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Politics : The Castle

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To: tejek who wrote (2817)	2/24/2004 5:04:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 7936

Both world and American polls show Bush's popularity declining significantly. US polls showed a unsustainable high level after 9/11, then a gradual drop interrupted by a blip up when we invaded Iraq then a drop down to a more normal baseline. In addition to those general trends there has of course been fluctuations but no strong steady recent decline. I'm not quite as current on world polls but from what I have seen it shows that Bush is not popular outside the US but that there has not been a major recent drop in his popularity. So the fact that we may have sent him a tiny bit of aid in 1980 makes them hate us when they supported the idea of sending him much more aid a couple of years later? That doesn't make any sense. That's because the aid was not tiny. Who supported sending him more aid later? The aid was tiny in 1980. As for sending aid later didn't you pay attention to the original question - "What damage was done by our minimal support of Saddam in 1980 rather then waiting until Iraq was under more threat from Iran?". When Iraq was under strong threat from Iran Saudi, Kuwait and others aided Iraq and supported others aiding Iraq even though Saddam would control the aid. None of the Gulf states and probably none of the Arab states wanted Iraq or even a significant part of Iraq's territory to be overrun by Iran. He was particularly a problem in the 80s and early 90s. Later in the 90s he was a bit under control because of US power and pressure but that control couldn't last forever. Damn it, you don't know that.........you are not clairvoyant. In fact, there was every indication he was becoming more manageable because of the simple fact that he was getting old. He was more concerned about keeping his skin intact rather than annexing countries. Annexing countries isn't the only way he could cause trouble. The sanctions where very tough on Iraq and on countries that benefited from trade with Iraq. The Arabs generally disliked them and France and Russia where continually pushing to weaken them or even lift them as where a number of American liberals. Over time the sanctions and other forms of American pressure and threat on Iraq would have declined. If we where lucky Saddam would have declined as well by then and not been succeeded by someone just as bad but Saddam could have ruled for many more years, look at Castro, or his successor (possibly one of his sons, if not some other Baath party thug) could have been just as bad. And maybe not......we dropped the bomb on Japan. We could have done the same with Germany, or even threatened them with it. I am sure it would have done the trick. If the USSR had not been fighting Germany then Germany might have gotten the bomb. (They would have had more time and more resources to devote to the effort). But even if they didn't I doubt the threat of the bomb would have worked. We destroyed Dresden as thoroughly as if we had nuked it but the Germans didn't surrender. They didn't even surrender when the Russians were entering Berlin and the Japanese almost didn't surrender after we dropped the two bombs. Why would we have had a war with USSR? All we had to do was threaten them with the bomb? Why didn't we? We didn't have many bombs at first. Also we demobilized after WWII to the extent that the North Koreans where almost able to push us out of Korea just a few years later so after we demobilized the Soviets had a conventional advantage. The bomb worked well as a deterrent against that conventional advantage but it doesn't work quite as well as an aggressive tactic. The Soviets considered Eastern Europe to be important to them and to be their sphere of influence. They had lost millions of people in WWII and they wanted to make sure that a future war wouldn't be on their territory. A threat to nuke them might get them to back down on side issue but it might not have worked on something that they considered of central importance. They might have bluffed that they also had nukes or they might have rolled tanks through Germany, or possibly have just thought we were bluffing and refused to back down. Would you have gone ahead and nuked them at that point? Also you have to consider the reaction of the American people and the world. Dropping nukes on Japan to end a long bloody war was accepted but killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of Russians when there was no ongoing war might not have been accepted and probably shouldn't have been. For that matter the Soviet Union was our ally in WWII and the Cold War was not in full swing until not long before the Soviets starting making nukes in 1949. You would have supported nuking them and killing so many people? Or would it have just been a bluff? What do you do if your bluff is called? Tim

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