I basically agree with you.
Why did they go into Iraq? First of all, Bush Sr. didn't finish the job, mostly because of international pressure. He caved and who can say in retrospect if it was a good idea. So people like Cheney or Rumsfeld wanted to "finish the job." They were raring to go.
Secondly, a lot of Bush et al's buddies made a lot of $ on defense contracts, and Halliburton et al are also getting the same (lots of $). Desire for oil was a big factor. So let's just say, special interests played a big role. Greed. A once ain a lifetime chance, boys, let's take it! Yeah!
I think we crossed a line here that we never had before and I don't know how the consequences will shake out over the next decades. It'll take that long to know. The line was: a first strike war without provocation. I'm not talking Afghanistan here, we can consider the terrorist bombing of the WTC provocation, I'll agree with that. I'm talking Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
A government ought to know what is solid intelligence and what is not. If we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, the above two reasons I mentioned created such greed/desire that they were willing to believe their own rhetoric based on slim evidence. That is, people lie to themselves and don't realize it. Perhaps that was true but I'm more skeptical than that. I think they're far smarter than that.
We are too little cognizant of what the rest of the world thinks. They bear grudges for how we've handled this. Those grudges will have a long memory. They may be visited upon us years or decades from now.
Not to mention that in spite of the nicely rebounding economy, we have a horrific deficit, when we started out with a surplus. I don't like that our surplus, which could've helped our own people--for instance, 75 million Americans have no health insurance, and many others are struggling with health insurance that is not adequate--has now gone into this enormous debt that will take so long to recover from--all to conquer and rebuild a country that was none of our business really, and no immediate or foreseeable threat to us.
I'm more worried that medications are so expensive, that college costs $40,000 a year, that lots of people are still out of jobs. I'd like to have seen our surplus put into our own quality of life at home.
The balance of power is shifting in the world, slowly and inexorably. China has 800 million we have 300 million. We're outsourcing to them and their economy is growing like crazy. We can't stop outsourcing as it makes us competitive in this global economy. I believe eventually that will build such economic strength on their part, that someday we will no longer be the superpower. It could be at such a time, which is quite a ways off, that some of our actions may come back to bite us in the behind.
I say this from the perspective of someone who qualifies herself as middle of the road with a slight leaning to the left. Apparently that is actually a constituency, as I saw it listed on a website the other day and thought, thats me. I categorize myself as independent because I won't affiliate with either party, so I don't vote in primaries, only elections. I vote democratic more than I do republican but not exclusively.
Anyway, on another note, a nice little article:
biz.yahoo.com |
