To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (118086 ) 10/30/2003 12:54:27 PM From: Sam Respond to believed that the answer would be yes, then we, or at least I, might not have opposed this operation. But if the answer actually was "yes", then IMHO the whole thing wouldn't have happened in the way that it happened. Bush would have mobilized world opinion first. That shouldn't have been so difficult against the kind of guy that Saddam was painted as being. The fact remains that the whole thing was done in the wrong way--the only part that was done "right" was the military campaign itself, but that was "right" only because the US had such overwhelming military power over the Iraqis, could take control of communications, bombed many of the defense installations prior to the inception of the actual war, could get extensive satellite intellegence of the terrain, and had overwhelming air support to the extent the Iraqis couldn't even get a plane in the air. They did do some of the PR right, perhaps especially the embedded journalists (not so much for the truth of what was happening but for their own PR purposes). Nothing else has been done right by these guys--not the build up to the war, not the diplomacy either before or after the war, not the immediate aftermath in Bagdhad, not the intermediate aftermath, not the awarding of contracts to favored contractors and the resulting appearance of greed--I could go on but won't. So they've built some schools and rebuilt some buildings. I'm sure that is appreciated--but they have, by most of the reports I've read, managed to alienate even more people by their tin ear for cultural differences. They are so academically focused on their neocon chant that "Every people wants the same things" that they totally ignore very real cultural differences--the recent crazy idea to send Turkish troops into Iraq was only the most recent example of their utter doofishness with respect to Iraqi history and culture. I've known a fair number of Straussians in my day, I spoken and studied with them, I've learned a lot from them, and I am sometimes impressed with their articulateness and learning, but am even more frequently depressed by their lack of historical perspective and their amazing arrogance in believing that they are not only the most intelligence creatures around but that no one else knows anything or has a valid POV that must be taken into account. (Straussians for those who may not know are the academic groupies that the neocons emerge from). Nowhere is this more true than in practical political situations, especially of the sort that is in Iraq today.
