Foreign Policy magazine - glorifying repressive regimes for being "tough on terrorism" while stirring up more fear

a publication with the impressive title of "Foreign Policy" ought to be able to rise above being a propaganda tool... oh, well... so much for a mag published by the carnegie endowment for international PEACE, eh...?

The List: The Worst Places to Be a Terrorist

Fighting transnational terrorism often involves making unsavory choices between protecting civil rights and providing security. The following regimes have opted for the latter and are definitely not the kind of places you want to get caught if you’re plotting some terrorist mayhem.

so where are these places that are so zealously safeguarding their citizens...?

• Jordan
• Egypt
• Singapore
• Russia

and, oh, by the way...

• France

i just gotta ask, what's the implied message here...? are these places the u.s. should be emulating...?

now, for the fear-mongering...

How (Not) to Spot a Terrorist

Identifying terrorists on the battlefield is relatively simple. My scout-sniper school instructor always reminded us of a solid truism that applies perfectly both in Afghanistan and Iraq—shoot the one with the gun. The same cannot be said of the world’s most dangerous terrorists—the ones operating covertly inside the United States and Europe. They are an entirely different matter. Hunting them down is more akin to finding Soviet spies during the Cold War. It requires an educated, deeply institutionalized counterintelligence apparatus...

and...

Meet the New Face of Al Qaeda

Few of the deadliest modern-day suicide bombers fit the stereotype of a mass murderer. Here’s a look at four once-average people who epitomize the changing profile of the terrorists we fear most.

and they go on to profile folks that, horror-of-horrors, could pass among us unnoticed...

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Goldman Sachs and its alumni - the people who own us

despite the on-going train wreck in the world credit markets, goldman sachs continues to scoop up massive amounts of cash... just look at this...

[F]or Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, this is turning out to be a very good year. He will surely earn more than the $54.3 million he made last year. If he gets a 20 percent raise — in line with the growth of Goldman’s compensation pool — he will take home at least $65 million. Some expect his pay, which is directly tied to the firm’s performance, to climb as high as $75 million.

[...]

Goldman’s stock has significantly outperformed its peers. At the end of last week it was up about 13 percent for the year, compared with a drop of almost 14 percent for the XBD, the broker-dealer index that includes the leading Wall Street banks. Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Citigroup are down almost 40 percent this year.

besides blankfein, somebody whose name is unfamiliar to me, but who could still earn a possible SEVENTY FIVE MILLION FRIGGIN' GODDAM DOLLARS THIS YEAR, who the hell ARE the people this world-class money vacuum cleaner has spawned...? well, just look at THIS list...

Last week, John A. Thain, a former Goldman co-president, accepted the top position at Merrill Lynch, while a fellow Goldman alumnus, Duncan L. Niederauer, took Mr. Thain’s job running the New York Stock Exchange. Another fellow veteran trader, Daniel Och, took his $30 billion hedge fund public.

still unfamiliar names to me... but, wait... there's MORE...

Robert E. Rubin, a former Goldman head, is the new chairman of Citigroup. In Washington, another former chief, Henry M. Paulson Jr., is the Treasury secretary, having been recruited by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff and yet another former Goldman executive.

The heads of the Canadian and Italian central banks are Goldman alumni. The World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, is another. Jon S. Corzine, once a co-chairman, is the governor of New Jersey. And in academia, Robert S. Kaplan, a former vice chairman, has just been picked as the interim head of Harvard University’s $35 billion endowment.

ah... NOW, we're gettin' down to it... are ya gettin' the picture here...? THESE, my friends, are the folks who OWN us, lock, stock, and barrel... they are also the ones who are calling the shots, these and their buddies at the council on foreign relations, the center for strategic and international studies, the center for a new american security, and, of course, let we forget, those at the carnegie endowment, the ford and guggenheim foundations that mettle helped us learn more about earlier today... keep 'em in mind, cuz what they say and do ends up being the way things will eventually come down...

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A Thursday puzzler: find the missing piece in this Robert Kagan essay

in all the gobbledegook about democracy, power, influence, military supremacy, ideological convictions, freedom, oppression, catalyst for change, unique abilities, and unique responsibilities, there's one major - actually HUGE - underlying motive to america's foreign policy that is only faintly touched on, if it can be said to be touched on at all... see if you can guess what it is...

End of Dreams, Return of History
By Robert Kagan


Robert Kagan

Since the end of World War ii at least, American presidents of both parties have pursued a fairly consistent approach to the world. They have regarded the United States as the "indispensable nation" and the "locomotive at the head of mankind." They have amassed power and influence and deployed them in ever-widening arcs around the globe on behalf of interests, ideals, and ambitions, both tangible and intangible. Since 1945 Americans have insisted on acquiring and maintaining military supremacy, a "preponderance of power" in the world rather than a balance of power with other nations. They have operated on the ideological conviction that liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that other forms of government are not only illegitimate but transitory. They have declared their readiness to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation" by forces of oppression, to "pay any price, bear any burden" to defend freedom, to seek "democratic enlargement" in the world, and to work for the "end of tyranny." They have been impatient with the status quo. They have seen America as a catalyst for change in human affairs, and they have employed the strategies and tactics of "maximalism," seeking revolutionary rather than gradual solutions to problems. Therefore, they have often been at odds with the more cautious approaches of their allies.

[...]

So long as Americans elect leaders who believe it is the role of the United States to improve the world and bring about the "ultimate good," and so long as American power in all its forms is sufficient to shape the behavior of others, the broad direction of American foreign policy is unlikely to change, absent some dramatic -- indeed, genuinely revolutionary -- effort by a future administration.

[...]

Six decades ago American leaders believed the United States had the unique ability and the unique responsibility to use its power to prevent a slide back to the circumstances that produced two world wars and innumerable national calamities. Although much has changed since then, America's responsibility has not.

didja figure it out...? if you did, post it in the comments... extra points to anyone who figures out what it is AND goes to the full 11,835 word essay and finds i'm wrong and that it's actually discussed in any detail there...

p.s. it's people like robert kagan and his ilk that are providing the "intellectual" underpinning for united states foreign policy... if you have the stomach to read the entire piece, you will clearly see why we are in the mess we're in today...

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