Jlallen, in one short paragraph you've tried top justify the action in Iraq with your CONCLUSIONS. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind those conclusions. I think your logic is, on it's face, extremely tenuous but maybe there's an iceburg under that tiny white cube, so let's have it.
So that you know what I mean by "reasoning," here are a few of the reasons that I'm not convinced by YOUR conclusions:
* I've heard lots of people tell me things that were "absolutely, incontrovertably true," and if I'd taken their word for the truth of the matter, I'd have been dead. Not figuratively dead, but literally dead. I like to know why others believe something religiously, and then I like to come to my own conclusions. Don't we all?
** Your statement that, "History has shown, time and again....appeasement and delay do not end in a good result....." brings to mind the great evil empire of Russia. We went through decades of appeasement and delay, we avoided the potential for the most bloody war in history and Russia is now, for most purposes, OUR ALLY.
I guess there's no ironclad rule for when appeasement and delay will work and when it won't, so maybe we ought to look at the particular facts of Iraq and figure it out on a case by case basis. I know this goes against the grain of the "all or nothing-for us or against us" dogmatic neo-con thinkers but I suspect that it presents a clearer view of world reality.
*** When you write, "in the face of Saddam's refusal to comply with UNSCR 1441....there was no other choice....the interests of US national security and regional peace and stability demanded it....," I can't help but wonder what you're basing that conclusion on.
Wasn't Saddam in major compiance with 1441? Our assertion that he wasn't was based upon our assurance to the world that he had wmds in large quantities, including an active nuclear program, and THAT HE WASN'T REVEALING IT. Maybe he didn't reveal it because it mostly wasn't there.
How did Saddam threaten U.S. national security? How did he threaten regional peace and stability? Even the neo-cons admitted, post war, that Saddam had been tremendously weakened by political and economic sanctions in the decade following 1991 and the HE WAS FAR WEAKER AS A RESULT. Maybe there were other ways of dealing with him. Maybe it wasn't necessary to sacrifice more and more of the blood of American youth in pursuit of the end of rebuilding the oil rich Middle East in an image that seems to grow more distant with each day that we occupy Iraq.
????Do you have more than conclusions to offer??????? |
