For you serious Foreign Policy buffs out there...

[Wetzelbill]

This is a great archive of material on George Kennan, the man who essentially came up with the "Containment" strategy during the Cold War and later became a critic of it. It includes many of his lectures, some of his articles etc. Plus, articles about him and so on. It's definitely interesting and must read stuff if you are seriously interested in foreign policy. It has a good little bio on him on the site too.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/2496/future/kennan.html

[Wetzelbill]

1. Shameless Kick

C'mon this stuff is pure gold!!!!

[BootinUp]

7. "At a Centuries Ending" looks very interesting.

I should probably read that one.

[welshTerrier2]

2. thanks, Wetzelbill ...

i'll take a read on this when i get some time ... part of being effective politically is being well read on the issues ...

threads like this too often die lonely deaths here on DU ... fwiw, here's one big vote for the Greatest Page ... perhaps others will follow ...

[Wetzelbill]

5. now if only I said something bad about Kerry/Dean/Clark

then I'd get noticed. :)

Thanks for the vote.

[BootinUp]

6. I'll take a look

no Clark slams are necessary.

[Wetzelbill]

8. Good I like Wes... I didn't want to be forced to do something drastic

:P

[Sensitivity]

3. Thanks for link. Forward to Condi when she gets off the coke

[Wetzelbill]

4. I love your movies Mr. Lee

:)

[radio4progressives]

9. K&R and bookmarked

:kick:

[Donna Zen]

10. Glad I caught this

before it sank! K & R. Great find.

[FrenchieCat]

11. Kick!

:thumbsup:

[Adelante]

12. That's a great collection

I bookmarked it. It's so hard to find time to read everything I want to, but my intentions are good. Thanks.

[Wetzelbill]

13. join the club

I don't do near the reading I should be doing. But, I do intend to.... :)

[Wilms]

14. K&R n/t

[Douglas Carpenter]

15. thanks...K&R

[bigbrother05]

16. KandR

[ChairmanAgnostic]

17. Kennan remains one of the powerful unknown

one of many talented people whose vision and ideas shaped the latter 20th century.

I had forgotten that he was one of the original promoters of CIA covert activities, (greece, chile, Italy, Egypt, Cuba, and so many more examples) and I forgot that he was one of the first to complain about the abuses and excesses that followed.

Great resource, thanks for the site.

[Wetzelbill]

18. he's interesting in that he initially came up with the idea of containment

but he felt that his ideas were misinterpreted, he always argued that our interventionist policies prolonged the Cold War if anything. He just felt that we focused too much on stuff that we never really should have been involved in.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

19. ah, the penny just dropped.

To maintain the initial containment policies, our fearful leaders had to demonize the USSR.
We did so, so much that we had McCarthyism, the missile scare, the sub scare, Cuba, Iran, and many other critical and dangerous times. Of course, the military industrial complex that Ike warned about never existed. right.

We see the same damned thing with the Dubai port issue and the demonization of Arab states, even those who are friendly. The demonizing PR worked, and America supported Iraq for a few years. now, rational thought is coming back, and it ain't pretty. And the billions made by the military industrial complex today don't exist either.

[Wetzelbill]

20. it's an amazing comparison isn't it?

Looking at the "War On Terror" prism the same way that the Cold War unfolded. The GOP needs to find an enemy to fight. Otherwise they have no agenda at all. If they have no monolithic enemy to have a military build up for or to scare the shit out of everybody with they have nothing. Now they have their enemy and you see the same tactics being played out. Fascinating stuff.

[lyonn]

21. "GOP needs an enemy to fight"

Bush's poll numbers prior to Sept. 11th were in the toilet, then, bang, the jerk gets 90% approval polling. Why did people think that bush standing on a huge pile of rubble and using a megaphone to say he hears us made him any better or smarter than he was the days before when he was fresh off his vacation. You are right, the repubs are only good at reducing taxes and building a huge military, star wars preferably. Any idiot can get people to vote for lower taxes, Clinton was able to raise them and still keep high poll ratings and re-elected.

[Wetzelbill]

22. interestingly enough

the GOP was so lost without an enemy after the Cold War that they were desperate to find one. For about 8 years that enemy was Bill Clinton. In that time was when the most damage was done to the word "liberal" etc. Witness the correlation of the Libs and Commies or Libs and Corruption. It's a historical paradigm that this more virulent strain of Republicanism has to find something to latch on to, fight and denigrate, whether it's the Cold War, Bill Clinton and liberals or now the "War On Terror. Without that stuff they really don't have much. They're totally reactionary that way. It looks now like they have ideas and so on, redoing social security, the prescription drug plan etc. Well, those aren't ideas so much as they reactions to undo the New Deal and the Great Society.

[radio4progressives]

23. Now that you can create a Journal on DU -

This would be a great piece to post, at least it won't disappear.

and it's very important history!