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

To: mirada who wrote (83993)	3/20/2003 2:07:28 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

comment on stratfor article: I think it would be very difficult to "plant" evidence of WMD. Nothing is impossible, and they certainly would have an incentive to do so, if they can't find any. But the materials and tools would have to have come from somewhere, and have a history, a group of people who worked on the WMD projects for years, and that would be hard to simulate convincingly. I don't believe in the Domino Theory. If anything, overthrowing a government in a preventive war will make other nations more avid to acquire nuclear weapons to deter the U.S.. Opinion polls, like the ones I've posted by Pew Research, show 80-95% opposition to the U.S. War On Terrorism, in every Muslim country. That opposition has increased over the last 2 years, even as the U.S. has dramatically displayed its Global Reach. We are not doing the things we need to do, to win a HeartsAndMinds campaign. Bush has given lip service and nothing else, to promoting a Palestinian State, and that is the core of Arab anger at the U.S. The methods used to achieve the goal of "Shifting the psychology of the region through a decisive victory" is likely to produce a "psychology" where recruitment to Al Queda increases. Regime Change will go well, we may even find WMD programs once we occupy Iraq. But I am deeply sceptical of our ability to do Nation Building. We abandoned Afghanistan, as soon as the Regime Changing was done. The goals the Administration has set itself, are extremely ambitious. <Using Iraq as a base for follow-on operations in the region> Where? All the other targets in the area (Iran, Syria are the most likely) are much harder targets militarily. If we want to do Regime Change in Iran, this can best be done by inviting them into the Global Village, not threatening them, encouraging an internal HeartsAndMinds campaign against the clerics, negotiating. All things we have displayed zero skills at. Our unwillingness to keep the Turkish Army out of Northern Iraq, makes a mockery of our stated goals of preserving Iraqi sovereignty, "Iraqi oil for Iraqis", and promoting democracy. The Kurds have a better democracy than anyone else in the area, and have done it with almost no help from us, against huge odds. And we may cynically bargain it away, along with their oil fields, to get partial and grudging Turkish cooperation. <This Turkish action does not challenge any fundamental U.S. interests.> Other than everything we supposedly stand for. <As in Afghanistan, the United States will create a puppet government.> More and More, we are hearing approving use of such phrases as "puppet", "colonialism", "client state", done by the "superior civilization". I had thought we were going back to the 1950s, but maybe its really the 1800s the NeoCons want to go back to. <If the United States cannot be loved, the second best outcome is to be feared.> I am ashamed to say, that seems to be the policy of my government. If we make a colony of Iraq, and then start threatening Saudi Arabia, the most likely result is an anti-American revolution there. Same thing in Iran: we will solidify the power of the clerics, and revive anti-U.S. nationalism, by having an army on their border, coupled with an aggressive military posture.