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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Dayuhan who wrote (43128)	9/10/2002 10:35:23 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) of 281500

There remains the serious problem of how we can accomplish this. Defeating armies and overturning governments won't accomplish the objective: the enemy is not an army or a Government, but an ideology. Can you make people stop believing in a religion by defeating their armies and overturning their governments? Will their belief become less fervent or radical if they are invaded and occupied? Not likely. I dunno, it worked well for Nazism, which had been pretty persuasive until then. I don't mean to be facetious about this, but ideologies that can claim victory are bound to be a lot more persuasive than those that can't. AQ and Saddam both racked up a lot of victories (at least, in their own eyes and the eyes of their followers) during the 90's. Wading into the ME and thrashing around with a big stick exposes us to a situation very similar to that which undid the Russians in Afghanistan We're hardly wading in, we've been very "in" Iraq since 1990. And Saddam has been proclaiming himself the victor. Do we let him get nukes and force us out, or do we stand up to him? and if so, when? Will a series of invasions and occupations make us more or less vulnerable to terrorist attack? I don't think we are contemplating a "series"; Iraq is a special case because of the pre-existing situation. I think a successful Iraqi campaign will be followed by a general reassessment in the Arab world about who has to be appeased most, the Islamists or us. My own suspicion is that the Islamists would be only too happy to see us wade in and start punching the tar baby. The Islamists keep hoping for the Arab street to rise and flock to their banner. But they are going to have trouble keeping up the story of how we are wimps who can be easily defeated. Now, we will just have to create a success story in Iraq. That will be tougher, but we certainly should be able to vastly improve conditions for the Iraqis.

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