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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1915)	6/5/2003 6:13:49 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 20773

So what would you do if you had the power? I think the only solution to the debacle of "winning" the war in Iraq, is to let the Iraqis decide what kind of government they want, even if it's not what the US wants (and of course it probably won't be). We can't very well stay there, and tell them they've got a democracy. Of course when we leave, they probably won't end up with a democracy. We might as well acknowledge that now- since we'll only look stupid and naive if we don't. This reminds me a lot of Elian- remember him? Freedom doesn't mean anything, if you don't have the freedom to make the decision that you don't want freedom. Even if it's a bad decision- real freedom is the power to make bad decisions. Anything else is just benevolent despotism (not something I, as an American, ever thought had much intrinsic value, since the cornerstone of freedom is the ability to control one's life- for good or ill. You'd think people who like to call themselves patriots would understand that- but they just don't get it.)

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1915)	6/5/2003 8:53:03 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Rather than deal with examples of clientitis where I'd be dependent upon sources which I anticipate would be rejected based on their political orientation, I think I'd rather go back and address your comment that I posted to in the first place: Anyone noticed the total lack of Middle East expertise among the leading ideological advocates of the Iraq operation? Any Arab hands who served in the region? Nope. One of the chief advocates of war to overthrow the Saddam regime was Ken Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm: In The Threatening Storm, Kenneth M. Pollack, one of the world’s leading experts on Iraq, provides a masterly insider’s perspective on the crucial issues facing the United States as it moves toward a new confrontation with Saddam Hussein. For the past fifteen years, as an analyst on Iraq for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, Kenneth Pollack has studied Saddam as closely as anyone else in the United States. In 1990, he was one of only three CIA analysts to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As the principal author of the CIA’s history of Iraqi military strategy and operations during the Gulf War, Pollack gained rare insight into the methods and workings of what he believes to be the most brutal regime since Stalinist Russia. Examining all sides of the debate and bringing a keen eye to the military and geopolitical forces at work, Pollack ultimately comes to this controversial conclusion: through our own mistakes, the perfidy of others, and Saddam’s cunning, the United States is left with few good policy options regarding Iraq. Increasingly, the option that makes the most sense is for the United States to launch a full-scale invasion, eradicate Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild Iraq as a prosperous and stable society—for the good of the United States, the Iraqi people, and the entire region. Pollack believed for many years that the United States could prevent Saddam from threatening the stability of the Persian Gulf and the world through containment—a combination of sanctions and limited military operations. Here, Pollack explains why containment is no longer effective, and why other policies intended to deter Saddam ultimately pose a greater risk than confronting him now, before he gains possession of nuclear weapons and returns to his stated goal of dominating the Gulf region. “It is often said that war should be employed only in the last resort,” Pollack writes. “I reluctantly believe that in the case of the threat from Iraq, we have come to the last resort.” amazon.com Though he's not in the Bush administration, I wonder why he wouldn't qualify as having Middle East expertise?