insurgency among Sunni Arabs in the west and center of Iraq.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 1/19/2005

Next fall, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holy month of Tishrei (which begins with Rosh Hashanah) will coincide.

They will begin on or about October 3, and the saint's day for Francis of Assisi falls

Jude Wanniski, 5/17/2005

[Jude Wanniski, founder and chairman of Polyconomics, Inc., is a world-renowned political economist whose 1978 book The Way the World Works wa named one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th Century by the editor of the National Review. He was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan from 1978 to 1981.]

www.antiwar.com/wanniski/

Memo to: Republican Senator

Buried down in Saturday's *New York Times* report on President Bush reaffirming his unqualified support for John Bolton as U.N. ambassador is the reason why almost all of you are ready to vote for his confirmation.