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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (23516)	1/8/2004 4:29:30 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793608

The war in Iraq was, "a leap, a rush to judgment, almost a knee-jerk reaction" More than 12 years from the Gulf War Cease Fire Agreement & 17 ensuing UN Resolutions all egregiously violated by Iraq & this war, post 9/11, was "a leap, a rush to judgment, almost a knee-jerk reaction"? LOL!

To: Lane3 who wrote (23516)	1/8/2004 4:45:56 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793608

"What was delivered was a justification that would resonate with those predisposed to follow the President into war. What was never presented was a rationale that would make sense to people like me. It seemed they didn't care what we thought, which further exacerbated the unilateralist perception." At what point did folks become confused about the rationale? Before or after these folks voted overwhelmingly to approve? Considering all the publicly available information from the Bush Admin about Iraq, & considering a unanimous vote in the UN Security Council for UN Resolution 1441, that among other things found, <font size=4>"As today's resolution states, Iraq is already in material breach of past U.N. demands."... and, "this resolution as an opportunity for Iraq to avoid war and end its isolation."<font size=3> Congress gave President Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq. The Senate approved the measure 77-23. The House voted for the resolution, 296-133.

To: Lane3 who wrote (23516)	1/8/2004 4:55:29 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793608

I have not seen any opponents of Perle's thinking, whether from the Left or from the Realists at State, seriously acknowledge Islamism as a political movement and explain how they would approach the problem. I think we're having a violent agreement -g- The trouble is, the tools that the Realists have to bring to bear - diplomacy, sanctions, containment - are quite unlikely to be effective. Thus, they don't make the argument, knowing they have a weak case. They must ignore the political nature of the Islamist movement in order to have a case at all, or at least pretend that it's weak enough so that Our Friends the Saudis et. al. can deal with it on their own. And the Democrats have not even tried to assemble a case at all. When Frum says that cries of "What about North Korea? What about Iran?" are mere excuses, he is dead right - I have not heard one serious alternate policy, just ludicrous suggestions of only operating with UN approval, after the UN made it crystal clear that to operate with UN approval is to do nothing. With UN approval, Saddam would stil be in power, and sanctions would have dissolved entirely. If that's what they wanted, they should say so. The Prez spent his energy trying to jury rig a weapons connection between 9/11 and Iraq when he should have been framing it as a war on Islamism complete with swamp draining and democracy. When we're faced with such cognitive dissonance, the natural reaction is to distrust competence or motives or both No question that the lines of argument chosen were faulty and picked by the lawyers in an fruitless attempt to get UN support, a point argued vociferously by neocons like Perle and Pipes at the time. The problem is that bringing swamp-draining into the open would have had negative repurcussions on our attempts to get aid from various fence-sitting regimes, like Saudi Arabia. But there is no doubt that Bush blew the arguments, especially by never properly naming the enemy, which is Islamism, not terrorism, which is a mere technique.

To: Lane3 who wrote (23516)	1/9/2004 5:08:30 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793608

there is a second choice among war with Iraq and some other unnamed actions. I didn't think it was correct to assert that the political movement paradigm lead automatically to war. I have not seen any opponents of Perle's thinking, whether from the Left or from the Realists at State, seriously acknowledge Islamism as a political movement and explain how they would approach the problem. Maybe because they think we're fighting a war on terror. After all, that's what they've been told. kholt, You are presenting the same old argument and still fail to account for several things: 1. In America, it is not necessary to convince you personally. 51% of the people is enough. 2. You have forgotten the UN's failed role in containing Iraq. 3. You have forgotten the US Congress' authorization to use force to remove saddam if Iraq continued to refuse to cooperate with UN sanctions. That was an expectation...as near an order as congress can issue. Painting everything with a broad brush called terrorism assumes every terrorist movement and leader have the same goal. That is not even close and our leaders know that. Terror organizations are very very complex and numerous. Here is a list of all the terror groups on the current state dept roster: Abu Nidal Organization Abu Sayyaf Group Armed Islamic Group Aum Shinrikyo Basque Fatherland and Liberty Gama'a al-Islamiyya HAMAS Harakat ul-Mujahideen Hizballah al-Jihad Kahane Chai Kurdistan Worker's Party Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization National Liberation Army Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- Shaqaqi Faction Palestinian Liberation Front -- Abu Abbas Faction Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command al-Qa'ida Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Revolutionary Nuclei Revolutionary Organization 17 November Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front Shining Path Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade 'Asbat al-Ansar Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Jaish-e-Mohammed Jemaah Islamiya Lashkar-e-Tayyiba Lashkar I Jhangvi Real IRA Salafist Group for Call and Combat United Self-Defense Forces/Group of Colombia Anyone looking at this list will agree with your assertion that Islamism needs to be addressed as part of the problem. I believe it is being addressed, albeit not in open forums. You must see the difficulty our leaders have in stating that publicly, afterall freedom of religion is a guarantee in America. There are 36 terror organizations on that list. Taking down Iraq hurt many of them badly, very badly. You are not convinced of which is the appropriate approach to resolution. I strongly recommend you read about each of these 36 orgs. Knowing your enemy is essential to comprehending and evaluating proposed solutions. We all need to understand how complex this problem is, because the war on terror has only just begun. We very well may need 36 different solutions. This war is going to become more complicated not less. And most disturbing to me is there is no clear winner in sight. uw