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Politics : Polite Political Discussion- is it Possible? An Experiment.
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To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (1196)8/25/2006 10:25:44 AM
From: epicureRead Replies (1) of 1695
 
I do understand. I feel a bit sick when I read parts of the book. I thought it was pretty clear before the war that 1. Iraq was the wrong target (and I said so many times on SI) and 2. it was going to be much more expensive and difficult than people thought, and 3. it could have potentially disastrous results for the region.

The waste sickens me. But I think, I hope, people will learn from this. I think the lessons are clearer than they were for many wars. The new "doctrine" of preemption is not a good idea- given our less than psychic grasp of intelligence. Planning is everything, and going in to battle without planning, in detail, for the occupation that will follow leads to a big mess.

But people will not learn from this war if they don't know what happened. The administration is trying to say "Who could have predicted..."- when lots of people did predict exactly what has happened. But I tend to forget specifics- so this book will be a tremendous aide-memoire for me. I had forgotten, for example, the terrific Atlantic Monthly articles, and how prescient they were. It was nice to be reminded of those. And I took a trip back to 2002 on SI- fascinating to see who bought the admins' line and who didn't.

I understand why the book might be painful to you, but recommend it to others, because I think many people do not realize just how cocked up this thing was. The author has a very clear style, and an organizational ability that is superb- I think I will read his other books.

I thought I would start with this one:

amazon.com

since my dad was a marine (WWII pacific theatre)
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