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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (20405)	3/1/2002 10:40:55 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

John, should we just wring our hands in anguish? Well, here's a cut at my thoughts. I'm sure Iraqis want peace, prosperity and happy families, like the rest of us, with opportunities and fun. Living in the shadow of Saddam's capricious violent acts [not to mention Uday's and others'] can't be a lot of fun. His sons in law ended up unhappy about it. As have a lot of people. If the criterion for deciding which states we should invade is those with governments which mistreat their populations, Iraq would certainly be on the list but others would be just as high or higher. We should have invaded Rwanda, intervened in Bosnia, etc. But I don't think this is your point. I assumed your point about the Muslims and Saddam was not that he was such but that he might ally himself with Al Queda, such as sell them wmds. If that is your argument, then it would take some evidence to tie him to 9-11 or to future plans. It doesn't seem wise to me to invade Iraq on the thought he might possibly, could eventually do something. That means some rather large number of folk die on the basis of a suspicion. As for the Hitler comparison because of anti-semitism, that argument would, if Nadine is correct, cover the entire Arab world. That's stretching it too much. I think of three stages of thought: (1) Does he have wmbs; (2) has he used wmbs; (3) would he use them against the US or some ally? If the answer is fairly convincingly yes on all scores then some action has to be taken. It becomes a question of whether an invasion or something short of it is the best one, particularly thinking about the kinds of outcomes one wants. Japan is way off mark; Afghanistan is way off mark. I don't know what would be on mark. My own answer right now leaves me with an obvious yes to one and two but simply questions on three. The Bush folk have done a particularly bad job of addressing three; they've fostered a public debate in which the radical right wants invasion and the moderate middle doesn't but may come around in the future. If they don't direct their attention to convincing public opinion, I repeat that I think they will face very difficult times. And that's unlike the political skills of GWB. I know I didn't answer your question. But I did take it seriously even though I thought you posed it just to hammer me into a corner. John