It's ok for Bush to be raising the spector of sanctions with Iran, or Korea, but somehow this is a failed approach with Iraq?
Yes, yes, yes! This part of your approach is imo completely detached from reality on the ground. The connecting threads of my argument are not pro or con this approach or the other in the abstract, as yours seem to be, but a weighing of ends and mean against actual real-world feasibilities. What is actually feasible never seems to enter into your calculations. The previous history - such as a 12 year state of war with Saddam - is also ignored, except to beat up on the US in a kneejerk way.
Sanctions are useless 9 times out of 10. They are done as a gesture when stronger measures are judged unfeasible. Stronger measures are being judged unfeasible with North Korea (China holds all the cards there) and with Iran (too big, and the people, who hate the government, might be able to act, which was not the case in Iraq).
To sit and call for useless sanctions is a weak position. To do so when you clearly have the option of a stronger course of action is a very weak position. All the players on the board can evaluate for themselves what options exist, and how the course chosen measures up against those options. Those who play their hands successfully gain political capital, those who play their hands ineffectually lose political capital. Those who play strong hands ineffectually reap derision.
This has been a persistent theme of the arguments of the Left - see, Bush was for war in Iraq, but he calls for sanctions in North Korea, so Bush is a hypocrite. It drives me batty. Not only does it sound like teenage whining to me ("You're not being fair!" as if foreign policy with dictators was about 'fair'), but it is also transparent excuse making. I mean, it's not as if the Left would rally to Bush's side if he did threaten military attack against North Korea, is it? Is it really the position of the Left that the US should do nothing anywhere? The kneejerk anti-Americanism seems to trump every other argument.
we should have drawn the line in the sand and demanded human rights, and fair and free elections.
Demanded of Saddam? Useless. Obviously and utterly useless. Message to the world: "The US is not serious about Saddam. They have the power, but they will only bluster; they won't move" Moral: Business as usual continues. Saddam will survive again. The US is ineffectual. |
