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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (50917)	10/10/2002 4:34:48 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

WHY WE'RE IN IRAQ BY RICHARD REEVES Universal Press Syndicate October 8, 2002 Nice piece from Reeves, Scott. Increasingly, he's one of my favorite columnists. However, I wish to demur a bit. I've told several friends that the past year has led me to overturn many of my familiar ways of thinking about foreign affairs. Not only 9-11 and not only participation on this thread, but all the reading I've done on the side, thanks to tek and others. One of the things I've learned is just how critical the Vietnam war was to my views of almost everything in foreign affairs. I knew it was so as a conceptual thing but I had not realized that the experience was deep, and I can think of no better metaphor, in my gut. So Reeves genuinely talks to my gut. We get involved in a long occupation of Iraq to fulfill the Wolfowitz' Wilsonian dream and we become the target. Big bullseye on our backs. And, eventually we leave, much as we left Vietnam, only it takes the many years it took there to learn the lesson well. That, as I said, gets to my gut. So, then I have to engage the head and try to think of just what's different this time. Certainly there are. But just how significant are the differences? Are they trivial such that the similarities are the things that should get my attention? I genuinely don't know. One can make an argument (the use of the "one" makes possible the acceptable academic distancing) that stable oil prices are essential to the global economy and US national interests in a way that Vietnam never was. You can make an argument that in Vietnam we got on the wrong side of a nationalist movement; in Iraq we would not (although to counter that argument right away, we might, in fact, by our invasion, create a nationalist movement, the aims of which were to get us out). You can make an argument that the geography is so different it is a difference that really matters. You can make an argument that, with the exception of Syria and Iran, the neighborhood states are friendlies (well, there is that Islamist thing, after all). Well, I could type more but you may see where my headspinning goes at the moment. My really serious problem is that I knew exactly what views I held on the Iraqi invasion question. Until I read Pollock. Now I need to rethink them.