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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: FaultLine who started this subject	7/23/2003 10:41:42 PM
From: Bilow	of 281500

Hi all; Re Shock and Awe and the quagmire in Iraq. The fundamental error of the Bushies in getting locked into the ongoing Iraq guerilla war was the same as that underlying the failure of the "Shock and Awe" campaign. In a corporate takeover, you can expect that most of the employees will stay with the company and will willingly work for the new managers. Especially if the new managers promise them all sorts of improvements. Bush's advisers, having plenty of experience in corporate governance but little real foreign policy experience, made the fatal mistake of assuming that Iraq could be taken over like a bankrupt company. The Shock and Awe idea was that if you decapitated the Iraqi regime, you could take over the country pretty much the same way that a group of mercenaries can take over a banana republic with a quick coup. Mercenaries and investment bankers are able to pull off this sort of stunt because they do not carry a lot of baggage into the conflict. In particular, they don't try to take over countries or companies where the majority of the citizens or employees personally hate them deeply, LOL. Iraq had a rotten regime, just like one that a group of mercenaries might choose to topple. But Iraq's people had a history with the United States, and a history with the Bush family. The Americans had dropped bombs on them for 12 long years, and had applied economic sanctions that effected every family in the country. This baggage left the Iraqi people sullen when Bush expected them to be exuberant over liberation. That sullen attitude was enough to leave most of them "passively" supporting guerilla operations against the US. (Passive support means stuff like not reporting what you know to the authorities.) -- Carl

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