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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (47260)	6/1/2004 8:58:25 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 793953

IMO, it was a large fringe. I never said the silly fringe was small. Before the war the silly fringe, on both sides, often appeared larger (certainly louder) than the rational center, and largely dictated the terms of discourse. That’s one reason why the quality of debate was so low. Many of the silly fringe arguments on both sides were simple exaggerations of reasonable arguments. A sensible person opposed to the war might have pointed out that there was little evidence to suggest that the relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda was so strong that removing Saddam would be a serious blow to Al Qaeda. The silly fringe would scoop that up and turn it into “there was no link between Saddam and AQ”. On the other hand, a sensible person in favor of the war might point out the necessity of sober calculation of the degree of threat Saddam might pose to the region in the future, if he was not removed. The silly fringe would twist that into “letting Saddam stay would cede control of the Gulf to him”. The silly fringe requires absolutist arguments, those being the only ones it understands. Absolutism, which will almost never be adopted by a thinking person, might even be said to be the defining characteristic of the silly fringe argument. That’s why it’s so unfortunate, and so discouraging, to see the fringes rising to a position where they dominate political discourse. I’m not sure that’s because the fringes are actually so large: they may just be shouting louder than everyone else. I hope that’s the case, and I hope the non-fringe wakes up. The way to beat attempted chaos is to keep on working despite it, and most of Iraq is doing just that. You’d end up with political chaos even without AQ in Iraq. That’s why their bet is an astute one. What they are accomplishing is to keep the US in force protection mode, force the US into aggressive (and often ineffectual) actions that build hostility among the populace, and generally reduce productive interaction between the two groups. It is inevitable that a day will come when Iraqis feel that the cost of the American presence exceeds the benefits. The AQ people want to push that day forward. It’s good to keep on working, if you have a practical, attainable goal. I’m not sure we do. It will be interesting to see if this interim government can actually govern. I hope it can, but I’m not optimistic. It will be interesting, also, to see how we choose to balance the prerogatives of a sovereign (well, sort of) Iraqi government with our insistence that American forces must be solely under American control. Expect the nationalist card to be heavily played when an election comes around. Whether the balance of terror (a revised an updated use for the term) will favor the Iraqis or AQ remains very much to be seen. That’s a new definition of this conflict: AQ vs. the Iraqis. I’m not entirely sure it’s accurate, though it’s appealing. Our biggest problem in Iraq is not AQ, or Sadr, or the Sunni rebels. Our biggest problem is the difficulty of creating a government that works. Terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters, or whatever you want to call them are part of that problem, but by no means the biggest part. Have you seen any of OBL's pronouncement on the House of Saud? Having that set of Arab rulers replaced by AQ would suit them fine, just fine. I agree. We’re talking in different directions here. I said that if there was one Arab leader they could throw to the sharks, it would have been Saddam. By “throw to the sharks” I meant, I thought obviously, to use as a sacrifice to bring the desired American occupation into the region. They want to overthrow the Saudis themselves. They wanted us to overthrow Saddam. We removed one of their leading competitors and provided them with a fat target and a propaganda bonanza. If the US ends up leaving Iraq in disarray, the house of Saud will be naked and ripe for the plucking.