Hi Bruce. I just got back in town and wanted to reply to your thoughtful post. It's nice to see some moderation in a thread that's become one of the most knee jerk conservative threads around. What's really scary about that is that many of the posters here go back a long way with me and in most aspects of their thinking they are thoughtful people.
In the past this thread had some diversity to it but it seems to have degenerated into a thread where like minded people reinforce the views they prefer to believe. For instance, it amazes me that anyone could condemn the Michael Moore approach to politics and then PRAISE Ann Coulter as refreshingly insightful. I think that requires a special type of blindered thinking. But back to your post.
You write; "ON THE ONE HAND, it is working: I have many otherwise meek, mild "liberal" friends who with passion in their voices describe Bush, and Republicans in general, as though they were bugs to be squashed to save world civilization. ON THE OTHER HAND, it makes me in turn- and apparently many others - very, very mad, partisan and passionate.
What you write is very true. It has its counterpart in the many Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity etc., followers who seem to believe that democrats or, shudder, liberals are all weak kneed, treasonous, democracy hating "bugs to be squashed." In fact, if you consider how long right wing talk radio hosts have made a living pandering to the dark side of partisan politics, you might consider the birth of populist radicalism to have been the Rush Limbaugh hate fest.
I do recognize the irony in the mirror image of partisan views that despise partisan views. I also recognize, as you do, the danger to our country from such mindless labeling and such black and white, straw man thinking. Going back as far as the time when Gore and Bush were fighting it out over Florida, I regretted the scorched earth approach to politics when the country needed fairness, openess and a refreshing look at all the common values, goals and beliefs that make us one country. At some time, someone, somewhere, with a big vision and a clear understanding of the long term goals of an enduring America will need to inspire us to become better and to make a better world.
In the meantime there is currently a hangover from the last election. There is clearly a perception of election fraud on both sides. Who knows, maybe both sides are right. I share your fear that no matter who wins this election the hangover will be even worse.
Forget your rhetoric about Bush's exageration of the threat of WMD and his supposed use of "fear, envy and distrust"(??) You were opposed to the invasion REGARDLESS of the existence of WMD, regardless of the faults of Sadam's regime or the suffering of its people. Regardless also of the EXECUTION by the Army and the Bush administration of the occupation.
Bruce, you were right on two out of three. I was opposed to the invasion regardless of exisitence of wmds. First they oversold the "dangers" so much that I didn't believe them. Why overhype it if the danger was so real? Second, I could think of no good reason to believe they had the motive or the means to use wmds against us or any other Gulf nation. Third I couldn't see any reason for believing that Hussein would arm the radical Islamics that he had been systematically killing and who, absent our threat, were his deadly enemies. So I had no "self defense" fears that justified the invasion and occupation.
I was also opposed to the invasion, as you say, "regardless of the faults of Sadam's regime or the suffering of its people." How's that for the person Warp refers to as a "liberal democrat?" (Which, by the way, I'm not.) The "suffering" of the Iraqi people was, I suspect, just about as oversold as the existence of wmds. I'm not suggesting that they weren't oppressed; they were. What I am suggesting is that their lives weren't so bad that there was wholesale enthusiasm for a fight to the death to overthrow the Saddam Regime.
Even if, however, they were a tremendously "suffering" people, the sad truth is that you can lend the "last helping hand" to a people that are on the verge of radical change, but you can't create radical change in a culture, religion or people that haven't asked for your help and have shown no willingness, as a people, to fight and die for the values you think they ought to believe in. The impetous for such changes must be internal and the momentum must build over time. Otherwise the radical change may be culturally, religiously and institutionally impossible and may result in power vacuums and chaos.
You are wrong on the third count, however. I was not opposed to the invasion "[r]egardless also of the EXECUTION by the Army and the Bush administration of the occupation."
I was against it BECAUSE I felt the "army and the Bush administration" could NOT execute the occupation. My belief was based on the reasons outlined above and also on my experiences in Vietnam which taught ME that you cannot go into another hive and expect that the bees there will not unite in anger to drive you out. That, by the way, is a lesson that's been learned over and over again by nation after nation. It's too bad that all the Bush people but Powell never left home to fight nor studied enough history to learn it.
I did hope, however, that I was wrong. I hoped that they would understand that the real power in Iraq lies in those who bleed and sweat for a living and that those that help THEM might have a chance of INFLUENCING the ambitious changes that they SAID they wanted to promote. Instead, however, they wiped out all the institutions, neglected the needs of the people and tryed to fill the vacuum that their destruction had created. It didn't work and the clerics, who were the default power in Iraq, have grown stronger and stronger waiting for us to fail.
As it turns out, I was not only correct in seeing the problems and understanding the near impossibility of the task and the grave dangers of attempting it and failing, I was far too optimistic concerning the competence of the Bush Administration in attempting the task. I think the roots of that incompetence lie in their dogmatic belief that they are "right," together with their refusal to seriously entertain opposing views and their lack of experience in dealing with people who bleed and sweat their lives away. In retrospect, it's difficult to see how they could have been so disdainful of the power and pride of the average Iraqi citizen.
You have succinctly identified a basic difference in world views between you and I when you wrote; "On the issue, however, of what a "people" want, I couldn't disagree with you more. I believe that all peoples, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey etc. do want a say in how their society operate, do want to be empowered, in other words, DO want democracy. And I am certain that most of the women in those societies do want equality. And I am even more certain that these countries- and I'll discuss it with you on a case by case basis - do prefer material comfort to spiritual values.
Sure, they do want a say in how their societies operate and want, in some respects, to be empowered, but they are much more of an old testament people than we sometimes believe and they can feel empowered and have a say in how their societies operate WITHOUT HAVING DEMOCRACY. They can choose to be governed by their religious tenets as decreed by their clerics, and that seems to be what they are choosing in many instances. I you don't believe me then ask yourself what would happen to our "occupation" of Iraq if the Shiite cleric Sistani issued a Fatwa tomorrow that the Americans must be killed and forced from the lands of Iraq. I believe it would be bloodbath and the number of Shiites that would take up arms would be remarkable. I'm not the only one that believes that as the many concessions to Sistani by Bremer and the Bush Administration indicate.
What makes this more dangerous is that the ones willing to stand up and fight for what they believe are most often the ones who are the most radical in their beliefs. The danger of this is apparent. If you are in a room with 100 people and 90 of them like you and would like you to live, but not enough to risk anything themselves, and 10 are willing to die to kill you; do you think you ought to leave? In the Mideast there seem to be a lot of instances where there are a lot of fence sitters out empowered by passionate movers and shakers.
And of course most of the women in those societies want "equality." but surely you don't believe that morality, values and culture can be legislated? The problem is that in order for them to have equality their CULTURE must allow for it, their religion must sanction it and their institutions must protect it.
In the Mideast you're 0 for three on these critical prerequisites and you need 2 out of three to have any chance of assuring it. The women there understand this and no matter what WE insist on in their "interim" constitution, they are not going to have equality without gradual, generational change. Until then they can exercise their rights and, like black people of the early and middle part of the last century, they can get their teeth knocked out for it.
It amazes me that so many who considered themselves pragmatic realists as conservatives are now playing follow the leader with purportedly conservative policies that are based on tooth fairy thinking and "change the world" activism. What is wrong with you people? You should look at what IS and what CAN be changed, not at what you think the world should be. You should let nations primarily find their own paths to enlightenment instead of interfering at the point of a gun based on some silly claim or "right wayism."
Which brings me to my final point; why did we invade Iraq. If you want to be a pragmatic thinker and a realist, look at what we did in the decades before the invasion with respect to our Mideast policy, look at what we did during the occupation and look at the 14 permanent military bases we're building there. Then talk to me about fighting terrorism, helping those poor Iraqi people and fostering democracy in the Mideast. No matter what you say, it still looks to me like the use of American power to control a tremendously critical cheap energy source and assure our world dominance as the strongest economy in the world.
If you want to talk about the war on terror, that's a different and very complex subject. It's also one that almost every expert (not political) commentator says has been set back by our invasion and occupation of Iraq. the truth of this lies in your acknowledgement that: "[a]ny effort to fight the terrorists without eliminating the breeding ground ,in the long run, will prove fruitless."
What you may not recognize, however, is that the "breeding ground" that must be eliminated is not a nation or even a place, but rather the populations of everyday people who believe in the ideas that drive the terrorists and who feed them, hide them, supply their children to them and become the "ocean" within which they live. You don't "eliminate" that "breeding ground" by preemptively attacking Iraq and killing nationalist who are there fighting for their independence from our occupation. That seems self evident to me and those 12 year old boys, those leaders in Egypt, Jordon and other Mideast States, those polls and those hateful eyes of Iraqis that our soldiers are reporting seem to indicate that we have a growing PROBLEM.
Or maybe not? |
