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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (84186)	7/27/2000 2:17:58 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

And don't you think THEY had no guts because they were afraid the American people had no guts? I'm not making a judgment here about whether guts are good or bad things to have- I'm just saying everyone governs by poll now. Every politician wants to make the "people" feel good. Because if they make the people feel good then the approval rating will be good. And if the approval rating is good all is well with the world.

To: nihil who wrote (84186)	7/27/2000 7:30:59 AM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 108807

In retrospect, while I can understand their concerns, it was still a huge blunder. JLA

To: nihil who wrote (84186)	7/27/2000 7:48:23 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Guts had nothing to do with it. We could not have pulled together Arab participation in the coalition, and used Saudi Arabia as a base of operations, if we had aimed at precipitating the break up of Iraq, and we could not have sustained public support, which is not trivial, for a long term occupation and continued warfare against the separatist elements as well as loyalists to the regime. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were desperately afraid of the southern Shi'ites, and the potential for that part of Iraq to become a launching pad for an Iranian bid to control Mecca and Medina, and to dominate the Gulf. Turkey, a NATO ally, was desperately afraid of the creation of a rump Kurdistan, as a rallying point for Kurd ambitions throughout the region. Israel agreed to be sidelined, but could not be counted on to stay their, if it felt its security threatened by radicalization of the Arab street, which we managed to avoid through the coalition and brevity of the war. King Hussein, with a major, restive Palestinian presence in Jordan, which tended to support Saddam, could not survive neutrality in a protracted conflict. Syria, with its own regional ambitions, was likely to take advantage of any destabilization to further its ambitions to create a Greater Syria, and establish hegemony, which would have exacerbated tension with Israel, especially at the flashpoint of a Syrianized Lebanon. I will not go on, but it was a delicate and complex situation, and the Bush administration hoped to finesse it in two ways: by destabilizing the regime, in the wake of defeat, through a coup, and by supporting the expatriate Iraqi opposition, with the hope of establishing a regime that could hold the country together, but would abandon regional ambitions. Unfortunately, although there were attempts on Saddam, his hold on the country, and security apparatus, proved to be too strong. Thus was born a policy of containment, which held back from aggressive challenge to the regime, in order to prevent the country from falling apart, but which sought to ensure that the regime could not fulfill its ambitions. There are elements of that policy that have failed, and mainly caused untoward suffering to the populace, and should have been dropped. The general goal of sidelining Saddam, and waiting out his demise, has been accomplished.