It turns out my pre-war predictions were pretty much right on the mark. However, I did err in my belief that there would become a seige of Baghdad. In retrospect, this didn't happen there--it's now happening in Falluja, a city we didn't capture while rushing to Baghdad. Still it's interesting to read what was written before the war began and compare this to where we are today. Here's a post I wrote shortly before the war:
>>> Brumar, some thoughts.
First, it may be easy to win the war but not easy to win the peace afterwards.
Second, it could become hell winning the war and the scale of tragedy would mean no victory, where winners bow their heads in tribute to too many dead.
Third, I think many in the pro-war camp, and you've probably seen this, think the war will go very easily, much like the Kuwait drive-out, that the Iraqi soldiers will quickly surrender like before.
Well, this war won't be like the war before. What our forces will be seeing is an army knowledgeable that their families had suffered the effects from the Shock and Awe campaign, that they might not even have any family left. So revenge could become a factor in any Iraqi response. Further, this time around it is likely to become an emotional defense for the heart of the homeland, unlike Kuwait where there was no territorial instinct.
After all of these months of debate, I'm of the perspective that this war is primarily Bush politics whereby the happiness everyone will naturally feel from having taken Saddam down, will translate into presidential and congressional votes in the next election cycle, that the war will cloak the bad economy, among other things.
The second bonsus from a victory will mean the inside campaign donar trail will become GOP-lucrative, as oil and rebuilding contracts get pointedly assigned, with the US firmly in control of the world's oil.
And the third benefit will be a belief that a new regime in Iraq will take much of the heat off of Israel, perhaps weaken the Palestinian side of the negotiating table.
This was has nothing to do with truth, it has nothing to do with weaons of mass destruction, it has nothing to do with the tyranny of Saddam, it has nothing to do building democracies in the MidEast. It reeks of politics and money over people, that's about it.<<<
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