It's an eye opener for me to see politics take over vs winning the war and supporting our troops.
In the view of many people who oppose[d] this action, it was first and foremost politically motivated for domestic political reasons not for national security reasons. It was a rather successful attempt to make Iraq and Saddam the issue in the '02 elections rather than Al Qaeda and Osama on the one hand and the economy on the other. That is why the "marketing" plan for the took place in Sept of '02, that is why Bush couldn't wait until after real hearings and a real debate could take place in order to get his carte blanche resolution passed, that is why Bush didn't really care if the UN backed him or not--he won either way if, as I and others believe, domestic politics was his priority. If the UN backed him, he is a great leader; if the UN dissed him, he is a courageous leader bucked the loony tunes in the UN. Either story plays well among his supporters and a fair part of the American public.
If this succeeds the Iraq people will be free. The country will be a complete change in the middle East. The rewards for everyone in the world will be one less country full of terror. In the long run we should all benefit from our actions.
Indeed. The key word in this nice thought is "If." As you must be aware by now, a number of opponents of this war were and are skeptical of whether this action will bring about the desired results, or will backfire in any number of ways, including but not limited to making Osama stronger rather than weaker (especially if we had actually focussed our energy on (a) making countries that we need for combatting Al Qaeda our allies rather than alienating them, (b) actually combatting Al Qaeda and making sure that Afghanistan and Pakistan are stable and aren't havens for Al Qaeda, and (c) not providing Al Qaeda with propaganda in order to win more soldiers in their war against us. Further, Iraq is a complicated country. We've just made it even more complicated. The war against Al Qaeda is complex enough, we don't really need that complication right now. We needed to apply some principles of triage and didn't. Because of domestic political considerations. That is why many of us are as pissed as we are. One reason why. Not the only one. I don't have time right now for more on this. Triage. |
