Hi Sig; Re: "Considering that in todays world with embedded reporters, TV, and instant news dispersion people cannot even reach agreement on what is happening.
What accurate consensus was reached in the old days when only controlled and biased news was available via static filled AM radio?"
Hey, the reason that there weren't news articles published in early 1942 questioning whether or not WW2 was justified was because it was evident to all from the basic facts. Bush's war was not so obviously justified, so it is more difficult to reach agreement on its justification.
And as the war continues, the same problem occurs. If we were obviously winning the war, with a joyous Iraqi population continuing to welcome our soldiers and rejoicing in their jobs, gasoline, food and electricity, UN and NGOs still in country, oil production up, and our occupation forces had been reduced to the planned 30,000 then there wouldn't be as many voices saying that the war was going badly. Conversely, if there were hundreds dying every day, I would guess that fewer would argue that it was winnable.
If the only colors in the world were black and white, we wouldn't be having these arguments. And if our problem were one of those where the difference was black and white, most of us would agree. But with wars in the gray area, there are many people, their vision less sharp for whatever reasons, who will be fooled into guessing wrongly that one side is a bit lighter in shade than the other. And there will also be people with bad vision who guess right. That's the condition we're in now, the answers are not obvious. It was an optional war.
Re: "Did M Albright(I think it was) actually tell Saddam we would not object if he invaded Kuwait?"
My judgement is that there could have been a misunderstanding, but that there is no way in hell that Glaspie was given orders to give him a green light. But from the point of view of states, it really doesn't matter. To argue over it is to reduce oneself to seeking to find a sinner that can be blamed for a war. That's a waste of time, empty moralizing. It's better to spend one's time trying to figure out how to avoid getting into losing wars.
Re: "Will history show that Iraq 2003 was a new war, when Clinton bombed the country in 1998 and Saddam never met the conditions required to change the armistice into a conclusion?"
History always gets written from the point of view of the victors. But it's clear, from the fact that no WMDs were found, that Saddam did, in fact, meet those requirements of the armistice. As time goes on, I would expect the Neocons to continue to retreat from the WMD justification and for them to find other justifications. The best bet is to say that the real reason the war was fought was to stop Saddam from killing his own people.
Of course, as his own people are now getting killed by US soldiers at a remarkable rate, this rings a bit hollow. This thread has already seen statistics showing that duty in Iraq puts a soldier at a risk far higher (about 10x) than duty as a policeman in the US. There's another side to that coin. Our 140,000 guys are killing maybe 50 Iraqis per week. This doesn't seem like many, but we don't have that many soldiers in Iraq. If the whole US population murdered at the same rate that our soldiers kill Iraqis, our country would have something like 5.6 million murders per year. Iraq is not a pretty place for our soldiers, either on the receiving end or on the giving end of a gun.
I guess many people have already forgotten what the discussion was a year ago. Most people were certain that Saddam had WMDs and that he would not give them up. They used the simple logic of "who should you believe, George Bush or Saddam Hussein?" This logic, which is formally known as "ad hominem argument", obviously failed.
The Bush administration, along with most of the posters on this thread, were sure that Saddam would never let inspectors into Iraq. This was in error. Saddam asked for them to return. The analysis accordingly retreated. Next they were sure that Saddam would never allow the inspectors free reign. This was in error. Saddam allowed the inspectors free reign. The analysis accordingly retreated. Next they were sure that the inspectors were incompetent. This was in error. The inspectors found essentially no WMDs because Iraq had none. The analysis accordingly retreated. Currently they are "sure" that Saddam was ready to begin WMD production / research / whatever at any time.
The sequence of retreats from firm positions on WMDs in Iraq suggests that the Bush administration was, as you yourself suggested in the post I referenced the other day, "just plain stupid".
So what are the history books going to say? If the Iraq war turns out well (which I believe to be very close to impossible), some historians will forgive Bush the lies or errors. But if the war continues on its present track, it is inevitable that history will blame Bush for it. It was his call. It was optional. The excuse for it evaporated like a mirage. And it killed lots of people. It pissed off many of our allies. And it lost us considerable ground in the all important front in the war on terror -- the battle for the hearts and minds of the Arabs.
My observation is that people are generally capable of justifying anything that is in their favor, or that they believe is to their advantage, and that many people still think that invading Iraq, WMDs or no WMDs, was a good idea. Some of those people will eventually change their minds. Some will seek a scapegoat. The scapegoat for some will be Bush, for others it will be the Cassandras who tried to save Bush from himself. But for the historians in general, who are educated by books instead of the TV, they will come down rather hard on Bush.
Re: "Some are saying ( Iraqis included) that all work stopped and they were destroyed in 1991. That cannot be correct, UN Inspection reports showed that stocks still existed as late as 1995."
Look, I don't want to waste time on a fact check, but my memory is that you are right, UN inspectors did find WMDs in Iraq around 1995. But assume you (and I) are right about that. So what? Let's assume so, and that it is clear that those "some who are saying" are wrong. That doesn't mean that Bush was right about late 2003 or early 2004. The technical term for your argument is a logical fallacy known as a non sequitur. Most logical fallacies can be illustrated by arguments on this thread (by both sides):
en2.wikipedia.org
The question at hand is not, "did Iraq have WMDs in 1995". The question is did Iraq still have WMDs when Bush started a war on the basis of secret intelligence that he told us proved that Iraq had WMDs.
-- Carl
P.S. From my point of view, that of a right wing patriot, it is extremely dishonorable to start an optional war over a lie. Your own comments to the effect that you had to believe Bush, because no one would be so stupid as to lie (or in this case, fool themselves) about a reason for starting a war show that you are (or at least were) similar in thought.
There's another part to it, and that was the many times that Bush promised that if Saddam did destroy WMDs, there would be no war. That is, Bush repeatedly told us that the war would only occur if Saddam refused to disarm, and many people (myself included) thought Bush was telling the truth about this. It is now clear that Bush was dead set on having a war no matter what Saddam did. He was lying when he said he wanted peace. Not only did he not want peace, he turned down every opportunity for possessing it.
The intellectual failure of the Neocons was to confuse the concept of the United States as the sole "superpower", with the concept of a military power which is capable of achieving any desired result. They did not realize that the control of civilian populations is something that the US is no better equipped to do now than it was during Vietnam. The Neocons didn't realize this, they thought that our military had absolute power. Some still think this.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. |
