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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (118353)	11/3/2003 1:36:41 AM
From: lifeisgood	Respond to of 281500

I don't think Al Queda has the capability any more, to strike in the U.S. If they could, they would have I disagree. They don't operate on the time lines we impose on them. They struck the trade centers for the first time in '93 and then waited until '01 to hit them again. That's what makes terror so horrible, it's unpredictability and uncontrollability and the fact that many terrorists have no fear of giving their own lives in their pursuit of terror. best... LIG

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (118353)	11/3/2003 11:14:55 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

I hate to say this, but an Iraqi Pinochet is probably better than a fragmented Iraqi Warlord State. Better for us, even better for Iraqis. Chaos is very bloody, and can go on for decades. Under a Pinochet or Stalin, if you toe the Party Line, they mostly leave you alone. The problem is that the analogy to Pinochet's Chile is strained. Chile and Iraq are very different from each other. Iraq has more factions with guns, money and outside support than Chile, and the factions have historical animosity toward each other. Not that Chile lacked factions--but it was mostly limited to two main factions, and one didn't have the same access to arms to oppose the military plus the US. Perhaps if the Kurds and the Shia can make a workable alliance, then the analogy might work. But we bury other deep-seated hostilities when we use labels like "Kurds" and "Shia" as though they too are monolithic groups without differences. One reason for NOT doing this thing in the first place--despite the attractiveness of getting rid of Saddam--is that the situation is so complex, so full of mutual animosity and so filled with arms and scores to settle in a society which is not shy about settling scores, that once Saddam was removed, it becomes extremely difficult to control events. Actually, a better case could have been to do it in the absence of the Al Qaeda threat, and not doing it when it was done (and certainly not in the way it was done) exactly because of the way it muddied the war against Al Qaeda. But this administration is driven by domestic politics above all else. And they did it when and how they did it exactly because of domestic politics and the '02 elections. The fact that it worked for them means that they aren't going to change course before the '04 election for sure.