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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (66012)	1/15/2003 7:14:48 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bush a gambler? Nadine. Confused thoughts. Every act has some risk attached to it. The mid term election campaign, I thought was a no brainer. Bush had lots of personal popularity and intellectually disorganized opposition which didn't seem to cut the mustard on political organization, either. Not a big gamble. Tax cut. Tax cuts are popular with the American people. See Reagan. They also make economic sense. Again low risk. Pickering is too US domestic for me. Can't judge. But generally speaking, a defeat on an appointment is small potatoes in the long run. The administration just has to show up every day. The first two just don't look that risky. The third I'm not sure about. But if you're in an activity which necessarily has you in conflict with a lot of people, you must assume you can't win every time. My guess is it wasn't a big bet. And the biggie - pre-emption - deciding that waiting around until Iraq developed its next crisis or we got hit again was not the way to go. I thought pre-emption was a bad formal policy since the US has always acted pre-emptively anyway, but always categorizing it as an exception. Why get everyone's back up? It's something US enemies can use to drive between it and its friends. Iraq itself is a risky enterprise for Bush and it's not clear he's managed the risk as well as he might. But even before 9/11 it was impossible just to walk off from the Iraq situation. Objectively, the sanctions regime can not go on. From the start it was doomed to fail in a number of dimensions. The object at the end of Gulf War was to unseat Hussein (I think that was an object, although Bush1 was so crappy about it I'm not sure, but it certainly became policy under Clinton and remained such) and to disarm Iraq, and particularly shut down its WMD development. The Sanctions and inspections were put in place because Hussein would not acquiesce to the cease fire agreement at end the war and is still not doing so. This situation is unsupportable. Since there's always risk involved in every thing, gambling might be defined 'as not managing risk to minimize possible loss in the case of failure'. In this sense, US's Iraq policy has been a failure since Gulf War. Iraq has not abided by the cease fire agreement, Hussein has made political gains in the Middle East, the Iraqi people are suffering from Hussein's intransigence and the US is blamed for it, the US is stuck with bases in Saudi Arabia, the US has no local ME leverage against the Islamofascists, etc. Losses have been considerable and it can be argued there is no way of improving their management under the circumstances prior to 9/11, or afterward, unless conditions change. Except for the US, it is in the interests of nearly all players (not ordinary citizens, of course) after 9/11 that circumstances not change in the Middle East. They get to keep their present arrangements and the US is bled of money, soft power and possibly hard power also. Letting that go on in the hopes that some better circumstances might prevail is gambling in the face of present continuing losses. So what has Bush done? He's marched, and is continuing to march, one of history's most powerful armies up to Iraq's borders and is saying, basically, 'desist from the WMD development and get rid of the crappy regime or we'll invade and do it ourselves.' Right now Hussein is testing US government resolve and indirectly, that of the US people. So far, the cost has been relatively small and so have the risks. And there have been some gains that might be followed up. One gain is that the UN has been put on notice that it has to stop being an apologist for slimy regimes - Iraq, Iran, N Korea, etc. What's not clear is what is in mind if US does invade and takes the country or if Hussein is deposed. At least, it's not clear enough. Hussein might fold before a shot is fired but that seems unlikely. Nearly as unlikely is a coup overthrowing him. Most likely, if the US is going to depose Hussein, it will have to invade and final outcome of that is not clear Is the move against Iraq a dangerous gamble? Will losses be greater than present ones? The islamofascists are recruiting anyway and the bleeding continues. Will future losses be greater if US actually goes to war against Hussein? It depends greatly from how much preparation has been done for various end games and that's not clear, so there is political risk at home which hasn't been circumscribed. For a politician, that's gambling. Yup