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

To: JohnM who wrote (68938)	1/26/2003 3:08:05 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Good point. It looks like the administration is going to tie the events of 9/11 to Saddam's regime. That may achieve what you suggest. Something I read recently, and I'm not sure if it's true or not. Polls suggest we have more American support for going into Iraq, then we did going into Kuwait. So, I'm unsure how you've come to your conclusion of (huge swaths), with such certainty.

To: JohnM who wrote (68938)	1/26/2003 3:24:16 PM
From: paul_philp	Respond to of 281500

John, I am on the Bush needs to make the case bandwagon today but I agree with Kristol and Kagan. France actively undermined the containment strategy and are a direct cause of the current situation. I am very glad that the curtain has been raised on that charade. It is best to deal with reality head on. France is not an ally so let's stop pretending. Anti-americanism in Canada is running at a fever pitch. Most news coverage now simply omits the pro-American case altogether. There is nothing Bush can do to sway that opinion in a large way. Canadians have decided that a dangerous Iraq is better than an unchecked America. Discovering a nuclear bomb in Iraq wouldn't sway the majority in Canada right now. It would take an actual attack and then they would trample themselves running to support the Americans. I suspect that Europe is quite similar. Paul

To: JohnM who wrote (68938)	1/26/2003 4:11:45 PM
From: mistermj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>one of the basic lessons from Vietnam is that an administration should not take the country to war if it fails to convince a large portion of the population that all other options have failed and the country is under some imminent threat. The Bush folk have still not done that.<< denbeste on that subject: >>Still, you see comments in the press now to the effect that American support for the war is declining in the polls, and that overseas opposition is rising. Such reports seem to assume that Bush has to pay attention to those things. Either such articles try to claim that he needs to give up entirely on attacking (and "let the inspections work") or that the Bush administration needs to "make a case" by revealing evidence of Iraq's WMD programs. But he doesn't, and this is critical. Our system of representative government forces our leaders to face us on a regular basis for a reaffirmation of their mandate to lead, but they don't do this continually and this is deliberate. And right now, just after an election, Bush is as unfettered from short term public opinion as it is possible for him to be. It doesn't matter right now how much support he has; all that will be important is how much support he has in 18 months, during the 2004 election campaign. No, that doesn't make him a dictator. It makes him the leader of a representative governmental system. The system is deliberately designed to not hook the leaders too closely to the people, while also not letting them have too long a leash. It's a balancing act; leaders must have some degree of independence or they can't deal with some kinds of challenges. And while it is important that the people be on board for the overall operation of the nation, there are some decisions which will be based on knowledge which is secret and which can't be revealed without damaging the nation. Thus we pick leaders, and we trust them to make good decisions. History will tell us whether we made a good choice. There are still many checks on Bush. He had to get an authorization from Congress in order to attack Iraq, and he did. Once the war begins, he will be required by that resolution to make regular reports back to Congress on how it's going, and he will. All of that is reasonable and proper. And in a year and a half he and his party will have to face the voters again and try to make a case that they're handling the war correctly. Does he need to make a case now about Iraq's WMDs? He doesn't need to, but he will. However, it will happen at the last possible instant, so that the information that gets released is maximally politically useful domestically while being of minimal use to the government of Iraq. To try to push up the polls at home at the expense of a clean military victory would be folly, especially since the short-term polls really don't matter. If we fight, and if we win, and if we win rapidly, and if the rate of American casualties is low, and if the overall casualty rate is low, and if afterwards plenty of evidence is uncovered about Iraq's WMDs and Iraqi involvement in terrorism – all of which I now think is quite likely to happen – then people will look back and see this as an example of leadership, and they'll be right. But revealing too much too soon could tell the Iraqis a lot about how we learned what we did, which would tell them what else we know that we didn't reveal. And even more important is that it might tell them what we don't know; which of their secrets we probably have not discovered (for it is certain that we have not penetrated them all). If they realize that we know about certain weapons they have stashed in certain places, with several weeks notice, they could move them. But if they only have a few days notice then it's too late. And if they realize that there are others we don't know about, those might end up being used against our troops when the time comes. If there were a way for Bush to brief the citizens of the US and everyone living in Europe without anyone in Iraq learning what he said, then he could tell us a great deal. But it's obvious that this is impossible.<< denbeste.nu