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

To: Ilaine who wrote (44978)	9/18/2002 10:18:06 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

I don't think this is about politics. I have posted repeatedly that in 1998, Democrats argued in behalf of regime change. Nobody has stepped up to the plate for that argument. Why? Ah, CB, I don't actually, as you might expect, know what the motives are. Just engaging in my obnoxious right to speculate, publicly. I would guess, however, that politics is one of the motives. In their own minds, I would expect that the first is that analysis I offered of the sort of "wimpish" character of US foreign policy under Clinton. That's not politics. It's an analysis of the way to run foreign policy. But with all administrations, the politics is a close player in all these decisions. Bush's little aside to reporters the other day about Dems defending themselves against his Iraq proposals (and the subsequent White House attempt to downplay the comment) just shows how close to the surface these thoughts are. At this level of conversation, that's simply an observation that one can expect from administrations, at least on my part, not a negative. What is negative is my conclusion that we may invade Iraq for the wrong reasons. The right reasons would be some mix of immediate threat, long term commitment to democratize Iraq (though, for the life of me I can't see how we could do that), or highly credible ties to Al Q. Wrong reasons are because Iraq might be a good symbolic case for showing the US is not a wimp (wrong but understandable), saving face for Bush (wrong and not understandable), or revenge for papa Bush (ditto). I have no idea how this reasoning gets prioritized within the administration or even whether I'm right about this argument. It's just my latest way to make sense of the stumbling public face of the administration's Iraq policy, the multiple leaks about conflicts, and the new reason every week as if they are testing the political waters to see what will stick. As for the Dems in 98 wanting regime change, I've seen that people have posted that. I would have to go back and see which Dems and what they said but I'm not terribly interested and much too lazy to check it out. I'll leave it unremarked on.