What makes you think that I don't have an open mind?
Your response to those who disagree and don't hate Bush.
It seems to me that the 'pain meter' when it comes to Iraq in terms of lives and $$$ has hit a hi level.
The "pain meter" so far in Iraq is pretty low as wars go. But if it was high compared to other wars, or if even "low for a war" is far too high in your opinion, that doesn't mean that people who's threshold is higher are blindly partisan. They may have a higher threshold in general, or they may think the more has been or will be accomplished in Iraq to offset the pain, or they may have felt that what we have done in Iraq was necessary or at least very important. They may even have a different opinion about how much pain there has been (yes the number of American deaths and the amount of money we have spent is pretty well known but those are not the only forms of pain). They may think that sooner or later we would have to act and that the pain would be worse later. Or they may have felt that something bad that caused more pain would have happened if we didn't act. Or they may just be highly partisan, that is certainly a possibility, but it isn't a safe assumption.
Frankly, I think its bad politics to lead a democracy into war and not have it well thought out.
I don't think any war beyond the most trivial was well thought out if be well thought out you mean 1 - Planned in detail. 2 - Something very close to the detailed plan was implemented and 3 - Everything went off smoothly without much need to improvise or re-plan. Even in situations where you know exactly who the enemy is and you have a pretty good idea of their location, you still have a lot of uncertainty because they are intelligent creatures who react in unpredictable ways to your operations. In a place like Iraq, once we pretty much eliminated Saddam's armies the residual enemies are more nebulous. New enemies can join up, wile others are killed, captured, or stop fighting. The enemies can blend in with the civilian population. A detailed plan for dealing with them would not have been possible before the invasion. I do agree with you that looking back now there are some things that could have been done better, mistakes where maid, but mistakes have always been made in war and presumably always will be.
Tim |
