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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (526)	3/30/2003 9:19:35 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7832

I suppose the win is supposed to be that we bring democracy to the people of Iraq, that Iraq manages to not turn into Yugoslavia, that the example facilitates modernization throughout the region and throughout Islam, and that the oil keeps flowing. If there were a reasonable probability that that could come to pass, I might be for the war, too. The problem is that the odds are verging on impossible. We've decided that if it is possible for our government to withdraw and declare victory and save face, without trying to subdue Baghdad, that will probably be a "win". I don't see how you can find a win in that. Seems to me that the best we can reasonably hope for is that we win the battle fairly quickly without pissing anyone off any more than we already have, that the Iraqis end up better off than they are now, that the region doesn't erupt, that other countries don't follow our example, and that we exhaust our over-supply of hubris and never do this again. If that should come to pass, I would consider that we've dodged a bullet.

To: epicure who wrote (526)	3/31/2003 11:49:41 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7832

I spend my mental down time in the pool today pondering your notion that withdrawing would be better than going forward with the campaign. Could you explain to me how it would be better? I really wish we weren't at war. We had Saddam in a box. Yes, the box was bigger than we might like and not as secure as we might like plus he was thumbing his nose at us from his box. But he was still relatively contained in his box and not all that much of a threat to us. I don't know whether the war architects overestimated the threat from Saddam or discounted the risks of a war initiative, a whole string of Pandora's boxes. We've got the imperialist box and the body-bag box and the budget box and the WMD box and the oil-field box and the Balkanization box and the UN box and the crusade box and the environmental box and the jihad box and on and on, all Pandora's boxes. We seem to have a lid on the oil-field box but the rest of them are unleashing hoards of locusts as I expected. What a mess. So, here we are and what are we going to do about it. I do not see how packing up our tanks and going home will close the lid on those Pandora's boxes. The body-bag box would be closed, at least as far as the Iraq theater is concerned. But the rest of them would still be spewing locusts. Plus we might add another Pandora's box or two, like loss of respect and humiliation. I personally wouldn't mind the architects getting a dose of personal humiliation, but I don't want that for my country and you can't have one without the other. Chastisement, maybe; humiliation, no. I don't see how that improves our country's prospects going forward. I don't see any alternative but to proceed with the plan and hope 1)the architects were right, 2) we get lucky, or 3) we have the wherewithal to pick up the pieces once the fighting is over. If you see how this might play out better with a withdrawal, I'd appreciate your sharing it with me.