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

To: Sam who wrote (123383)	1/17/2004 8:16:53 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Sam; Before the war, our problem was that the nation was led by a guy without sufficient imagination to suppose that his gut feelings were wrong. But our problem now is far worse. Among important figures in the US, as well as the population as a whole, there is very high support for staying in Iraq. I believe that no matter who gets elected next year, we will remain in Iraq until the price far exceeds our natural inclination to believe the logic: that, because we are a superpower, our military power must therefore be infinite, and so "fixing" Iraq with military power is within the capability of our military. The one liberal (in the article you posted) who admitted, after the fact, that the Iraq war was a bad idea says: "One point we all seem to agree on is that America must stay and finish what it started." Also note that he still doesn't realize that even if he'd been in charge of invading Iraq he would still have ended up with a resistance to the occupation. Maybe they could have postponed the slide into resistance by another 6 months, but the friction between two peoples so different (American and Iraqi) was inevitable. The quote carries all the logic of the rapist who decides that since he has ravished a virgin by force, he is now morally required to continue as her husband. There is also an unspoken subtext; that the husband will make the decisions, LOL. They just don't get it. The Iraqis will continue to fight us, and those they think are allied with us, until we leave. Every decision we make will be second guessed by the Iraqis, no matter what that decision is. If we have full elections tomorrow the Iraqis will conclude that we had done it for our own benefit, and that the elected party (assuming that it cooperates with us) is our puppet. If we postpone elections, the Iraqis will conclude we are doing this for our own reasons. You just can't win, when you try and marry the rape victim, except by constantly beating the Hell out of her, and we do not have the psychological make up to turn that kind of brutality into our national policy. With WW2, we beat the Hell out of Japan and Germany before the occupation. If the neocon fantasy of an invasion of Germany in 1934 had happened, we'd be talking now about how the occupation of Germany had failed. If we'd invaded Germany, what would we have done? Our choice would have been to either fight against a resistance supported universally by the German people, or alternatively, to install Democracy in Germany and let them vote the Nazis back into power. The situation in Iraq is similar, except that in addition to the Baathists (or whatever political party would takeover their banner), we also have to worry about the religious fundamentalists. If we were really planning to bring Democracy to Iraq, I'd think that we'd be seeing more articles about political parties in Iraq being organized. I've not seen any, have you? -- Carl

To: Sam who wrote (123383)	1/17/2004 10:55:03 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

From your post -- an eloquent conclusion: <For my part, I have indeed changed my mind this week. I no longer think I was correct to support Bush's invasion of Iraq last March. That's hard for me to say, since as I noted at the outset, I've itched to depose Saddam Hussein by violent means, since 1991. But Bush was the wrong president to do it, and last year was the wrong moment—based on problems I didn't perceive clearly enough because of my impatience to see our unfinished business in Iraq finally completed. The first factor impelling me to change my mind is the emerging picture of the dishonesty involved in getting the public to support the war. Members of the Bush administration truly thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, as did the vast majority of its critics. But the administration contributed to the general misapprehension by suborning intelligence, exaggerating evidence, and amplifying unreliable data in ways that, as Ken Pollack has depicted, amount to deception. They did this because, absent a powerful fear of Saddam's WMD, the American people would not have supported the invasion. A democracy must not be led to war on the basis of deceit, even if the unarticulated reasons for going war remain persuasive to many of us. I don't fault myself much for being wrong about the weapons. Perhaps I should have been more suspicious, but if Ken and other experts couldn't see through the flaws in the Bush administration's evidence, I don't see how I could have. It was a very strong argument for war that turns out to have to be almost completely wrong. The other reason I have changed my mind is that, as I indicated yesterday, I don't think it stands up well to cost-benefit analysis available at the outset. I think that the benefits could have outweighed the costs if the Bush administration had proceeded multilaterally and on the basis of prudent contingency planning. But it should have been possible to see a year ago that Bush was going to proceed in precisely the self-undermining way he did. Unilateralism was the president's policy. The liberation fantasy that caused so much additional damage to the already wrecked society of Iraq was the obvious underpinning of the Pentagon's postwar plan. Here I do fault myself, for not better recognizing the evident character of this administration. Another president might have taken us to war in a basically prudent and honest way. This one was not competent to do so. Facing a continuing tragedy in Iraq, but no emergency, we should have waited for a leader capable of reasoning about our security priorities and working more effectively with countries we need as allies in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Mistake or no, we must all live with the consequences of our decision. One point we all seem to agree on is that America must stay and finish what it started. A functional, democratic state in Iraq that exerted a positive influence on the region would go a long way toward vindicating the liberal hawks. I'm less optimistic about this outcome than Tom Friedman. But if such a nation emerges, no one will be more pleased about it than I.

To: Sam who wrote (123383)	1/17/2004 4:35:31 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

"Mistake or no, we must all live with the consequences of our decision. One point we all seem to agree on is that America must stay and finish what it started. A functional, democratic state in Iraq that exerted a positive influence on the region would go a long way toward vindicating the liberal hawks. I'm less optimistic about this outcome than Tom Friedman. But if such a nation emerges, no one will be more pleased about it than I. " Last paragraph by JW is where we all need to be working on now regardless of where we were at the beginning and where we are now? I am not trying to get the bush admin off the hook for those of you who disagreed with this policy from the outset---i am just raising the bar a bit for discussion. I have been away from this thread for awhile because all that seemed to be discussed was missing wmds et al. Hopefully we can continue to the debate where Slate leaves off. Mike