Interesting to see the many points we disagree on, yet we can make it a civilized debate. Here's a walk through your reply, all JMHO points:
I am not surprised Bush was elected. Gore was a weak candidate; anyone who can't carry their home state is a loser with excuses in my book.
I don't think Bush is a decent man, however. Based on the record, he is a proven liar who refuses to admit he lied, therefore compounding his own dishonesty and insulting his audience by thinking they will buy a lie twice.
Polls indicate that many American don't buy Bush's line. Certainly he is on a knife edge for having enough support to get re-elected. My informal polling around here shows people evenly divided between those who still believe Bush and those who lean toward my point of view. A cliffhanger election could be in store.
His trip to Baghdad was braver than not going but I found it very hollow. He went in with more security than any human being in the known universe would get - certainly not what he has asked hundreds of thousands of others to face. A morale booster for the troops and pro-Bush voters at home no doubt. To me, the message was that Iraq is much less safe and much more unstable than the rhetoric Bush's staff puts out in Washington. But maybe I have heard too many government officials preach progress at press conferences when the facts were really the opposite (I spent many hours standing ten feet from those podiums at press conferences I had to set up).
The cleric's call was very clever, we agree there. There are good reasons that early elections would be problematic in Iraq, but he puts the US in the position of "fighting for democracy" then running away from elections (much like supporting freedom of the press then cracking down on media outlets who don't behave how we want).
I hadn't heard the view that Saddam would be a bulwark against Shiite fundamentalists. True but misguided, much like our supporting other rotten dictators who fell to radicals in the last 50 years. My view of Saddam was that he was rotten and brutal but didn't pose much of a threat to anyone or anything important to us, certainly no threat we couldn't contain very easily with the policy we used before. I know many disagree there - the argument has been hashed and rehashed ad nauseum.
To say that we invaded to defend victims of Hussein's human rights violations makes a mockery of millions who died in African conflicts without our raising a finger. Sometimes we care about innocent suffering and sometimes we don't?
The next argument "well at least we did something somewhere" suggests we don't have a coherent or consistent policy for address human rights issues around the world. But the human rights rationale was 99% ex post facto anyway when the WMD and 9/11 arguments wilted under scrutiny.
We agree 110% on the need for Bush to take a new proposal to the world community. We are up to our ass in alligators in Iraq, regardless how we got there, now we need an end game that provides stability and security, and rebuilds our international alliances. Personally, I doubt that Bush and the neocons have the integrity or the lack of ego to make that happen. JMHO of course.
Tying a response to 9/11 to invading Iraq was, in my mind, a brilliant propaganda stroke and one of the most enormous lies a president has perpetrated in decades. By distorting the real nature of the terrorist threat, Bush tapped into the biggest emotional current available and sidetracked it to support what was basically a bad idea, invading someone who had nothing to do with 9/11. Success or failure in Iraq won't be pivotal in the post-9/11 war on terrorism just because Bush keeps repeating the mantra. The facts don't support a tangible connection between the two much less a serious axis that merited attack.
Bush's critics do not have an empty agenda. As the message is fleshed out they will repeat many of the points I made, and hold Bush to account for not finishing the real threat we faced in Afghanistan. Don't be so quick to dismiss the opposition view just because you may have different assumptions. A smart Democratic nominee may be able to get real leverage if the American people realize they were conned.
Which is hard when American men and women in the field pay such a heavy price. Emotions will be mixed and exploited by the political hustlers to a disgusting degree next year.
I don't expect a moderate revival in either the US or Iraq now. |
