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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: space (Hijacked) who wrote (16144)	4/29/2003 5:51:29 PM
From: Edscharp	Respond to of 21614

space, "Suppose you don't find those WMD, say within the next two years, what will you be saying then? Let's assume the worse case. Not only do searches turn up no evidence of WMDs, but captured paperwork indicates that such weapons were long since destroyed and there was no intention by the Hussein regime to research or manufacture such weapons in the future. My first thought on this is that I would still be hard put to call the Iraq War a disaster. Saddam Hussein was one of the most god-awful leaders that ever existed. Whatever harm the U.S. led war created would be off-balanced by the harm that Hussein did the Iraqi people in the past and the potential harm he represented to them and his Arab neighbors in the future. However, there would be a significant downside. Obviously, the Bush administration, the USA, it's military and particularly it's intelligence agencies would suffer a very real and significant loss of credibility not only in the world at large, but domestically as well. It could cripple the administration and result in Democrats winning the Presidential election. It could lead to the loss of world credibility, hamper the future ability of the US to engage other rogue nations, combat worldwide terrorism or broker peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis and perhaps the North Koreans. Under these circumstance I would predict the ascendency of a stronger more influential UN. The Democratic party here will do everything they can to curry favor with the international community and will jump hoops to convince the world that what happened to Iraq will never happen again. To me that would be the ultimate disaster. Like so many things the UN started off as a good idea. The idea of the world policing itself is a noble one, but the reality is that many nations of the world are not interested in doing what's right, but will often act in their own selfish interests. France trades $3.5 billion per year with Iraq. War interrupts business. So what if Hussein is not cooperating with the inspectors? France is not a potential target. Germany's internal politics lean to the left, Schroeder had a tough election ahead of him. He pandered to the voters. Well, who cares about the suffering Iraqi's? Virtually no Arab nation in the middle east respected Saddam Hussein. Many feared and loathed him. But still, they could not consent to allow the US to intervene. Because of the political, religious and cultural mores of the region, many of the Arab peoples hoped for Saddam Hussein to be victorious over the U.S regardless of the fact that Hussein had killed more than one million of his fellow Muslims. To many in the West it seemed that the health of one corrupt leader was more important to Muslims than the health and well-being of other Muslims. Well, the US acted unilaterally. WMD was the main issue. I believe much of the USA's future role in the world will hinge on finding WMDs in Iraq. If Bush and company lied on this matter they will have done a huge disservice to the very nation they are sworn to protect.