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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35123)	7/28/2002 7:18:47 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"that's a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make." And Perle is right. Hackworth calls these Generals the "Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon." Gilbert and Sullivan said it well. Stay close to your desk, and never go to sea, And you can be an Admiral in the Kings Navy

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35123)	7/28/2002 9:04:41 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

"Whether he is contained or not, that's a political question," Perle said. What to do about Iraq essentially boils down to how much risk the U.S. government is willing to take, he said, and "that's a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make." So Perle feels that the military is not equipped to assess threat, but that he is. If we leave the decision up to politicians and political appointees, though, how do we assure that political factors unrelated to national security don't creep into the debate? I am not comfortable with the desire that some of these people, notably Perle and Wolfowitz, are showing for war. I am not privy to the intelligence reports, so I can't say for sure, but I have a strong gut feeling that the Iraqi WMD capability is being systematically and seriously exaggerated (through the time-honored tactic of unsubstantiated repetition) to create an expanded sense of imminent threat. This gut feeling is substantially reinforced by the knowledge that military professionals - who presumably ARE privy to the intelligence reports - are apparently not convinced that the threat is so desperate. It seems to me that if Saddam had deployable WMD and the desire to provide them to terrorists, 9/11 would have been a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. It wasn't. It seems to me that deterrence - the knowledge that a WMD attack would result in immediate and drastic retaliation - is and has always been our strongest protection against such attacks. It also seems that if we pursue a full-scale military assault, we forfeit the protection that deterrence gives. If he knows we're going to wipe him out anyway, what's to stop him from giving everything he has to terrorists? The cracks about "perfumed princes" are very cute, but I don't hear the people who make the cracks presenting any answers to the very real points the military men are raising. It's also worth pointing out that men like Perle and Wolfowitz are not exactly battle-hardened warriors. They are as much in the perfumed prince class as anybody in the Pentagon, and more so than most. sr@notimpressed.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35123)	7/28/2002 5:16:30 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi stockman_scott; My favorite paragraph from that article saying that the professionals don't want war in Iraq: A major goal of U.S. policy in a post-Hussein Iraq would be to prevent the creation of an independent state in the heavily Shiite south, or an independent Kurdish state in the north. To fulfill U.S. promises to Turkey and Arab states that Iraq would remain whole, a defense official said, "I think it is almost a certainty that we'd wind up doing a campaign against the Kurds and Shiites." That would represent a striking reversal of administration policy of supporting the Kurds against Baghdad. #reply-17803981 I had an argument with a liberal about 10 years ago about US support for the Kurds. She said that Clinton was going to continue our support for Kurdish independence. I told her that the Kurds were just pawns that we were using in a power struggle and that we wouldn't support any such thing as it would complicate our relationship with Turkey. So now the military is (presumably) getting ready for anti-guerilla actions against the Kurds and Shiites in a post-Hussein Iraq. If we were going to go into Iraq (we're not, but let's play the game of what if), the result would be a splintering of Iraq similar to what happened to Yugoslavia. It would be some time before Turkey would forgive us. -- Carl